Adult Swim’s Dana Snyder and FRED’s Ken Plume set out to have a literate conversation between two pals, but inevitably devolve into a verbal, and funny, free-for-all full of bickering, infighting, and the special kind of male bonding that comes from conflict expressed through the podcast medium.
Actor/comedian/raconteur Dana Snyder, you’re certainly aware, is Aqua Teen Hunger Force’s Master Shake, Squidbillies‘ Granny, Minoriteam’s Dr. Wang, and The Venture Bros.‘ Alchemist. Available for weddings and bar mitzvahs (bat availability pending), you can keep tabs on him via his website, www.eyeofthesnyder.com.
Ken Plume is the editor-in-chief here at FRED. He is a friend of Dana’s, as well as his arch-nemesis.
KEN P.D. SNYDECAST #30: Year In Revue – Dana & Ken return after another of their epic absences with a special look back at the year, plus a pledge for the year ahead.
[CONTENT WARNING]:This podcast may contain some foul language and horribly off-color jokes. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Some people hang the holly, others decorate the tree, and a few even terrorize the neighborhood with off-key caroling.
Not us.
Here at Quick Stop Entertainment, we’re celebrating the holiday season by giving a little something back to you, our readers (you know who you are).
Every weekday leading up to the holiday break, we’ve got uber-exclusive gifts provided by a whole range of artists, actors, comedians, and studios. One a day, straight from them to you (and you can check out last year’s fun here).
Ain’t that cool?
Today we’ve got an exclusive video from Satan himself, the pere of [adult swim]’s Lucy, Daughter of the Devil. With the help of creator/producer Loren Bouchard and a select group of elementary school students, Satan shares some of the holiday seasonal “Letters to Satan” that he gets (which makes a nice compliment to Satan’s special holiday recipe from the past).
VIRGINIA CITY, NV – Why start off the New Year by staring at the skeletal remains of The Crypt Keeper and his son (Dick Clark & Carson Daly) or the skanky duo of Ryan Seacrest and Tila Tequila? HBO is giving you a sexy reason to drop your ball at 12:05 a.m. with Cathouse: The Musical.
Dennis Hof has allowed America a peak behind curtain of his Moonlite Bunny Ranch to see how a legal brothel runs. This year he’s raising the curtain and putting on a show worthy of a Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland movie. This isn’t an amateur hour production as evidenced by this clip.
Who came up with the brilliant idea of a musical that’s geared toward heterosexual men? Hof and a few of the Bunnies phoned up the Party Favors to explain this entertainment spectacular. “Sheila Nivens calls me and says, ‘Cathouse: the Musical.‘ I said, ‘Great! Let’s do it.’ And she said, ‘Can you sing?’ “Sing? I banged 11 out of 13 girls in the church choir. Of course I can sing. Hell ya, I can sing.’ ‘What about the girls?’ ‘They can sing, too. If they can’t we’ll make ’em sing. We’ll teach ’em.’ That’s what happened.
Nivens picked out a special song from 42nd Street for Dennis to croon. He was up for the challenge. “They started sending out singing coaches and choreographers to teach the girls and me. We’ve been in the process of this special for ten months at least.”
This wasn’t merely having a girls lip synch around the Bunny Ranch while servicing V.I.P customers. “They really spent the money on this,” Dennis declared. “For the filming of the musical, I had them go to Piper’s Opera House. It’s a historic place in Virginia City. Five or six presidents have been there for events. Mark Twain was in a play there. HBO paid a year’s rent on the building. They spent a fortune building all the set. As much effort has gone into this one show that has gone into the entire 11 week series.”
There would be more musical accompaniment than the proverbial piano player in a whorehouse. “We’ve got a whole band. We have a whole orchestra,” Dennis said.
Patti Kaplan, the most influential director in America, tapped into her inner Bob Fosse to capture this spectacular. The hour-long special mixes the women singing and dancing with their everyday work. This isn’t just a cut and paste musical performances that you’d catch on PBS during pledge month. Dennis is still amazed at the transitions.
“We used my nightclub as a rehearsal space. The decor is a little bit like the Ranch. When you’re watching the rehearsal it looks like we’re in a different part of the Ranch. They filmed all the tryouts, the dance rehearsal and they mixed all this stuff up. You’ll be seeing at the Ranch a bunch of girls sitting around a Sybian. Brooke comes out, gets on the Sybian and has this earth shattering orgasm. It flips into her song. It’s a beautiful set and she looks like a million dollars. It’s amazing how they led into all this stuff.”
Brooke is proud of her song, but can’t let her mother see the whole performance. “Right before I do my solo, which I want her to see, I do a sybian ride which I don’t want her to see. I told her that she’s going to have close her eyes until that point and she’ll just have to guess when to open her eyes. But I lied to her and told her that I faked it so she’ll think it isn’t real anyhow. There’s no way you can have a fake orgasm on a sybian. It’s impossible. They’re good for a couple times a year, otherwise I lose feeling.”
There was a lot of other non-fake sexual moments captured by the cameras. “It’s just an amazing undertaking and it was fun,” Dennis said. “Here we are on these sets and the girls are doing their thing. During the breaks they’re having sex with each other in the corner. It was like Chorus Line in the Cathouse.”
Bunny Love swears she wasn’t part of the off stage hanky panky. “No. I’m gay for pay. So there wasn’t anyone there that I was interested in touching.”
During the sound mixing, the head of post production facility told Dennis that on the average “live concert” by singing superstars they make dozens of pitch tone corrections. “On Brooke’s songs they made three,” Dennis proudly reported. “They’re pushing her to do a pop album.”
Brooke was up to the challenge of being in a musical. “I have a degree in music,” she said. “It was exciting and then daunting that first came to my mind. It was a lot fun and a lot of work. I did the most songs. I had one day off in the three weeks they were up here filming. That was only because I said, ‘I had to have today off.’ It was tough. It was a whirlwind. When it was all done, I wish I could gone back and done it all over again.”
Was she more nervous seeing this special or the first time she partied with a Bunny Ranch guest? “I have a deep rooted background in music,” Brooke said. “I had to live up to my education and my background. This was more personal for me. I was more nervous about this. ‘Can’t I just give a blow job? Can’t I just get naked? Isn’t there someone I could have sex with?””
Brooke does seem amazed that she’s been able to pull off a career move that will set her college career advisors in a tizzy. Has anyone else been able to land an HBO musical special while working at a legal brothel?
“I’m an entertainer,” Brooke said. “I’m using all of my oral skills.”
This has been a fascinating life for her as she puts her college degree to work. “I’ve been really lucky to bring in all aspects of my life that I enjoy sex, music, meeting people and traveling,” Brooke declared. “People are telling me that I’m exploited in this job, but I’m doing great. I’m doing everything that I want to do and I’m getting everything out of life that I’m putting into it. (The Musical) is one aspect of the job that I never imagined and I’m very thankful for.”
She does wish that they could perform the show live. “We’ll let you know if we start touring. We’ll definitely come to your city,” Brooke promised.
Bunny Love wasn’t overwhelmed at the concept of the special. “I thought it was pretty amusing of an idea. I’d seen it done before on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Scrubs. I thought it was a crazy idea, but if anybody can make it work, we can.”
Her background prepared her for the experience. “It wasn’t that big of a deal for me,” Bunny Love said. “I’ve done productions with ballet and theater so the lights and the cameras didn’t effect me so much. It was just about learning my routines and steps.”
Bunny and the others still had to put in hours at the Ranch, but it didn’t wear them out. “It’s not like I was doing something for a different employer. They understood that you needed rehearsal time and can’t be on the floor for your normal shift. It was stressful and tiring, but we pulled through it.”
Will the experience lead Bunny Love to appear on Dancing with the Stars? “Lord, no,” she said.
Air Force Amy was game for performing. “You never say ‘no’ to anything around here cause you never know what it’ll develop into. I said, ‘If you want me and think you can do something with it, go ahead. I’ll be available.'”
She’s been working at the Bunny Ranch for quite a bit of time. How weird was it to realize that she was going to be singing and dancing instead of her normal duties for the show? “It’s all weird. It’s absolutely hilarious,” she said.
During our conversation, we remembered the cinematic joy that was Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. “This ain’t the first musical to come out of a brothel,” she said. Although Cathouse: The Musical should be the better of the two.
The only artistic difference that Air Force Amy had with the production came down to footwear. She discarded the shoes provided by the wardrobe mistress. ” I brought my own shoes. I’m wearing Chanel. I’m not doing a musical that’s going to DVD without wearing my Chanel.”
Air Force Amy really did serve in the military. While stationed in the Philippines, she saw Bob Hope’s USO show. It’s nice to know that troops around the globe will have a little holiday entertainment when she and other bunnies perform “I Know What Boys Want.”
I’m sadden to report that Isabella Soprano is not part of the musical. She’s still at her organic farm in New England. I was hoping to see her solo with Spinal Tap’s “Sex Farm.”
Dennis is juiced about the upcoming special. “People are going to be amazed. You expect hooker to suck and fuck and satisfy a man. You don’t expect them to be educated, articulate and talented.”
He sees this special as altering the way folks will enjoy the New Year after the Time Square ball drops.
“HBO has given us the prime slot. I’m getting hundreds of emails from people saying they’re having Cathouse parties at their homes. They want us to send them menus. I’m going to spend my whole New Year’s Eve calling various parties and saying hello to people. It used to be Dick Clark from Time Square, now it’s Big Dick Daddy from the Bunny Ranch on New Year’s Eve on HBO.”
Why would anybody want to watch a pack of whores like Carson Daly and Ryan Seacrest when there’s a chance to watch the fine ladies of the Bunny Ranch? After a year of having to endure your kids endless viewing of High School Musical and High School Musical 2, it’s time to put them to bed, pop the second bottle of champagne and remember that New Year’s Eve is an adult holiday.
HOW TO HAVE A FUNDRAISER
Dennis Hof has been amazed at all the coverage he’s received for his endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. Dennis has helped Paul get nearly as much press as Oprah’s done for Obama. “Every newspaper in New York City wrote about it,” Dennis said. Until the Iowa Caucus, if you drop by the Bunny Ranch and declare, “I’m pimping for Ron Paul,” you get the services of two women for the price of one.
Brooke Taylor doesn’t mind the campaign fundraiser. “I love it. I’ve never had so much help giving blowjobs. I get to pull one of my friends in to help me out. It’s great.
“There’s nothing I like better than a man and a woman together with me in the middle. You get the best of both worlds. Everyone has something to do. Everyone always has a mouthful. Couples are a big part of my business. It’s so great to be able spice up their sex life. There’s nothing better than the next time I masturbate thinking about the great sex they’re having after having been with me. I know they are talking about it and fantasizing about the next visit. I love that.”
This is much better than paying $2,000 to eat a rubber chicken and get a Polaroid with the candidate.
STRIKE RELIEF
Damn this Writer’s Strike. I’m sick of what’s being offered on network TV. Why are the rules of ABC’s Duel more difficult than the questions? Enough of the broadcast, it’s time to dip back into the latest DVDs of older shows in order to be entertained.
The Tudors – The Complete First Season contains combines the educational influence of The History Channel with the adult entertainment value of classic Showtime. The Tudors could have turned into Henry VIII Babies, but the series played smart. Natalie Dormer’s performance of Anne Boleyn reminds us how a King could start his own church. While Jonathan Rhys Meyers is great as the young English monarch, you want to see him break into an Elvis snarl that he rocked in the miniseries Elvis.
Gunsmoke, The Second Season, Volume 1 gives up the first 20 episodes of the sophomore outing. While this is still Chester-era, Festus appears in “Brush at Elkader.” Sheriff Matt Dillon still enjoys mingling with the hookers at Miss Kitty’s bar. The bonus on the collection is the sponsor spots for L&M Cigarettes. James Arness made smoking look so sexy when he took a drag and said, “Light up, Free up. Live Modern.” Is there a sense of irony in that ad campaign? Best one is him and Miss Kitty sharing a light.
The Odd Couple: The Third Season contains the roommates visits to the set of Password and The Price Is Right. Nothing says great ’70s TV moment than Jack Klugman rubbing elbows with Monty Hall. Although some may want to view the show to check out Tony Randall’s amazing fashion sense. That man know how to look suave. No wonder he was the neat freak.
Hawaii Five-O: The Third Season brings more criminals to the 50th State for Steve McGarrett to book. The series kicks off with Wo Fat terrorizing a neurosurgeon with “And A Time to Die.” “The Double Wall” brings Boss Hogg (Sorrell Booke) to the island. How do criminals not surrender when they encounter Jack Lord’s defiant hair? The show was still clicking at a high level for season three.
BAD SANTA
NBC sunk to a new low with its Yule Time edition of To Catch A Predator. The show started of innocent enough with a little girl discovering Santa Claus in front of her Christmas tree.
“You made it!” she exclaims.
Santa gives a jolly laugh and puts down his sack. “You want to give Santa a hug?”
The girl smiles. “Wait a minute. I need to get your cookies and milk!” The girl disappears into the kitchen.
“Don’t wake up your parents,” Santa warns. “Or you won’t get a pony.”
From behind the refrigerator steps Chris Hansen.
“Don’t you think you’re a little too old to be showing up in the middle of the night to see 10 year old girls?” Chris asks. Santa looks pretty damn startled that the girl is gone.
“It’s my job,” Santa says. “I bring gifts to all the good little boys and girls on Christmas Eve.”
“Gifts? What do you expect to be given for your gifts?”
“They have to be nice.”
“What does it take for a naughty girl to get on your nice list?”
?”What are you insinuating?’
Hansen waves a pile of papers. “I have your emails. If she’s a nice girl; you promise to come down her chimney. You like coming down the chimneys of little girls and boys while they sleep? Is that how you get your kicks?”
“That’s not what it means!” Santa waves his finger at Chris. “You’re not getting a pony this year.”
Santa races towards the fireplaces. The cops pounce on his ass. He’s hauled away. The SPCA takes control of the reindeer on the roof. It’s just sad how NBC stoops.
THE GAME CONTINUES
This is that unique time of the season when movie critics attempt to blow their favorite directors while attempting to impress us with their huge balls. Do we really care what the Boise Radio Reviewers ordain a film as the greatest of the year?
What we also get is flooded with diatribes about how TV is ruining movies. I’ve had it with these Cinema Bigots. For some reason anything that’s not projected at a multiplex for $12 a head is inferior entertainment. As if 24 frames per second is superior to 30 frames per second. This of course is complete crap. Is Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector funnier than an episode of Hogan’s Heroes? Are any of the Mission: Impossible movies better than the series? Is there any American cinematic drama of the past decade equal to HBO’s The Wire?
The good news about the writer’s strike is that The Wire might finally get decent ratings for its fifth season that starts January 6 at 9 p.m. (eastern time). This year the focus will be on how the media plays a role in the urban warfare in Baltimore. You might want to get caught up either by DVD or reruns on BET. I recommend the DVDs since BET has to take out the hardcore gangster action.
ROCKIN’ W/ LEONARD
Congratulations go out to Leonard Cohen for making the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame. This has to be the upset victory of 2007 when he bumped the Beastie Boys from the glory of Cleveland. How did the Mystic of Montreal pull it off? His voice has the range of Mack Truck engine. He sings about spacey ladies who like tea and oranges that come all the way from China. By the way, both the tea and oranges have been recalled. Is he rock? Leonard isn’t a complete folkie. He recorded “Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On” with Phil Spector diddling the knobs. “First We Take Manhattan” has a classy rage.
