NAOMI CAMPBELL IS FUCKED-UP

I know.  That headline is hardly worth the byte-space.   Even Corky from LIFE GOES ON knows Naomi Campbell is a head case.  But I just read her mini-interview in Newsweek where she was asked about throwing the phone at her maid and she replied, "I will never, I hope, be pushed to that level of losing my temper again."

I love how, even now, she's subtly passing the blame through her use of language.  She can't just say she lost her temper – she had to say she was "pushed" into it -- i.e. it's really her maid's fault after all.  She "pushed" Naomi into throwing a phone at her. 

DAVID O. RUSSELL AND LILY TOMLIN JOIN NAOMI IN THE FUCKED-UP CLUB

David O. Russell on the set of Three Kings 2.

Naomi Campbell, obviously, isn't the only Hollywood regular to be acting like an ass.  This week a couple of very incendiary videos surfaced on YouTube, featuring both Lily Tomlin and David O. Russell acting like complete dicks.  In case you haven't seen them, here they are for your pleasure:

Listen, I've lost my temper before on set.  I don't like incompetence, and I'm not above screaming to get people's attention.  But the personal assaults, physical intimidation, and downright cruelty in these clips is pretty disgusting.

Churning out the occasional great movie like THREE KINGS doesn't excuse this kind of behavior.  And this isn't a one time thing.  I personally know three or four actors – good actors and good people – who Russell treated deplorably while still in the audition stage.

All this said, I'd like people to know that this type of behavior is not the norm on film sets.  I've been on a lot of film sets with a lot of powerful actors and directors.  I've seen a lot of crybabyish power plays and whining.  I've seen some screaming and fighting.  But I've never seen anything quite like this.  So please don't think this is "just the way Hollywood is" from the behavior of these two dumbfucks. 

(This is a side note just for fellow fans of early punk rock – doesn't Lily Tomlin look almost exactly like Jimmy Pursey, the lead singer of Sham 69?)

WATCH SLiTHER ON CINEMAX!

Now all you cheap bastards you who refused to pay for SLiTHER in the theater or on DVD or pay-per-view can watch it for free on cable.  SLiTHER will be premiering on Cinemax on March 31 at 10 pm and then numerous, numerous times over the month of April.  You can also catch it on their hi-def channels and their On-Demand channels at the same time.  Check out their whole schedule here:

http://www.cinemax.com/apps/schedule/ScheduleServlet?ACTION_DETAIL=DETAIL&FOCUS_ID=620806

No Lily Tomlins were hurt in the making of SLiTHER.

(Thanks for the schedule, Michelle!)

GREGG HENRY IS ON MYSPACE

That's right, bitches.  You can now befriend Mayor Jack MacCready himself on MySpace.  Simply go to www.myspace.com/greggleehenry

In addition to stealing the show in SLiTHER, PAYBACK, BODY DOUBLE, a lot of other fun films, on his great new FX show, THE RICHES, Gregg is a first-rate musician.

First Rooker, then Nathan, Tania, now Gregg.  All we need is Elizabeth Banks and the SLiTHER gang will be cyber-complete.  (Like with Krasinski, it ain't gonna happen – so don't be starting any petitions, folks.)

SPEAKING OF GREGG HENRY –

He's playing a gig with fellow amazing actor Bruce Greenwood this Saturday night at Ghengis Cohen in Los Angeles.  I'm gonna be there and you should be as well.  Here's where it be:

Ghengis Cohen

740 N Fairfax, Los Angeles, California March, 24 2007

SOME GREGG HENRY TRIVIA –

At the end of every shoot, Gregg writes a tune about the making of the film.  For SLiTHER, he wrote a song called "Get the fuck out of the way, cocksucker."  He played it at the wrap party.

THE ICONS ARE ON MYSPACE!

For the seven of you who were fans of my old band, The Icons, we now have a MySpace page at www.myspace.com/iconsneverdie.  Befriend us.

You can download our songs for free there, and we'll be putting up additional songs every week or so.  Also, believe it or not, there may be some ALL-NEW Icons tracks in the future.

SOME ICONS TRIVIA –

I was paid five times as much money for putting the Icons song Sunday on the TROMEO & JULIET soundtrack CD than I was paid for writing the entire movie TROMEO & JULIET.  Why?  Because Oglio records is nowhere near as cheap as Lloyd Kaufman.

SPEAKING OF LLOYD KAUFMAN –

He asked me to post the following in my blog, in case there are any aspiring screenwriters out there.  And now that I've dazzled you with tales of the riches you make on a Troma production, I'm sure you're interested –

Lloyd Kaufman (director of POULTRYGEIST and THE TOXIC AVENGER) is looking for a screenplay for his next feature film. He would like to produce and direct an ensemble film (i.e., small cast) of any genre, but the script must be extreme, daring, and 100% original-- a project no one else would dare film.

Send feature-length,
COMPLETED SCRIPTS to:

Troma Building
Attn: Lloyd Kaufman
733 Ninth Ave.
NYC, NY 10019

Only feature-length, completed scripts will be considered (NO treatments, synopses, or works-in-progress). Hard copies only, please (no emails).

I don't quite understand, but I think he's looking for film treatments and partial scripts.  And toenails and little strips of your skin (I worked at Troma, I know what they get in the mail).

MY OTHER SHIT

Dude, I am dying to tell you what's going on with my other two projects, but I can't let the cats out of the bags just yet.  Other people are now involved, so it's not entirely up to me when I share the news.  Whatever the situation, I'll make sure you guys are the first to hear.

