Jennifer Love Hewitt, Prostitution Whore
We recently held a screening of the latest Lifetime made-for-TV movie, “The Client List,” at ROTI headquarters. Let me be the first to inform you that it is a masterpiece.
When it comes to Lifetime movies, the bar has been set pretty high. Perhaps the network’s finest film to date is “Sex, Lies & Obsession,” the brilliant 2001 flick in which Lisa Rinna plays the victimized wife of a sex-addicted Harry Hamlin: the scene where she finds his secret porno stash and recoils in horror is one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen.
I would be remiss not to mention the terrific effort that was “Who is Clark Rockefeller?” — a recent film in which Eric McCormack [Will from Will & Grace] gave the performance of his life as the German-turned-WASP con man. The scenes in which he portrays the blond, teenage, Kraut-accented Christian Gerhartsreiter are beyond marvelous.
And who could forget Tori Spelling in the classics “Co-Ed Call Girl” and “Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?“
But despite this sterling track record of making amusingly dramatic films that never fail to deliver unintentional comedy value, Lifetime has clearly outdone itself with “The Client List.”
I don’t know about you, but a film that stars Jennifer Love Hewitt as a former Texas beauty queen down on her luck, forced to turn tricks to put food on her family’s table…and who then gets addicted to the attention of flabby johns who fly in from all over the world to sample her delights…only to be arrested and jailed, her secrets broadcast all over the city by the insatiable media, threatening everything she holds dear…well, that’s a film that I am not going to miss.
If you can’t handle TV movie spoilers, read no further!
So here’s the situation at the beginning of the film: JLH and her husband, portrayed by Teddy Sears, are unemployed, flat broke, and behind on their mortgage. She’s a former beauty queen who married the local football star, only to see her dreams shattered when her hubby blew out his knee.
Now he’s unable to work construction due to his injury, she’s been laid off from her job as a massage therapist, and their three ungrateful little kids keep demanding that food be put on the table.
It doesn’t help that her judgy mom, portrayed by Cybill Shepherd, has filled J. Love’s head with nonsense about how a woman should always get by on her looks.
The first indication of this film’s awesomeness comes when the Hortons (for that is the name of this fictional clan) head to the local bank to negotiate an extension on their mortgage.
Foreclosure is looming, but Sam Horton (J. Love’s alter ego) has a brilliant plan: dangle her massive mamm-globes in the face of the banker to persuade him to bend the rules.
When this shockingly fails to work, J. Love goes to Plan B: describing in precise detail the conditions under which they’d signed off on their mortgage, including some shady dealing by the banker.
It seems Sam Horton has an incredible memory for specifics, and she uses it to intimidate the scalawag into granting them a one-month extension.
Having foreshadowed the shit out of the rest of the plot, “The Client List” quickly cuts to the chase.
The story accelerates as J. Love scores a miracle job at a health spa located in a distant town. She’ll be able to use her massage therapy skills to pay the bills! Crisis averted!
At first, the job at amusingly-named Kind Touch Health Spa seems like the answer to the Horton family’s prayers. The owners welcome Sam with open arms and tell her she can start right away.
But as Sam observes one of her new co-workers tending to a client, she quickly realizes that there’s more to this job than therapeutic massage. Though the Lifetime audience does not care to see any details, and thus we’re only treated to the most tasteful camera angles and cutaways, she watches in horror as a barely-legal teen gives a hairy old man the most expensive beej of his life.
J. Love is traumatized and flees the spa. It seems her dream job isn’t going to work out after all.
But as she drives home, she gets a call from her best girlfriend, who tends a local bar. Hubby Horton is passed out drunk after spending a depressing day standing outside the Home Depot with the rest of the no-good day laborers. She picks him up, only to discover that they’re out of gas and don’t have more than a dollar to fill the tank.
That’s when Love knows what she has to do. She calls Kind Touch Health Spa and begs for her job back.
She’s going to take her talents to Sex Beach.
[Standing ovation in the ROTI screening room.]
Sam’s first time turning a trick doesn’t go well at first. It seems she’d rather dispense marital counseling than deliver a sex job. She even takes a phone call from her daughter, which is just gross. But just as the john is about to bail and starts pulling up his pants, she bites the bullet and disrobes, displaying her magnificent assets. Let’s just say he has a change of heart.
When she heads home that evening, J. Love has a wallet full of cash. She brings home gifts for the kids and pays the mortgage. Her husband can’t believe his good fortune — he can afford to send his awkward son to play flag football. She confides in her bartendress bestie, who warns her not to get addicted to the sex trade.
Nonetheless, J. Love is getting accustomed to boofing the businessmen and bigwigs that patronize Kind Touch…and the money and attention that come with the gig. She justifies her actions in amusing soliloquies delivered in a woefully inconsistent Texas accent to the little angel statue on her dashboard.
Through an outstanding montage, we see how Sam gains confidence as a hooker — she comes through the door in a series of titillating outfits, her visage slowly transforming from anxiousness to sultriness.
It turns out that Jennifer Loves Hookin’ has a special talent for the world’s oldest profession. Using her superpowers of memory, she always remembers what the johns like — oatmeal cookies, rusty trombones — and what they’re stressed about in their home lives.
Not to mention her superpowers as a sexual dynamo turning a dozen tricks a day (tragically, this is never actually shown onscreen). She fields marriage proposals and a parade of old, flabby, hairy dudes fly in to town on private jets just to bone her. The other girls at the “health spa” are getting jealous!
The money is rolling in now, and she showers her family with gifts at Christmastime. J. Love herself is decked out with jewelry showered upon her by worshipful clients. She buys her husband a new motorcycle to celebrate his new job as an extermination company trainee. Even her critical mother is silenced by an expensive holiday gift.
Whoring a ton is the best thing that ever happened to the Horton family!
Sadly, though, Sam is boning so many dudes that she barely sees her family, missing her kid’s first flag football touchdown. She’s falling asleep at the wheel, even driving into a ditch to avoid an accident. Worst of all, she’s too tired to give her husband any V on the side.
That’s when this rather obvious movie takes a twist that I honestly didn’t see coming.
Noticing her fatigue, one of her clients offers her a baggie of fine Columbian. She refuses at first, but he insists on tucking it inside her purse.
Later that night, all J. Love wants to do is crash, but her daughter needs her to whip something up for the big bake sale at school. She can barely keep her eyes open as she strains to read the cook book.
Suddenly, she notices her purse, tantalizing her with its powdery contents. A slow zoom in on the handbag depicts the tantalizing lure of the bad shit.
This moment didn’t have any dialogue, but the interior monologues of J. Love and her purse were abundantly clear:
The bake sale is saved, but the dark side of hooking has emerged.
Once J. Love starts sniffing blow, her life quickly begins to unravel. She’s turning more tricks than ever before, but she’s falling apart. Her mom notices that she’s gotten freakishly thin. When her daughter innocently asks her “Mom, are you going to get more Coke?” she freaks out before realizing the little girl means soda. While she once serviced clients with a personal touch, she now gets right down to business.
Worst of all, she’s turned into an all-out coke whore who will “make it worth your while” for a baggie of happy powder.
The movie demonstrates her downfall by making her look like a hardened drug addict mere weeks after she begins her habit. It took Lindsey Lohan YEARS of snorting and boning to achieve the deterioration in her looks that Sam Horton accomplishes in a month or so:
But the worst is yet to come…
Sam encourages one of her co-workers to leave the business and seek refuge at a nearby Christian Fellowship center. The ex-hooker quickly dimes out Kind Touch Health Spa to the bible-thumpers, who in turn put the local police on speed dial.
This has no effect, because the crafty folks at Kind Touch have been giving the coppers free bonetime for years. But when the Christian Fellowship crew get the mayor’s office on the line, they get results. It’s an election year and the mayor is looking to get some good publicity. She orders a crackdown on Kind Touch!
J. Love gets arrested for hooking and blowcaine possession, and hauled out in front of a bevy of television cameras. Her husband is watching the Cowboys game at the bar when the breaking news is splashed across the screen!
Here’s where Teddy Sears, in the role of the husband, really steps up his game. The look on his face when he sees the mother of his children hauled out of a Texas whorehouse in prosti-garb is Daytime Emmy-worthy:
After this shocking turn of events, J. Love is facing two years in the slammer. Her husband takes the kids away and her mother won’t take her calls. Total humiliation in the community follows. Now she’s not just talking to the angel on her dashboard, she’s pretty much talking to herself non-stop. She’s lost everything, including her sanity.
But J. Love still has a trump card to pull — her ridiculously good memory. With help from the other hoes at Kind Touch, she puts together a list of all the upstanding pillars of the community who patronized their services…if they’re going down, they’re going to bring down all the johns in Texas with them.
Her lawyer uses that to get the ladies a get-out-of-jail free card, and the publication of the list in the local papers turns the scandal back on the horndogs.
Not only that, but she’s able to capitalize on her newfound fame as the finest sex machine in Texas. A mob of betrayed women converge on her house, but instead of tearing her limb from limb, they beg her for tips on how to please their men!
The ever-resourceful Sam Horton thus rebuilds her social capital by instructing her neighbors on the finer points of dude arousal:
And just like that, she gets her life back together. Her mom finds some sympathy in her cold, brittle heart. J. Love kicks the habit and gets her Narcotics Anonymous 60 days clean badge. Even her husband seems to be open to a reconciliation.
Unlike the last film I shared with y’all, this one has a happy ending! How apropos for a film about HJs for pay!
According to TV by the Numbers, “The Client List” pulled down very respectable viewership numbers. Hooray for Lifetime original movies!
If you’d like to watch this brilliant piece of cinema for yourself, I have great news. It’s available on demand at Lifetime’s website!
It’s time to give props to the MVP of this fine film. Jennifer Love Hewitt is simply magical in the role of Samantha Horton. I think this may be the best performance she has ever delivered.
You know, some people like to make fun of JLH for being a little chunky in the hip zone. There are rumors about her being wicked uptight sexually that seem pretty plausible. Her perpetually failing relationships with dorks like Jamie Kennedy and the singer from LFO do her no favors. And her career has clearly sputtered, why else would she be headlining a Lifetime movie?
