October 09, 2008
As many have suspected, there seems to
be something fishy about the poor box office showing of David Zucker’s right
wing satire, “An American Carol.” After all, who doesn’t enjoy a hearty laugh
at such witty notions as Hollywood being renamed “Bin
Laden City”
with billboards pitching “Victoria’s
Burkas” (okay, that is kind of funny). So, no surprise that the filmmakers report they have been
getting complaints from would be patrons who were mysteriously sold the wrong
tickets or otherwise misdirected by those crafty, left-leaning theater owners
and exhibitors.
Seems like they might be taking a page out of
the RNC playbook for disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters. Meanwhile,
Zucker and company are “investigating.
Predictably, as the movies become more like elections, the
elections are becoming more like movies or, more exactly,like movie promotion.
Just the other night after I had turned on the mute button when the latest
McCain ad came on I noticed something odd. The scare quotes that appeared over
the demonic images of Obama and other “liberal Democrats” were attributed to “The
Washington Times,” that Moonie-owned rag that’s a rubber stamp for the Repuublicans.
That’s about as valid as a movie ad with a quote from Pete Hammond or Earl
Dittman! Or more like one from David Manning, the fictitious critic invented by Sony Pictures a few years back to serve as a
source for their own bogus encomiums.
Confirming my suspicions about this strategy is this boo
boo in which the RNC put out an ad with a glowing review of her debate performance (“She
killed. It was her evening. She was the star.”) with the attribution “Famous
Person.” Like they hadn’t quite gotten around to getting anyone to put their
name on the quote they had already written up. It's just like what happens at a movie
junket when a publicist passes through a room full of "critics" with a list of quotes
and asks which one they want to be blurbed for.
/
October 08, 2008
Now that the main Republican talking point has been refined from “Osama
is an elitist" to “Osama is a terrorist,” it’s only a matter of time before they
bring up the old canard about him being a Muslim. Which begs the question -- so
what if he is? Nobody running for President lately has been excoriated for
being Catholic, or Jewish, or Mormon, or whatever religion
believes that man walked with dinosaurs and preachers should run witches out of
town. Clearly, when some voters confuse the religion with a common textile,
some attempt at education is in order.
Thus the relevance of a couple of film festivals taking place
these days in the area. The Palestinian Film Festival, already underway at
various venues including the Harvard Film Archive and the Museum of Fine Arts,
features on Friday a lecture at Northeaster University on Palestinian Cinema by
veteran auteur Michel Khlefli, whose visually striking and profoundly affecting
Wedding in Galilee, in which Palestinians and Israeli soldiers achieve a reconciliation
of sorts at the title nuptials, 
also screens on Saturday at the MFA.
The second event is The Muslim Film Festival: Art Under Fire!
which opens Monday with Nina Davenport’s mordant, sad and hilarious “Operation
Filmmaker,” a
microcosmic look at the Iraq
debacle through the experience of a young Iraqi looking for a break in Hollywood. That’ll screen
at the Brattle Theatre.
Another high point is
Jocelyne Saab’s“Dunia” (2005) in which the young Egyptian woman of the
title is torn between pursuing the dance career of her late mother, studying
poetry with a charismatic professor who crusades for artistic freedom, and
marrying an asshole. Though suffering from occasional kitsch, platitudes and
tweeness, the film more than compensates for these weaknesses with some
stunning images and a real feel for the ambience and atmosphere of Cairo. It even-handedly
shows some of the less attractive aspects of Egyptian culture, such as female
circumcision, sexual repression and violent intolerance. But it also touches on
a side of Islam that doesn’t get much play in the West these days, most notably
the Sufi tradition that emphasizes the power of love, self-fulfillment and
ecstasy.
It screens at the Egan Center at Northeastern University
and like all the films in the festival, it’s free. 
October 06, 2008
Enough with the polls. Maybe the only reliable window into the
souls of American voters is what they’re willing to line up for and pay $10 to
see on a movie screen. In which case last weekend’s box office provides an
excellent test case, with two politically antithetically movie satires playing
mano-a-mano.
On the right is David Zucker’s “An American Carol,” which, as
noted in previous posts, is a variation on the Dickens’s classic featuring a
Michael Moore stand-in serving as punch bag for patriotic icons like Gen.
Patton, John Kennedy, George Washington and Bill O’Reilly. On the left is Bill
Maher and Larry Chrles’s “Religulous” in which believers like George Bush, a theme park Jesus and assorted
televangelists, Jews for Jesus and one US senator provide kindling for
Maher’s anti-faith auto-da-fe.
A look at the box office numbers shows, that, on the face of it,
the right has eked out a narrow victory, with “Carol” taking in $3.8 million to
“Religulous”’s $3.5 million. However, “Religulous” appeared on a third as many
screens, so the per-screen average comes to $6,972 for “Religulous” and $2,234
for “Carol.”
Conclusion? The election is too close to call!
Unless you concur with what the pundits -- i.e, critics -- have
to say. There, “Religulous” wins in a landslide. “Rotten Tomatoes” gives it a
“Fresh” rating of 65% while “Carol” stinks up the joint with a truly rotten 15%
Big surprise, you say -- the critics are all a bunch of
hand-wringing, God-hating left wing pansies anyway. Well, not so fast. Consider, for example, the assessments
of the usually reliably right wing “New York Post.” Lou Lumenick gives “Carol” a brutal 1/2 star
review, opening with the observation:
“Even if it
weren't three years too late to parody Moore (ineptly played by Kevin Farley),
Moore's ridiculous tribute to Cuban health care in ‘Sicko’ is far funnier than
anything in this desperately laughless farce from David Zucker (‘Scary Movie 3’).”
Ouch.
On the other hand,
the “Post’s” Kyle Smith gives “Religulous” an enthusiastic three star review
(true, you don’t have to be religious to be a conservative -- just don’t admit it and try to
run for any political office). He observes:
“We know there is no God because Bill Maher is not immediately struck
dead...”
But the hardcore
pinko rag “The Village Voice” doesn’t agree. J. Hoberman finds the whole thing
a little sophmoric, describing it as “a
dog that has more bark than bite.”
Speaking of dogs,
what about the film that topped the box office (“Carol” and “Religulous” were
#9 and #10, respectively)? “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” took in over $29 million, and the irony of a
comedy about a spoiled rich pet unleashed in the mean streets of Mexico City being released
the same week that the nation’s economy collapsed was not lost on astute
reviewers.
Notes Nathan Lee in
that pillar of the Liberal press, The New York Times:”
“As
multimillion-dollar frivolities about the pets of the ruling class go, ‘Chihuahua’ is reasonably
diverting. As one that happens to be opening in the middle of an economic
meltdown, its mere existence feels utterly insane.”