Now, it's been a while, so here are --

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED –

The first three questions are from Lil' Ferd --

1) I've seen several blogs by your wife about The Office having guest directors for several shows. Would an episode be really different based on who directs them?

Yes, they'd be different.  By watching episodes of the Office I can usually tell who it's directed by because different directors have different styles and strengths.  (I can also usually tell who the director is by whose name it says under "directed by" in the opening credits – just a little insider knowledge.)

Anyway, some directors are very meticulous about the shots, and others care a lot less about camera and a lot more just about the actors' action.  In Joss Whedon's episode, perhaps my favorite episode yet, he was amazing at two things – focusing on the emotions of the characters, and the choreography and shooting of the slapstick sequences in such a way as to make them believable (this was definitely, in my opinion, the best physical comedy the show ever featured).  Charles MacDougall, another occasional Office director, is very meticulous about the way the show is shot.  You'll find the most perfect shooting style in his episodes.  His shots are a lot more extravagant and filmic.  It should also be mentioned, that all the directors are, to some extent, incorporating the shooting style created by the original director on the show, the great Ken Kwapis. 

But, still, in TV, the writers have more power than the director, so TV shows will vary in style less than movies with different directors will.  If a director would wander too far from the Office style, it would be the job of the executive producer, Greg Daniels (the real boss on the Office), to reign them in.  Luckily, the Office is one of the most well respected shows on TV, so they're able to attract the very best directors around.

In movies, the director has a lot more power, and the writer or writers have very little.  So the directing style from movie to movie changes a lot.  The MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movies are different in almost every respect because they had three very powerful directors (Brian DePalma, John Woo, and J.J. Abrams).

2) What are the different tasks of the two (director and producer)?

On a movie, the director is in charge of the creative direction of the film.  The producer is in charge of getting the film made. 

The director tells the actors where to stand, helps them to process their roles, decides where the camera goes, how the film is edited together, what the color palette of the film is, etc, etc.  The producer makes sure all of the people are there doing what they're supposed to be doing.  He hires most of the people.  Without him or her, there wouldn't be a movie to direct. 

3) And which do you think is harder?

That really depends.  There are some lazy directors out there and many workaholic producers.  But, in general, I'd have to say directing is the harder position, as it tends to take up most every waking hour of a person's life while they're directing a film.  It's perhaps the most coveted job in Hollywood, and, therefore, the people who are doing it usually worked their asses off to get there.  And how difficult it is isn't just my imagination:  Film directors, on average, have a much shorter life span than your average person, even other professionals in the entertainment industry.  This is most likely due to the large amount of stress (and donuts).  I feel like I looked a good three years older after my year and a half working on SLiTHER, including a few gray hairs I didn't have earlier.  

What's the difference between associate producer and producer? – Tina

The associate producer is the one who gets the producer coffee. 

Actually, quite often, an associate producer is an assistant to the director or producer who becomes so involved with the project they get credit, or they get credit simply because it's in the director or producer's contract.

Producer credits are, in general, quite fucked.  Writing credits and directing credits have guilds overseeing them to make sure that the appropriate people get the appropriate credit.  It's not a perfect system (on SCOOBY-DOO I had to share "story by" credit with a guy whose script I never read), but at least they try.  Producer credits can go out to whomever at the discretion of the studio or whoever's financing the film. 

If I'm a big star like, say, Tom Hanks, who wants my cousin Ablazin' Devil Head to get a producer credit, even though he's never been on a movie set and he lives full time in Costa Rica selling pot and surfing – well, Ablazin Devil Head's probably going to get a producer credit.  The studios try to be somewhat fair with this stuff, but a lot of weird folks get thrown in there.

On TROMEO & JULIET, the financiers of the film didn't want their name on the movie because of its racy nature, so they gave Executive Producer credit to their sons, who were fourteen years old at the time (for instance, "Executive Producer" Grant Quasha is the son of financier Alan Quasha).

One more question – featuring a SLiTHER SPOILER (don't read below if you haven't seen the movie and ever plan on it…)

okay, i read on imdb.com that "The post-credits coda shows a cat getting possessed by the last surviving creature. This was originally meant to happen to Bill, after the Grant-creature is destroyed. Starla sees the resulting wound later, prompting her to shoot Bill to death."

so, where was THAT supposed to be in the movie? i am so confused, so now during that storyline, bill was to die? that's confusing. – Melissa Krasinski

Never trust anything on IMDB, especially the trivia section. Whether this is true or not depends on how you define "originally meant to happen".  There WAS an early draft where Bill gets infected at the end of the film.  Starla discovers his consciousness has been inhabited by the disease.  And the disease continues to love her.  Starla, in her wisdom, shoots Bill in the face, killing him.  However, there were a lot of different endings in the various drafts I wrote (as well as different beginnings and middles) and this is only one of them.  By the time we got to the shooting draft (a long while before shooting), the script was exactly as it ended up in the movie.

THE USUAL LINKS

After Ed smashed his grandmother's antique German stein collection he replaced it at the James Gunn Store.  She was just delighted.

Buy stuff at the JGAS store and make money for Rover Rescue!  For every dollar made I will personally match a dollar -- go to www.cafepress.com/jgas

Give me some motherfuckin' appreciation at the James Gunn Appreciation Society - chat, mock me, and begin an alarming friendship with the Ablazin' Devil Head -- http://groups.myspace.com/tjgas

And that's the end of this blog, folks.  See you soon!

James