Regardless, J. Love’s performance in this film is spot on. (Yes, it would have been a thousand times better if she showed boob or had a sex scene, but that’s just not what you get from the Lifetime genre.) Few other actresses could have nailed the combination of goody-two-shoes pageant queen and cleavage-for-miles Texas whore that she achieves in this movie. You could chalk it up to natural sexiness and charm, or perhaps a lifetime of experience in the acting biz…
But I’m inclined to think her secret is a vajazzled no-no. It just spreads its sparkle throughout J. Love’s entire being and throughout this film itself.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
“Threads” Will Melt Your Head
I recently watched one of the most frightening, thought-provoking films I’ve ever seen.
It is called “Threads,” and it’s a 1984 BBC teleplay depicting the after-effects of a massive worldwide nuclear conflict.
The Cold War setting of this film may be a bit dated, and the British lingo may be a bit confusing for the American audience…but neither of these factors detracts from the horror and mind-blowing realism that this film will blast upside your dome.
Pretty much what this film comes down to is that if countries start nuking each other, we are all completely screwed. It doesn’t flinch at showing the effects of megaton blasts, radiation poisoning, and the dark side of human nature as society breaks down. It does not have an ending laden with hope for a brighter future.
The comments on Youtube, where this film has been posted for easy viewing, are filled with British folks talking about how they saw this film as children and were scarred for life.
I warn you, don’t watch this movie if you are a little bitch…you may never recover from the fright.
“Threads” initially focuses on two young lovers, Jimmy and Ruth, who have no idea that their world is about to be ripped apart by geopolitical brinksmanship.
An interesting element of the film is its depiction of civil society’s attempt to manage a post-nuclear crisis event, and the ultimate futility of that enterprise.
As West and East move slowly towards all-out war, some people are closely following the situation, while others just ignore it. Voices of protest are drowned out by patriotic chest-beating. Many people don’t really want to think about what a nuclear war will entail.
The Americans and the Russians begin open combat, and people begin to freak out. Trade unionists are jailed along with other “subversives.” The country braces for nuclear war.
As disaster looms, you may find yourself rooting for the attack to happen: “Let’s DO THIS already!” That’s how I felt, anyway. Trust me, you will regret this emotion soon enough.
(The moment in the previous segment where a woman pees her pants in terror is actually how I came to discover “Threads.” It was recently the subject of a post on The Awl that mentions “the saddest IMDB page in existence.”)
Just in case you thought the worst was over once the nearby RAF base was nuked, the Commies decide to hit Sheffield directly, as 3000 megatons explode worldwide. Bad times.
A Youtube commenter notes that at this point, “Threads” is setting a new standard for disturbing cinema: “This is scary, makes Alien 3 and The Terminator look like Spongebob Squarepants.”
A week after the attack, things have only gotten more effed up. The scene in the hospital in the following clip might be the most brutal part of this entire film.
At this point, all hell has broken loose. Looters raid homes and kill anyone they find. Police summarily execute prisoners. The only valuable goods left are food supplies and the ability to labor. If you can work, you might survive.
This is where it gets incredibly shitty and unfair. Even if your region of the Northern Hemisphere didn’t get nuke or get nuked, you’re still completely screwed because nuclear winter sets in. You’ve heard of “natural childbirth,” but this is as real as shit gets.
The characters we met before the war are almost completely wiped out within a decade after the attack. Language and culture erode to the vanishing point as memories of a time before armageddon are erased.
(I’m pretty sure this segment contains an subtle hint at the mysterious fate of one of the main characters. Listen for a music cue towards the end.)
Ready for a horrifying ending? Here you go.
There’s not a lot to say after watching that, but if you’re like me and enjoy incredibly dark, apocalyptic visions, here’s a high-quality review from DVD Outsider that gives props to the people who created this film. I have excerpted the review here as best I could, there’s so much great info that I didn’t want to cut too much out. Read and be schooled:
Threads takes a very sobering and sometimes harrowing look at the effects of a nuclear war on the people of Sheffield. Though open from the start about its status as drama, it nonetheless utilises many of the codes and conventions of the documentary genre to ground the action in a very persuasive reality. Memorable incidents from Watkins’ film are recreated here – the enforced post-war billeting of homeless survivors with uncooperative house owners, the shooting of looters, the shell-shocked faces of the injured and traumatised, even the extracts from the government’s Protect and Survive information film – but this is hardly surprising given that they were working from largely the same source material and with the same purpose in mind…
The intricate and informed script was by Barry Hines, who writes almost exclusively from a working-class perspective, and this is carried over into the structure and characters of Threads. Those who start the war, who launch the missiles, who attempt to organise what remains in the aftermath are never shown, as Hines concentrates exclusively on the effect events have on ordinary people. The only officials shown are those of the local emergency committee, themselves common folk who quickly discover that they are out of their depth.
This is very effectively illustrated in the build-up, with information of the impending conflict caught in brief glimpses of newspaper headlines and radio and TV broadcasts as a kitchen-sink family drama plays out in the foreground, inevitably recalling Hines’ work with Ken Loach, emphasised by the use of actor Phil Askham, so memorable in The Gamekeeper and Looks and Smiles, in a support role. Like The War Game, Threads also delivers a string of sobering facts and figures through on-screen graphics and voice-over, its ace-in-the-hole here being narrator Paul Vaughan, whose voice was at the time of broadcast familiar to the viewing public through his extensive work on the BBC’s prestigious scientific documentary series Horizon.
Where Threads and The War Game walk hand-in-hand is in their sheer power as persuasive film-making. If Hines provides the structural foundations, then they are built on to extraordinary effect by director Mick Jackson, a man who has since been swallowed up by Hollywood, but who was once one of British TV’s most crucial talents, directing the breezily seductive A Very British Coup in 1988, and what we here at Outsider regard as the very greatest TV movie of all time, Life Story, in 1987. Never wasting a shot, Jackson’s potent but economical use of imagery and sometimes razor-sharp editing (courtesy of Jim Latham and Donna Bickerstaff) communicating the very real horror of the events as much through suggestion as direct exposure.
Individual images linger long after the film has ended – the nuclear explosion seen from the streets of Sheffield, the woman who wets herself in the street in terror, the screaming panic that is cut off halfway by a second blast, the body of a loved one left upstairs to rot, the shell-shocked girl staring directly at the camera cuddling a teddy bear in place of the baby she has presumably lost, the stark gloom of the nuclear winter that follows.
The final third is as dark as any television I can remember, as the population is reduced to medieval numbers and the absolute basics of existence, even language itself mutating into a localised but limited collection of short, monosyllabic survival phrases. A brief flicker of hope towards the end soon fades, grimly upturned in a chillingly suggestive finale that cuts to black just before a scream of horror not just for personal loss, but for the very future of mankind, if indeed it has one. You are left stunned, as you should be, and if the years have distanced us a little from a time when the events described here seemed frighteningly possible, the film contains, tucked away in those half-caught broadcasts in the first half, an all-too pertinent warning. Here the flashpoint for nuclear annihilation is not the Cold War favourite of Berlin, but Iran, the very country that American and British politicians are at this moment issuing guarded warnings to regarding their nuclear programme. The Berlin wall may have fallen, but in too many other respects the world is still too ready for war.
This is why people who play politics in opposition to global nuclear disarmament piss me off…
We should thank our lucky stars that our world isn’t as close to nuclear apocalypse as it used to be, but we are still FAR too close to making “Threads” a reality.
Mad Respect for “The Mad Drummer” [Guest Post]
Many of you have probably seen this video, which went viral this month and recently showed up on Failblog as “Drummer Win.”
It depicts Steve Moore, the “Mad Drummer” for West Virginia cover band Rick and the All-Nighters, tearing it up during a performance of “Sharp Dressed Man.”
I love this video, but I don’t really know the first thing about drumming beyond beating Rock Band songs on the “Easy” level.
So I called in one of the finest drummers I personally know, ROTI reader GoGoMrPoPo, for a review of the Mad Drummer’s chops.
After reviewing the video evidence and this interview that Philadelphia Weekly conducted with Moore, here’s his take.
Wow. Steve Moore really is insane. Much respect.
He does an incredible job of not missing a beat or even messing with the sound and feel of the groove while basically performing seated gymnastics. Close your eyes and listen. If you listen to a lot of music and have an ear for the drums, you can easily hear little flubs or miss-hits in much more studio music than you would think, and all the time in live shows. I don’t hear them in this clip. Granted, Sharp Dressed Man is a very simple groove with very basic fills, but sometimes that’s where mistakes stand out most, when they’re most obvious. It’s a very impressive display.
I’ve never been one for “visual drummers,” as Moore calls them. Most guys who focus on that stuff kind of stink as drummers or just don’t seem to get what I think the drums are about in a rock band, and over the years I’ve just grown to really despise flashy stick work and drum tricks like that.
I remember I really loved Twin Cinema, the New Pornographers album of about 5 years ago. Great song writing, beautiful vocals, catchy tunes, and really strong drumming with crisp, thick drum sounds, and I was really excited to see them live, but it turns out the drummer [Kurt Dahle] is a fruit fart who twirls his sticks every chance he gets and makes pained sexy faces as he squirms on his throne.
I know it sounds stupid or petty, but it ruined the album for me. I can’t listen to it anymore because I see him doing his silly stick tricks and making that creepy face whenever it comes on:
The truth is that a lot of drummers can do a lot of cool stick tricks.
I was never interested in them and definitely can’t do them myself, but a lot of drummers spent more time in lessons or just immersed in their kits than I did. I liked playing with bands and listening to music, not watching Terry Bozzio or Dennis Chambers videos while I twirled my Vic Firths (I probably would be a better drummer if I did), so I’m usually more interested in hearing the interplay among band members.
Moore says himself that he saw a gimmick that he could run with, but I think the dude deserves more credit. He’s mastered that gimmick, and he’s making a living off it. That’s a hell of a lot more than a lot of really good drummers can say about their craft.
But all this talk of him being in the wrong band, well, I disagree.