It’s strange to think that Leonard Cohen got into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame before Steve Miller. Isn’t Rock n Roll all about the Space Cowboy and the Gangster of Love? I only hope Leonard is inducted by 50 Cent – since they’re both pimps.
Our holiday contest-a-palooza continues as we give away, in conjunction with City Lights Media, five (5) copies of THE TEN on DVD.
Masters of comedy David Wain and Ken Marino team up for THE TEN – a series of laugh-out-loud stories that reinterpret – and reinvent – the Ten Commandments! The film features an All-Star Ensemble Cast – including Adam Brody, Rob Corddry, Famke Janssen, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Ken Marino, Gretchen Mol, Oliver Platt, Paul Rudd, Winona Ryder, Liev Schreiber, Justin Theroux and Jessica Alba.
Contest ends at midnight EST on Friday, January 4th.
CLOSED! THANKS FOR ENTERING!
Official Rules
No member of Quick Stop Entertainment or their immediate families may enter.
No Purchase necessary to win.
Must be 18 years of age or older to enter.
All submitted entries must be received by 11:59pm EST on Friday, January 4th.
The winner must allow 4-6 weeks after notification of win to receive the product.
The web. It’s a big place, full of plenty of distractions ““ some funny, some informative, some ludicrous, some disturbing, some inane, some profound. Each and every weekday, we present links to a few of our favorite finds”¦
Some people hang the holly, others decorate the tree, and a few even terrorize the neighborhood with off-key caroling.
Not us.
Here at Quick Stop Entertainment, we’re celebrating the holiday season by giving a little something back to you, our readers (you know who you are).
Every weekday leading up to the holiday break, we’ve got uber-exclusive gifts provided by a whole range of artists, actors, comedians, and studios. One a day, straight from them to you (and you can check out last year’s fun here).
Ain’t that cool?
Today, not only do we have an extra special holiday sampler of the brilliantly funny UK quiz show QI, but we also chat with host Stephen Fry.
If you’ve never heard of the UK quiz program QI, you’re missing out on one of the funniest “educational” shows ever devised (the devisee being creator/producer John Lloyd, formerly of Blackadder, Not The Nine O’Clock News, and Spitting Image). The key to QI (which stands for “Quite Interesting”) is the central tenet of its philosophy – it’s not always being correct that counts, but interesting (and funny). The interesting nature of a given piece of information spurs conversation and debate, eventually leading round to the learning said informational nugget. Did you know that the Earth has more than one moon, for example? Or that otters kill crocodiles? Hosted by Stephen Fry, it features a rotating panel of four comedians (one of which is mainstay Alan Davies) – and it’s one of the most hilarious shows I’ve ever seen… Honestly, you’ll laugh as much as you learn. Be sure to visit QI on the web at www.QI.com.
Far from being a stuffy intellectual, a loathsome toff, or a smug git, Stephen Fry has managed to walk the fine line of being not only a wonderfully intelligent man who unashamedly exhibits said intelligence, but also a very funny performer and an all-around humble and likeable guy.
From out of the fertile ground of the Cambridge Footlights – alongside fellow ‘lighters Hugh Laurie, Tony Slattery, and Emma Thompson – Fry soon planted himself in the burgeoning comedy scene of the 1980’s alongside comedy partner Laurie, a teaming known by the rather straightforward sobriquet “Fry & Laurie”. By the end of the 1980’s, with Fry & Laurie fast becoming beloved members of the funny firmament, Stephen branched out into playwriting before moving into screenwriting, directing, acting, hosting, just plain bookwriting… Really, there’s not much he hasn’t done.
Since 2003 – and over the course of 5 series and counting – he’s served as host/schoolmaster of the panel show QI.
In the not-to-distant past, I had a chance to chat with Stephen about QI – and as a holiday treat, we finally present that interview to you, the merry masses…
KP: So, I suppose we should start at the beginning – how did QI enter the picture?
FRY: Well, through John (Lloyd). Through his remarkable persuasive powers. I’ve known him for years and years. Really, he was a great hero. When I was at university – he had been, like me, at Cambridge in the Footlights club, which is a famous club at Cambridge. It produces comedians, and has done so for over 100 years. John Cleese and Peter Cook and Ali G – and myself, Emma Thompson, and Hugh Laurie were all in the same year at Cambridge, and we were all in the Footlights as well. And as I say, it’s that sort of Python tradition. And John Lloyd had been in about five years before me. Same time as Douglas Adams who wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide. They were very good friends. John had become well known to those of us aspiring toward the comedic world because of a TV series called Not The Nine O’Clock News, that he produced. When we left university, I sort of got to know him a bit.
KP: There’s somewhat of a history with Footlights of the alumni sort of lifting up and providing opportunities for those that come afterward, isn’t there?
FRY: Yes indeed. It causes extreme annoyance to those who were not at Cambridge. It’s often regarded as a kind of closed shop, a kind of Mafia, but it’s really just because we’re all very insecure and like working with people we know and trust, I suppose. But he did this series Not, as I say, and then Blackadder started and he asked me to be in the second series, where I played a character called Melchett, and then in the third series in one episode, and then did all the fourth series, as well. We just became friends, really. We’d go on skiing holidays together and that sort of thing. And then a few years ago he started to talk about this idea he had about this whole quite interesting thing, and at first I just thought, “Well, that sounds interesting. It’s a bit sort of Ripley’s Believe It or Not.” But knowing his track record as the best comedy producer of his generation, I kind of thought he must have some television ideas – because for him it’s a whole empire. It’s not just television – it’s books, it’s probably films, and god knows what else.
KP: I think it’s an action figure at this point…
FRY: Yeah. (laughing) So, he took me to lunch in a very fine restaurant of my choosing, and…
KP: So, you know how to play the game as well…
FRY: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And he asked if I would be in it. Either as a regular guest or as the host, and I said I’d rather be a regular guest than a host – not really knowing much about hosting and whether it was the kind of thing I wanted to do. And we did a pilot for the BBC, and he said, “Well look, for the pilot, can you be the host? Because we just can’t think of anyone else who could do it.”
KP: So he’s actually quite sly about the way he set this up…
FRY: Absolutely, yeah, indeed. So I did it for the pilot, and then it just seemed natural… everyone seemed to like it and said, “Well look, you must do the series. It goes through June.” So I said, “Well, okay then.” And I did it through the series. And, actually, I quite enjoy doing them, being the sort of beaming host of or, indeed, the vicious host, depending on how you look at it.
KP: Obviously, for years you’ve done panel shows. How would you describe the difference, from your perspective, to now be in the presenter’s seat?
FRY: Well, on the one hand there’s less onus on you to come up with witty remarks. On the other hand, there’s a strange onus on you to keep order. It’s bizarrely like being a schoolteacher, which I was very briefly before going to university. In what we call your gap year – which is the year between school and university where people like to go off usually and do the Inca trail in Peru or lounge around on Leonardo DiCaprio style beaches in Southeast Asia – but I instead taught at a prep school in England. And it’s like that. It’s like having a class of unruly people, and I feel it’s my duty to drag them back to the subject. But, on the other hand, of course, let them be amusing as well. So it’s a peculiar feeling. But it’s fun, and actually that sort of personality distinction between myself and Alan in particular is part of the fun of it, really, is that I treat him like a naughty puppy or a bad school boy.
KP: Who knew you would develop into an amazing comedy duo?
FRY: Yes, it does seem like that. It’s great fun. We record… I don’t know how long we record. John probably knows. It’s only about an hour, from which they have to get a half an hour, of course. And because we do 12 in one series – which is a lot for an English series, although it’s nothing for an American series – it gets into a nice rhythm.
KP: Did you know right off the bat that there was a rapport between you and Alan?
FRY: No, no, not at all. I’ve known him – met him at industry parties, award ceremonies and things – and he seemed a very nice chap and I liked him, but no, it just did seem to work. Of course, you know he plays a lot dumber than he really is, and I play a lot smarter than I really am! (laughing)
KP: With the benefit of the prompter, I’m sure.
FRY: Yes, absolutely. I’ve got all the answers, but usually, obviously, the point is not to… if everyone just knew the answer it would be a very dull game. The idea is to vamp and busk and generally, as it were, scatting on the subject. And the great thing is that now it’s well established, people who’ve not done it before will have seen it on television and be less scared of it. Because when it started, when we had a newcomer they were very nervous that they wouldn’t know enough, or that they had to be funny. I think what makes it fun for everyone to be on… well, there are a number of things. One is that it doesn’t address any of the boring issues that other television addresses, i.e. the celebrity culture and pop culture and contemporary politics and so on. It is genuinely… you have weird conversations about strange insects or about the nature of the universe or a chicken that lived five years without its head.
KP: Very much about the tangent…
FRY: Exactly, exactly. And that’s a relief, though. And people don’t have this enormous feeling that they have to come up with smart one-liners all the time. That it’s wonderful when people are funny, but it’s also wonderful if they genuinely know something interesting. You know, and sometimes the audience enjoys that more than anything else. Some odd fact may remind them of another odd fact, because everybody does know odd things. But off the top of their head they won’t know them. You need to be reminded. It’s like priming a pump.
KP: Alan mentioned that Hugh (Laurie) was quite nervous about doing the show…
FRY: Oh yes, indeed he was, yeah. He’s always nervous, Hugh, mind you.
KP: From what Alan related, he had a performance anxiety that he wouldn’t be able to keep up with you…
FRY: (Laughing) That’s nonsense! A, he can keep up with me, plus – I mean, he’s so brilliant, Hugh. And also, of course, he has so much charm that he’s always absolutely brilliant anyway.
KP: I think, now – by law – he belongs to us in America now.
FRY: Yeah, he certainly does, doesn’t he? Yeah. I’ve only seen four episodes, I think, but he’s terrific. Really wonderful.
KP: I’m surprised they haven’t scheduled your stunt casting as the hospital administrator, or something…
FRY: Well, funnily enough, when I talked to him he said, “You’ve got to come and do an episode.” I said, “I’d like to be the visiting doctor from London who’s even nastier than you are. Who makes you look like a pussycat.”
KP: I can’t even imagine that… unless you went around performing unnecessary amputations or something, I can’t imagine a more unpleasant sort than what they’ve made his character out to be. But in a loveable way.
FRY: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
KP: When you look at something like that, as far as a career trajectory, did you ever have a plan for where your career would go, or where you thought it would go?
FRY: Never. I’ve never had a career plan or trajectory in my life. I rather enjoy the fact that I have no idea what’s going to happen next in the world, and everything’s a constant surprise. I’ve never planned more than a few months ahead. I just do or don’t do things according to mood, really. I sometimes think, “Well, if I concentrated on one thing, if I decided to be just a writer, or decided to be just a comedian, or just an actor,” I might have had more conspicuous kind of success, but I don’t regard success as meaning anything… Happiness is the only success I’m interested in, really. Rather than the kind of reputation type of success. And QI‘s just something that is fun, and it’s nice… it gives pleasure to people in a very particular sort of way. I like the fact that taxi drivers talk about it. And they say, “Oh, I thought it was going to be too poncy for me…” This very English word – too kind of “artsy-fartsy”, as you would say, I think. But they enjoy it. Because, as I say, everyone does know things that they don’t know they know, and it’s a good program, and so it gets a huge mailbag, of course, because people would say, “Oh, this reminds me of something I was told…” And, of course, people love telling me that I’m wrong.
KP: Yeah, including Alan.
FRY: Indeed, absolutely! Absolutely.
KP: He mentioned that you were generally uncomfortable with the Boxing Day episode at the end of Series 2, with the tables being turned and you being placed in the hot seat under his questioning…
FRY: Well, I just thought it was a bit… well, not exactly self-indulgent, but I was just worried that it was a bit… yeah, I mean, it looks as if we were too pleased with ourselves in a strange sort of way, as if we were making an assumption in taking for granted that people would so buy into our characters that they would be amused by something that might amuse us. So it was probably oversensitivity on my part.
KP: See, Alan’s take on it was you just desperately didn’t like being put in that position.
FRY: (laughing) Maybe that’s true! Maybe that’s probably the horrible truth of it, is that I don’t like not being boss.
KP: And the problem that Alan had was that you happened to get the first couple of responses correct…
FRY: Yes, quite. He wanted to humiliate me! (laughing) The tradition in grand English country houses is that the Duke and Duchess serve the staff, the servants, their Christmas lunch. That’s a very English tradition, that. So it’s that sort of equivalent. I become the school boy for one episode.
KP: Does it feel different to you? For years you’ve done panel shows, but being the host, was it a completely different feeling to then be put on the panel?
FRY: Yes it was, actually. I mean, very strange, because you suddenly feel a whole different part of your comic mind is being asked questions, as it were, that you know you have to come at from a different place. Because you think, “Well now, do I interrupt here? Am I silent? If I’m silent too much people think I’m sulking. If I talk too much, they think I’m trying to take over everything.” So a rather bad bout of self-consciousness comes over one. (laughing)
KP: Do you find that you became slightly more frustrated with the panelists at times during the first series? I remember in particular the “how many moons” episode…
FRY: Oh, (laughing) absolutely! Yes, I see it as partly in a comic sense, but also partly in a quite serious sense to be my function, is to stop this kind of anti-science nonsense that is so prevalent amongst some, and try and sort of bang the drum for rational thought. Which is a bit like Hugh in House, actually. Try and be rational and basically push the palm of your hand hard into the face of those who doubt the value of logical thought.
KP: I think, to some extent, Rich Hall saw a bit of an opening and a way to needle you on that.
FRY: He did indeed. He’s brilliant at that. He’s an extraordinary figure, Rich, isn’t he? I mean, talk about dry. I don’t know anybody who’s dryer than Rich Hall.
KP: Someone I’m glad who has found a life outside of the US.
FRY: Yes, absolutely. Is he well known in America? I’ve never been quite sure.
KP: Well, I remember watching Rich on Not Necessarily the News in the 80s. Which is where he really made his mark. And then, much like the US does with other things, we kind of cast him off unceremoniously.
FRY: Right. And he has his Otis Crenshaw character as well, doesn’t he?
KP: Yes.
FRY: Have you seen that? Yeah, he’s kind of a trailer park character…
KP: I’m quite glad that he has an aftermarket in the UK, and you respect him as much as we foolishly did not.
FRY: Indeed.
KP: We tend to be quite disposable, and you guys actually tend to respect intelligence and talent.
FRY: Oh indeed. Yeah, we do.
KP: Which I’m sure you’ll see, because at some point we’ll even be foolish enough stop liking Hugh, as well.
FRY: Oh ho ho, please. He’s so sweet.
KP: It wouldn’t be my choice.
FRY: No, I hope not. Well he’s got to do another 22 in a few months, so he’s going to be there for a long time.
KP: Can you envision a season lasting that long?
FRY: No. And they work so hard on it. I’m doing this movie at the moment here in Berlin. It’s a studio picture. It’s Warner Brothers and it’s got a big budget and everything. So everything’s nice and slow. Here I am in my dressing room chatting to you. I get a nice Mercedes driving me in every morning and get nicely looked after and my own personal assistant who cleans my ashtray and brings me coffee whenever I want it and books me theater tickets if I’ve got a free evening and so on. Hugh, who is the star – and I’m only just a supporting actor – Hugh, who is the star of his own TV series, he has to drive into work, which all people do in TV. He shares a two-way trailer. I mean, he has his own section of it. And he gets almost no time in his dressing room in his trailer because people between shots are running, the whole crew is running around to do the reverse shot and they’re running to do the next shot. And they’re firing people who are a bit slow because they have so much to do. Eight, nine, ten pages a day. You know, we’re doing half a page today, and this is quite a lot of special… not special effects, but stunt work in the one I’m doing today. But give me films any day. They’re so much more relaxing! (laughing)
KP: Plus he gets to juggle the American accent…
FRY: Yes, which he does a very good job with – at least to my ears he does, and I think to a lot of Americans he really does do a good job.