But Anne Hornaday
in that other Liberal pillar, “The Washington Post,” is not so sure:
“The economy is in
freefall. Congress is a circus of dysfunction and demagoguery. The White House
is under investigation for violating the Constitution. Things are heating up in
Pakistan.
What we need now is a talking Chihuahua
movie!
“Okay, the concept
for the movie is admittedly lame, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with
watching a passel of adorable pooches wrinkle their brows and bark while human
voices come out of their mouths.”
As for Smith in
the “Post,” he pretty much sums up the whole relationship between moviegoers
and Hollywood,
if not the electorate and politicians, with what might be the best lede of the week:
“The film is ‘Beverly Hills Chihuahua.’
The audience is the fire hydrant.”
October 02, 2008
Many of the eulogies for the late great Paul Newman have focused on the
saintliness of the man, an aura of goodness that emanates from him both on and
off the screen. “Someone Up There Likes Me,” indeed. Truth be told, he always
had a knack for playing an asshole, whether an outlaw or a rogue or an outcast
or a downright villain, that twinkle in his beautiful blue eyes could just as
easily evince malice, irony, corruption or anarchy as benevolence and
beatitude. “The Left-handed Gun” (1958), “The Hustler” (1961), “Hud” (1963), “Hombre”
(1967), “Cool Hand Luke” (1967), “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969), “The
Sting” (1973), “The Hudsucker Proxy” (1994)... I think most fans would prefer
these over, say, “The Silver Chalice” (1954).
Overlooked also has been his last on screen film role, “The Road
to Perdition” (2002), Sam Mendes’s adaptation of the Max Allan Collins and Richard
Piers Rayner’s graphic novel about a Depression era Chicago hit man, played by
Tom Hanks, on the lam from the mob. Newman plays the ruthless but avuncular mob
boss, who is also serves as Hanks’s ambiguous father figure. Newman got his
tenth, and last, Oscar nomination for the role, for Best Supporting Actor.
Coincidentally, it was
also the last film shot by Conrad Hall, who died in 2003. Hall won an Oscar for
Best Cinematography, his third, the other two being for Mendes’s “American
Beauty” (1999) and “Butch Cassidy” (1969).
Unsurprisingly, the best parts of the movie are Newman’s
performance and Hall’s stunning images. Hanks is pretty good, too.
I was fortunate to have attended a press conference with Newman
in Chicago when he was promoting the film. As might be evident, he is ironic,
mischievous, anarchic, with a definite aura of saintliness.
PN: [Looking incredulously at the tape recorders assembled before
him] It looks like somebody’s ready to declare a war. [laughter]. My God.
Q: is this project your swan song?
PN: No, it’s probably closer to a vulture than a swan song. I
keep trying to retire from everything and discover that I retire from
absolutely nothing. I was gonna get out of the racing business, and I’m back in
the racing business and I was gonna let someone else handle this spaghetti
sauce and I’m back with the spaghetti sauce…I just finished the first play that
I’ve done in 35 years [he played the narrator in a Broadway production of “Our
Town”], which is like sticking a rifle in your mouth. So, um, I don’t seem to
be able to retire. Maybe if you get me a different swan.
Q: anything else you’d like to do?
PN: I’d love to do another film with Joanne [Woodward, his wife
of 50 years], and we’re looking at something down the pike [presumably the HBO
TV-movie “Empire Falls” (2005)]. I can’t really discuss
it right now, but there’s still a little vinegar left in the old dog yet.
Q: [Something to the effect of... “Tom Hanks, blah blah blah?”]
PN: Strangely enough you know, Tom and I, the majority of the
work that we did was not with each other. The trouble with these interviews is
that you get asked the same question, and by the end of the day you feel like a
real moron because you have such a limited perspective of things. So the
question that was just asked me, I feel like I’m repeating myself, so should I
try to say something different about Tom, so I don’t sound repetitious, or
should I just give the same answer? He has the quality of not dodging things,
which is as true off-screen as onscreen. and there’s no fancy footwork, there’s
no approaching things sideways and what you’re lookin’ at is what you get. And
that’s refreshing.
Q: Do you approach a role differently to hide Paul Newman the
icon?
PN: No, you say I’m an icon. My grandchild is not thinking I’m an
icon. He’s three years old and he came to the door the other day and said, “I
am OBSESSED by ‘The Yellow Submarine’!” What will he say when he’s six? So the [Newman's
Own] spaghetti sauce is good to think about. Morning, noon and
night. Think about spaghetti sauce. Think about hustling other people to buy
the spaghetti sauce.
Anyway, I don’t think about any of that [icon] stuff. What you’re
able to achieve on the screen has nothing to do with you. the only thing
sometimes I think is you pick up certain mannerisms from characters you play
and they become part of the way you present yourself. the only two things that
ever stuck to me were, unfortunately, from Rocky Graziano [the boxer he played
in “Somebody Up There Likes Me” (1956)]. I never used to spit in the street. I
was with Rocky for about 9 weeks before the picture began filming, and I spit
in the street. It sickens my wife. And I never used to swear. I never used any
kind of foul language. Now it’s not worth being in the same room as me. It’s
funny, of all the attributes that could have stuck to me that those were the
two that stuck the strongest and the longest. But, I really don’t take much of
it seriously, I really don’t.
Q: Nice work with the piano. Is that you playing?
PN: the piano is great fun and we worked very hard at it
actually, cause it's not really about playing the piano, it's about doing
something together.
Q: What will the audience get out of performance?
PN: I don’t know. I just hope it will have the ring of truth
about it somehow.
Q: How do you prepare for the role?
PN: I insist on two weeks of rehearsal, which I give for nothing.
And that has happened in almost every picture I have done since 1954.
Q: why do you insist on it?
PN: You discover a lot of things on your feet, and if you don’t
have any rehearsal that anything that happens on screen is by accident.
Q: How did the loss of your son [Newman’s son Scott died of a
drug overdose in 1978] impact your performance [his character in the film has
a troubled performance with his real son (played by Daniel Craig] and his
surrogate son played by Hanks]?
PN: well that was a very long time ago…I don’t think at all. But
it obviously has impacted me in other ways. In outside work that I do.
Q: I have you noted any changes in your acting acting style over
the years?
PN: well, I certainly wasn’t on the cutting edge of Stanislavsky
or the Actors Studio. I came in late, I had a fairly long and detailed formal
education in the theater at Yale. Almost everything that I learned about being
an actor came from those early years in the Actors Studio. There’s not a performance that I can look at
comfortably until after, oh , the late 70s, without any sense of satisfaction. The
other interesting thing is that the Actors Studio has bled overseas to England
and I suspect they do it better now than we do. I also suspect they have a very
formal training in classics, which our actors don’t have.