There’s not a whole lot of interest in “visual drumming” in today’s music scene, and a cheesy cover band is absolutely the best platform for that kind of gimmick. Maybe it would be cooler if he were combined with a shredder with Eddie Van Halen chops, a Geddy Lee look alike with the skills to match, and a dead ringer for Bon Scott, but even if they rocked righteous they’d still have to be a cheesy cover band.
Most bands, most front guys, really, don’t want a drummer like that. They’ve got their own gimmicks like having pretty hair and cool clothes and being all magnetic and stuff, and Steve Moore would totally kill that vibe, man.
I’m sure things will change. Chicks used to go wild for Simon and Garfunkel as much as they did for the freaks in Cinderella or Eddie Vedder, and as much as they do now for James Blunt (do they?). But Moore made the right call by sticking to his meal ticket (and standing by his friends).
I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a nod to his humility, though. He comes across like a real self-aware sweetheart. I may not love his tricks, but I respect the hell out of him as a professional and a person.
GoGoMrPoPo dwells and drums in Brooklyn.
Randy Wells Hates Daylight, Sobriety
Randy Wells, starting pitcher for the Chicago Cubs, has a problem.
He is horrible when pitching in day games.
Cubs fans are beginning to wonder if this weakness is merely a fluke — a product of small sample size and a little bad luck — or something more, perhaps indicative of a wee self-control deficit.
These concerns came to a head last weekend as Wells took the mound for an afternoon match against the Cubs’ crosstown rivals, the White Sox…
Rumors that Randy had been out all night boozing with the newly-crowned Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks began with a call to a local radio show, and soon spread throughout the stands and the interwebs.
Randy Wells claims he was not involved in any such shenanigans, and says he bedded down at an early hour in order to be his best on game day. But he was then shellacked by the White Sox’ sorry offense, to the tune of 5 earned runs and 10 hits in 5 innings, and tarred with the loss.
An ROTI investigation reveals that Randy Wells has a systemic problem when hurling before sundown, and at least one heretofore-unseen eyewitness report states that he’s a true madman when it comes to the Chicago party scene.
Red-faced Randy with Chi Sock Gordon Beckham,
each sporting tanlines and a Victoria’s Secret supermodel on his arm
Randy’s troubles began when a caller to Chicago’s WSCR claimed he was partying until 3 am at the club Underground with the Blackhawks and some members of the Chicago Bears. The reason why Wells’ alleged presence was notable, of course, is that the rest of the athletes were on vacation, while he was due to pitch the next day.
Wells vehemently denied these rumors:
”It’s never how you want to wake up and come to the ballpark,” said Wells, who has struggled through particularly rough first innings in three of his last four starts.
”I told myself all last night and at dinner, come in confident and today’s a new day, and it’s a big series for us, and everybody’s going to be pumped up, and I’m going to be pumped up. And then to come in and have to answer questions [from the team] about somebody saying you were out all night, it’s kind of funny.
”I don’t know what they’re talking about. I went to dinner last night, got some good dinner with friends, got home, got some rest. And I was excited to come to the ballpark. I showed up at 8 in the morning. It’s pretty tough to pull an all-nighter and be here at 8.”
The rumors persisted, however, when Wells coughed up two earned runs in the first inning on four consecutive hits, then got chased in the fifth inning after allowing three more runs…and all this at home, against an offense in the lower-third of the major leagues.
FanHouse’s John Hickey explains that Wells is in quite a funk:
“I’m not exactly brimming with confidence right now,” [Wells] said after lasting just five innings while giving up 10 hits and five runs. “My ERA is ballooning up and I’m not winning. I need to take care of some stuff, make some adjustments and get my edge back.”
Part of the problem is Wells’ sinking fastball isn’t sinking. Another part is that his pitches all seem to be about the same speed, 88-91 mph.
“I was talking to my teammates today, and that’s what they said,” Wells said. “They told me how they would approach it as hitters. They’d eliminate [looking for] one pitch and sit on a pitch.”
It was certainly a successful strategy for the White Sox Friday. And that left Wells at perhaps his low point of the year.
“It’s embarrassing,” Wells said. “It really is. I know I’m better than this. I hope the fans know I’m better than this.”
Unfortunately for Randy Wells, the fans seemed to be of one mind on this one.
And their attitude was not particularly supportive.
Querying Twitter for “Randy Wells” turns up a barrage of critical comments:
The Blackhawks’ party at Underground
(Not pictured: Randy Wells)
Unlike troubled, bitter Cubbies fans, ROTI is not so quick to condemn young Randy…
Our philosophy is to investigate, THEN condemn!
Thus far this season, Randy Wells has started six day games and seven night games. He’s pitched 34.2 innings in daytime and 37 innings at night. It’s just about an even split.
Wells has been sharp after dark — a 3.21 ERA and 1.21 WHIP, holding batters to a .241 batting average and .667 OPS. For those unversed in baseball stat-dorkery, those are very respectable numbers.
During the daytime, it’s an altogether different proposition. He’s been blasted for a 7.01 ERA and 1.78 WHIP, and opponents are mashing a .349 batting average and .876 OPS when facing him. You don’t have to be Bill James to detect that those numbers are way, way worse.
These splits also held true in his rookie campaign of 2009, although his numbers have diverged much more drastically this year…
Nighttime Randy Wells makes batters look like Nick Punto. Daytime Randy Wells makes batters look like Albert Pujols.
Nighttime Randy quieted the Texas Rangers’ powerful lineup on May 22nd, going 8.1 strong innings, giving up less than one walk/hit per inning pitched.
Daytime Randy allowed six hits and five earned runs against the rival Cardinals on May 28th, and was pulled from the game in the first inning without recording a single out.
Now, whether his bad daytime starts were due to sweating out last night’s booze on the mound, I have no idea. It’s yet to be proved that Randy Wells was partying with the Blackhawks, despite what the Tweeps might tell you.
However, ROTI received a tip about Randy a couple of weeks before he became the subject of a boozy controversy in the Second City. It involves massive intoxication.
It was forwarded to us by trusty tipster C. Dave, who received it from a friend in Chi-town:
I went to the local bowling alley last night. We were drinking beer and hanging out when Randy Wells came in to do some bowling. He’d been drinking since 2 in the afternoon and was bombed. At one point he was on the floor wrestling one of his friends. I tried to get a picture, but some of his crew was looking at me (the girls–less wrecked, I think), and I realized that was probably a great way to get my ass kicked and my phone smashed.
After we finished bowling, we went to the bar. Wells came in and bought a round of SoCo-lime shots for everyone in the bar.
We saw him a little later playing some punching game-thing, and just whaling on whatever he was punching…
Shortly after we received this tip, Randy was bashed by the awful Houston Astros for six earned runs on nine hits and two walks in 5.1 innings. You guessed it: day game.
So what have we learned from our investigation of the “Randy Wells drunk on the mound” rumor?
Randy Wells is a pretty fun guy to hang out with. He’ll buy everyone in the bar a SoCo and lime shot, wrestle all comers at the bowling alley, and set a new high score on the punching game-thing (probably not the smartest pastime for a dude that makes a living with his hands and arms, but whatever).
He’s also a great guy to have on your baseball team, assuming it’s a night game.
On the flip side, Daytime Randy Wells is a horrible pitcher, one that makes the Cubs faithful long for Tom Gorzelanny…
I have no idea if Randy Wells was still drunk when he pitched against the South Siders. But I do know that Lou Piniella, and any fantasy baseball owner, would do well to steer clear of handing the ball to this party animal in day games.
Take to the Sky on a Natural High
22-year-old Yasmine Villasana tossed back at least one vodka and cranberry before heading out of Dallas-Fort Worth Airport at high speeds!
Unfortunately, she wasn’t prepared to stop at the toll booth.
What happened next was a magical, fiery flight that we can all enjoy via Youtube:
The Impala bursts into flames as it takes flight! Johnny Storm, eat your heart out.
One of the best parts of this story is Villasana’s attempt to explain her way out of the situation…
Here’s a report from The Sun (UK):
This driver chose the wrong way to fly out of an airport when she launched over a toll booth — in her car.
Yasmine Villasana, 22, was arrested for drink-driving after ploughing into a barrier and taking off at Dallas Airport, US, on Tuesday.
Her Chevy Impala launched over the 30ft barrier and landed on the road on the other side before bursting into flames.
Cops said when they arrived on the scene Villasana was trying to get back into her still burning car.
Despite this she insisted she had only had “one vodka and cranberry” the night before the crash.
She said her car had been rear-ended before the smash.
Cops inspected the vehicle but they found no evidence of any collision from the rear.
The scene made for some amazing photos:
DListed called her “A proud graduate of the Duke Brothers school of driving,” and added:
“Surprisingly, Yasmine only broke her wrist during the crash and nobody else was hurt. Yasmine told police she only drank one cranberry and vodka the night before. Yasmine also continued to roll out the hilarious lies when she claimed that someone rear-ended her. I believe her. The spirit of KITT tossed her over that toll.”
Many Youtube commenters thought this story couldn’t be real after viewing the video. It’s legit, skeptics! Here’s the police report!
I personally get the giggles when someone embarrasses themselves in this manner and then turns out to have an accessible Facebook account.
Yasmine Villasana did not disappoint! Her employment is simply perfect.
Here’s Yasmine “ON THE WAY 2 THE RKELLY CONCERT”: note the telltale mole under the right eye…
My favorite is probably this series of photos in which she triple- and quad-teams a homie while protruding her rump as much as humanly possible…
UPDATE: OK, I take that back. My favorite is this picture discovered by a commenter on Jalopnik:
No doubt you’ve heard the expression, “Why drink and drive when you can smoke and fly?”
Yasmine says eff that noise. Buy her a drank and hitch a ride, and you’ll find yourself airborne soon enough.
# # #
Have a nice weekend, everyone.
Opening a Pandora’s Box of Gretchen Gossip
ROTI has published almost 300 stories in our time on the world wide web, many of them merciless exposes loaded with embarrassing details.
We have never gotten a response to a story that rivaled the reaction to last week’s post regarding the online rumors about Gretchen Mol.
Not only did our readership spike as commenters at Gawker/Defamer and BlindGossip mentioned the article, but anonymous tips poured into our inbox, with tales even more shocking than the ones we’d already seen online. Entertainment industry insiders were quick to light up our tipline with the ribald tales they’d heard. Jeez, what did Gretchen Mol ever do to you, Internet?