KP: I think it’s always a nicely disconcerting moment when interviewers actually hear his natural accent in interviews…
FRY: Yes, indeed.
KP: As someone who’s observing it and has occasionally dipped his toe into it, do you see a reticence for the US audience to accept British actors on their own terms?
FRY: I think the fact that Hugh was probably best known to American audiences for Stuart Little, in which he also played an American, has made it quite easier for him, because I think with the exception of the Masteripece Theater-type audience who would have seen him as Bertie Wooster in Jeeves & Wooster, most of them will say, “Oh, that’s the guy who was with Geena Davis in Stuart Little,” and they’ll feel quite sort of… maybe feel he almost is American or, if he is English, then he probably grew up in America. Whereas if it was an obvious English actor like Hugh Grant doing it, I think they would find it rather hard to accept. It’s a tricky one. We love… we don’t mind Renee Zellweger doing an English woman, or Gwyneth Paltrow…
KP: But you did mind Dick Van Dyke.
FRY: That was terrible, because it was just so… Just so bad. An unspeakably bad accent. I mean, he can’t have had a dialogue coach. It was just shocking.
KP: (laughing) But he tried…
FRY: He tried, bless him… yeah, and, you know, he certainly was a good hoofer and he could move around and so on and, you know, I’m a big fan of his and all the rest of it, but dear me. (doing bad accent) “‘Ello Mary Poppins!”
KP: Well, that shows you the full range of what we have to offer.
FRY: (laughing) Yeah. But, you know, don’t… I sometimes get quite cross with Americans for selling themselves short. You’re the country that gives us The Simpsons and West Wing and things like that. There’s some really intelligent writing and performing and brilliant TV going on as well as the dregs. There’s some fantastically smart people working in television. Aaron Sorkin and people like that, David Kelly, and many of the others are really – they’re just incredible, what they put together under the pressure they do. Even things like CSI are so much better than they need to be, if you know what I mean. Obviously, after that fourth and fifth series, they tend to get more sentimental and formulaic and so on, but they’re very well constructed and very impressive pieces of craftsmanship. And at their best, like West Wing and The Simpsons, quite brilliantly written.
KP: Another thing I regret, and QI is an antidote to that, is that we tend to be so intensely disposable because of the glut of information that we have delivered to us…
FRY: Yeah.
KP: Just a all of this mass media coming at us.
FRY: Yeah.
KP: Whereas, especially with performers – and QI being an example of that – there really is an appreciation for solid, intelligent performers in the UK that I just don’t think we have over here.
FRY: Yes, absolutely. That is an advantage we have, no question. Yeah. It would be interesting to see what would happen if the Americans took the format, to see what you would do with it. Whether it would become more a series of one liners, whether there would be script editors. We don’t have that. I get the questions and that’s all I do, and I just say “Hi” and ask them. And the contestants… “Contestant” is not the word… The performers come along and respond to them. Some of them would like to know roughly what subject might come up beforehand, but nobody writes gags for them. Nobody tells them what to say. That’s the fun of it. I think the audiences know that somehow. They know whether something is prepared or not. And I’d be interested to see if American performers would allow that.
KP: It seems – particularly your role within it – a very British thing compared to the US, since we really don’t have the same kind of headmaster-type role in our upbringing.
FRY: No. You have issues with authority.
KP: As you’ve seen with Rich.
FRY: (laughing) Right! Exactly! (laughing)
KP: Can you imagine hosting an American version of the show?
FRY: It would be interesting. I would be treated, probably, like King George the Third, as someone who had to be… you know, have my tea poured over the side of the ship! (laughing) (doing American accent) “We fought a goddamn war to get rid of your kind!”
KP: Yes… The final segment every week would be them switching places with you.
FRY: Yeah, I mean, look at Anne Robinson on The Weakest Link. I mean, it lasted about a series or two, didn’t it, before people got fed up with this bitch from England…
KP: I think it was just the intensity with which it was sold.
FRY: Yeah, I think it was overdone, wasn’t it? It was ridiculously overdone.
KP: To the point where, I think at one point they were airing it three or four times a week.
FRY: Oh, dear god.
KP: Eventually we had The Weakest Link: County Commissioners special.
FRY: (laughing) Yeah, enough already!
KP: You can only have so many variations of a game show.
FRY: Yeah, quite.
KP: But there’s also just the concept of the entertainer-based panel show, which really doesn’t exist here in the US. Bill Maher tried to do it with Politically Incorrect, but we really don’t have… I mean, in the UK there is that deep history of the panel show and game shows.
FRY: Yes, there is. That’s right, absolutely. Lots and lots and lots. And I don’t know what it is. I don’t understand what psychological national characteristic is called in that gives it this kind of obsession, or at least history of it. Who knows what it says about you?
KP: You’re someone who’s endlessly interested in being on these shows… What is the appeal, to you, of the panel show?
FRY: Well, the fact that it’s simple and easy. I turn a lot more down than I do, but I do the odd episode of Have I Got News For You, which is a topical one, and I’ve done it about four times and it’s been going for 12 years. I’ve done a few others. And I love doing them on radio. They are enormously enjoyable.
KP: Like Just A Minute…
FRY:Just A Minute, exactly, and I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, which is a wonderfully silly one but very enjoyable. But yeah, I mean, it’s a pleasant way to spend an afternoon in a studio with… you know, (laughing) I don’t know what the answer is, I suppose. It used to be, before television took over the world, that’s how British people would disport themselves after dinner. They would play games. What’s called house party games. Games like Just A Minute all come from that. They were “parlor games” is the phrase, isn’t it? And a lot of the best games on television come from parlor games like that. There’s that play by Noel Coward, Hay Fever, which has got that classic scene in the middle where they all play this game called in the manner of the word where someone goes out of the room and everyone in the room has to think of an adverb – like “slyly”, or “astonishedly”, or whatever it might be. And then the person comes in and they ask questions, and they all have to reply in the manner of that word. And then he has to guess what the word is. And there’s this fantastic scene of violence and emotional sort of thunderstorm in Hay Fever because one of them feels humiliated because he doesn’t know the word “archly” or something, and they get in this terrible fight about it.
KP: So this is what a repressed populace plays during a blackout…
FRY: It would seem exactly that – rather than actually just getting straight down to it, as I’m sure you Americans would.
KP: As opposed to expressing emotions through parlor games…
FRY: Yeah, (laughing) that seems to be it.
Check out the rest of this year’s “Holiday Havoc”HERE
SModcast is the meandering palaver of a pair of dudes whose voices are so dull, they don’t deserve to be on the radio (and, hence, aren’t). Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier are SModcast.
The best thing about SModcast? It don’t cost nothing.
SModcast 42: SMerry Christmas –
In which our heroes ring those silver bells in celebration of the holidays, chatting up all things related to the season, from the little baby Jesus to Conan the Barbarian.
[CONTENT WARNING]SModcast features harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Listener discretion is advised.
T’was two weeks before Christmas,
When all through the nation,
Former UPN outlets…
Showed a true aberration.
The street was the same,
But it wasn’t as good.
This Miracle’s color –
And no Natalie Wood.
Look! There’s David Hartman
Of the old G.M.A.
And Jane Alexander…
Who once ran N.E.A.
All the character actors…
Do I see Roddy McDowall?
And as Mr. Shellhammer,
None other than Thurston Howell!
And the big man in red
May have been a real mensch.
But he’s sure not Kris Kringle.
He’s Brian Keith’s butler named French.
If you look past the color,
You’ll see something quite lyrical.
It’s not about Santa’s mail,
But, I’d still call it a miracle.
For, up to that moment,
It was safe to assume…
Messrs. Doyle and Bosley
Were never in the same room.
The same roundish tummy.
The same roundish pan.
I’m not the first to believe
Dave and Tom the same man.
And to make things confusing
While Bosley was Fonzie’s foil.
On the very same network,
The Angels’ Bosley was Doyle.
For your comic relief,
And 70’s ABC fun…
Two lovable cherubs.
Or was there just ONE?
Is there a Bosley?
And ALSO a Doyle?
Which of these guys
Is according to Hoyle?
For an answer to this
Grand contradiction…
Look no further than this
Ersatz “Miracle” depiction.
On the bench sat Judge Tom
In Kringle’s hearing for fitness.
David Hartman called Macy.
And, in walked the witness.
The courtroom door opened…
And I gasped, at a loss.
David Doyle took the stand
As Kris Kringle’s boss.
There they were for a moment,
Although it was brief.
It was more than sufficient
To debunk a belief.
When the movie was over,
I could hear all exclaim…
Merry Christmas to all
From Bosleys one and the same.
Some people hang the holly, others decorate the tree, and a few even terrorize the neighborhood with off-key caroling.
Not us.
Here at Quick Stop Entertainment, we’re celebrating the holiday season by giving a little something back to you, our readers (you know who you are).
Every weekday leading up to the holiday break, we’ve got uber-exclusive gifts provided by a whole range of artists, actors, comedians, and studios. One a day, straight from them to you (and you can check out last year’s fun here).
Ain’t that cool?
It’s Christmas, and that means the fine folks over at AstroBase Go – Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer – have put together another special Venture Bros. holiday tune exclusively for Quick Stop…
In 2004, The Monarch & Dr. Girlfriend gave us their take on the Bowie/Crosby “Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy“, while 2005 brought the tender trio of The Monarch and Henchmen Nos. 21 & 24 belting out Dolly Parton’s “Hard Candy Christmas” during The Monarch’s incarceration, and 2006 delivered the epic “Venture Aid 2006”
This year, The Monarch & Dr. Girlfriend follow in the vocal footsteps of Shane McGowan and Kirsty MacColl by putting their own spin on the epic holiday classic “Fairytale Of New York”…
Instead of manning-up and actually going the emotionally hard route of being outrightly rejected by publishers, I’m rejecting them first and allowing you to give my entire book a preview, let you read the whole thing or, if you like, download the whole damn thing at no cost. Download and read my first book “Thank You, Goodnight” for FREE.
Zachary Levi of “Chuck.” Missy Peregrym of “Heroes” and “Reaper.”
It’s always a delight to interview an actor or actress “on the verge,” as it were, and get an opinion on their career and work while they’re still in that stage of being unguarded and still possess a good sense of humor about their place in the food chain of entertainment.
When I was asked whether I’d want to interview David Paetkau for ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM (Opening today, Christmas Day) there wasn’t a moment of hesitation. Apart from thinking I was going to interview a Hawaiian (I mean, come on, look at the name. I should have tossed in a question about Poi…now I’m depressed I didn’t.) I believe that this is exactly the kind of person I really enjoy talking to for a variety of reasons; one of the biggest ones, though, is that for those of you who have ever had the kind of career where you’ve had some success and are making your way up the ladder it is that drive, that hunger to go farther from where you are today, to be better than the other guy, is what’s most interesting. Once you make it, it’s all about reflection and experience and who here hasn’t read an interview with some A-lister that seems less to be about the work and more about how great it is to work with X or how funny X is off the set?
Doesn’t interest me.
What I immediately saw in the prospect of interviewing David by e-mail is that I could not only give the man a little time to think about the answers but that I could stretch the bounds of what I would have normally asked him had we been able to have a proper sit-down conversation. What you see below is the accumulation of less than a days’ worth of familiarizing myself with his work and me thinking of a few things that I might have never asked if I was sitting right in front of him for fear of the response.
I don’t usually do e-mail interviews but as I read his answers I have to believe that this could be my favorite means of getting to know someone. David was a champ for handling my questions with aplomb and I have to be honest by saying when and if I see ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM I’ll be seeing it just to find out if he’s one of those who gets eviscerated.
Much thanks and praise must be given to David for playing along…
1. I researched and found that you were recently nominated for the Canadian equivalent of an Emmy for your work on “Whistler.” Now, I recently heard about some football, the pigskin type and not the footsie femme ball that is somehow loved everywhere else but in America, players who love all the records they break but somehow feel hollow if they have no ring or championship to show for it. What is your take on your profession, that people love to have awards shows and talk about who might win what and the studios that push hard for some films to “win big” or the pundits that somehow feel like an award is validation of someone’s goodness? Or, to put it another way, do you enjoy the thrill of possibly winning something to put on the mantle?
DAVID PAETKAU: Sure I do, but it certainly wouldn’t be for career ‘validation’. I think it would be a rush and a helluva party, that’s why I’d be happy just to get nominated as the saying goes. If acting were a team sport where there was a set goal at the beginning of the season, that goal being the sole purpose of the team, like the stanley cup in hockey then yeah I could see how one might feel hollow if they have no ring or championship to show for it. Luckily acting in itself is not a team sport and the reward I enjoy most is making a living doing something I love (most of the time anyways).
2. Aside from the really sweet chance to be up and close with some of the most recognizable movie creatures ever created, and the sweet payday, were there any reservations about getting involved with the ALIENS VS. PREDATOR sequel to a movie that originally did OK and that some fans thought lacked the kind of bite they were hoping to get?
DAVID PAETKAU: Yeah, there were some definite reservations because they wouldn’t let us read the script. it was ‘locked’ and ‘secret’ … so i had no idea what i was getting into! I still decided to jump onboard, because I figured it’s better to regret something you did do then something you didn’t do. It also helped that Aliens is one of my favorite movies.
3. How difficult is it to sustain genuine fear for multiple takes on a film of this scale? Does your character get killed off early after someone tells you to “Walk down that way real far and keep alert”?
DAVID PAETKAU: It can be difficult to sustain genuine fear. Especially on a long night shoot when it’s pissing rain, you’re soaking wet, you’re cold and you’ve got a million things to think about just to get hit your mark correctly and not mess up the shot. When my character does die it’s not as a result of taking bad advice. Dale’s just trying to get the hell outta dodge, which is quite a sensible plan if you ask me.
4. Canada is best known for its hockey and back bacon. You’ve made a successful name for yourself up north but what’s been the difference between the work you’ve done in Canada versus the work you do here in the U.S. of A?
DAVID PAETKAU: Is there a difference?
Now that the dollars are on par, not much, especially when you shoot in the states outside of L.A., but there is a big difference when you work in Hollywood, in that it’s fricken’ HOLLYWOOD! Nothing beat the first day I drove to work at a Hollywood studio. It was a dream come true.
By the way, Canadians call back bacon, ham. : )
5. On your IMDB page there are a few people who make mention of your “hawtness” or that you’re “gorgeous.” Does seeing this kind of superficial attention validate your decision to make a living by being in front of the camera and, if so, how great is it to be you on Saturday night at a club?
DAVID PAETKAU: I’d be a fool not to be a little flattered. Hasn’t helped me at the clubs though.
6. Talk to me, because I think we’ve gotten to know each other pretty well here, what did you take away from the experience of working on ALIEN VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM?