Q: What’s it like playing in a gangster movie?
PN: The film unlike other gangster films, is not really about
explosions, it was about family. But not even in the sense of Mafia family, but
it was really about family and vengeance and I can understand that, and not
only understand it, in some cases admire it. That they happened to occur within
the confines of the Irish mafia is what’s different. I just found everything
that happened in that film compelling and promising and it gave me chance to
deviate from the kind of stuff I usually do.
Q: Did you continue to fulfill your reputation as a practical
joker?
PN: Uh, that’s part of my life that thank God, no longer exists.
Actually, Bob Redford and I had a series of confrontations. He
was there first with something, and after he pulled it I said, ‘you made a big
mistake Bob, for two reasons. One, because I’m richer than you are, and two,
because I have more time that you have.’ I pulled one on George Roy Hill and it
frightened him and we had a terrible confrontation and he said, ‘behind every
practical joke there is an element of malice’ and that pulled me up short. So,
I’m trying to regulate to like one or two a year. 
Q: To what do you attribute the longevity of your marriage?
PN: I don’t know what she puts in my food.
Q: What’s your favorite flavor among the [Newman’s Own] salad
dressings?
PN: Italian family dressing.
Q: You don’t consider yourself an icon, but who are the icons and
legends for you?
PN: Brando, Olivier, there’s really too many...I really should
not have mentioned them because by forgetting somebody you’re beating them out
of a category in which they belong. I’d have to go through all my books, and it
would take me five days to figure it out really. And I’m not being sloppy about
it, there are just too many people that I admire. Joanne’s in there somewhere
too — I would’ve been killed if I didn’t say that.
Q: As a celebrity is it part of your responsibility to help
people?
PN: This is not a celebrity issue. This is a political issue, and
the concept that a person who has a lot holds his hand out to someone who has
less, or someone who isn’t hurting holds his hand out to someone who is, is
simply a human trait that has nothing to do with celebrity. I am confounded at the stinginess of some
institutions and some people. Bewildered by it. You can only put away so much
stuff in your closet. In 1987, what the average CEO earned against someone who
is working in his factory was 70 times. It’s now 410 times. If you eliminate
the middle class, which we are slowly doing, incidentally, Aristotle said the
greatest government is the government that has the least amount of people on
each end. I don’t think there’s anything exceptional or noble in being a
philanthropist. It’s the other attitude that confuses me.
Q: What made you go back to stage work?
PN: Joanne is the artistic director of Westport country
playhouse. She was putting on “The
Trojan Wars.” No, “The Trojan Women”…thank
you! He got it late, but he got it!
Q: What did your father do and what was your relationship with
him like?
PN: My father was a partner in the sporting business store.
probably the best sporting goods store west of the Appalachians.
he was the oldest seller of radio in the us. during the depression, 85% of the
sporting good businesses went out of business. In the middle of the Depression,
he came to Chicago incidentally, and got
$100,000 worth of goods from Spaulding, and $100,000 worth of goods from Wilson on consignment.
The reason he got $200,000 worth of goods was because both of those companies
knew that if he sold a baseball glove for $4.25 that there would be a check in
the mail for $2.18, which they were entitled to. I learned a lot from that. He
survived because his reputation was impeccable.
Q: what do you love most about your career as an actor? and
dislike?
PN: I’m in one of those positions where I have too many on both
ends of the spectrum...I don’t know. I suppose the best actors are children.
So, to that extent that you can maintain that childlike part of your
personality is probably the best part. The worst part? This. (laughs)
Q: What’s it like being here in Chicago?
PN: We shot “Color of Money” here, and Joanne shot a wonderful 16
mm film here. I’ll never forget, we were shooting “Color of Money,” and we were
staying in a hotel and the Chicago bears had just won the Superbowl and I had
to get up at 5 in the morning, and the cars were streaming down the streets
with their horns blaring and I couldn’t sleep and I looked out the window, and
15 floors beneath me the streets were still slippery from the snowfall, and
there, splayed out on the hood of a car, up against the windshield was this
football enthusiast, and the car was going about 50 miles an hour, and I’ve
always wondered whether that guy survived. Listen, 25 years ago, if you’d asked
me what the 5 greatest cities in the us were, I probably would’ve said New
York, New Orleans, San Francisco, and now I’d say Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and
New York. So, Chicago’s
a wonderful city to be in and it’s a great time for the people who live here.
Its vibrant, its got art and culture, a couple really feisty left wing
newspapers.
Q: What does it take to get you to do a movie since you’re so
picky about roles?
PN: I haven’t the slightest idea. and it changes from year to
year too.
Q: Why this movie?
PN: Well, I thought it was a pretty showy piece of work. and I
also knew that the movie was going to be wonderful . I haven’t seen it, but I
would bet my bottom dollar that the movie itself is wonderful.
September 25, 2008
It looks like the big showdown between Barack Obama and John
McCain won’t be taking place since McCain refuses to participate until all the
economic problems go away.
In the meantime you might want to drop by the Brattle Theatre which will be
hosting a panel discussion that I’ll be moderating (okay, I admit it -- all
that snarky self-righteousness is just a smokescreen for my own shameless
self-promotion) for the United Nations Association Film Festival.
Among those participating
are filmmakers Iris Adler, Sam Kauffmann, Jamil Simon and Ian Slattery.
Slattery’s powerful documentary “Soldiers of Conscience,” an even-handed and
provocative look at troops serving in Iraq who have opted for conscientious
objector status, screens as the Festival’s opening film tonight at the Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard. Adler’s poignant “Hidden Wounds,” about
veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, screens Sunday also at
the Kennedy School. Simon and Kauffmann will
probably be screening shorts at the panel discussion.
The subject? “A Call to Action: Making Powerful
International Documentaries.” It would have been a useful tie-in to the debate,
which was supposed to focus on international issues and answer the question as
to which candidate would be better equipped to handle foreign policy. Another
question comes to mind: would anyone watching the debate know the difference? It’s not
exactly like there’s a glut of information in the media on the subject. Newspapers
have cut back or eliminated their foreign bureaus. Cable and network news
programs feature celebrity gossip, sensationalism and fulminating blowhards. So
maybe that leaves documentary filmmakers as the best alternative source of news about the rest of the world. That
is, of course, if anyone really cares.
If you do, you might want
to drop by.