It’s tough to know what to do with unsubstantiated tips such as these, so we’ve been perusing them and trying to figure out the best way to present them to you. However, as we agonized, these same tips started showing up on gossip blogs with nary a hint of skepticism and only thinly veiled anonymity.
So…let’s do this.
Remember, these rumors are probably not true, completely unverified, and quite possibly bogus.
However, as the events of the last week have demonstrated, there is a major online campaign to sully Gretchen Mol’s reputation, and we’re merely reporting on its existence and the deets of her alleged deeds. We’re shining a light on the shady underworld of Hollywood gossip, it’s a public service, people!
To recap, Rumor #1 about Gretchen Mol was that she was Harvey Weinstein’s longtime bone-friend, and that her sexual prowess convinced him to use all his powers of hype to get her anointed “Hollywood’s Next It Girl” — a designation that she famously failed to live up to.
This led to Rumor #2, later elaborated on by a tipster. LaineyGossip strongly suggested that Weinstein and another man (our tipster alleged it was Sopranos writer Terence Winter) ran trains on Mol this past summer, for nothing more in exchange than an invite to the Inglorious Basterds premiere.
Rumor #3, floated by CDAN last week and later “solved” by BlindGossip, asserted that Mol boned a producer in order to get her husband the job of directing Paranormal Activity 2 — and that she’s kept on smashing him behind her husband’s back. This sparked our story. (Although we surmised that the producer in question was Oren Peli, a tipster later suggested that it was Akiva Goldsman, the most talentless hack ever to win an Oscar in the history of the entertainment business.)
Rumor #4 also came from CDAN, openly referencing the earlier, extremely obvious blinds. This one suggested that one of Mol’s beaus likes it rough bondage-style, and oh by the way he’s an HBO writer with a new show coming out that she is a part of. This is obviously a reference to Terence Winter, who cast Gretchen in his new show, “Boardwalk Empire.”
Our rapidly filling inbox suggests this is just the tip of the iceberg. Allegations of sexual gymnastics of every type of description have been pored over by the intrepid ROTI research team. All I can say is that it’s probably all bull, lies sparked by jealousy at Gretchen Mol’s improbable rise, but instead of leaking these out as thinly-veiled blind items, we’re going to discuss them like adults.
We’ll start with the rumors that have already become widespread, particularly the allegations of a longstanding sex-for-career-connections pact between Gretchen Mol and movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. One source contacted us using an anonymous email address, alleging to know the back story on the blind item that started this ball rolling downhill in the first place.
Gretchen met Harvey at a party or premiere and they hooked up soon afterward. Harvey became a little obsessed with Gretchen because the sex was so great. Harvey would go on in detail to “friends” about how Gretchen was in the sack [details redacted, even I can't go there].
Harvey (allegedly) once said how Gretchen “fucked like Ginger Lynn.”
That’s such a dated porn star reference, it almost has to be legit…but I will maintain my skepticism about all of this until I see some hard evidence.
My friend told me, “If Jessica Simpson is sexual napalm than Gretchen Mol must be an Atomic Bomb.” Kind of makes sense because Harvey has slept with a bunch of starlets, but he went out of his way to call in favors to put Gretchen on two Vanity Fair covers in the same year. How many A-listers get two VF covers in one year… hardly any, but they gave them to a nobody?
They banged for a couple of years on the side until Harvey’s wife couldn’t take it anymore and made Harvey dump Gretchen and slander her to other studios. Remember, back in the ’90′s Harvey had a lot of pull. Gretchen was up for some major roles…she was supposed to replace Sharon Stone for Basic Instinct 2 in the late 90s. Of course, everything fell through.
Another anonymous emailer contacted us, claiming to have spent years running interference for Weinstein on his boning trips to the Mol.
This source, who let’s face it, is probably some 13-year-old Singaporean fraud, blabbed that he once had to drive Harvey out to New Jersey, where they held up filming of Woody Allen’s film “Celebrity” so that Weinstein could boof Mol in a trailer.
Another time, the emailer claimed, he guarded the door while Harvey received a beej in the bathroom of trendy Manhattan eatery Nobu. Our emailer also told a tale of listening in while Harvey, Gretchen and a “hot ass Asian chick” went at it in a suite at the Carlyle Hotel.
The emailer added, “Harvey was crazy about this woman. He talked about her a lot and how she’s the best fuck he’s ever had. She almost busted up his marriage, but he never loved her…he was just hooked on the sex with her.”
The next tip seemed absurd and laughable…until it was published on a gossip blog yesterday!
According to another (probably 100% full of shit) tipster and the relatively respectable site Crazy Days and Nights, Gretchen Mol boned P. Diddy — and then smashed the homies!
Gretchen got together with P. Diddy around 2001. Wasn’t he with J. Lo at that time? They met at some party (of course) and he told her about a movie project he was going to produce with his business partners. I do remember hearing about that back then because I rolled my eyes at the thought of fucking Puff Daddy producing a big screen musical.
Anyway, Gretchen did what she did best and let be known that she was willing to do whatever it took to get one of the leads. I guess Gretchen even went around telling people that she was going to do the musical with Diddy.
My friend told me he actually went to do an interview with Diddy at a recording studio and thought it was odd to see Gretchen Mol there. He didn’t see Gretchen interacting with Diddy, but saw her and “a couple of brothas getting cozy” (his words) before they headed off somewhere. I asked him what he meant by “getting cozy” and he said that he saw them whispering in her ears in the hallway as she giggled like a little girl and some grab ass. The movie never happened and that chapter was closed. Sounded to me like Diddy had his fun and then passed her around.
Who comes up with this stuff? I don’t believe a word of it. Why peeps be hating so hard on Gretchen Mol?
However, I would be remiss not to link to this curious coincidence — photos of Gretchen Mol at a P. Diddy CD release party in 2001. Just sayin’.
One email we received purported to explain a curious casting decision…
So, of all the actresses in Hollywood why would they cast a girl with blonde hair and blue eyes in the role of Bettie Page? Everyone on planet Earth wondered about this casting choice. It’s because Gretchen banged a producer… a female producer.
Katie Roumel was one of the producers (all female) for the movie. Guinevere Turner was supposed to play Bettie until Gretchen went down on Katie. Mary Harron (director) was told to cast Gretchen because financing would be easier. Like Gretchen Mol could really pull in financing?
Everybody involved knew why she was cast and this rumor was out there at the time, but nobody actually gave a shit because Gretchen was still considered a failure. Hey, Gretchen was good in the movie and professionally she will always be known for this movie.
One more item before we put this subject to bed, and gladly, this time it’s semi-verifiable.
A tipster pointed out that Gretchen Mol used to date director Abel Ferrara, and that he cast her in some of his movies. At some point they broke up, allegedly because of her infidelities.
That assertion seems to be supported by Ferrara’s decision to name a character with the familiar moniker of “Gretchen Mol” in his film Mary. The movie is mostly a modern parable (or something) about the Virgin Mary, but includes this weird subplot that Ferrara apparently used to wage vendetta on Mol.
The character of “Gretchen Mol”, portrayed by Marion Cotillard, is a blonde strumpet who carries on an affair with Forest Whitaker’s character, a married TV host. From the screengrabs this tipster emailed us, it sure does look like our Gretchen. And from what we’re told, this character is an amoral skank who will bone anything with a pulse.
SO — what actually happened, what does all this mean, and why should we care?
We’ll never really know if any of these stories are true. If they are, it looks like Gretchen Mol missed her big chance to put out the best celebrity sex tape ever. But there are crazy rumors going around about everyone in Hollywood. Haters gon’ hate.
However, it does seem as though the smear campaign against Gretchen Mol is reaching critical mass. CDAN seems to have a new blind item about the “director’s wife” every week. Has Gretchen Mol been blacklisted as these revelations leak out, as some of our tipsters claim, or is this just the way of the world in the seedy backrooms of Hollywood? It’s not how much talent you have on screen, it’s how much talent you have in the sack? If so, that’s sad for every chaste entertainer robbed of a part they deserved, and every filmgoer robbed of the best possible performance.
It’s too bad that Gretchen Mol hasn’t delivered on the early hype, but we don’t need to beat her up over it for all time.
I hope that this has been a productive way for you to get all the Gretchen Mol rumors out of your system, Internet. Now take her name out your mouth.
Is Gretchen Mol a Hollywood Hoe?
[UPDATED 5/15/10] -> [FOLLOW-UP 5/20/10]
Right up front, I want to note that this post is not based on any original reporting — it is merely a distillation of a series of nasty Internet rumors that we are duty-bound to report upon. While we have no concrete reason to believe that any of these rumors are true, it is nonetheless our mission to bring these rumors to you, our viewers, so YOU CAN DECIDE.
So hey, remember Gretchen Mol?
Female lead of the sleeper hit “Rounders” and supposed “It Girl” of 1998?
In polite conversation, she’s oft-mentioned as the best example of an overhyped starlet who failed to pan out. Her September 1998 Vanity Fair cover, which asked “Is Gretchen Mol the Next It Girl?” is usually cited as evidence of the weird media excitement over a fairly average talent who never really demonstrated that “It” quality on screen.
Yes, she was hot. But as the New York Times noted in 2003, the concept of Mol’s “It”-ness was largely a fiction cooked up in the Vanity Fair editorial offices:
ON a recent episode of HBO’s hit series ”Six Feet Under,” a roomful of brunch guests played a parlor game. Each had to guess the identity of the celebrity whose name was written on a sticker attached to his or her back. The young woman with the ”Gretchen Mol” tag asked a man, ”Am I known for my figure or my face?” ”I don’t know.” ”Am I an Oscar winner?” ”I don’t know.” ”Am I blond?” Long pause. ”I don’t know.”
The scene was meant to establish the man’s lack of pop culture knowledge. As any trivia buff would tell you, the 30-year-old Ms. Mol is blond, is not an Oscar winner and is not primarily known for her figure, her face or, for that matter, any of her roles. Instead Ms. Mol is famous for appearing on the cover of the September 1998 issue of Vanity Fair. She was wearing a see-through Alberta Ferretti slip dress, her golden head was tipped back lazily and she peered out at the world through sleepy eyes. Beneath her name ran the headline, ”Is She Hollywood’s Next ‘It’ Girl?”