DAVID PAETKAU: A year’s worth of anticipation… (and a couple of props, but don’t tell anyone)
7. If you’re a fellow geek then you’ll know where this question is coming from but what was the mood on set as the Strause brothers navigated their way through the takes on this film? Were the Predators and/or Aliens allowed to improvise song and dance routines or did some chug their Starbucks through a straw or did any of them put their arms out saying, “Look at me! I’m a scary alien!”? I’m just saying, sometimes there are directors who take this thing seriously and there are some who have fun with the process of a flick like this.
DAVID PAETKAU: There were some funny moments, and maybe they’ll be a few outtakes in the dvd, but like I said before, we worked mostly nights, cold, impossibly wet nights and if you’re going to slow production with a joke at 4:30 in the morning, it’d better be damn funny, because otherwise you’d have to face the wrath of a soggy crew. I did have a rather surreal moment though when I first saw the seven foot tall Predator. It was at the craft service table and the poor guy was looking for sugar for his coffee, so you were right on with that; Predators drink coffee with a straw, long straws mind you. I, of course, held the sugar at arm’s length and demanded he do a dance number for it. I believe he did an Irish jig.
7. Have you ever, and it’s OK to be honest because it’s just you and I talking, bought a copy of your work on DVD to give either a mate or family member? Buying your run on LAX or a copy of FINAL DESTINATION 2 would be something, I think, you should be doing for your loved ones to prove you’re not slacking but I am always curious to know if there’s any thrill to having your work on sale for the world to see.
DAVID PAETKAU: Nope, but I guess it is kind of nice to know that I could. Those movies are out there forever whether you like it or not.
8. On ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM were you subject to working with green screens, tennis balls or having to react to things that weren’t there and, even if you didn’t, did you at least get a glimpse into how modern day special effects are being done on blockbusters this size?
DAVID PAETKAU: No tennis balls, but I did have to pretend that cold slimy goop was alien blood melting my face off. The toughest thing was the man in suit aspect. A guy dressed in an alien costume with rubber claws isn’t intimidating up close. The cool thing about the Stause brothers was that they edited each scene as we filmed it. They’d have the sequence cut together on the spot, send it to the second unit with notes on exactly what other shots they needed. It was amazingly efficient. It was way beyond just playback.
9. ALIEN VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM is being opened on Christmas. A little odd, nes’t pas, for a movie like this to be associated with the holiday season but I’d like to know what your thoughts are on release dates with regard to the hubbub about how important they are to some studios’ decisions to release or not release films on certain dates. Obviously, something is afoot in the decision to do this but, in your opinion, does it really matter when a film’s released if it’s good enough?
DAVID PAETKAU: I guess the theory on a Christmas release is that it’s good counter programming to all those damn oscar movies. I’m a little nervous about the release date because i think it’s incredibly important to a film’s success no matter how good it is. Look at the Assassination of Jesse James, a great movie which had a terrible release date (amongst other things) and it flopped miserably. I think they should have released AVP-R it in October before Halloween, but hey, i’m not a studio executive… yet.
10. How do you see your progression as an actor? Is everything a stepping stone to something else you want to accomplish or are you comfortable with how projects come your way or is there something else you hope happens as you take steps forward in your career?
DAVID PAETKAU: Acting is merely a stepping stone to bigger and better things; writing, directing, running a studio, going into politics, and then ruling the world.
Some people hang the holly, others decorate the tree, and a few even terrorize the neighborhood with off-key caroling.
Not us.
Here at Quick Stop Entertainment, we’re celebrating the holiday season by giving a little something back to you, our readers (you know who you are).
Every weekday leading up to the holiday break, we’ve got uber-exclusive gifts provided by a whole range of artists, actors, comedians, and studios. One a day, straight from them to you (and you can check out last year’s fun here).
Ain’t that cool?
Today, we’ve got a special edition of Paul Dini’s “Monkey Talk”, which finds Rashy and his little brother, SuperRica, swingin’ it Vegas-style for the holidays…
Be sure to check out Rashy’s official site at LittleRashy.com“¦ And while you’re at it, be sure to check out Rashy’s “mom”, Misty Lee, at MistyLee.com
Check out the rest of this year’s Holiday Havoc – and past Havoc –HERE
For this last installment of “Comics in Context” before Christmas, I was considering a good number of possible topics. There is the wonderful new Disney film Enchanted, which combines live action, computer animation, and good old traditional hand-drawn animation. There’s the new DVD set Walt Disney Treasures: The Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, collecting the cartoons featuring Disney’s cartoon star before the creation of Mickey Mouse. There’s Fantagraphics’ new second volume of their Popeye reprint series, featuring the debut of my favorite E. C. Segar character, J. Wellington Wimpy, and IDW’s first volume of Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates. And now that the Broadway stagehands’ strike is over, I could go see the stage version of Disney’s The Little Mermaid.
I promise you that I will get to all of these subjects early next year. But last week, I unexpectedly received a review copy of a book whose publication will be one of the landmark events of 2008 in the world of comics. This is Mark Evanier’s long-awaited Kirby: King of Comics, a beautifully produced art book devoted to the career of the late Jack Kirby, co-creator of the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Captain America, and so many more, that also serves as his biography, which Harry N. Abrams, Inc. will publish in February, 2008. For me, Christmas came early this year.
The visual excitement begins even before you get to the book’s title page, with several pages of art showing Kirby’s work at its peak, that serve as the equivalent of an overture to a longer piece of music. The initial page, showing a determined, powerful Captain America, his fist clenched, hurtling towards the reader, from Captain America #112 (April 1969), carries the balloon, “And so, a legend lived again!!”, which is equally applicable to this book about Kirby. Across from the title page is one of Kirby’s astounding collages, this one showing Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four entering the otherdimensional Negative Zone in Fantastic Four #51 (June 1966). (Evanier reveals later in the book that Kirby originally intended to portray Negative Zone sequences entirely through collage, but this proved to be impractical; see Evanier p. 171). Reed marvels that “I’ve done it!! I’m drifting into a world of limitless dimensions!!” and this seems an apt description of the incredible worlds of fantasy that Kirby envisioned and captured in his art. And at the bottom of the title page is a small picture of the Thing, whose personality, as the book later tells is, Kirby based upon his own. The text hasn’t even begun, and yet the reader can already see how much careful thought went into putting together this book.
It was wise for numerous reasons to select Neil Gaiman to write the introduction. As regular readers of this column know, Gaiman wrote the recent revival of Kirby’s Eternals (see “Comics in Context” #194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199), such demonstrated both his admiration and his genuine understanding of Kirby’s work (as opposed to those who claim to be Kirby admirers and then proceed to twist his characters out of shape). Moreover, Gaiman, with his high standing among readers of graphic novels, can attract the attention of those among them who may know little about the superhero genre in which Kirby spent most of his career, or even disdain it, and alert them through this introduction that Kirby deserves their attention.
Gaiman starts his introduction by protesting that “a thousand other people” would be more qualified to write the introduction, since he never met Kirby, and recounts how he once could have spoken to him in a hotel lobby, but had to catch a plane, and never got another chance to meet him (p. 11). Yet this too makes Gaiman a good choice to write the introduction. Evanier knew Kirby better than nearly anyone; Gaiman represents everyone–comics professionals and fans–who only knows Kirby through his work. Since Kirby passed away in 1994, there is already an enormous audience of fans of Kirby’s work who will never have the opportunity to see or meet him at a convention, especially when one considers the higher profile that comics have been receiving in mainstream culture in the early 21st century and the extraordinary commercial success of recent films based on Kirby co-creations, notably the X-Men and Fantastic Four movies. Though Gaiman is a Boomer who grew up reading Kirby’s Silver Age comics, anyone who has discovered and come to admire Kirby’s work over the last dozen years or so can identify with the feelings he expresses in this introduction.
“It was grand and huge and magnificent,” Gaiman enthuses about Kirby’s imagination (p. 12). You can sense the excitement that Kirby’s work inspires in Gaiman from the way that these adjectives burst forth in rapid succession. Gaiman’s comparison of the visceral power of Kirby’s art to rock music is well taken. As a student of Gaiman’s oeuvre, I was pleased by his unexpected revelation that Kirby’s Thor series is “where my own obsession with myth probably began” (p. 11). Gaiman also notes his fondness for the 1974 Joe Simon-Jack Kirby version of DC’s Sandman, and its “influence on the rest of my life” (p. 12). And, yes, the main illustration for Gaiman’s introduction is a handsome 1981 Kirby drawing of the 1940s version of the Sandman. Its not the 1974 Sandman, who was the ruler of a dreamworld and thus had a clearer influence on Gaiman’s own Sandman series: you can find the cover of 1974’s Sandman #1 on page 184. But the “˜40s Simon-Kirby Sandman had a dream motif, as well, so his presence on the page is appropriate.
Within a relatively short piece Gaiman manages to sound themes that will resurface in the rest of the book, such as the lack of appreciation Kirby’s creativity received from some of his publishers. Notably, Gaiman directs the reader’s attention to the “small, human moments” in Kirby’s work, that contrasted with the epic scale of his fantasy, particularly “Moments of people being good to one another, helping or reaching out to others” (p. 13). Now take a moment to try to think of any similar moments in new superhero comics from 2007. I drew a blank, too. Many artists attempt to copy the visual flash of Kirby’s work, but how many contemporary comics pros match the emotional substance?
The best part of Gaiman’s introduction comes in a postscript at the end, in which he wishes there were a museum of Kirby art and that Evanier would be there to give you a guided tour. (There is the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center, mentioned in Evanier’s acknowledgments page, but so far it exists only online here). Gaiman notes that a physical Kirby museum does not exist “yet” but that Evanier’s book will serve as a substitute till then (p. 13).
When I interviewed Evanier about Kirby: King of Comics for Publishers Weekly‘s online newsletter Comics Week, he also compared the book to a museum exhibition of Kirby’s art. I like to think of Kirby: King of Comics as the coffee table book published to accompany a museum retrospective of Kirby’s work that exists only on the printed page. Every phase of Kirby’s artistic career, starting with childhood sketches, is visually represented. Drawings of his world-famous characters are here, but so are relatively obscure creations like Stuntman and the Western hero Bullseye. Whereas other writers might have given short shrift to the period between the Golden and Silver Ages of superheroes, Evanier demonstrates how creatively productive a period the 1950s was for Kirby. Many of the celebrated iconic images that one would expect are here, like a cover reproduction of the cover of Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961) (p. 115) and, amazingly, the original artwork for the monumental splash page to “This Man, This Monster” in Fantastic Four #51 (June 1966) (p. 146), with the quietly distraught Thing, standing with sculptural stillness amidst a driving rain that serves as a metaphor for his inner grief. But so are other familiar pages from comics of the 60s and 70s, reproduced from Kirby’s original penciled artwork, as well as art from every decade of his career that even a longtime aficionado like myself finds new and surprising. Unlike the authors of other Abrams coffee table books on art, Evanier does not delve much into critical analysis. But as the reader moves through Kirby: King of Comics, he can see for himself how Kirby’s art evolved over time from brilliant promise to unquestionable mastery of his artform.
Catalogues for museum retrospectives are also usually written in academic prose, but not this one. A writer for television, film, comics and more, including his popular blog (http://www.newsfromme.com/), Evanier is a well practiced, witty and skillful storyteller, an artist of anecdotes. In Kirby: King of Comics Evanier quickly sets an informal, entertaining tone, establishing a personal bond with the reader. Gaiman is right: reading this book is very much like having Evanier escort you through a Kirby show, spinning the tale of the great cartoonist’s life.
Indeed, Evanier sets the tone as early as his masterful preface, which starts out recounting an anecdote about the days back in 1939 when the twenty-one-year-old Jack Kirby saved away in the comics sweatshop of publisher Victor Fox. Then, suddenly, it’s as if Evanier had caught the reader in a judo hold and flipped him over, because the tale of the tyrannical Mr. Fox unexpectedly transforms into an explanation for the title of Evanier’s book and of why Jack Kirby, however much he deserved it, could never take his nickname as comics’ “King” entirely seriously.
But there’s lot more to this preface. On his blog and elsewhere, Evanier has made clear his disagreements with David Michaelis’s biography of Charles M. Schulz, Schulz and Peanuts (see “Comics in Context” #204: “Was It a Dark and Stormy Life?” and I recommend that you read Schulz’s widow Jeannie’s recent criticism of the book). Nonetheless, in Kirby’s case Evanier seems to agree with one of Michaelis’s basic premises, that the artist’s body of work expresses his personality. At his book’s close, Evanier writes that “The stories of intergalactic visitations–of subterranean civilizations and small g gods striding across terra firma–they were all autobiographical, in emotion if not in deed” (p. 218). In contrast with Michaelis, Evanier does not delve deeply into his subject’s psychology. Yet, far more effectively than Michaelis does with Schulz, Evanier vividly portrays Kirby’s personality on the printed page.
Thus, for example, the preface depicts Kirby as a “truly modest man,” “embarrassed” at first by being hailed as “king of comics” by his admirers. In the description of Kirby’s time working for Fox, Evanier shows how Kirby and his fellow artists would find relief from the pressure their dictatorial boss exerted by doing impressions of him in his absence. I’ve been in a situation like that and known people who reacted similarly. This little story gives us an insight into the kind of guy that the young Jack Kirby was, like someone we might have known in our twenties, someone who would have been fun to be around, and, significantly, someone who had the resilience not only to endure a bad situation, but to rise above it through humor. And yet the immensely talented Kirby didn’t turn his resentment of his oppressors into arrogance, but remained “truly modest.”
The preface even provides sharp cameo appearances by its supporting cast. This is the first time I’ve read something about Bill Everett, who went created the Sub-Mariner that same year of 1939, that allowed me to feel why people liked him. And the preface is Evanier’s first step in his book’s generally sympathetic portrait of Stan Lee as a man who genuinely recognized and valued Kirby’s talents–an attitude that was less common from the 1940s into the 1970s than you might have imagined–and yet repeatedly seemed unable to read Kirby’s feelings, thereby exacerbating the rift that grew between them.
Moreover, in the preface Evanier introduces one of the major themes that runs throughout his book. Having grown up in New York tenements during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Kirby knew what poverty was like, and was determined not to let his wife and children fall into it. “He wants to do great stories and express himself and share his incredible imagination with the world, and all that is fine,” writes Evanier. “But being a good provider is still Job One for him and always will be” (p. 17).
Yet standing in the way of Goal Number One for most of Kirby’s career are the likes of Victor Fox, who, Evanier scathingly writes, felt “that since he’s paying [his artists], he’s going to experience the joy of treating them like dirt every day” (p. 15). Evanier’s book shows that for nearly his entire career in comics, Kirby was continually contending against clueless executives and close-minded editors who failed to show him or his work the respect they deserved. In the 1970s even much of the comics readership seemed to desert him. As the book recounts, for much of his life Kirby was struggling simply to support himself and his family. By the mid-1970s Kirby was no longer able to find work in comics. It’s like reading that Vincent Van Gogh only sold one of his paintings during his lifetime. How could this be? From the vantage point of 2007, when Kirby is widely recognized as one of the foremost artists in the history of American comics, this blindness to his greatness seems astounding. How could so many people not see what was right in front of their eyes?
There was something else that was astounding at the start of the first chapter: as artist and writer, Kirby was wholly self-taught. “As he later explained,” Evanier writes, “The pulps were my writing school. Movies and newspaper strips were my drawing school. I learned from everything'” (p. 19). Over and over I’ve seen the admonition that comic book artists shouldn’t just look at comics in learning how to draw, but I suppose that one difference was the illustrative style of comics like Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant and Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon in that time. Certainly it’s significant that Kirby said that he learned to draw from the movies: this certainly helps explain his emphasis on action and movement.