September 24, 2008
What happens when two geeks get together? They talk about
geeks and superheroes and how they are very much the same as Brett Michel and
Simon Pegg demonstrate in this second part of the interview.
BM.Moving on, superhero films – I’d imagine you’ve been
keeping up with them?
SP: Yeah. It’s interesting, actually. There’s been a
parallel – this is something that I’d like to write about – the evolution of
the hero from the kind of superman from the 80s; the bodybuilder there, and the
90s; the Van Damme, the Schwarzeneggar – to a degree that that hero has been –
and this is after John McClane – the hero has become more and more ordinary,
more geeky, so that you have Seth Rogen as a leading man, and, you know, Steve
Carell. People who are just kind of regular guys have become like the heroes of
film. “Superbad” is a great example: two geeky guys. But then, running parallel
to this, you have also the rise to prevalence of superhero. But it’s
interesting that all these superheroes are, to a degree, geeks. You know? Tony
Stark, Peter Parker, even Bruce Wayne. Even Clark Kent. I mean, he is a geek. They’re
all kind of…it’s brilliant. There’s definitely a sensation in there somewhere
about how we are perceiving the male…
BM So, “Ant Man?”
SP: I mean, Edgar [Wright, Pegg’s collaborator and director
of “Shaun” and “Hot Fuzz,” who is planning to bring the somewhat obscure Marvel
superhero to the screen]just chose that.
I’ve got nothing to do with “Ant Man,” but…
BM. Really?
SP: That’s Edgar’s project. He’s developed that with Joe
Cornish. But, I would hope for a cameo.
BM: Back when you spoke of ant man when you were in Cambridge with “Hot Fuzz”, I got the impression that you
would be playing Ant Man.
SP: Well, we were kind of joking there…I’m too old to play
Ant Man, I think. Edgar needs to get, he needs to get Hank Pym. He needs a
young guy. I would hope to play something in the movie, just to keep an ‘in’
with my boss, but Edgar – and this is Edgar down to a ‘T’ – is that he
specifically picked a lower-level Marvel character, a sort of…a less than
popular Marvel character [laughs] and I have no doubt that he will make it
better than any previous Marvel film, because he is that good at what he does.
But, yeah, he’s one of the kind of lower-tier heroes. I’m sure the film will be
about that: the ‘small man’ complex.
BM: It didn’t quite work out in “The Incredible Hulk.”
SP: I didn’t mind…I kind of enjoyed that movie, but I’m a
big Ang Lee sympathizer. I like that “Hulk.” I thought that the Hulk himself in
it was brilliant – the closest thing that I’ve ever seen to the comic book – a
big, dumb, thick, scared-looking anger machine.
BM: I appreciated the climax of that film on an intellectual
level, but good god, there was no way to make that work onscreen.
SP: No. That’s where it fell down. But that sequence in the
desert is better than anything that was in the new Hulk film. The whole thing
with how he gets around, jumping about? That’s what he used to do in the
comics, just jump around! [laughs]
BM: I would love to see the motion capture footage of Ang Lee acting out the Hulk’s performance on that film.
SP: Yeah, yeah! I just remember his face, you know, his eyes
fill with tears like that. It kind of did justice. It was brilliant.
BM: Have you been following the Democratic Convention at
all?
SP: I’m behind Barack, absolutely. Just because, I think it
would be just this fabulous, poetic thing for him to become the President. I
think, for this country, it would be monumental.
BM: Sidney Young, your character in your new film, is based
on Toby Young, who I see is now working as an associate editor for the rather
conservative weekly, the “Spectator.” Seems like a strange position for him.
SP: Well, the thing is with Toby – well, Party politics in
the UK
are slightly different now, anyway. I mean, it is similar to this country, in
that the parties sort of jostle for position, so much where they’ve kind of
ended up at a middle ground. But Toby’s quite, he’s pretty middle class. He’s
not exactly a working class hero. He has enough disregard for what people think
of him to avidly support the conservatives. [laughs] We had a mayoral race
recently in London,
and our mayor was Labor affiliated. He was very much a left-wing man. He had
done a lot of fuck-ups. Some of the transport issues were just bad, and it felt
like it was time to change things, but his opposition was a conservative man.
And even though I was pissed off, I still couldn’t bring myself to vote that
side of the line. It just felt wrong. I hope Obama gets it, I really do. Just
the beauty of him as a black man. If he does get in, it’s taken 200 years from
enslavement to him being the leader of the country. Which, when you think about
it, is fucking ages! It is a long, long time. It’s taken 200 years for a black
man to be the President of the United
States. That’s too fucking long! But, it
will be brilliant, if it happens.
[a knock comes on the door; the publicist briefly enters,
saying she’s sorry, but that we’ll need to wrap things up.]
SP: Oh, come on! We’re talking about politics here! [laughs]
BM: And we haven’t really spoken about the film!
SP: Ah, it’s really good! It’s out on October the 3rd
and it’s got Megan Fox and Kirsten Dunst in it.
BM: One last question, then! Toby’s attraction to American
celebrity culture, which was followed by his eventual disillusionment of its
vanity and superficiality – have you experienced 
this yourself?
SP: I distrust that world so much, anyone who takes it on…
BM: Well, your fan base seems to be rooted in the ‘fanboy’
culture.
SP: Yeah. I’d really like to keep it that way. I’d just like
to stay there, because I think they’re in it for the right reasons. Their
enthusiasm is entirely honest, and not fickle, and I think, if…to keep working
towards pleasing people like that would be great, because you never want to let
them down, you never want to short-change them. You would continue to do the
best work that you possibly could. But, the larger world is a fickle kind of…
BM: Are you interested in getting the sort of “Entertainment Weekly” level of attention?
SP: No, I don’t know. I can’t…It just seems to me like a
sort of a necessary…I mean, obviously, “Entertainment Weekly” is a cool
magazine. The idea of being on the cover, you think “Wow, I’ve achieved
something.” But at the same time, you’re entering into an arena which is entirely
unpredictable and, you know, hard to manage. And, for me, I always look at it
as being like “fame,” for want of a better word, or the attention that it
brings you when you do a job like this. It’s the equivalent of what radiation
is to people who work in a nuclear power plant. It’s a hazard of the job, in a
way. It’s not altogether necessarily a good thing. There are no perks with
radiation, obviously. You don’t get to go to parties and things.
BM: But what about the radiation you might be exposed to
from “Aint It Cool News?”
SP: Well, you get radiation that turns you into a superhero.
That kind of radiation. But, otherwise, I find it daunting and scary.