The answer that came back was neither a resounding ”Yes” nor a defiant ”No” but instead a head-scratching ”Who???”
To be fair, VF was ice-cold that year in its attempt to anoint the next generation of stars. Check out this ho-hum lineup:
I see four legit movie stars — Natalie P, Joaquin, Vince Vaughn and Blanchett — indie queen Christina Ricci (already past her prime at this point, I’m afraid), semi-reliable character actors Djimon Hounsou and Rufus Sewell, and four complete whiffs: Mol, Wes Bentley, Claire Forlani and Eddie Furlong. It’s kind of weird to see these people all posed together, shortly before their careers drastically diverged.
Anyway, Gretchen Mol has never come close to living up to that cover. Nevertheless, she’s become industry shorthand for pure, baffling hype.
For instance, take this Gawker graf on the nosediving fortunes of Kip Pardue:
The golden boy actor, who played football at Yale and was an Abercrombie & Fitch model, seemed destined for big things when he was cast in that Sylvester Stallone racing movie Driven and in Remember the Titans. But then despite his drive, no one remembered him (get it?). Maybe he was hyped to the point of premature saturation, like a more male but no less blonde Gretchen Mol.
Recently, however, some filthy internet rumors have perhaps shed some light on how Gretchen Mol became Vanity Fair’s cover girl in 1998.
I warn you that these rumors are utterly unsubstantiated and potentially horrifying to the squeamish.
The vicious tales began at the blind-item gossip site Lainey Gossip, which ran this extremely lengthy, detailed and juicy item:
It was mystifying several years ago why she was hyped the way she was hyped. Just another starlet with no real significant starring vehicles somehow ending up with a prestigious magazine cover proclaiming her as the next It. Well It never happened. And after all this time and a string of failures, she’s been trying to change the course. So she’s gone back to the major player who tried to make it happen for her the first time. There was an arrangement back then – her sexual services for his professional services – and apparently the same arrangement was resurrected recently in the hopes that she’ll finally confirm a juicy role to kickstart a stagnant career.
So far, this sounds suspiciously like our girl Gretchen. But Whooooo could the power player be?
Well, if we focus on Rounders, the role she is best known for, we might guess that producer Ted Demme had something to do with it — if he hadn’t died while playing basketball (while overweight and high on cocaine) in 2002, thus rendering himself ineligible.
The item continues:
Never mind that he’s married. His wife benefits handsomely from his generosity and while he may not fulfill her with fidelity, he certainly makes up for it through client exchange. Probably better that way. And given what he looks like, it totally makes sense. But he is a legend in the business both for his accomplishments and for the way he leads these ladies to their accomplishments, counting a couple of award winners and a few box office heavyweights on his resumé…which is why he quickly tired of our poor girl and discarded her.
So we know he’s an industry legend, known for delivering awards to his proteges, confirmed ugbo with a pampered wife.
Sounds like Harvey Weinstein, founder of Miramax — the studio that made Rounders!
Here’s Harv-bo with his wife, the gorgeous fashion designer Georgina Chapman. Keep in mind that this is actually a pretty good picture of Mr. Weinstein:
OK, now brace yourselves, this is about to get a little gruesome.
But not before drying her out. One day late summer, they were joined in a hotel suite by a third gentleman (identity insignificant), both of them enjoying her as she allowed herself to be taken, and, um, decorated appropriately, all for a reward at the end of the session – the privilege of simply looking at a script, no promise, no confirmation…just an advance read. And a suggestion to show up at a premiere for a few introductions. She is so desperate, it’s been so meagre, she submitted to the humiliation although gamely seems to have enjoyed it. An actor after all, obviously able to shut out her husband and child waiting for her back at home.
And then he just cut it off. Told her he could no longer help her. That her body in his bed was no longer required. Which of course only added to her degradation. She tried and tried to offer up more, willing to engage in further depravity, but was only met with rejection. Because he’s moved on. He’s hunting his next target. A young, nubile, blonde babe with a large profile and a perky rack who so far has been able to resist his advances but is trying to graduate from supporting roles in film, as the fact that she’s a headliner on the small screen has not helped with the quality of scripts she’s being offered, or with many of her auditions so far. She’s currently waiting on a big break and he’s trying to make sure it doesn’t happen, so that in her disappointment, she’ll come running to him, ready to wheel and deal.
It’s rare that a blind gossip item should have this level of detail and telling clues, and it’s also almost unheard of for all the Internet to reach unanimity on the identity of the persons involved.
Commenters at GossipRocks quickly zeroed in on Mol and Weinstein, speculating that the young nubile babe was Blake Lively. The Gossip WrapUp agreed. OhNoTheyDidn’t joined the chorus.
Dlisted’s Michael K not only echoed these analysts’ conclusions, he ran this picture:
Harvey must have been SO PISSED when B. Live got the lead in Green Lantern two short weeks after this blind item ran!
Further food for thought: Gretchen Mol and her husband, indie director Tod “Kip” Williams, randomly showed up to the NYC “Inglorious Basterds” premiere, right around the time this suite session was said to have taken place. Neither had any connection to the film. “Inglorious” was produced by The Weinstein Company and Harvey was in the house.
By the way, they also have a kid named “Ptolemy.”
Today, another blind item ran at Crazy Days and Nights that suspiciously fits the couple pictured above, and again, everyone immediately started shouting that it sounded like Gretchen Mol’s M.O.
There are all kinds of ways to get a job in Hollywood, but this one is particularly juicy. This married writer/producer/director wanted to direct this much anticipated movie. A movie for which there was a lot of competition. Well, one day the producer of the movie came over to the director’s house to interview him for the job. While he was there the director’s B- list movie and television actress wife showed up. She sat in on the interview and made it perfectly clear to the producer that she was perfectly willing to f**k him right there if it got her husband the job. The next day the producer came over and our actress and he had sex. The director got the job. What he might not have expected though is that his wife who has done this kind of thing before has continued to sleep with the producer.
Funnily enough, Kip Williams just snagged the prestigious job of directing Paranormal Activity 2, despite the fact that bigger names like Brian de Palma were rumored to get the gig, and another director had already signed on to take the helm.
One CDAN commenter noted,
“Gretchen (from the looks of IMDB) has been a series regular/co-star on 3 different TV series. One of them looks like it is starting this year. Hubby’s resume is VERY light and all indie or at least pretty low key. He has writing/producing/directing credits and I think PA2 is pretty high profile. Plus add in the rumors about Gretchen and Harvey and I think we have a winner. You guys are good.”
PA2′s producer is the schlub pictured here on the right, Oren Peli:
Does that dude look like he’s ready to say no to Gretchen Mol’s come-hither stare? Somehow I doubt it.
Now, I don’t have any idea if any of this is actually true, or if there’s just an organized campaign among blind-gossip bloggers to besmirch Gretchen Mol’s reputation with extraordinarily thinly disguised blind items.
WE REPORT…YOU DECIDE!
* * *
UPDATE: This story has certainly caused a buzz. BlindGossip is now describing the latter blind item as “solved” and accusing Mol of being the slutty director’s wife.
Not resting on his laurels, Enty from CDAN has posted another torrid, tawdry tale:
Yesterday I introduced you to the married actress who was willing to do anything to help her husband. Well her affections are not just reserved to help her husband. She also looks out for herself. One of her regulars is an A list writer and show creator who wrote for one of the greatest television shows of all time and has a new one on the same network.
Anyway, to make sure she stays in this writer’s good graces, our actress indulges his fantasies and anytime you see her with bruises on her wrists you know she was hanging out with him. One time, our actress was orally servicing this writer and someone walked in. The writer expected our actress to stop but even when she saw the person who walked in she just kept going until the act was completed.
CDAN commenters quickly zeroed in on Terence Winter, writer for the Sopranos and creator of new HBO show Boardwalk Empire…featuring Gretchen Mol.
We’re also told that Winter was the third man in the Weinstein/Mol sandwich!
But wait, there’s more. We received an email from tipster S.D., who tells us that the rumors about Gretchen Mol have only just begun to spill out…
I have a reporter friend in NYC who told me last night that these blinds are just the tip of the iceberg. I couldn’t believe my ears with some of the shit he told me about her. Most of the stories happened years ago (pre-Bettie Paige movie), but they are incredible!PS – Gretchen has been pretty much blacklisted since the casting couch blind item. She couldn’t get any meetings for pilot season and she wasn’t invited to any shows during Fashion Week in NYC (usually a mainstay at certain shows).
Again, I have no firsthand knowledge of any of this, I’m just attempting to interpret smoke signals. But if the allegations being flung around by our sources and tipsters is true, there is nothing Gretchen Mol won’t do to get what she wants…she’ll even bone her way into heaven.
ALLEGEDLY.
Follow-up Post: Opening a Pandora’s Box of Gretchen Gossip
Fifteen Songs I Heard on the Radio in Costa Rica
You might have thought ROTI went on hiatus out of laziness, but it was actually for the purpose of conducting critical pop-cultural research in the nation of Costa Rica.
Specifically, finding out what American tunes they like to rock on the radio.
My first opportunity to listen to the radio in Costa Rica was on a shuttle ride from the airport to our hotel in San Jose. The driver was playing 70s American rock of the vocalistic variety — Journey and the Doobies. I wondered whether he threw that on because he figured that American tourists yearned for those tunes — or if, more perceptively, he spotted my visage and immediately pegged me as a sucker for yacht rock.
What I wanted to believe is that he actually loves this kind of music, and preferred nothing more than to blaze the highway from Alajuela to San Jose in a dilapidated shuttle van, blasting the sweet vox of Michael McDonald.
After we acquired a rental car the next morning, I was able to begin freely perusing the airwaves. There’s nothing more enjoyable than rocking out to some fine, familiar melodies while exploring a foreign land.
Put it this way: on the first part of the journey, I was looking for a river bed (of familiar jams). I flipped through the channels and quickly found this:
This fortunate find tapped a deep vein of soft rock, particularly of the 70s variety. If they can be judged by the programming of their FM stations, Costa Ricans love some soft rock jams, the kind some long haired hippie composed on a lazy drive down the Ventura Highway.