On page 20 are nine sketches of famous people of the 1930s that Kirby drew as a boy, ranging from Stalin to Katharine Hepburn. The sketches vary in quality, some are better likenesses than others, and in some one can see Kirby experimenting with caricature. All. the sketches are striking, but they are juvenilia, nevertheless. But on the opposite page is another boyhood drawing, portraying Andy Clyde, a now forgotten comic actor who adopted the persona of an old man. (I know who Clyde is because I dimly remember seeing his Columbia theatrical shorts on TV in my childhood.) This drawing captures Clyde’s screen likeness (complete with old man makeup) realistically, while creating appealingly semi-abstract patterning in much of the linework, and, best of all, conveying through subtle means the personality of a serious, contemplative man behind the comedic facade. This is really good! Later in the book Evanier shows us sensitive, naturalistic portraits that Kirby did of himself (p. 66) and his wife Roz (p. 67) during his military service in World War II: they show a different stylistic path that Kirby could well have pursued, had he not chosen instead to do comics in which there was less time or room for detailed portraiture.
I never expected Andy Clyde, whom I hadn’t thought about in years, to turn up in a book about Jack Kirby. So, too, it is surprising to discover from Evanier’s book that, from boyhood on, Kirby was friends with Leon Klinghoffer, who was infamously murdered by terrorists in 1985. I already knew of Klinghoffer because of something that Evanier does not mention: he posthumously became the title character of an opera: John Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer. How strange that two boyhood friends who worked together on a club newsletter ended up as the famous subjects of very different biographical works.
Next Evanier runs “Street Code,” a brief story that Kirby wrote and drew late in his career, in 1983, for the short-lived revival of the pulp magazine Argosy. The story is placed here since it deals with life on Manhattan’s Lower East Side during the period of Kirby’s boyhood. In introducing it, Evanier observes that Kirby ordinarily “wrote and drew what others wanted” and had to confine “moments of autobiography” to the subtext” (p. 23). “Street Code” is another marker showing an alternate path that Kirby could have taken, perhaps, had he lived long enough, and not suffered physical problems that handicapped his drawing skills, in order to attempt the kind of autobiographical graphic novels that his former boss, Will Eisner, pioneered in the final decades of the last century. Another benefit of placing “Street Code early in the book is that, amidst the many examples of Kirby’s early, immature work, when he was still developing his craft, “Street Code” allows the reader to see Kirby work at his peak, both as artist and as writer. This is where the crude early work, as Kirby learns in the job, is heading, so the reader should study the early work to find glimpses of the greatness that is to come.
The boy protagonist of “Street Code” is never named, but we first see him, pulling on a sweater, reflected in a mirror: it’s a clever signal to the reader that this story is autobiographical, fictionalized though it may or may not be.
I was likewise impressed with the large panel atop the following page, depicting the boy and his mother in their tenement apartment. Kirby shows us the cramped quarters of this impoverished pair, with food cooking atop the same stove used for heating the room, which also holds not only the dinner table but also a bathtub in which the mother, in the foreground, is washing the laundry. Simultaneously Kirby conveys a sense of confinenent and a paradoxical sense of space, filled with detail: this is the private world of these two characters.
Later in the book Evanier will describe Kirby’s scripting of his series from the 1970s onward as being done “in a florid, theatrical voice that did to linguistics what his art had always done to the rules of anatomy and physics” (p. 165). Actually, Stan Lee continually used heightened, operatic language in his scripts; the difference is that he was far better at it than Kirby was. Even so, as I mentioned in my recent columns about The Eternals, Kirby’s scripting is better than he is given credit for. But, apart from his weird mannerism of unnecessarily putting words into quotation marks, “Street Code” shows Kirby’s writing at its best: simple and emotionally evocative.
The first person narration, presumably delivered by the protagonist as an adult, looking back on his boyhood, describes how his mother’s “odd, lingering glance,” which he can nevertheless feel “warm my back” as he leaves the apartment (p. 25). And Kirby shows that glance on her face, too, understated and perhaps weary, but prompted by his description, one can see it is loving, as well. One is so used to Kirby’s prowess in devising spectacular effects that his skill in subtle facial expressions and body language can come as a surprise. But not, perhaps, to Neil Gaiman: this is an example of one of the “moments of tenderness” he mentioned in his introduction.
At the bottom of the stairs the protagonist encounters two bullies, one of whom calls him a “cockroach” (p. 26). I was reminded of Forager in Kirby’s The New Gods, who belonged to a humanoid race that the gods of New Genesis once disparagingly referred to as “bugs.” Later in “Street Code,” when a “block fight” begins, one of the combatants addresses the other side as “y’lice” (p. 30).
A fight ensues between the protagonist and the bullies, that Kirby resents with the same palpable energy and violence as any of his superhero battles. I suspect that through the many fight scenes he drew in superhero comics, Kirby may well have been drawing upon and channeling the rage he would have felt in situations like this in his actual boyhood, and perhaps his anger at the bullies and oppressors he encountered in his adult career, as well.
Over the following two pages, 28 and 29, is an incredible double-page spread depicting the world just outside the protagonist’s tenement: cars race past a wagon slowly being drawn forward by two trudging horses, kids play catch anid the puddles in the street, while along the sidewalk, packed with pedestrians, customers peruse the goods at fruit stands, and a formidable-looking policeman angrily raises his nightstick, apparently shouting at the unseen malefactor responsible for a hurtling bag from above, its contents about to rain down upon the head of an unsuspecting man, seated on the sidewalk, reading his newspaper, while the tenement buildings loom towards the sky, linked by clotheslines that span the length of the street. This panorama of a Lower East Side street, suffused with activity, has just as much epic quality as any of Kirby’s science fiction vistas.
On the following page the protagonist’s battle against the bullies segues into a “block fight.” “Invasion from the adjoining street!” proclaims the narrator, as if he were describing a war between nations. “The face of the enemy was different! His speech was different! His roots were different! All we shared was American birth and clothes–and a fiery hate imported from the “˜old’ country!” (p. 30). Those lines would not seem out of place in X-Men, the superhero series that Kirby co-created that famously centers on the theme of racism. In his book Disguised as Clark Kent (see “Comics in Context” #200, 201, 202, 203), Danny Fingeroth shows how the immigrant experience and the accompanying sense of being an outsider influenced the work of Kirby and other early superhero comics creators. Here is yet another example.
Then comes time for the protagonist and his alliues to perform their combat ritual of rubbing the “misshapen spine” of a boy naned Georgie for good luck. Georgie does not appear to mind, but the ritual troubles the protagonist for reasons he has difficulty defining: “Something inside me was spilling. . . something the Street Code couldn’t touch. . . something only God and my parents knew about. . . “ (p. 33). Was it that the rubbing hurt Georgie, as it certainly does when the protagonist, overcompensating for his sense of guilt, does it? Does the protagonist realize that he and his allies are treating Georgie as some kind of freak? Or does the protagonist sense that Georgie’s deformity–“the terrible thing that nature had done to Georgie’s back”–was a sign of something immense: the universe’s capacity for cruelty? Georgie is actually far from lucky in life.
“Street Code” concludes with the narrator linking his own participation in gang violence to Georgie’s lot in life, as the narrator’s younger self stares directly out of the panel as if looking straight at the readers, confronting us with his epiphany: “I was hurting,” the narrator tells us, “hurting for Georgie and me–and the lousy things we had to do for the Street Code. . .” (p. 33). (Why, look: another reference to lice.) It is as if he feels that by participating in gang violence, he collaborates in the cruelty in the world that Georgie’s misshapen back symbolizes. Through this reminiscence about life on the Lower East Side nearly a lifetime before, Kirby succeeds in finding cosmic significance.
Next come two bits of information in the book to be filed under the heading, “If Only They Had Known.”
Kirby claimed that he enrolled in the Pratt Institute, a New York art school, but had to quit after only one day; Evanier casts doubt on the story (p. 34). Longtime readers may recall that last year the Pratt Institute held an exhibition of the work of nine contemporary alternative comics artists (see “Comics in Context” #122, which I originally titled “Gallery of Gloom”). I wonder if any comics aficionado at Pratt has any idea that Jack Kirby may have just barely qualified as one of their alumni.
Atop page 35 is a delightful surprise: a drawing of Popeye, that forebear of the superheroes, that Kirby did when he tried out to be an assistant animator at the Max Fleischer Studio. Evanier writes that the first Popeye cartoon on which Kirby worked in that capacity was “A Clean-Shaven Man” (1936) (You can see it here). That’s the cartoon for which Quick Stop contributor Paul Dini did the commentary track in Warner Home Video’s recent Popeye Vol. 1 DVD set (see “Comics in Context” #190: “Pop Eye-Con”). If only Paul had known about Kirby’s involvement, he could have mentioned it!
I also quite like the 1939 editorial cartoon that Kirby did for the Lincoln Features Syndicate, demonstrating his opposition to Hitler years before America entered World War II (something else that Danny Fingeroth will find interesting): it shows British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, now infamous for his policy of appeasement, petting a large serpent with the head of Hitler who has just swallowed the nation of Czechoslovakia whole (p. 37).
It seems that when he was at Lincoln, Kirby believed that if he did right by the syndicate, doing the best work he then could, the syndicate would do right by him. Evanier comments, “It was his spin on the American Dream. You make your boss rich and he’ll take care of you. All Jack’s life he believed in that, no matter how many times the bosses got rich and he didn’t” (p. 37).
I can understand why Kirby thought that. It would seem to be a basic rule of human interaction that if you show loyalty to someone, he or she will show loyalty to you. Treat people fairly and they will treat you fairly. Isn’t that the Golden Rule: do under others as you would have them do unto you?
But Kirby’s idealism continually clashed with the real world of incompetence, insensitivity, and greed. Evanier observes that “Either he’d work for men who didn’t know how to exploit what he gave them”–which seems to have been the case at Lincoln– “or for men who did and wouldn’t share” (p. 38).
Treading his biography of Jack Kirby, I keep thinking if Mark Evanier’s continuing reports at his blog on the Writers Guild of America’s current strike against movie and television studios and producers. The latter side, subscribing to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s maxim that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” has been simultaneously arguing that (A) distributing movies and TV shows over the Internet will be the cash cow of the 21st century, and (B) they can’t pay royalties to the writers of said movies and TV shows because no one will make money distributing them over the Internet. Maybe it depends on which side Two-Face’s coin comes down on.
Well, at least the movie and TV writers have a union that looks out for their interests and can challenge the policies of management. But there was no union for comic book professionals in Jack Kirby’s day, and still isn’t. He was on his own: the man who may be the one true genius in the history of American comic books, continually forced to struggle just to support himself and his family.
Kirby: King of Comics is so full of riches, both in artwork and in biographical information and insights, that it demands more than one week’s installment of this column. So I’m leaving off here, with Kirby in 1939, just about to enter the new comic book industry, and I’ll resume my review at the start of 2008.
ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF
Are you still looking for a last minute Christmas present to give a Marvel fan you know–or perhaps to yourself? Why not head over to Amazon.com and order Simon & Schuster’s new Marvel Travel Guide to New York City, which was written by yours truly? This little guidebook will show you just how important New York has been as the primary setting for Marvel stories from 1939 through the present. There are the fictional places, like the Baxter Building, where the Fantastic Four are headquartered, and Daily Bugle Building. and this book sill show you just where they would be located, if they really existed. Then there are the real places where Marvel stories have been set, like when future Daredevil Matt Murdock first met Elektra when they were students at my alma mater, Columbia University, or the time the Statue of Liberty came to life. (That’s right: you’ll have to read the book to find out more.) And then there are real places that Marvel fictionalized, like the art museum called the Frick Collection, which inspired Avengers Mansion. If you’re a Marvel fan and you’re coming to New York for the New York Comic Con or any other reason, you might well want to pick up this book. Using this Marvel Travel Guide, you can spend a day waking around Manhattan and locating the sites–real, fictionalized, and imaginary–of the adventures of your favorite characters.
I am also pleased to announce that New York University’s School of Continuing & Professional Studies will be offering my course, “The Graphic Novel as Literature” in the spring 2008 semester, starting in February, and my new course, “The Superhero as American Icon,” in the summer 2008 semester, beginning in May. But if not enough people sign up for them, NYU will cancel the courses. Let’s prove to them that there really is academic interest in the comics medium!
I’m currently collaborating on another book, and I am working on several book proposals in various stages of development. However, books on comics history pay less than you may think, and teaching a course at NYU for semester doesn’t quite cover a month’s rent. My New Year’s resolution for 2008 is that, partly due to new medical expenses in my family, I will renew the search for a steady full-time or part time job. If you know of any opportunities for a comics historian, reviewer and teacher, preferably in New York City, with Boston as my next choice, please let me know here at comicsincontext@aol.com.
Some people hang the holly, others decorate the tree, and a few even terrorize the neighborhood with off-key caroling.
Not us.
Here at Quick Stop Entertainment, we’re celebrating the holiday season by giving a little something back to you, our readers (you know who you are).
Every weekday leading up to the holiday break, we’ve got uber-exclusive gifts provided by a whole range of artists, actors, comedians, and studios. One a day, straight from them to you (and you can check out last year’s fun here).
The Sound of Young America is, as it describes itself, “a public radio show about things that are awesome.” Hosted by the aforementioned Jesse Thorn, it features interviews, music, comedy, and conversation, presented with a healthy dose of postmodern fun and fancy free.
Head over to MaximumFun.org and give the show a listen, but not until after you give this little year’s holiday festivities a cyber-spin…
Some people hang the holly, others decorate the tree, and a few even terrorize the neighborhood with off-key caroling.
Not us.
Here at Quick Stop Entertainment, we’re celebrating the holiday season by giving a little something back to you, our readers (you know who you are).
Every weekday leading up to the holiday break, we’ve got uber-exclusive gifts provided by a whole range of artists, actors, comedians, and studios. One a day, straight from them to you (and you can check out last year’s fun here).
Ain’t that cool?
Today, we’ve got an exclusive sketch from UK comedy duo Mitchell & Webb – a little piece called “IT Helpdesk”.
Chances are, to most Americans, the names David Mitchell & Robert Webb mean very little… unless, of course, they have a friend, relation, or acquaintance by that name. I speak, however, of a pair of brilliant comedians by the sobriquet Mitchell & Webb who currently ply their trade in the sceptred isle of England.
A cursory glance at the offerings on YouTube will bring you up to speed on Messrs. Mitchell & Webb – who, since their Cambridge Footlights days, have written and starred in Edinburgh Fringe productions, radio (That Mitchell & Webb Sound), a live tour, and a trio of sketch shows (Bruiser, The Mitchell & Webb Situation, and That Mitchell & Webb Look – the latter two of which are currently available on DVD). They’re also the stars of the Britcom Peep Show (about to begin its 5th season), the feature film Magicians, and were cast as PC (Mitchell) & Mac (Webb) in the British versions of the popular Macintosh ads.