September 23, 2008
My colleague Brett Michel recently interviewed Simon Pegg,
who was in town publicizing his big Hollywood breakthrough movie, “How to Lose
Friends & Alienate People,” Robert Weide’s adaptation of Toby Young’s sardonic memoir about being a successful
if dissolute journalistic hack in London who tries to make the big time in New
York at hoity-toity “Vanity Fair.”
A parallel to Pegg’s own
career? In fact he’s already made inroads into the American audience, establishing
a cult following with “Shaun of the Dead” and
“Hot Fuzz” and creating
excitement with his plans to play the young Scotty in the upcoming “Star Trek” movie.
Some had turned onto Pegg as far back as his “Spaced” TV series in Britain, in which
he played a benighted “Star Wars” and superhero geek, something Pegg is in real
life as his perennial appearances at Comicon Conventions will testify.
At any rate, Brett is a big fan, and so was willing at the last minute
to fill in for me when I was unable to interview Pegg. In this first part they discuss
an interview with Brett’s other [former] hero, Harrison Ford, after which they descend
into the black hole of “Star Wars” and postmodern aesthetic theory, from which they
emerge only after turning to the requisite discussion of Krzysztof Kieslowski.
BM: I hope this goes better than the time I interviewed Harrison
Ford…
SP: I’ve heard stories. What happened?
BM: Long story short, it was the single worst interview I’ve
ever conducted. truly painful. I was scheduled to speak with him for a
half-hour, and the film he was promoting – “Firewall” – wasn’t very good, and
didn’t provide many talking points. turns out, it didn’t really matter, since
no matter what I asked him, he’d either give clipped, one-word answers –
y’know, ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – or he simply wouldn’t answer at all. Honestly, I had
run out of topics within about 15 minutes. Plus, even though he was sitting
directly across the table from me, he was turned sideways, facing the door. The
only time he actually looked at me was to shoot me an icy stare as if I was an
idiot, based on something I said – and it’s easy to come off as an idiot when
you’re funmbling as bad as I was. Still, this was Harrison Ford, for chrissakes
– one of my boyhood idols. Han Solo! Indiana
Jones! and he completely emasculated me. It was fucking awful. anyway, the
publicist had said she would give a ‘five-minute warning knock, indicating that
we should begin to wrap things up. when that knock came, he jumped up out of
his chair and exclaimed, “Saved!” – and that was it. the interview was
mercifully over.
SP: Wow. I always say that the promotion side of the job is
what you get paid to do and the acting you do for free. But, you do it with
good grace, you know what I mean? [laughs] I think it’s important to kind of
enjoy it.
BM: My readers will appreciate that. moving on… A little
background: an hour and-a-half ago, i was lying on my couch in my underwear…
SP: Wow! That’s a great image to plant in my head. [laughs]
yeah. You’re welcome. I didn’t know I’d be conducting this
interview until then…
BM: Congrats for getting here fully clothed.
what makes you think I’m wearing underwear? It was only an hour and-a-half ago, remember,
and I hadn’t yet prepared any questions…
SP: So, did you slide down a pole and jump into a
fast-moving vehicle and get here in your Brett-Mobile?
BM: Ha! Yeah -- but it was a rather ventilated ride. Before
that, though, I scribbled down as many questions as I could think of and…
actually, I cribbed the questions from my editor!
BM: Well, let’s get in as many as we can before the dreaded
warning knock! I just finished watching “Spaced” on dvd…
SP: Oh, you did? You got the “Region 1”?
BM: Yup. At the close of the pilot episode, you were about
to masturbate to Gillian Anderson’s photo. and now on your new film, you got to
work with her…
SP: Which is the first thing that Bob Weide – the director –
brought up when she stepped into the rehearsal room. We’ve met a couple of
times before, and I think the first thing he said when Gillian sat down – with
me having said, “Please don’t mention it to her” – was “So, have you seen the
episode where Simon wanks to ya?” I don’t think I’ve ever been as embarrassed.
But, she is such a good sport, Gillian is. She’s a boy’s girl. For someone as
stunningly beautiful as she is, she’s a bit of a lad, which makes it all the
more easy. You know, she could be sort of stuck-up about it, but she was so
not. And we had such a good time. We’ve become good pals now, which is bizarre
for me; someone who idolized her and crushed on her enormously, and still do,
within the bounds of what my wife allows me to crush on. Having said that, she
has certain crushes as well, which I’m fine with. But yeah, she’s super-cool.
She’s great.
BM: Is she also aware that in another episode, you had her “X-Files”
action figure sitting on your face as you slept?
SP: Yeah. Her husband Mark is such a sweet guy. He’s a real
cool guy, and she’s having her third baby now, and it’s so safe. I can just be
like: I’m out! I’m a Gillian Anderson appreciator and there’s no shame in it
whatsoever, and she’s really cool with it. And it’s hilarious how when I met
Piper, her first daughter, her first child – Piper’s like 13 now, and she was
conceived at the beginning of the second season of “The X-Files,” and you could
see how Gillian grew on screen. And the first thing I said to Piper was, “Ah,
you must be the ‘bump’ from season two,” which she must have thought was
half-geeky, half-hilarious.
BM: Speaking of geeky and (sadly) hilarious, my notepad, as
you can see here, is the one I used while taking notes for my review of “The
Clone Wars.” Have you…
SP: I haven’t seen it yet, to be honest. I um… is it a
terrible thing to say that I just don’t care anymore?
BM: No. I’m completely there with you.
SP: I kind of think, if you’re going to do that – there’s no
question for me about the beauty and artistry of what those animators do; it’s
incredible and aesthetically, it’s a massive achievement and they should be
applauded. But, if you’re going to do it, do the OLD characters! Do the sequel
that we’ve always wanted to see, you know? Let’s pick up with Luke and Han and
Chewie and I mean, Jesus! I would care sooo much then, you know?
BM: Yes, but then how would you reach the lucrative ‘tween
girl demographic?
SP: That’s the kind of crap that... they’re not going there,
are they?
BM: Yup. And they’re using cutesy nicknames. ‘Anakin’
becomes ‘Sky-Guy’…
SP: Oh, God. Have you seen Patton Oswalt’s material about
the prequels? It’s sooo funny. He’s like [in a Southern accent]: “D’ya like
Darth Vader? Y’get t’see him when he’s a kid!” It’s so funny. I don’t give a
fuck where they come from!
BM: Well, let’s get the hell away from “Star Wars,” then.
SP: Yeah, before we get bogged down.
BM: You wrote a dissertation on “A Marxist overview of popular
70s cinema”?
SP: I did – with “Star Wars”-related works.