Having made an initial gauge of this sensibility, it was time to check out the options on the contemporary pop side. This quest did not disappoint.
We turned up a diamond in the rough from the Russian group Tatu (I refuse to spell it in the “proper” way). Remember these ladies? They were auditioned by a Russian version of Lou Pearlman and chosen from a group of hundreds of competitors, on one condition: they had to pretend to be lesbian lovers. This moronic conceit led them to make a brief splash in the US before fading into obscurity.
I’d never heard this single off their failed second album — while the lyrics are laughable, its superb hook, combined with kitsch value, make it a real keeper.
(I didn’t include it because it’s very, very mildly NSFW and because the antics of Tatu definitely distract from the song itself…but the actual video for this song is hilarious.)
Further exploration of the radio dial led to a station called BEATZ 106. We got there just in time to catch the “Old School Lunch Hour.” I swear, this is a concept I’ve heard on hip hop stations in Phoenix, and maybe LA as well. I started to wonder if BEATZ 106, which did not seem to have a DJ live in the house, wasn’t just a beamed transmission from some American radio conglomerate.
Not that it mattered when they were cranking out classic hits like this:
I made a basic navigational error when first approaching Costa Rican roads — being a typical American driver, I looked at road numbers and expected to navigate that way. This is a bad idea in Costa Rica, because you will rarely see road numbers posted anywhere except the largest highways.
Thus we missed the turn we wanted to take, and ended up maneuvering through the town of San Ramon. This led us away from the main road to Arenal and along a winding road that climbed over hills, descended into sweeping curves, and crossed a variety of rickety and intricate bridges over rivers and streams. The views were awesomely epic as we paced ourselves several car lengths behind a shabby blue truck, laden with produce, that gamely attacked every hill and curve.
And we celebrated the greatness of En Vogue.
With the help of this mighty soundtrack, we approached the great Volcan Arenal, which glowered in the distance as we navigated around it.
For the next few days, the only music we heard was the song of tropical birds, the snort of wild pigs, and the splash of waterfalls into pools of fresh rainwater. Ya feel me??
Sadly, the time came for us to embark on another epic drive, this one taking us to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve. The road was unpaved, bumpy at times, and took us through ranches perched high on the top of hillsides. Cattle roamed the roads, and we saw some sweet sights like this school bus abandoned by the side of the road:
The soundtrack featured this smooth rock gem from Howard Jones. I recently discovered his song “Things Can Only Get Better” while shopping at CVS, and now this. I am starting to think that either this fellow is very underrated, or I have an extreme soft spot for corny tunes penned by Englishmen. Likely, both.
After I indulged myself in a good half-dozen soft rockers like the song above, my traveling companion revolted and switched the station to a frequency playing more contemporary hits. This is how I came to enjoy the following song by Taylor Swift, who I’d previously known only as Kanye victim.
Apparently there are two extant mixes of this song, one that’s a little rocked-up and one that’s countrified with pedal steel goodness. Biggest no brainer of all time? I think so.
Another highlight of this pop station was “My Happy Ending” by Avril Lavigne, not because it was that great of a song, but because the lyrics were frankly disturbing. This is the song that your psycho stalker listens to as she breaks into your house and crosses out all the eyes in your photos of friends and loved ones with a Sharpie before killing herself. It’s seriously frightening.
We saw tons of cool wildlife in Monteverde, including the amazing quetzal seen above, but one of my favorite moments had nothing to do with natural wonders at all. We were eating a kickass meal in a classy Italian establishment called “Pizzeria de Johnny” when an unusual version of “Dust in the Wind” began to play on the speaker system. “Is this a cover?” my companion inquired, noting the unusual vocals. “No,” I replied, “it’s actually an instrumental version with somebody in this restaurant singing along.”
Unfortunately I was not able to get this on tape, so you will have to settle for the original Kansas version…
Our next journey, and opportunity to listen to Costa Rican radio goodness, was from the mountains down to the seaside village of Manuel Antonio. This was a long and grueling journey through a variety of terrain, but as always, the tunes soothed our souls.
This song we never actually heard in its entirety — it was merely teased several times by a radio station looking to goose its commercial breaks. This didn’t really matter, because simply hearing the immortal opening notes was enough to enliven our spirits and keep us singing this song for days.
I did manage to turn up a 90s rock frequency, which my life has been sorely lacking since Boston’s 104.1 turned into a docile workplace mix station. We’re all suckers for the rock hits from our formative years, and I am no exception. Hence, I enjoyed hearing this old track from Red Hot Chili Peppers:
My theory on vintage 90s RHCP is that Flea is so superb, John Fruciante is so talented, and Chad Smith is so steady, that Anthony Kiedis can basically do whatever stupid shit comes to his mind and get away with it.
Check out these “lyrics” from this song and try to tell me what the hell he is talking about:
It’s bitter baby,
And it’s very sweet.
I’m on a rollercoaster,
but I’m on my feet.
Take me to the river,
Let me on your shore.
I’ll be coming back baby,
I’ll be coming back for more.Doo doo doo doo dingle zing a dong bone
Ba-di ba-da ba-zumba crunga cong gone badI could not forget
But I will not endeavor
Simple pleasures aren’t as special
But I wont regret it never.
Whatever that means…
In the esteemed opinion of my traveling companion, there is no greater diva than Beyonce, and thus she was bound to figure into our journey. We heard her single “Halo” a number of times in our travels, and saw the video on Latin American MTV. Even though she squeezes every last drop of pathos out of each note, I still think this song is pretty cool and one helluva power ballad.
This brings us to the biggest hit record in Costa Rica as far as we could tell – a song that was so annoyingly catchy, we should have figured out sooner who was responsible.We heard this record at least a half-dozen times and it was completely stuck in our heads.
Damn you Black Eyed Peas! Why must you be so skillfully viral!
Warning: This video features a haggard Fergie cavorting about in an attempt to roleplay as a wood nymph, and it’s not a pretty sight.
We coasted to a stop at Manuel Antonio, where the weather was hot and the Pacific waves crashing on the beach were tantalizing. We hadn’t been in town for more than five minutes when a dreadlocked hippie said to me, “Welcome to paradise!”
You will not be surprised to learn that the beach bums of Manuel Antonio LOVE them some Bob. (And so, apparently, does “secret Rasta” Laura Bush.) I heard this song blasted out of restaurants, bars and trinket dispensaries on several different occasions…
Our last day in Costa Rica was brief, but featured an epic cab ride I hope to never forget. Our friendly driver guided his red coche through the crowded, gridlocked streets of San Jose with skill and aplomb. He also had a steady hand on the radio dial that gave us some of the musical highlights of our journey…
First, he tuned to some Madge, and declared her “The Queen Madonna,” as he enjoyed this classic 80s hit.
Having set the tone, he then proceeded to blow our minds. He dialed up a R&B station and when the first notes of this song were heard, he cried, “Are You Ready?” We weren’t sure if this was the name of the song or a question directed at us, but it turned out to be both of those things. And we were not at all prepared for the musical magic that was about to carom off our domes…
As we approached the airport, a melancholy vibe descended over the cab. We realized our time in Costa Rica was drawing to an end. Our cab driver knew just what to do, and flicked his radio dial to elicit this all-time classic from one of the finest songsmiths pop music has ever known…
Costa Rica is a magical place. The people are amazing and friendly, the food is tasty, and the scenery and wildlife will drop your jaw.
I highly recommend that you visit — but leave your iPod adapter at home. Costa Rican radio has all the jams you will need for an enjoyable journey.
I Feel Sorry For Rob Fusari
Songwriter/producer Rob Fusari has had a pretty nice career. He’s written memorable hits for a variety of artists and had a couple of #1 records.
He got his big break penning Destiny’s Child’s debut single, then went on to produce one of Will Smith’s biggest and most obnoxious hits.
He’s the mastermind behind “Bootylicious,” one of the greatest guilty-pleasure singles of all time.
Recently, he had his biggest professional success yet, when he helped a young musician named Stefani Germanotta become the worldwide superstar Lady Gaga. Apparently, he smashed her as well.
Unfortunately, the entertainment biz is a tough world, especially when you start stirring the company ink with your peen. Lady Gaga kicked Fusari to the curb and now he’s on the outside looking in.
So Rob Fusari decided to sue Lady Gaga for $30 million in what looks like a pretty frivolous lawsuit. It’s hardly a smart move for a dude looking for talented young musicians to trust him with their careers. A bit of research on his track record shows that while Fusari is undoubtedly a talented hitmaker, he just can’t get out of his own way sometimes.
Frankly, you gotta feel a little bad for the guy. He helps artists become superstars, but he needs to wrap his mind around the fact that he is always going to be a behind-the-scenes bit player.
That’s just the way the game works, dig?
Rob Fusari’s music career began as a sideline to his main gig in information technology. He’d work as an office drone during the day, then hit the studio at night. While he’d grown up with the melodious rock of Boston and Journey, he began creating the R&B grooves that all the kids were listening to. Then he got laid off from his IT job, and he decided to give music a full-time try.
In a very informative interview with Billboard, Fusari described his first success in the music biz.
The decision was kind of made for me – they fired me. It seemed devastating, but it was like a weight had been lifted. I woke up the next morning and said to my mom, “I’m going to give music one year.” So I worked down in my mom’s basement in a studio the size of a closet. And sure enough, it didn’t happen in a year. I was doing co-writes, calling people, sitting by the phone . . . Barry White’s son was supposed to call for something, another guy was going to give one of my songs to Elton John. Nothing ever happened.
A buddy of mine knew this guy, Vince Herbert. Vince is a producer and an entrepreneur. A hustler with a capital H. Back then he was producing on Destiny’s Child’s first album. One day he came to my mom’s basement and I was working on the hook to “No, No, No.” When I played it for him, he said, “You’ve got to give me a copy of that. I’m working with this group who might be able to do that.” I gave him a cassette, and he calls me that night and says, “We’re cutting the record. And I’ve got a guarantee it will be their first single.”
Fusari had just come up with his first hit hook, and it was a tasty one.