Check ’em out… But first, check today’s Holiday Havoc from Mitchell & Webb…
The weekend’s here. You’ve just been paid, and it’s burning a hole in your pocket. What’s a pop culture geek to do? In hopes of steering you in the right direction to blow some of that hard-earned cash, it’s time for the Quick Stop Weekend Shopping Guide – your spotlight on the things you didn’t even know you wanted…
Unfortunately, the big screen adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s illustrated fable Stardust (Paramount, Rated PG-13, DVD-$29.99 SRP) has been saddled with many a comparison to The Princess Bride. That’s probably because modern fantasy with wit and an adult touch are few and far between, and really haven’t been attempted since that mid-80’s gem. Stardust, though, is it’s own beast, and while it sometimes falters under the weight of trying too hard, it’s a mostly enjoyable romp through a fairytale land where a young man of mysterious lineage based half in the real world and half in the aforementioned enchanted land, named Tristan (Charlie Cox), travels to said land in order to bring back a fallen star… Who just so happens to have attained human form (Claire Danes) during her descent from the heavens, and is hunted not only by Tristan, but also the heirs to the kingdom’s throne and a witch (Michelle Pfeiffer) who seeks the heart of the star to renew the immortality of herself and her sisters. Bonus features include a making-of featurette, deleted scenes, and bloopers.
The second season of sleuthing magicians Jonathan Creek (BBC, Not Rated, DVD-$34.98 SRP) hits DVD with another half-dozen episodes starring Alan Davies as the mop-headed magico in question. Unfortunately, the 2-disc set is sans any bonus materials, but at least the show itself is cracking good fun.
The main attraction of the new 2-disc special edition of Braveheart (Paramount, Rated R, DVD-$19.99 SRP) is the digital remastering of the picture and sound. It is a noticeable, if not terribly extraordinary, upgrade. Bonus materials include an audio commentary with Mel Gibson, making-of featurettes, archival interviews, a photo montage, and a pair of theatrical trailers.
No holiday weekend is complete without the tipsy travails of Patsy & Edina from last year’s star-studded Christmas special revisiting our favorite ladies who lush, Absolutely Fabulous: White Box (BBC, Not Rated, DVD-$14.98 SRP). Bonus features include a retrospective special, a behind-the-scenes featurette, and the original French & Saunders sketch that started it all.
On December 2, 2006, Kevin Smith hosted a special conversation between Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee and the current (and controversial) Editor-In-Chief, Joe Quesada. That conversation has been released on DVD as Marvel Then & Now: A Night With Stan Lee & Joe Quesada, Hosted By Kevin Smith (Hero Initiative, $24.95) The DVD is available exclusively as a fundraiser for the Hero Initiative, and you should definitely check out the website while you’re ordering your copy.
Forget that horrid big screen version – it will be duly erased from your memory by the original TV adventures of Pete, Linc, and Julie – The Mod Squad (Paramount, Not Rated, DVD-$38.99 SRP). The first volume of season 1 contains 13 swingin’ episodes featuring our teenage trio, who go from the wrong side of the law to working as undercover detectives. Bonus materials include a trio of newly produced retrospective featurettes.
My emotions about The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (Paramount, Not Rated, DVD-$129.99 SRP) are a mixed bag. As a cinematic tool to excite a young audience about the personalities and events that shaped the early 20th century, I think it’s a success. The time-hopping adventures are fun and certainly instructional. I don’t, however, really see them as the juvenile tales of the Indiana Jones that we come to know and love in Raiders and its sequels – Indy is clearly just a hook to bring the audience in. Also, I have to say, my biggest gripe is that – in large part – much of the thematic simplification and visual shortcuts that Lucas would later bastardize the Star Wars franchise with had their roots here. If you divorce the series from those two drawbacks, what you’re left with is still a nice show for kids, and a pleasant diversion for adults. The series has been split into three volumes, with the second 9-disc set focusing on the “War Years” (World War I), featuring in-depth companion documentaries packed with more historical figures and luminaries than you can shake a stick at.
The latest Modern Masters spotlight from the fine folks at Twomorrows turns its artist spotlight on Frank Cho (Twomorrows, $14.95 SRP) – he of the beautiful babes and the occasional monkey. Packed with the by-now expected oodles of doodles and artwork both rare and unpublished – plus an in-depth interview with the subject himself – you know it belongs on your shelf with the rest of the Modern Masters releases.
I admit, I was hoping for the same kind of brilliance they bring to Reno 911, but I still found Tom Lennon and Ben Garant’s Balls Of Fury (Universal, Rated PG-13, DVD-$29.98 SRP) to be a fun flick – but maybe that’s just because there’s no denying the comedic appeal of Christopher Walken as the ping pong overlord of an underground table tennis ring. Bonus features include featurettes, deleted scenes, and an alternate ending.
The tunes aren’t nearly as memorable as those found in The Producers, but the cast album of Mel Brooks’s latest Broadway adaptation – Young Frankenstein (Decca, $18.98 SRP) – is certainly better than Spamelot‘s disappointing batch of songs. The real standout, though, is Andrea Martin’s showstopper as Frau Blucher, “He Vas My Boyfriend”.
I can’t stand Brett Ratner. In fact, the only people I can tolerate less are JJ Abrams and Brannon Braga. It’s just the level of pure, unadulterated smug that’s so off-putting. The only thing that saves the third film in the Rush Hour franchise (New Lines, Rated PG-13, DVD-$34.98 SRP) is the dynamic between its stars – Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker – as they cavort through Paris like a pair of street fighting Clouseau’s. The 2-disc platinum edition features an audio commentary, making-of featurettes, deleted scenes, an outtake reel, and the theatrical trailer.
Sega’s hyperspeed hedgehog with the voice of Urkel gets his third animated series released. Sonic Underground (Shout! Factory, Not Rated, DVD-$29.99 SRP) features the first 20 episodes, interviews, and a bonus CD with tunes from the show.
Nicolas Cage’s unlikely (and borderline somnambulant) action hero adventurer Benjamin Franklin Gates will be back on the big screen this holiday season, so it’s expected that the very first National Treasure (Walt Disney, Rated PG, DVD-$29.99 SRP) would make a reappearance on DVD as a 2-disc special edition, featuring deleted scenes, and alternate ending, an opening scene animatic, and behind-the-scenes featurettes.
Count ’em out and ride in the final 16 episodes of the sophomore season of Rawhide with the second volume of season 2 (Paramount, Not Rated, DVD-$38.99 SRP). This 4-disc set features 16 episodes of Clint Eastwood as cowhand Rowdy Yates.
In the annals of unnecessary movie, add the live action adaptation of Underdog (Walt Disney, Rated PG, DVD-$29.99 SRP) to the list. Reimagining Underdog as a real dog in a human world was mistake number one, but pairing that reimagination with a poor script and a fire sale clutch of Disney owned actors (Jim Belushi, Amy Adams, Patrick Warburton) is just sad. Bonus materials include deleted scenes, bloopers, a music video, a featurette, and an Underdog cartoon.
Add Rob Zombie’s Halloween (Genius, Not Rated, DVD-$29.95 SRP) to the long list of films that prompt the stupefied reaction of “Why in the hell did they remake this?” Zombie claims a deep love the Carpenter original, which makes his decision to execute this lackluster reimagining all the more cringe-worthy. The 2-disc special edition features an audio commentary, alternate ending, deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and the theatrical trailer.
If the cold sparks a desire for a rather intense piece of filmmaking to warm things up, give a spin to Eastern Promises (Universal, Rated R, DVD-$29.98 SRP) – starring Naomi Watts as a midwife who’s discovery of a crime family’s operations leads to a desperate and dangerous situation involving a “this can not end happily” relationship with a hardened member of the syndicate (Viggo Mortensen). Bonus features include a pair of behind-the0scenes featurettes with director David Cronenberg.
In a repeat of the .5 edition of the first Jackass flick, Jackass 2.5 (Paramount, Not Rated, DVD-$29.99 SRP) offers up an expanded cut of the sequel, featuring much more of the same. The disc also features a new making-of, a look at the Jackass game, bonus segments and stunts, and a photo gallery.
So there you have it… my humble suggestions for what to watch, listen to, play with, or waste money on this coming weekend. See ya next week…
Instead of manning-up and actually going the emotionally hard route of being outrightly rejected by publishers, I’m rejecting them first and allowing you to give my entire book a preview, let you read the whole thing or, if you like, download the whole damn thing at no cost. Download and read my first book “Thank You, Goodnight” for FREE.
Before I let you animals loose to do what animals do during their Christmas break I’d like to share a recipe for some alcoholic delight this holiday season.
It’s called the Oatmeal Cookie and it is, perhaps, one of the most satisfying aperitifs you could ever toss down your gullet as you navigate your way through treacherous social graces. It’s simple enough to shake up but it’s wonderfully dangerous and delicious:
Stick all three ingredients into a tumbler with ice and shake. Add a spritz of Coke and serve. – Special Thanks to Trafton Nicholls for the recipe
Yummy and lethal. Be sure it’s represented at all your holiday shindigs. You’ll be thanking me as your stomach feels the warm goodness of a drink that’s akin to wrapping your insides with a fuzzy sweater.
Now, as we wrap up the year that was 2007 for trailers it is time to look back and see who managed to actually create something out of nothing and tease us all while doing it. This was a year where I saw more of the same being passed off as exciting fare but if you are any kind of reader of this column you should know that this is really a matter of the studio’s needing to impress us, to entertain us, to dance, monkey.
Trailers have become such an integral part of how a movie gets marketed and released (por ejemplo: How many of you there were all sorts of excited after figuring out that the newest DARK KNIGHT trailer debuted last Sunday night? Yeah, this is how much power they wield) but there still is a vacuum needing to be filled about how well the companies out there are doing their jobs right. I like to let the world know when there’s a trailer people should be watching and appreciating for its intimate goodness but there’s only so much I can do. Not to mention difficult when people ask what I do for this site. Sure, it may sound all hip and cool to drop that you review movie trailers while trying to infuse pithy remarks here and there but it’s hard to do it with a straight face when in the presence of a complete stranger.
It doesn’t exactly bring boys to the yard, if you catch the drift.
However, that hasn’t stopped me from doing this thing week after week and year after year (more on that in the coming weeks) and the Greatest 2007 Trailer Awards countdown is no different than any other needless, disposable countdown list that you’re no doubt seeing all over the place. So, without anymore hesitation here are my picks for the best of ’07. I’m counting down 10-6 this week, stay tuned for the rest in seven days:
10. THE LIVES OF OTHERS: Where else has reading been so engaging? It’s just a tough sell when you have a foreign language film you’re trying to get people to see but we’re so isolationist here in the States that when we see words pop on the screen we’re all but debilitated in ways that Kryponite can’t even hope of doing. You have a mixture here, though, of pure drama and the thin sense of real foreboding. The trailer succeeds where others failed because it doesn’t sell its genuinely engaging story; it takes the next step of playing into what makes us all human and what can happen when our humanity becomes the very thing that is the object of someone’s interest. Creepy and highly effective.
9. RENO 911: MIAMI: Brilliant. I wasn’t bullshitting the boys of RENO when I said on camera during my interview with Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant when I said that RENO 911: MIAMI was one of the only movies I actually watched more than once this year. The reason that I was brought to the trough of this film’s offerings was its highly amusing and creative trailer. It doesn’t try to hook us with a pop soundtrack that would try and mask the funk of shit comedy like others tried to do this year. This trailer gets by on its own strength and its the opening sequence that not only sets the tone but its everything that comes out of Deputy Junior’s mouth and body that hooked me clean. Walking into doors, getting tazered bro’ by some minx and even the cars peeling out of the garage only to ram into one another was just a peek at what was one of the best ads for a good time at the movies this year.
8. LITTLE CHILDREN: You can have FATAL ATTRACTION. You can keep that film and boil it if it means that this movie could take its psychological place as a reason why you should never, ever cheat on your lady. This trailer is sparse but that’s the real treat. The train chugging in the background with a heavy dependence on mood evokes the exact kind of emotion that you’re going to feel throughout this film. It sells itself without ever having to pitch itself if that makes any sense at all. The audio of the train careening by as we build up to what should be obvious to anyone with any sense at all, that there is no way anyone is going to get out of this unscathed like the train that will demolish anything in its path, is not only palatable but it reaffirmed my notion that you should never, ever cheat on your lady. She’ll cut your balls off. I have come back to this trailer many times this year if only to try and understand that quiet greatness of this trailer’s power.
7. TRADE: See this movie? No? Don’t worry, I didn’t either and, from the looks of it, not a lot of other people did. One of the best things about reviewing movie trailers is that I can basically say whatever I want without having to ever see the film to see if I’m right. Usually I have a pretty good barometer for what really stinks and what should have a decent chance of surviving but I can’t place this film in any sort of those boxes. The story seemed to spring from a rather interesting place and its premise doesn’t strike me, and still doesn’t, that would appeal to a lot of people across a wide swath. That’s irrelevant, though, as this trailer showed how you can have a good premise, explain yourself with a little bit of exposition and leave me wanting more with a great back beat. “Agnus Dei” by Rufus Wainright is one of the superlative uses of music that ever was this year. The trailer tugs at you while demanding you keep up with the story.
6. DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT: For anyone who wants to talk about trailers always giving away too much of a film I’d like to introduce you to this trailer. Without so much of a scrap of background or context we’re given nothing to base any reason why we should go out and spend money to see this movie but it does not matter in the slightest. This trailer is eerie in ways that I can’t explain but I will say that it’s use of a voiceover is actually well-used and understated to the point of us feeling like interlopers into a moment we feel compelled to try and stop. We don’t know why we feel like something is going to happen, and it’s going to be bad, but the trailer takes the chance to not say anything one way or the other. It’s wonderfully daring and evocative. I can’t stand watching this trailer and not feeling a sense of unease. Mission accomplished in every sense of the word.
Director: Martin McDonagh Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Colin Farrell Release: February 8, 2008 Synopsis: IN BRUGES is the darkly comedic tale of the fates of hit men Ray (Farrell)and Ken (Gleeson). After a difficult job in London, the team is ordered by their boss Harry (Fiennes) to cool their heels in Bruges. Very much out of their comfort zones, the men find themselves drawn into increasingly dangerous entanglements with locals, tourists, and a film shoot. Soon, their perspectives on life and death are violently skewed.
Prognosis: Positive. I have great affinity for this trailer for a couple of reasons.
One, I think we finally are given Colin Farrell in his natural habitat. You watch this thing and wonder what the hell happened with S.W.A.T., ALEXANDER, DAREDEVIL but then remember why MIAMI VICE and INTERMISSION were good examples of what he’s able to do. The guy has something but it just hasn’t blossomed in ways that some pretty boys turn that acting corner like Brad Pitt showed he could do after FIGHT CLUB and 12 MONKEYS.
Two, anyone who can use the word “retarded” and make it sound funny has got my vote.
I appreciate the way this trailer begins with a flash. There isn’t a quick cut or a thumping beat to make me feel like I’ve stepped into an MTV video for the movie. This trailer begins with a quite benign back and forth with a priest and Colin. It seems innocuous enough until Colin pops him.
Interesting.
The trailer slides easily into putting everything into context. In does it so well that by the time that Colin unleashes his comedic artistry it’s a wonder why there hasn’t been more said about why the It’s a Small World ride at Disneyland had to be “adjusted” due to the increasing weight of people (I’ll go on the record and say it’s mostly Americans). Colin glides right through this thing. Equal parts violent, amusing.
The whole idea of the film, that Colin has to wait two weeks in Belgium with his fellow hit man and await instructions of what to do, is so basic that it begs an answer as to why someone thought it was ripe for comedy.
Big-ups, huge praise, needs to be heaped on the narrative voice-over with regard to the letter that Colin reads from the big boss wondering where the two of them are (a case of cabin fever obviously set in and they wanted to take in some sights, insult the locals, that sort of thing) in a bleeped manner that I have never heard before during a narrative. It just made me appreciate the creativity.