BM: I think we’re bogging down…
SP: It was a dismantling of consent, which was forwarded by
an Italian Marxist philosopher called Antonio Gramsci. It was all about the
fact that if you watch a movie without critically objectifying yourself, you
consent to the inherent prejudices within the film. So, if you’re watching a
film which is very sexist, if you don’t think “Hey! That’s pretty sexist,” you
are being sexist by watching it. And “Star Wars” and “Raiders [of the Lost Ark]”
embodied a certain amount of late-seventies neuroses: bomb fear and subjective
stereotypes and it was all about that!
BM: You also had a quote in the “Guardian,” which said that
“an awareness of the postmodern condition is still the intellectual bedrock” of
your comedy…
SP: Did I say that? Man, I must have had a couple of cups of
coffee! Yeah, I think you can’t not be aware of popular culture and what’s gone
before you now; you can’t not be postmodern. The stamp of popular culture is
such an important part of day-to-day life for modern human beings that it’s
hard not to refer to it. You can’t just pretend that you’re starting from
scratch these days. You’re part of a huge legacy of expression that is fun to
refer back to.
BM: Like “Star Wars.”
SP: There I go again!
BM: I’ve actually seen you a couple of times before here in Boston, sitting in the
audience during both your promotional tour for “Shaun of the Dead” and for “Hot
Fuzz…”
SP: Always a pleasure to return.
BM: …and the first time I ever heard of cornetto was at that
screening of “Hot Fuzz.”
SP: Apparently, McDonalds are doing a Cornetto now. It’s
coming to the States. So by the time we do the third film, it will be a known
quantity.
Oh, ok. At that screening, you guys went off on a whole riff
about King cone, cornetto’s american ice cream cone equivalent…
BM: That’s right. “Shaun,” “Hot Fuzz” and an upcoming film
will make up the “three flavors cornetto trilogy,” I believe?
SP: We decided to call it that because “Shaun” featured a
strawberry one, heavily; “Hot Fuzz” obviously features the blue original; and
the last one is the mint chocolate.
BM: Why mint?
SP: We don’t know yet. We just will.
BM: You’ve already decided on a title?
SP: Well, we have a title that we’re kind of playing with
and Edgar [Wright, director of “Shaun”
and “Hot Fuzz”] kind of announced it as if it’s the actual thing, and it’s not.
BM: So you’re not willing to go on record with it?
SP: We are! The working title is – they were so desperate to
announce that deal with Edgar, that they pre-empted our working title for the
movie – “The World’s End.”
BM: Care to elaborate on what the film might be about?
SP: We know what it’s about, but I cannot say.
BM: Ok. I think that I might be able to kind of intuit…
SP: You think? [laughs]
BM: Ok, maybe not. although, if you’re painting an ‘end of
days’ type of scenario, you’ve kind of covered that ground already.
SP: Well, our standard line at the moment is that the third
one will be like the first one, times the second one. It will be the answer to
that equation: “Shaun of the Dead” times “Hot Fuzz” equals The World’s End.”
BM: Is the ‘three flavors cornetto trilogy’ a reference to
Kieslowski’s ‘three colors trilogy’?
SP: Yeah, but only in a very flippant way! [laughs]
BM: That’s ok.
SP: Yeah, we’ve reduced a masterful trilogy to an ice-cream
snack. And isn’t that the very crux of what we do, as filmmakers. We’re
reductionists. [laughs]
BM: Like George Lucas.
SP: Hey! Don’t lump me in with that guy! You started off so
well… [laughs] Keep going!
BM: Better filmmaker: Kieslowski…or Lucas?
SP: I think we both know.
Next: What movie are you promoting, by the way?
September 19, 2008
The box office demographic for the rest of 2008, usually
dominated by the male 12-24 year-old
perpetual adolescent crowd, might be
switching genders. So suggests Steve Mason writing in the “Hollywood Wiretap”
website, where he speculates that the fourth quarter of 2008 will belong to the
“below 25 female” audience. Among the upcoming films he sees as drawing big box
office from this group are “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” “High School Musical 3:
Senior Year” and “Twilight.”
He might also have included “The Secret Life of Bees,” in which Dakota
Fanning plays a lonely 14-year-old girl in the South who finds solace and
wisdom with some local beekeepers.
But he probably would not have included another Dakota Fanning
vehicle, Deborah Kampmeier’s “Hounddog,” in which Fanning plays another young Southern girl seeking solace. It will be opening nationwide on October 3
[which is when my review will be coming out]. First premiered at the Sundance
Festival in 2007, it earned the moniker the “Dakota Fanning rape movie” from
the outraged and the titillated. Critical response was universally disastrous,
focusing as much on the hamhanded cliches as on the alleged exploitiveness.
Which strikes me as odd since critics at the same festival largely adored
“Black Snake Moan,” in which Cristina Ricci plays a nymphomaniac chained in her
underwear to a radiator by a wise old bluesman played by Samuel L. Jackson.
I mean, isn’t that kind of clichéd and exploitive, too? In fact, having seen
both films, I’d have to give the edge on odious racial and sexual stereotypes
and solaciousness to “Moan.”
Maybe I’m alone in that opinion. Not to pick on Ebert-beater Lou
Lumenick of the “New York Post,” but his reviews are a case in point.
“Hounddog” he dismisses with one star and the phrase: “trailer trash of the
worst kind.”
His three star review of “Moan,” however, opens with the lede:
“I could practically smell the sex and sweat while watching Craig
Brewer's arty exploitation film, ‘Black Snake Moan,’ even as my jaw was
dropping repeatedly to the floor.”
Maybe that’s what struck Ebert, and not the festival binder that Lumenick is said to have hit him with in the notorious Toronto Film Festival incident. That
or something else. Anyway, it seems to me that perhaps he liked “Moan” more
than “Hounddog” because Ricci is sexier looking in her underwear than Fanning.
And also older. The main reason “Hounddog” got panned, no doubt, was because it showed a prepubescent girl who
displays sexual curiosity and is sexually assaulted. Nobody wants to think
about these things happening. Certainly not the good people from the Concerned
Women for America (CWA) of North
Carolina, who are especially peeved because the film
was shot in their state and with the approval of the North Carolina Film
Office.
Donna Miller, “a CWA Prayer/Action
Chapter Leader for the Fayetteville
area and No More Child Porn Campaign Director” is leading the campaign to get
citizens “to fight this graphic movie from being shown in their local theater.”
Quoting disdainfully from the director’s statement in the film’s press kit,
Miller says, “This movie is about a
nine-year-old girl, not an adult woman. She should be outside skipping rope or
riding her bike, not ‘celebrating the power and creative force of her
sexuality.’”