He gave the 16-year-old Beyonce and her fellow Destiny’s Children their first hit — this is so old school that not only are there 4 ladies in the group, Michelle Williams was not yet among them. I personally prefer the Wyclef remix of this song, so let’s go with that:
With the success of “No, No, No,” Fusari had entree into the music business. He began working steadily with a variety of R&B artists, putting together decent if forgettable tracks. His new friend Vince Herbert brought him out to LA, where he worked with Bone Thugs, K-Ci and Jojo, and other folks of that ilk. But eventually, Fusari decided to return to New Jersey and start his own outfit.
That’s when he created a huge hit record — but it was also, creatively, a total piece of poo.
I’m talking about “Wild Wild West,” by Will Smith.
On the list of songs I despise, this one ranks pretty high. Fusari merely lifted the entire rhythm track from Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish” — a ridiculously sweet bassline if there ever was one, but interpolated here without an ounce of originality — and grafted on a sound effect from a classic Whodini hip hop song, “Wild Wild West.”
Then Dru Hill (translation: Sisqo) was recruited to sing the hook, which was merely the melody to Stevie Wonder’s chorus, but with the brilliant lyrics, “We’re going straight to the Wild Wild West,” repeated over and over again.
Basically, this was a page from the Puff Daddy School of Songwriting — an uncreative mashup of elements from other, better songs.
Moreover, it provided a stage for Will Smith to plug his latest idiotic summer blockbuster, with a lyrical style that hasn’t been in vogue since the 1980s:
Now, now, now, now once upon a time in the west
Mad man lost his damn mind in the west
Loveless, givin up a dime, nothin’ less
Now I must put his behind to the test
Then through the shadows, in the saddle, ready for battle
Bring all your boys in, here come the poison
Behind my back, all the riffin’ ya did,
Front and center, now when you look back kid?
Who dat is? A mean brotha, bad for your health
Lookin damn good though, if I could say it myself
That is absolute tripe. I can’t use strong enough terms to describe how stupid those lyrics are. You can watch the video if you want, but I’m not going to embed that musical skidmark.
The grand irony here is that even though Rob Fusari had a legit #1 hit record, he really didn’t see much in the way of profit on it. That’s because he didn’t really do anything, except glue some Will Smith rapping to a Stevie Wonder song. They got all the money and he got a shiny platter and a pat on the head.
So when he went to work on his next big hit, he learned from his mistakes. Don’t use an entire backing track and declare yourself finished — get creative and sample an element from a song, and create an original hook that’s yours alone.
He started out with the idea of using the guitar rhythm riff that opens “Eye of the Tiger,” but while he flipped through his CD case, his eyes alit on the Stevie Nicks classic “Edge of Seventeen.” Fusari grabbed the disc and built a kickass track around the filthy 16th-note guitar riff by Waddy Wachtel.
Unlike “Wild Wild West,” Fusari also came up with an amazing chorus (“I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly,”) and used the nascent lingo of “bootylicious” to devastating effect.
In the hands of Beyonce and friends, this became one of the most massive hip-hop jams of the aughts.
Unfortunately, this turned out to be more of a frustration than a triumph for Rob Fusari.
He’d been eager to record his own guitar track, so that he’d merely have to share a songwriter credit with Stevie Nicks and his collaborators, instead of yielding fees for sampling the original performance. But Mathew Knowles, Beyonce’s dadzers and controlling manager, didn’t give a damn about Fusari’s cut of the track and forbade it.
But what was worse, the Knowles clan didn’t even care to acknowledge Fusari’s role in creating the classic hit. Instead, Beyonce went around claiming that SHE was the one with the creative inspiration to pen “Bootylicious.” Honey Bee alleged in an interview with Barbara Walters that the guitar part in Stevie Nicks’ song reminded her of a voluptuous woman and thus, inspiration was born.
When word of this fraud got back to Rob Fusari, he was incredulous. He called up Mathew Knowles demanding answers.
Knowles put him in his place with a strongly worded retort. “People don’t want to hear about Rob Fusari, producer from Livingston, NJ. That’s not what sells records. What sells records is people believing the artist is everything.”
Kind of a dick thing to say, but also, totally and completely true.
But Fusari had an emotional outburst, by his own admission, and hasn’t worked for Beyonce since.
So after cranking out a string of hits, Rob Fusari found himself starting over again.
His new idea was to create a female version of The Strokes, a hard-rocking, hard-partying New York City act that would blow people away with their style and Television-esque retro rock. He put the word out to his associates to keep an eye open for rock chicks who might fit the mold.
A friend of his named Wendy Starland saw the young Stefani Germanotta performing at a club and gave Fusari the tip. He talked to Stefani on the phone and invited her out to his suburban studio. Their first encounter came as something of a surprise to Fusari:
Next week comes and I figure there’s no way this girl is going to show up. She was supposedly taking a bus from New York that would put her in Livingston at 8:40. Eighty-thirty rolls around, and I drive down to the pizzeria near the bus stop to grab a slice, and sure enough, I see this girl who does not belong in this pizzeria or in this town, and she’s asking for directions. I’m thinking to myself, “Please tell me this is not her,” because this is not the Strokes girl I’d envisioned.
[She looked] like a guidette. Totally “Jersey Shore.”
Anyway, we ride back to the studio, and I’m plotting how to cut this short. I can’t picture going to a label with this girl. We arrive, and she sits down at the piano and starts playing a song about Hollywood she’d written. And I tell you, in 20 seconds, I’m like, “Oh, my God. If I can handle my business, this girl is going to change my life.” I said, “You’ve got to come up here next week, and we have to start working.” And she did. She took the bus to my studio every day for a year straight, no exaggeration.
Fusari helped Stefani Germanotta in a few important ways.
First, he helped coin her name thanks to a T9 blunder. While attempting to express his passion for the song “Radio Gaga,” a classic they both enjoyed, he instead texted her “Lady Gaga.” She declared that from now on, that was her new moniker.
Second, he persuaded Gaga to ditch the rocking songs and become a dance-pop act. She didn’t like the idea at first — “She was anti all that. She would go to festivals like Bonnaroo.” — but eventually came around to the musical stee-lo that would make her a gigantic star.
Finally, he squired her around to labels, using all his connections to help his protege (and new boo). This was an arduous process that saw Gaga picked up by LA Reid, then dropped; ignored by Jimmy Iovine, then signed.
In the meantime, he encouraged her to work with other producers, like Akon and RedOne, who collaborated on the great track “Just Dance.”
Fusari also made musical magic with Gaga, co-writing and producing the weird and wonderful #1 hit “Paparazzi”:
Unfortch, as Gaga blew up, Fusari was left in the dust. By the time her debut album, “The Fame,” exploded, he was relegated to the sidelines.
As he sadly explains in the Billboard interview, he isn’t even sure why she dissed him:
Are you and Stefani still friends?
I don’t know. I feel like I may have been demoted to . . . what would be one level beneath friend?
Professional acquaintance?
Yeah, there you go. That’s it.
What do you think happened?
I don’t know. I can’t figure it out and I won’t ask. I don’t know if I said something or did something. I don’t know.
Will you be involved in her next record?
I don’t believe so.
So — anyway. Shit happens. Lil’ Stefani Germanotta the guidette took advantage of Fusari, picked his musical mindbrain clean, bounced on his peen a few times, and moved on to bigger and better things.
Life sucks like that sometimes, especially in the entertainment biz.
Unfortunately, Rob Fusari has not broken his cycle of getting extraordinarily butt-hurt every time someone in the biz screws him over. And this time, he’s decided to do something about it…
He dropped a $30 million lawsuit on Gaga, claiming that he essentially created the Lady Gaga brand and thus deserves a whopping cut of all present and future revenues. That kind of sounds like BS to me, given that he acknowledges Gaga’s whopping musical talent was already there before she met him, and the fact that her second album is a huge hit no thanks to him.
According to MTV, this is how the lawsuit begins its case:
Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned/ Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.
All business is personal. When those personal relationships evolve into romantic entanglements, any corresponding business relationship usually follows the same trajectory so that when one crashes they all burn. That is what happened here.
Gag me! Paging Marc Randazza — a pithy, well-written legal brief, this is not.
Most likely the work of some shady lawyer, possibly this guy with a crappy website, the suit may well have merit, but it lost me right off the bat with its grandiose bluster and mixed metaphors.
As the presiding judge in this court of public opinion, I’m not sure I buy Fusari’s claims. He’s made half a million off of Gaga’s glory, but feels like he should have profited so much more.
I’m much more inclined to side with Gaga given the smackdown her high-powered lawyers unleashed in the countersuit:
Reached for comment, Lady Gaga said only: “RAH-RAH-AH-AH-AH-AH! ROMA-ROMA-MAMAA! GA-GA-OOH-LA-LA!”
Whoops, that was actually Adrien Chen from Gawker. Now on the real:
Fusari made Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, “enter into an unlawful arrangement” when he made her sign a contract giving him rights to her future earnings, the suit says, calling his actions “predatory and financially abusive.” “The … arrangement was structured in such a way as to mask its true purpose – to provide the defendant unlawful compensation for their services as unlicensed employment agents,” the suit says.
Dri-zow! I love legal saber-rattling almost as much as I DON’T love the grueling detail work of analyzing legal briefs. So we’ll leave it at that for now and see how this plays out.
The point is this: Rob Fusari needs to climb out of the pool of bitterness that he drowns in every time one of these divas dicks him over. You want to work in pop music, or the entertainment business for that matter? Grow yourself a thicker hide.
If Fusari could have just dealt with the fact that Gaga dumped him by the side of the highway, put on a brave face for the world, and used the cache earned from creating another number one hit to move on to his next huge success, he would have been a lot better off.
Instead he’s just “the bitter producer/ex boyfriend who’s suing Gaga.”
If you were a young artist, would you be eager to work with this dude? He’ll sue you if you don’t stay best friends forever, and bitch to Billboard if he feels like you didn’t give him enough credit.
I feel bad for him though. As a white boy who enjoys the hip hop beats, I sometimes wonder what my life would be like if I devoted all my talents to creating dance floor magic. I can imagine how frustrating it must be to churn out classic jams and get no credit and little in the way of riches. But the sad fact is, nobody cares about the white boy behind the curtain. In the world of pop music, it’s all about the superstars doing what they do.