What’s more is that when Ralph Fiennes enters the picture he just adds to what amounts to a true madcap adventure. The cat and mouse shootout that ensues is enough to make you wonder whether this is a comedy or an action/comedy or an action/comedy/adventure or something else entirely.
I would usually loathe the expression “And what’s more”¦” but I am going to employ it here to sum up what makes this film look like a real treat if, for nothing more than to hear Colin, in his Irish lip, talk about Bruges: “If I had grown up on a farm”¦and was retarded”¦Bruges might impress me. But I didn’t so it doesn’t”. The lilt in his voice is what really makes the dialogue snappy.
And, one more thing: Jordan Prentice. I know a lot of you didn’t get a chance to see one of my favorite independent movies of 2007, WEIRDSVILLE, he played a mall cop with a thirst for medieval vengeance but he plays the part of a man in this trailer that not only has an amusing quip about where to find a prostitute in Bruges but then becomes a hilarious punch line, literally, when he gets a karate chop to his neck.
I need to see this movie; I just hope to God all the best parts weren’t employed in the making of the trailer.
Our holiday contest-a-palooza continues as we give away, in conjunction with Paramount Home Video, five (5) copies of THE MOD SQUAD: SEASON ONE VOLUME 1 on DVD.
THE MOD SQUAD featured three young, tough, and cooler-than-cool detectives whose covert unit did their part to bridge the generation gap and put the bad guys behind bars.
Contest ends at midnight EST on Friday, December 28th.
CLOSED! THANKS FOR ENTERING!
Official Rules
No member of Quick Stop Entertainment or their immediate families may enter.
No Purchase necessary to win.
Must be 18 years of age or older to enter.
All submitted entries must be received by 11:59pm EST on Friday, December 28th.
The winner must allow 4-6 weeks after notification of win to receive the product.
The web. It’s a big place, full of plenty of distractions ““ some funny, some informative, some ludicrous, some disturbing, some inane, some profound. Each and every weekday, we present links to a few of our favorite finds”¦
Some people hang the holly, others decorate the tree, and a few even terrorize the neighborhood with off-key caroling.
Not us.
Here at Quick Stop Entertainment, we’re celebrating the holiday season by giving a little something back to you, our readers (you know who you are).
Every weekday leading up to the holiday break, we’ve got uber-exclusive gifts provided by a whole range of artists, actors, comedians, and studios. One a day, straight from them to you (and you can check out last year’s fun here).
Ain’t that cool?
Today, we’ve got an exclusive track from cyber-troubadour Jonathan Coulton – an evil, evil man who must be destroyed.
Why this call to action? Because he’s immensely talented, an amazingly gifted songwriter, and his incredible creativity both intimidates a normal, ungifted person like myself and drives me to distraction with catchy tunes and wordplay.
Damn him to hell, I can’t stop listening to his music.
That includes his first album Smoke Monkey, his first EP, Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow, and the complete 4-disc collection of his online songwriting experiment, Thing-a-Week.
You can purchase all of his discs, plus other merch – as well as partake of more sonic goodness – at www.JonathanCoulton.com. While you’re over there, be sure to check out all 52 Things – and pick up his CDs. And pledge your life to him. That talented bastard. Until then, here’s an exclusive live version (performed at Johnny D’s in Somerville, MA) of his nontraditional Christmas tune “Chiron Beta Prime,” with a little help from professional singing persons Paul & Storm and a “robot” assist from “Scott”…
MALIBU – Thankfully the Santa Ana flamed fires have spared my latest business venture. Having Satan for a silent partner has its advantages.
I’ve decided to give Promises and Dr. Drew a run for the star detox business by offering a revolutionary approach at The Party Favors Rehab Center and Hardcore Fighting Academy. We believe you can’t clean up your life until your clock is cleaned.
While other rehab centers will baby you with meatball psychiatry and compassion, your first day at PFRCHFC is all about wailing on your ass. You think your old man was hard on you, wait till our staff of trained “therapists” take you down into the Tyler Durden Memorial Basement for intense small group sessions. You won’t care about withdrawal pains since you’ll be too concerned about how many teeth you have left. Other rehab centers have you cleaning toilets. We’re going to use your head as a bowl brush. You’ll be gargling with Mr. Clean. We won’t have you making beds or doing laundry. You’re sleeping on the basement floor in a loin cloth. When you get out of our rehab center, the TMZ pests will dash away since you’ll smell like an animal that has been locked in the basement for six weeks.
Will you be cured? Not quite. You’ll still be addicted to alcohol, although now it will be applied to your flesh with cottonballs after your “break through” sessions.
For those of you who can “handle” your drinking, Party Favors is pleased to announce that it’s getting into premium booze business. We’ll be joining Jay-Z and Donald Trump on the top shelf. Instead of getting into the fancy vodka business, the Party Favors Distillery squeezes out high quality Moonshine.
Our two signature brands that’ll be clogging the aisles at Macy’s Liquor store are Granny’s XXX and Otis’ Secret Stash. Granny’s XXX comes in an authentic little brown jug. Originally the bottle was going to mention that it’s for medicinal purposes, but the FDA told us it wasn’t a cure for legitimate diseases. As if Restless Leg Syndrome is a real disease. If you suffer from drinking too much house paint, Granny’s XXX is guaranteed to peel the semi-gloss off your small intestine. Granny’s XXX comes in one flavor: harsh. We recommend you dilute it with Ronson lighter fluid.
Otis’ Secret Stash has a variety of flavors including Cherry, Peach, Strawberry and Pineapple. Instead of using bunch of artificial ingredients, we chop up the fruits and squeeze ’em into the bottle. You can put the diced delights on your morning pancakes as a hangover cure. The Pineapple is my favorite. If you eat a chunk of the shine soaked golden fruit, you’ll get a vision of Jack Lord.
While we use an authentic Southern recipe, our bottles promise that we don’t resort to an old car radiator as a condenser. Does Donald Trump promise that he doesn’t use his old Rolls Royce radiator on Trump Vodka? If the Donald drank a little Granny’s XXX, he’d grow a real haircut.
These are only the first two points of the Party Favors triangle of pleasure. We’re proud to announce our new bar at Las Vegas’s Zanzibar Casino and Hotel. ReTox opens on the 4th of July, 2008. The club’s slogan is “When you’re ready to fall off the wagon, we’ll catch you.” I can’t give too many details except we are in negotiations to lure Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears to host our “Screw the Chip” opening night. Plus we’ll be the future home to the Little Miss Booze pageant. Mondays will be 2 for 1 drink night for “graduates” of PFRCHFC.
We do offer gift cards in case you want to give a friend the present of booze, decadence or sobriety this holiday season. Party Favors wants to be your full-service alcohol abuse destination.
HATIN’ THE HOBBIT
Peter Jackson didn’t get any brotherly love in Philadelphia. My sources on the set of The Lovely Bones said the local crew was frustrated with the Oscar winning director. He’s described as being unprepared for the film.
The local crew members are used to working on M. Night Shyamalan’s films. He’s meticulous in his production work. He knows what he wants and they give it to him. They expected the same from Jackson seeing how he pulled off Lord of the Rings and King Kong. They joked that Jackson would have a CGI version of the film that they’d capture in the flesh.
Instead Jackson became notorious for arriving at the location without the rush to make movie history. When he did make a “artiste” decision, it didn’t produce applause. One incident described how Jackson demand a complicated multi-camera set up. The crew warned him that the moves weren’t going to work in the tight location space. He wouldn’t alter his plans. They spent hours setting it up. They were quietly hoping to be proven wrong by the man. They wanted to bask in his genius. After the first take; Jackson declared it a dud and scrapped his initial vision for the shot. He didn’t inspire trust amongst the natives.
Could this explain why Ryan Gosling is no longer the lead in the film? Rumors spread that Jackson found Gosling “demanding.” Perhaps Gosling was expecting Jackson to be more demanding?
Does Jackson always work like an anti-Roman Polanski? Did he wander onto the set and wait for the cinematic inspiration on Lord of the Rings? Or maybe leaving the land of Kiwis has thrown off his game. Philadelphia is a town that can suck the life out of you – just ask Terrell Owens and Santa. All that cheese steak can clog your mind. Does sound like Jackson’s tombstone will pay homage to W.C. Fields’ epitaph.
HOLLY GOLLY DVDS
The screenwriter’s strike continues so that means more time to spend with my DVD collection. Do I really need to see stars promote films that stunk up the screen last year? Here’s a few titles I’ve been enjoying and might great Christmas gifts for your special friends that aren’t happy with donations to the Human Fund.
Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. The Third Season takes us back to Camp Henderson. While 1966 to 67 marked an escalation of the war in Vietnam, Gomer hadn’t a care about battling the Cong in a rice patty. His only wanted to keep Sgt. Carter happy. There’s not even a subtext of Vietnam in the scripts. It’s a beautiful alternate America that has Gomer defending it. “Gomer and the Little Green Men From Outer Space” has our favorite private receive a close encounter of the third kind. Naturally everyone thinks he’s gone nuts. The closest Gomer comes to shipped out to Asia is his tenure in a tiki bar watching Lou-Ann Poovie sing. Even though the nightclub has a Pacific island feel, we’re told it’s the Congo Club. Gomer Pyle’s basic mission was to entertain without making the viewers remember the evening news from Southeast Asia. Mission Accomplished.
Rawhide, Season Two, Volume Two brings us another heaping spoonful of Clint Eastwood on the range. The endless cattle drive continues with sixteen more episodes. “Incident of the Stargazer” has Buddy Ebsen which means you’ll see Barnaby Jones tangle with Dirty Harry. “Incident of the Dancing Death” gives Sam Peckinpah regular Warren Oates time with the cattle. “Incident of the Deserter” has the cook falls in love and start a restaurant in the wilderness. Can the crew live on Clint’s meals? What makes Rawhide great is they didn’t fake the show. They really are moving a herd of cows across the range. Clint isn’t standing by a rear projection screen faking it on a plastic horse.
Midnight Movies explores cult cinema that took hold when the clock struck twelve. We see how El Topo, Night of the Living Dead, Freaks, Reefer Madness, The Harder They Come, Pink Flamingos, Rocky Horror Picture Show and Eraserhead took hold in an era before VCRs. All the major people related to the films are interviewed. They all point out that Midnight Moviegoers preferred to smoke dope and use popcorn for their munchies. You might want to have a few of the featured films on DVD so you can launch into the late night magic afterward.
There’s no review for Saturday Night Live Season – The Complete Second Season since it has been whisked to a secure and secret location and won’t be revealed until Christmas morning. All you need to know is that this is the arrival of Bill Murray and the departure of Chevy Chase. A comedic win-win.
Any exercise video that begins with Carmen Electra saying, “Thank you so much for bringing me into your bedroom. I’m so happy to be here” moves to the top of the workout pile. Carmen Electra’s Aerobic Striptease – In the Bedroom is more enjoyable than Todd Field’s In the Bedroom. The routine starts out with stretching on the floor in front of the bed. After ten minutes, Carmen moves the action onto the mattress. The isometric holds made me break a sweat. Carmen does wear her sneakers into bed, but that’s probably a gym rule. The second half workout features her in a Las Vegas hotel room with a view of the Wynn. She’s wearing a pair of heels for this more involved routine. To help her feel the burn, she slaps her butt. Did she clear that move with a physician? Carmen Electra’s Aerobic Striptease – Vegas Strip has her start off the workout by saying, “The whole point of this series is to really feel your body. Don’t be afraid to touch yourself.” I’m overwhelmed with emotion at this affirmation. This routine is performed on the dance floor of the MGM Grand’s Studio 54. Carmen brought along two girlfriends. Once you’ve mastered these motions, you’ll be ready to tryout for the Pussycat Dolls. This DVD is more fun than my last stay on the Vegas Strip and nobody pesters you into visiting a time share resort.
The seventh wave of Disney Treasures DVDs are a must buy for Magic Kingdom freaks. The Adventures of Oswalt the Lucky Rabbit contains the surviving 13 cartoons featuring Walt’s pre-Mickey Mouse animated hero. He’s pretty much Mickey Mouse with longer ears. The second disc in the tin is dedicated to Ub Iwerks, the man who animated Disney’s early cartoons. The Chronological Donald Duck, Volume Three (1947 – 50) has 30 shorts featuring the squawking waterfowl. This collection features the introduction of Chip n Dale to torture Donald. The quality of the restoration on these shorts is better than Volume 2. Disneyland – Secrets, Stories & Magic skimps on the secrets. There’s zero talk of Club 33 – the hidden bar near Pirates of the Caribbean. The main film is about as probing as a Travel Channel special. The bonus features rule on this set especially Disneyland U.S.A, a cinemascope tour of the park from 1956. Annette Funicello twirls around in “The Golden Horseshoe Revue.” They throw a reproduction of the old ticket book in the tin. For folks who make pilgrimage’s to Anaheim and Orlando, you better grab this for your collection since they only pressed 50,000.
EVEL’S LAST JUMP
The true cause of Evel Knievel’s death won’t appear in the coroner’s report. What brought down the legendary daredevil was a fatal stunt he performed two days before his final sleep. He announced to the press that he had settled his public feud with Kanye West. They were friends. His peace with the rapper became the ramp that aimed him into the grave.
Evel broke every bone in his body. What kept him together for 69 years? Pure spite. Watch any interview with Evel and you’ll see him hold grudges against anyone he perceived screwed him over. A few years back on the Jim Rome radio show, Evel was ready to kick the ass of a kid from his elementary school days. In documentaries, there are hours of him cussing about the guy who engineered his rocket-cycle at Snake River. Once a person went on Evel’s list, they feared him showing up on their doorstep with a baseball bat.
Evel sued Kayne for ripping off the story of Snake River for the “Touch the Sky” video featuring “Evel Kaynevel.” Evel was pissed off that Kayne had used his daredevil image to “promote his filth to the world.” Two days before his passing, Evel announced they had settled the lawsuit. They posed for a picture as if they were best of pals. Evel told the press, “I thought he was a wonderful guy and quite a gentleman.” When Evel forgave Kayne, his body couldn’t deal with it since his heart was fueled with spite. Like putting sugar in the gas tank, Evel’s engine locked up. He overdosed on bygones.
Perhaps in heaven Evel will be reunited with the sharks from the tank in Chicago? Or maybe he’s swapping sucker punches with Norman Mailer? What we do know is that his ghost won’t be swinging a Louisville Slugger at Kanye’s dome.
SOUND OF THE SEASON
There are three 24/7 Christmas radio stations in my town. Why? There’s more Christmas music on the dial than rock. They started the “Jingle Bell Rock” a week before Thanksgiving. What’s irritating is the simple fact that there might be thousands of Christmas records, but each on of them has the same 15 songs. Did you know you can program a solid nine days of nothing but “The Little Drummer Boy” without repeating an artist? Bet the guys in Gitmo don’t get the aural torture that greets a mall employee for their 10 hour shift at the Sunglass Hut.
RANDOM TV NOTES
When will ATT run a commercial with Dick Cheney telling us how he spends his time in secure and secret locations, meeting with people that must remain private, attending off-the-record conferences and relaxing in his man-sized safe? Dick declares at the end, “I need a phone that works where I live. A place I call Noneofyourfnbusinessaholes.”