Indeed she should, even though in the
movie the character is more like eleven or twelve than nine, though the age is
never specified. And if Miller had seen the film, she’d realize that the only
thing “graphic” about it is David Morse’s (he plays the redneck father) bare
butt. That, and Fanning impaling her hand on a nail during the assault. If
anything, it’s the opposite of child porn -- an earnest attempt to depict the vulnerability
of children and a cautionary tale for parents and children alike about the
dangers of pedophiles. Not that that necessarily makes it a good movie.
Come to think of it, it’s not unlike
the brouhaha disingenuously stirred up by the McCain campaign about the Illinois
legislation Barack Obama supported for “age appropriate” sex education to teach
children to avoid potential predators. Yes, there’s definitely something
obscene going on here, but it’s not on the movie screen.
September 16, 2008
Even some Republicans were skeptical about the box office
potential of David Zucker’s conservative satire, “An American
Carol,” in which,
as I’ve mentioned before, a Scrooge-like Michael Moore-ish filmmaker is taken
through a tour of American History by George Washington and other patriotic
spooks. But maybe the success this Spring of Nathan Frankowski's anti-evolution
documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” changed some minds, because
Vivendi plans to release the film on October 3 on 2,000 screens. On the other
hand, last weekend another right wing documentary, Nathan Frankowski’s “Proud
American,” took in the lowest per screen average ($180 on 750 screens) of any
film in Hollywood history. Perhaps not coincidentally that was the same weekend that
Lehman Brothers folded and caused the Dow to have its biggest decline since
9/11.
Nonetheless, the jolt of energy that the Sarah Palin nomination
has injected into the right wing has convinced the “Carol” people that this is
the perfect time for releasing the movie. Plus, according to producer Steve McEveety
(he was also behind “The Passion of the Christ” ) the film is a comedy in the
mold of previous, non-political Zucker farces as “Airplane!” “Sure, it takes a
position, but it's fun,” McEveety told the “Hollywood Reporter.” “Can’t we have
a little fun during this election?”
I guess it depends on whether or not your idea of fun is Dennis
Hopper as a judge gunning down ACLU lawyers trying to take down the Ten
Commandments from his courthouse. Or whether this trailer leaves you rocking
with laughter. What do I know? Lots of people seem to think this is as much fun
as a barrel of monkeys.
Speaking of Palin, the people promoting “Carol” are
taking a hint from those marketing the VP nominee by keeping the film away from
the press. There will be no preview screenings of “An American Carol” before its opening.
However, the press is invited to interview Zucker and other members of the cast
and crew beforehand. Without seeing the film, that is.
This is a first in my experience. Say what you will about
Michael Moore, but at least he has enough backbone to let you see his movie
before you interview him about it.
September 12, 2008
Because we make a living sitting
in dark rooms and writing about it, people think film critics are
sissies. Not so, as Lou Lumenick, he-man critic for the New York Post,
never tires of proving. Back in 2006, he
was one of the few critics with the guts to squash “Ant Buddy” ,
an animated children’s film, calling it out as commie propaganda. Last year he struck a blow for all-American heterosexual horniness by
saying he wished that Diablo Cody had won the New York Critics Circle screenplay award so she
could demonstrate her stripper talents at the ceremony.
But Lou’s tough guy act
isn’t just talk, as he demonstrated the
other day at a press screening at the
Toronto Film Festival. When some jerk sitting behind him touched him on
the
back, Lou told him off. “Don’t touch me!” He said. Again and again!
Finally, Lou turned around and smacked the guy on the knee with a
festival binder!
September 11, 2008
People have been sniping at John McCain for the quality of his
backgrounds for delivering speeches -- A
green screen
a few months back and more recently the
blue screen at
the Republican Convention. Well, pipe down. As all movie buffs know, these are
screens for the CGI special effects that will be included in post production
before the campaign enters theaters everywhere. The finishing touches have yet
to be polished up, but here’s a link to part of it, a kind of trailer for what
we might expect in November. Check the video
here.
September 09, 2008
As noted below, there doesn’t seem to be a burning desire on the
part of fans for another “Poltergeist” movie. And do we really need another
“Ghostbusters,” especially after the brilliant remake featured in Michel
Gondry’s “Be Kind, Rewind?” Since the 1984 original grossed $292 million and
the 1989 sequel took in another $215 mil, Sony Pictures apparently thinks it's
the franchise to call.
Bringing it up to date will be the Judd Apatow/ “The Office” writing team of Gene
Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg.
So what is it with the spirit world and Hollywood these days? As a character says
about New York City
in the upcoming “Ghost Town,” the place
is lousy with ghosts. You’ve got the ghosts as avenging spirits as in
“Poltergeist” and as embodiments of evil seeking to possess the living as in
the Ghostbusters movies. And then you’ve got the “Christmas Carol” template
with the ghosts as harbingers of guilt, haunting miscreants with reminders of
their misdeeds (see “An American Carol” below ) or deeds undone, which is how
it works out in the “Ghost Town” formulation. And sometimes the person haunted
and the ghost are one and the same...
Sounds like the perennial problem of guilty consciences and fear
of punishment and the terror of mortality to me. But why does the phenomenon
spike periodically? “Poltergeist” came out in 1982 and “Ghostbusters” in 1984, “Poltergeist
III,” “Ghostbusters 2,” “Ghost”and “Jacob’s Ladder” all appeared from 1988-90,
and “The Sixth Sense” and “The Others” came out in 1999 and 2001. There seem
more these days than usual, too — some other recent examples include “Ghost
Rider,” “Over Her Dead Body,” “The Life Before Her Eyes.” I’m sure I’m missing
some. And don't forget the ghost hunting shows on TV.
Is this cause for spirited discussion? Or just a dead issue?
September 05, 2008
Now that we’ve gotten war off our TV screens, we can put it
back where it belongs, in movie theaters. Because it looks like the war movie
is back, repackaged and marketed anew, just like the war we used to see on TV.
So observes “The Hollywood Reporter” after taking a look at the upcoming films
now being showcased at the Toronto Film Festival. Among those featured are
Spike Lee’s “Miracle at St. Anna,” which is the war movie as vindication of
overlooked African-American history and Paul Gross’s “Passchendaele” which is the
war movie as reminder of the mind-numbing and pointless slaughter of thousands of Canadians on a
blood-soaked hard to pronounce Belgian WWI battleground. And sneaking in too is
the now untouchable Iraq War Movie, called “anything but an Iraq War movie.” Such as an action-adventure movie that just happens to
take place in Iraq like Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker,” or a romantic
comedy involving goofy, attractive folks who just happen to be Iraq War
veterans on stateside leave in the US like Neil Burger’s “The Lucky Ones.” "Iraq
is a dirty word in film marketing right now," explains Roadside Attractions
co-topper Howard Cohen, who is distributing "The Lucky Ones." The "Reporter notes that Cohen is planning a Sept. 26 release for "Lucky" "in hop
es that the zeitgeist might change, making the
film more marketable.’
And let us not forget the war movie as Tom Cruise movie, “Valkyrie,” or as Quentin
Tarantino movie, “Inglorious Bastards,” (both of which apparently are raising controversies with German critics, who are still soreheads more than 60 years after the war ended)..
But the real sign that the war movie is making a comeback is the Hollywood script-like story of John McCain as processed
into his presidential campaign narrative. As another Hollywood Reporter article comments about the just-concluded Republican
Convention and its nominee (and you can just imagine these words being spoken by the
late voice of Hollywood trailers, Don LaFontaine) “A prisoner of war who beat the odds during
five years of brutality in a Hanoi jail cell, John McCain beat the odds again
Thursday night when he accepted the Republican nomination for president. The
story of McCain's youth was told in the 2005 TV movie "Faith of Our
Fathers." But walking up to the podium at the Xcel
Energy Center,
the now 72-year-old McCain turned another page in a new script that brought him
from nearly failed candidate to a possible Hollywood-style triumph as president
of the United States.”
And if they can’t do it in real life, there’s already the movie
version. "The Guardian" has been calling on readers for casting suggestions for all
the leading figures. The leading candidate for the role of McCain is, no
surprise, neo-Republican Jon Voight.
.
September 02, 2008
Who says movies don’t offer a window into the truth, a mirror of
the zeitgeist? The titles, anyway. A tip of the hat to the people at Mudflats.com, a site dedicated to “tiptoeing through the muck of Alaskan politics,” for this
update on what’s playing at the local movie house in Wasilla, Alaska, Republican
Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s hometown.
Meanwhile, I’ve been at a loss trying to come up with
movie-related items stranger and more implausible than the recent developments
in the Presidential election. Maybe this will do. “Poltergeist,” the 1982 Stephen
Spielberg-produced,Tobe Hooper-directed horror film about evil spirits entering
a suburban household through their TV screen, a smash hit that spawned two
sequels, is being remade with Vadim Perelman (“The Life Before Her Eyes,” “House
of Sand and Fog”) directing. That despite the alleged “’Poltergeist’ Curse,” which
supposedly resulted in the death of at least four and as many as six of the
cast members.
One of these was the waif-like
star Heather O’Rourke, who died on February 1, 1988 at the age of 12 after making
"Poltergeist 3." As fate would have it, I was one of the last journalists to
interview O’Rourke, spending a day on the set of the Chicago production for the “Chicago
Sun-Times.” Perhaps the “Curse” extends to my efforts on mustering up a copy of
my article on line; I’ve been completely stymied trying to “register” to read it. All I
remember about the experience is that Zelda Rubinstein, who played the dwarf
exorcist and whom I also interviewed, was nasty and abusive. And also that they
glued a fake moustache on my lip so I would resemble Tom Skerrit’s stand-in
double..
At any rate, perhaps the only curse Perelman and company need
fear is from fans of the original film. Here’s what “horrorchick81” has to say
about the remake:
“u gotta be shittig me......like i said NOOO NEED
TO REMAKE THIS. i hope everyone dies on this set.”
Good luck, Vadim.
August 28, 2008
So Barack Obama has been nominated as the Democratic
candidate for president, which inevitably raises the question -- is he the
Antichrist? The McCain people have been sort of suggesting that with their “The
One” commercial
though they didn’t come right out and
admit it when David Whittenberg, a blogger for the
“Washington Post,” confronted McCain spokesperson Brian Rogers about it. He
“didn’t give a straight answer,” Whittenberg writes of the response from the
Straight Talk Express. ‘"The Obama
campaign has said that they don't believe that to be the case. IIf you really want [the ad's]
secret meaning," he added, "play it backwards at half speed," said Rogers.
Whittenberg might be working on that, but in the meantime he
did what any other journalist would do -- make a Google search. He entered “Obama
and Antichrist” and got 1.3 million hits. Sloppy research! I refined the
search, putting “Barack Obama” in “exact wording” and “Antichrist” in “all
these words” and only got half as many. Though I’m still sifting through the
501,000 hits, some have stuck out,
including one in which Tim LeHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, authors of the “Left
Behind” series of Apocalypse/Rapture novels, express skepticism. "I can
see by the language he uses why people think he could be the antichrist,"
LaHaye is quoted as saying, "but from my reading of scripture, he doesn't
meet the criteria. There is no indication in the Bible that the antichrist will
be an American."
Or IS he an American? Nonetheless, even though there is
an "Obama is the Antichrist" website, the general consensus seems to be that he’s not.
What a relief! But then, what if...John McCain was the
Antichrist? I pop his name and “Antichrist” into the Google advanced search and
get 452,000 hits!. True, many of these are items about the John McCain people
insinuating that Obama is the Antichrist, but there are also observations like this
on the web forum “abovetopsecret.com”:
“Look at his
name John, Jaan, A name in Arabic which is another name for the Devil. Cain,
Remember the bible story of Cain slaying his brother Abel?, Cain, A Black devil
that had to go live in Southern Iraq in the wicked city of Nod. All of the Evil
Aliens from other galaxies used to meet their at the first Nudist Camp on this
planet; Nod/Nuwd. John McCain does have a Reptilian shapeshifting appearance
about himself, Would you not agree?. The AntiChrist.”
Sounds
reasonable to me. But just to be thorough, I pop some more names in. Hillary
Clinton? 342,000! Many , however, seem
to be preoccupied with her Antichrist-like fashion sense. Britney Spears?
148,000, but no doubt her alleged claim to be the Antichrist at the time of her suicide attempt might have upped the
numbers. The biggest shock was when I punched in “Bill O’Reilly is the
Antichrist” -- only 8 hits tallied. Compared to when I punched in my own name, which was 59!
One of those Antichrist hits under my own name, by the way, was a
blog item back in 2007 about
Lars Von Trier being incapacitated by depression while working on his new movie
called “Antichrist” -- which was the subject I was originally going to write about in this posting before being
distracted by all this political stuff. It seems Von Trier is feeling better
and “Antichrist” is back on track.
It takes place in a world which has been created by Satan, and not God and a
couple played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbrough hide out in a cabin in
the woods (surrounded evidently, judging 
from the pictures on the website ,
by cute woodland creatures)after their daughter has been killed in an accident
and await the apocalyptic news that the Antichrist, Ralph Nader, has been
elected President.