When is John Cho going to end up on Dancing With the Stars? The Harold and Kumar Go to the White Castle star must seduce America with his twinkle toes.
Lifetime’s America’s Psychic Challenge needs to have the ultimate final test: Pick the winning numbers of all the major lotteries for that week. Wouldn’t you want to tune in for that episode? You give me the Powerball digits and you’ve earned the title. Lifetime’s got a great new title for a show: How to Look Good Naked. Why isn’t this series on HBO? These people won’t be naked cause they’ll always have those blur splotches on their bodies. We don’t need more teaser TV.
This gives me hope for my upcoming series: Do You Mind If I Put My Private Parts In Your Mouth? It’s based off the BBC 4 show Schlong Along My Ding Dong. We’re hoping to land Andy Dick as the host. He’s already developing our new MTV series, How Bad Are You Willing to Break Into Showbiz. As Art Linkloser once said, “Desperate attention whores make the best contestants.”
How come for all the publicity for I Am Legend not one of the suck up infotainment shows are willing to admit this film is a remake of Last Man on Earth and Omega Man? Is the Fresh Prince ashamed of being connected to Vincent Price and Charlton Heston? On Entertainment Tonight, the director of the film claimed that an element of Will’s character was something they created. Note to Francis Lawrence: you didn’t think that hard. Your genius idea was featured in the earlier films. Will Smith is the third last person on the planet.
Did Tom Hanks think he was playing Dean Martin in Charlie Wilson’s War? The shot of him in the tux with the tumbler is only short Jerry Lewis to be a full Dino impersonation.
I’m still irritated that certain cable channels run the closing credits of movies beneath the opening of their next movie. They shrink and squish the already tiny type. What’s the point? Can you really read any of that. Even used car dealers can’t defend that font size and crawl speed. It’s Morse code in fast forward. It’s time they just kill the credits instead of allowing this farce to continue.
What’s the point of seeing the Spice Girls reunion if they won’t wear their old outfits? Didn’t Scary Spice’s name come from her wardrobe that even Beyonce’s mom wouldn’t design? Is she really Sporty Spice without sneakers? Can we embrace a mature Baby Spice? What’s the point in watching Ginger perform without her Union Jack corset and platform boots? Do we need to see them as five fashionable ladies – as if they all morphed into Posh Spice? Were they really about the music and not the marketing?
WHY BUZZ ON THE HORNET?
For the past five years The Green Hornet has been near the top of my most wanted TV shows on DVD. I had never seen a complete episode outside of the Batman crossover episode, but I wanted to see Bruce Lee in action. Plus the show was made by the folks who produced Batman. How could it not amaze me? American Life channel now runs the show on Friday nights. After watching four episodes, it’s off the buy list.
There was a reason this series lasted only one season. It’s lackluster. Bruce Lee gets completely misused. Bruce has great moves, but he only gets put in a kick or two before his opponent falls to the ground like an Italian soccer player. Capt. Kirk and James West didn’t have such fragile villains. Why does Kato work for the Green Hornet? He spends the whole day working as the houseboy for Britt Reid, the communications emperor. Then at night, he has to change uniforms and drive the millionaire around town hunting for bad guys. Can’t Britt pay Kato enough cash so that he only has to work one job. Bruce Wayne didn’t make Dick Grayson work two gigs. Alfred kept Wayne manor in order. Kato should have kicked Green Hornet in the head for being such a cheap ass taskmaster.
Why does Hollywood want to bring this character to the big screen? The only way I can see this film working is Green Hornet vs. Kato. The plot can revolve on Kato finally getting sick of Green Hornet’s “Time to lean, time to clean up the city” policy. Green Hornet tries to use his media empire to ruin Kato’s reputation since it’s obvious that sidekick is the real force of the operation.
TYLER PERRY VS TYLER PERRY
When will Tyler Perry sue the makers of This Christmas for making a Tyler Perry film that didn’t involve Tyler Perry? There had to be at least one person per screening wondering where’s the guy dressed up as an old woman.
TV STAR OF 2007!
Why don’t they change the name of Rule of Engagement to the The Patrick Warburton Show? Patrick Warburton owns the series. Why exactly is David Spade in the cast? To insure a cameo from Rob Schnider for season three? Whenever Warburton is off the screen, the show loses steam. Two consecutive scenes without him and I’m writing my Congressman to get Warburton back on the screen. It’s torture! Does Donal Logue get jealous when he turns on the show and sees Warburton getting frisky with Megyn Price? She looks sexier without the burden of three TV children and Kevin Corrigan creeping around the house.
Between Rules of Engagement and The Venture Brothers, Warburton is the king of TV comedy for 2007. When’s he going to have an HBO show so we can hear him cuss up a storm?
TV’s Crossover star of the year is Lexington Steele. One of the big studs of the porn world (and less hairy than Ron Jeremy) has snuck on the rather adult shows of Nip/Tuck and Weeds in the last few months. Lex seems to be poised to get a Saturday morning show in Brazil at this rate.
Moving the doctors of Nip/Tuck to Los Angeles has goosed the show. Not that things were getting to staid in Miami, but the plastic people of Hollywood are perfect fodder for McNamara-Troy. What can be better than casting a Bo Duke as a porn producer? A tribute to the infamous hottub poop clip showed how it can be faked.
BITE STEVE
Is Steve Buscemi really voicing a gingerbread man in a Go Phone commercial? He’s funny looking gingerbread man, you know?
BUMP HER
How come you never see the tabloids spreading rumors that Janeane Garofalo is pregnant? They fight to spot the bulge on Angelina Jolie and Jessica Simpson. But why not start a pregnancy watch on Sarah Silverman? Why isn’t Winona Ryder assumed to be hiding triplets beneath her trenchcoat? How about Bea Arthur? Why aren’t her “sources” claiming she’s eager to put a bun in her oven. What man does she has want to coat her in baby batter? That guy from High School Musical 2. I’d buy that copy of US Weekly. If Jennifer Lopez can get knocked up, why not Maude?
Our holiday contest-a-palooza continues as we give away, in conjunction with McFarlane Toys, THE GRINCH WHO STOLE CHRISTMAS action figures.
Perfect for your holiday decorating needs, the first wave of How The Grinch Stole Christmas toys based are on Chuck Jones’s animated adaptation of the Dr. Seuss classic. The sculpting work is spot on – particularly when you put the dioramas together and create the aforementioned perfect holiday decoration. The initial wave features “All I Need Is A Reindeer”, “Two Sizes Too Small”, “Cindy Lou Who”, “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch”, and the deluxe diorama “The Grinch & Max On Mt. Crumpit”.
Each of five (5) winners will receive one figure from the wave listed above.
Contest ends at midnight EST on Thursday, December 27th.
CLOSED! THANKS FOR ENTERING!
Official Rules
No member of Quick Stop Entertainment or their immediate families may enter.
No Purchase necessary to win.
Must be 18 years of age or older to enter.
All submitted entries must be received by 11:59pm EST on Thursday, December 27th.
The winner must allow 4-6 weeks after notification of win to receive the product.
The web. It’s a big place, full of plenty of distractions ““ some funny, some informative, some ludicrous, some disturbing, some inane, some profound. Each and every weekday, we present links to a few of our favorite finds”¦
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Let’s have a Patrick Swayze Christmas this year… (Thingamabob)
VIDEO BLOG #100: “My Horsey” ““
This week, J.D. and Turk encounter a uni-horned creature of myth… or do they?… as we go behind-the-scenes of this sequence from episode 7×06, “My #1 Doctor”.
Download Scrubs Video Blog #100:
Large (560 x 420 – QuickTime – 37.21 MB) Small (320 x 240 – QuickTime – 16.36 MB)
Some people hang the holly, others decorate the tree, and a few even terrorize the neighborhood with off-key caroling.
Not us.
Here at Quick Stop Entertainment, we’re celebrating the holiday season by giving a little something back to you, our readers (you know who you are).
Every weekday leading up to the holiday break, we’ve got uber-exclusive gifts provided by a whole range of artists, actors, comedians, and studios. One a day, straight from them to you (and you can check out last year’s fun here).
Ain’t that cool?
Today we’ve got a trio of “From The Archives” tracks from our good friends at Opie & Anthony, featuring Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes, and Jim Norton. Also included is the now legendary dust-up between Kevin and the late Joel Siegel.
Download Kevin Smith & Jason Mewes on Opie & Anthony:
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Check out the rest of this year’s “Holiday Havoc”HERE
Our holiday contest-a-palooza continues as we give away, in conjunction with Universal Home Video, five (5) copies of THE KINGDOM on DVD.
Jamie Foxx leads an all-star ensemble cast including Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper, Jason Bateman and Jeremy Piven in this explosive action-packed thriller directed by Peter Berg about an elite FBI team sent to Saudi Arabia to stop a terrorist before he strikes again.
Contest ends at midnight EST on Wednesday, December 26th.
CLOSED! THANKS FOR ENTERING!
Official Rules
No member of Quick Stop Entertainment or their immediate families may enter.
No Purchase necessary to win.
Must be 18 years of age or older to enter.
All submitted entries must be received by 11:59pm EST on Wednesday, December 26th.
The winner must allow 4-6 weeks after notification of win to receive the product.
Far from being a stuffy intellectual, a loathsome toff, or a smug git, Stephen Fry has managed to walk the fine line of being not only a wonderfully intelligent man who unashamedly exhibits said intelligence, but also a very funny performer and an all-around humble and likeable guy.
FRY: Well, through John (Lloyd). Through his remarkable persuasive powers. I’ve known him for years and years. Really, he was a great hero. When I was at university – he had been, like me, at Cambridge in the Footlights club, which is a famous club at Cambridge. It produces comedians, and has done so for over 100 years. John Cleese and Peter Cook and Ali G – and myself, Emma Thompson, and Hugh Laurie were all in the same year at Cambridge, and we were all in the Footlights as well. And as I say, it’s that sort of Python tradition. And John Lloyd had been in about five years before me. Same time as Douglas Adams who wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide. They were very good friends. John had become well known to those of us aspiring toward the comedic world because of a TV series called Not The Nine O’Clock News, that he produced. When we left university, I sort of got to know him a bit.
KP: So, you know how to play the game as well…
KP: Who knew you would develop into an amazing comedy duo?
FRY: (Laughing) That’s nonsense! A, he can keep up with me, plus – I mean, he’s so brilliant, Hugh. And also, of course, he has so much charm that he’s always absolutely brilliant anyway.
KP: Does it feel different to you? For years you’ve done panel shows, but being the host, was it a completely different feeling to then be put on the panel?
When I was asked whether I’d want to interview David Paetkau for ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM (Opening today, Christmas Day) there wasn’t a moment of hesitation. Apart from thinking I was going to interview a Hawaiian (I mean, come on, look at the name. I should have tossed in a question about Poi…now I’m depressed I didn’t.) I believe that this is exactly the kind of person I really enjoy talking to for a variety of reasons; one of the biggest ones, though, is that for those of you who have ever had the kind of career where you’ve had some success and are making your way up the ladder it is that drive, that hunger to go farther from where you are today, to be better than the other guy, is what’s most interesting. Once you make it, it’s all about reflection and experience and who here hasn’t read an interview with some A-lister that seems less to be about the work and more about how great it is to work with X or how funny X is off the set?
I don’t usually do e-mail interviews but as I read his answers I have to believe that this could be my favorite means of getting to know someone. David was a champ for handling my questions with aplomb and I have to be honest by saying when and if I see ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM I’ll be seeing it just to find out if he’s one of those who gets eviscerated.
DAVID PAETKAU: Yeah, there were some definite reservations because they wouldn’t let us read the script. it was ‘locked’ and ‘secret’ … so i had no idea what i was getting into! I still decided to jump onboard, because I figured it’s better to regret something you did do then something you didn’t do. It also helped that Aliens is one of my favorite movies.
5. On your IMDB page there are a few people who make mention of your “hawtness” or that you’re “gorgeous.” Does seeing this kind of superficial attention validate your decision to make a living by being in front of the camera and, if so, how great is it to be you on Saturday night at a club?
DAVID PAETKAU: No tennis balls, but I did have to pretend that cold slimy goop was alien blood melting my face off. The toughest thing was the man in suit aspect. A guy dressed in an alien costume with rubber claws isn’t intimidating up close. The cool thing about the Stause brothers was that they edited each scene as we filmed it. They’d have the sequence cut together on the spot, send it to the second unit with notes on exactly what other shots they needed. It was amazingly efficient. It was way beyond just playback.
For this last installment of “Comics in Context” before Christmas, I was considering a good number of possible topics. There is the wonderful new Disney film Enchanted, which combines live action, computer animation, and good old traditional hand-drawn animation. There’s the new DVD set Walt Disney Treasures: The Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, collecting the cartoons featuring Disney’s cartoon star before the creation of Mickey Mouse. There’s Fantagraphics’ new second volume of their Popeye reprint series, featuring the debut of my favorite E. C. Segar character, J. Wellington Wimpy, and IDW’s first volume of Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates. And now that the Broadway stagehands’ strike is over, I could go see the stage version of Disney’s The Little Mermaid.
Unfortunately, the big screen adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s illustrated fable 
The second season of sleuthing magicians 
The main attraction of the new 2-disc special edition of 
No holiday weekend is complete without the tipsy travails of Patsy & Edina from last year’s star-studded Christmas special revisiting our favorite ladies who lush, 
On December 2, 2006, Kevin Smith hosted a special conversation between Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee and the current (and controversial) Editor-In-Chief, Joe Quesada. That conversation has been released on DVD as 
Forget that horrid big screen version – it will be duly erased from your memory by the original TV adventures of Pete, Linc, and Julie – 
My emotions about 
The latest Modern Masters spotlight from the fine folks at Twomorrows turns its artist spotlight on 
I admit, I was hoping for the same kind of brilliance they bring to Reno 911, but I still found Tom Lennon and Ben Garant’s 
The one thing you don’t want to happen during a remake is to be constantly reminded how much better the original version was. Sadly, those were the exact thoughts running through my mind while watching Ben Stiller try and finagle his was out of an impending marriage while on vacation in Mexico with his fiancée in 
The tunes aren’t nearly as memorable as those found in The Producers, but the cast album of Mel Brooks’s latest Broadway adaptation – 
I can’t stand Brett Ratner. In fact, the only people I can tolerate less are JJ Abrams and Brannon Braga. It’s just the level of pure, unadulterated smug that’s so off-putting. The only thing that saves the third film in the 
Sega’s hyperspeed hedgehog with the voice of Urkel gets his third animated series released. 
Nicolas Cage’s unlikely (and borderline somnambulant) action hero adventurer Benjamin Franklin Gates will be back on the big screen this holiday season, so it’s expected that the very first 
Count ’em out and ride in the final 16 episodes of the sophomore season of 
In the annals of unnecessary movie, add the live action adaptation of 
Add Rob Zombie’s 
If the cold sparks a desire for a rather intense piece of filmmaking to warm things up, give a spin to 
In a repeat of the .5 edition of the first Jackass flick, 
Director: Martin McDonagh Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Colin Farrell Release: February 8, 2008 Synopsis: IN BRUGES is the darkly comedic tale of the fates of hit men Ray (Farrell)and Ken (Gleeson). After a difficult job in London, the team is ordered by their boss Harry (Fiennes) to cool their heels in Bruges. Very much out of their comfort zones, the men find themselves drawn into increasingly dangerous entanglements with locals, tourists, and a film shoot. Soon, their perspectives on life and death are violently skewed.