Meanwhile, what’s Gaga up to? Only making the best single of her career with a little help from Rob Fusari’s old nemesis — Beyonce!
Robert Zemeckis’ Reign of Terror Is Finally At An End
Robert Zemeckis used to be one of the finest movie directors in the world.
For his work directing Back To The Future and its sequels, as well as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? the 10-year old me considered him the greatest helmsman in the history of Hollywood.
The Academy shared my high esteem after Zemeckis masterminded the epic Forrest Gump, marshalling totems from four decades of Americana into one gigantic Hanksathon that thrilled viewers and critics alike. He was named the Best Director of 1994.
Unfortunately, Zemeckis’ career began to turn for the worse. Maybe it was some kind of alien signal that infiltrated his mind while filming Contact, which was pretty good except for the totally implausible McConaughey character. His next film, What Lies Beneath, was probably the most cliche-ridden film I’ve seen in all my days, and what’s worse, Zemeckis was fronting like he could hang with Hitchcock. Then came the grueling Cast Away, a desperate play for Oscar glory with FedEx ads plastered all over it.
All this was merely prologue to the horrid turn his career would soon take. Zemeckis decided that motion-capture technology was the future, and used it to adapt The Polar Express. The result was a melange of creepy looking figures prancing about on the screen, destroying my childhood memories of the classic Christmas book and replacing them with uncanny valley nightmares.
Despite the tepid critical response, Big Z then doubled down on the technology, using Disney funding to build his own studio. His continued his appalling rampage by cranking out the blasphemous motion-capture edition of Beowulf and then moving on to last winter’s Christmas Carol adaptation with a bizarre Jim Carrey-alike in the role of Scrooge.
Zemeckis then hit rock bottom when he went public with demands that Oscar create its own category for the horrible motion-capture films that he and only he is interested in making.
Mere weeks later, Jim Cameron’s Avatar not only beat him at his own game, it completely wiped his studio off the map. Cameron re-invented the special effects that Zemeckis spent a decade beating into the ground — Cameron insisted in calling his technology “performance capture” to distinguish it from Zemeckis’ abominations — and embarrassed him at the box office.
Now, Disney has shut down Zemeckis’ studio and sent him packing. The arrogant manner in which Zemeckis squandered his talent has long enraged me, but today I smile.
Finally, justice has been served.
The beginning of Zemeckis’ downfall was the aforementioned What Lies Beneath. This movie’s twist was that Harrison Ford was the bad guy, despite the fact that we have been conditioned to trust him over the first two acts of the movie, not to mention two decades of filmgoing.
That’s fine, but Zemeckis pooped all over the audience by giving the twist away in the theatrical trailer. His theory? People WANT to know the ending before they go to see the movie. Fuck you, Zemeckis!
Don’t even get me started on his pretentions to make a Hitchcockian thriller, all the while copping out with a supernatural plot that neatly ties up the loose ends of a preposterous story.
Ebert executed an excellent takedown of this turd of a film:
There’s a bag of tricks that skillful horror directors use, and they’re employed here by Robert Zemeckis (“Back to the Future,” “Forrest Gump”), who has always wanted, he says, to make a suspense film–”perhaps the kind of film Hitchcock would have done in his day,” according to his producer, Jack Rapke. Hitchcock would not, however, have done this film in his day or any other day, because Hitchcock would have insisted on rewrites to remove the supernatural and explain the action in terms of human psychology, however abnormal.
[...]
I’ve tried to play fair and not give away plot elements. That’s more than the ads have done. The trailer of this movie thoroughly demolishes the surprises; if you’ve seen the trailer, you know what the movie is about, and all of the suspense of the first hour is superfluous for you, including major character revelations. Don’t directors get annoyed when they create suspense and the marketing sabotages their efforts?
Actually, Zemeckis boasted about his trailer technique in promotional press for the film!
This arrogant “I understand the moviegoing public better than the critics” attitude led him to fart his career away over the following decade. After his failed attempt to recapture Oscar glory with Cast Away, Zemeckis went down the motion-capture rabbit hole, into a dark place…and dragged movie viewers down with him.
The beauty of Chris Van Allsburg’s “The Polar Express” is its magical realism, epitomized by its famous concept of a bell that can only be heard by those that believe in Santa Claus. The illustrations in this Caldecott-winning book are superb and evocative. In short, it is a genius piece of storytelling, enhanced by tremendous artistic talents.
Zemeckis took this masterpiece and decided to innovate it using the motion-capture techniques shown above. The result was a horrifying, skeevy sideshow of technology gone wrong.
i09 hit the nail on the head when they described this film as “A world of Tom Hanks faces, shudder and mutated children. When those kids smiled they looked the demons from Devil’s Advocate, which probably isn’t what this Christmas film was going for.”
The reason why this technology goes beyond lame to a place that’s frankly frightening is an effect known as the uncanny valley. Wikipedia explains it thusly:
The uncanny valley is a hypothesis regarding the field of robotics. The theory holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness.
Maybe the crowd-sourced encyclopedia isn’t the best scientific evidence, so here’s a little reinforcement from Scientific American:
The flop of the 2004 animated film The Polar Express is largely blamed on the “creepy” feeling people get when they look at very realistic-looking robots or human animations. These too real facsimiles fall into the so-called uncanny valley, between acceptably fake-looking human representations and real, healthy humans. Psychologists have long wondered whether this aversion has an evolutionary basis, and new research on macaques suggests that it does.
Princeton University researchers presented images of real monkey faces, unrealistic animated faces and realistic animated faces to five monkey subjects and recorded how long they gazed at each. Similar to the human response to objects in the uncanny valley, the monkeys avoided looking at the most realistic animated faces.
Even MONKEYS understand that this technology is monstrously bad!
If you want to make a Pixar-like computer-animated cartoon, then by all means, have at it. If you want to use effects to enhance a live-action film, awesome. But when you lean on an FX crutch that leads you to create imagery like this…
…you are crafting a cinematic nightmare.
Zemeckis’ next project was an adaptation of the classic Norse epic poem Beowulf. This ancient masterpiece is fascinating on literary and anthropological levels and inspired such modern classics as “The Lord of the Rings” – Tolkien was an Oxford don who was considered the foremost Beowulf expert of his time. His essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” called for an understanding of the film not only as a historical document but also as a literary work of genius.
Naturally, Zemeckis couldn’t wait to get his hands on this legend and transform it into a motion-capture atrocity. The Wiki entry contains all sorts of horrifying nuggets on this front:
Zemeckis did not like the poem, but enjoyed reading the screenplay. Because of the expanded budget, Zemeckis told the screenwriters to rewrite their script, because “there is nothing that you could write that would cost me more than a million dollars per minute to film. Go wild!” In particular, the entire fight with the dragon was rewritten from a talky confrontation to a battle spanning the cliffs and the sea.
[...]
Robert Zemeckis insisted that the character Beowulf resemble depictions of Jesus Christ, believing that a correlation could be made between Christ’s face and a universally accepted appeal.
[...]
Southern Methodist University’s Director of Medieval Studies Bonnie Wheeler is “convinced that the new Robert Zemeckis movie treatment sacrifices the power of the original for a plot line that propels Beowulf into seduction by Angelina Jolie—the mother of the monster he has just slain.’ What man doesn’t get involved with Angelina Jolie?’ Wheeler asks. ‘It’s a great cop-out on a great poem.’”
I think I would rather watch a video of the performance above than the final result run through the motion-capture meat grinder.
Since Robert Zemeckis knows better than anyone else what makes great cinema, he immediately began looking for another literary classic to disrespect, tarnish and adorn with effects straight out of Ghost Rider and Spider-Man 3.
Joe Morganstern of the Wall Street Journal hit a critical grand slam with this explanation of why Zemeckis’ “Carol” is such an unmitigated waste of celluloid.
To put it bluntly, if Scroogely, Disney’s 3-D animated version of “A Christmas Carol” is a calamity. The pace is predominantly glacial—that alone would be enough to cook the goose of this premature holiday turkey—and the tone is joyless, despite an extended passage of bizarre laughter, several dazzling flights of digital fancy, a succession of striking images and Jim Carrey’s voicing of Scrooge plus half a dozen other roles. “Why so coldhearted?” Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, asks the old skinflint. The same question could be asked of Robert Zemeckis, who adapted and directed the film, and of the company that financed it. Why was simple pleasure frozen out of the production? Why does the beloved story feel embalmed by technology? And why are its characters as insubstantial as the snowflakes that seem to be falling on the audience?
A catch-all answer—and by now an all-too-familiar one—lies in the unnature of that technology. Like “The Polar Express” and “Beowulf,” which were also directed by Mr. Zemeckis, “A Christmas Carol” employs a motion-capture process that translates the movements of live actors into fantasy images. For its advocates, the process is cost-efficient and good enough. For its detractors, including me, motion capture has become synonymous with a special sort of semi-lifelessness—body language that is vaguely impoverished, faces with limited mobility and dead eyes.
In the global marketing push for his new film, the director has dismissed such problems as essentially solved. But they haven’t been solved at all; they’ve only been mitigated, and partially masked by the novelty value of 3-D. Motion capture remains an impediment to capturing emotion.
FilmDrunk ran this hilarious transcript of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew blasting Zemeckis’ filmic atrocities:
Kevin Murphy: I’ll just start the bidding with the entire Robert Zemeckis Christmas movie library. [A Christmas Carol and The Polar Express.] He’s really tried, with his dead, doll-like eye animation that he does, to destroy Christmas for children all over the world.
Mike Nelson: Smack dab in the middle of the uncanny valley, aren’t they? You just don’t know whether to scream or be delighted.
KM: Just to warm myself up for seeing [A Christmas Carol], just to amp up my hate a little bit, I watched the Christmastown/Nuremberg-rally scene in Polar Express. The end, when the elves are marching in formation, and Hitler—oh, I’m sorry, Santa—comes out…
Bill Corbett: [Laughs.] Hitler Claus!
KM: It’s severely backlit behind him, and everyone is just sort of…
BC: [evil voice] “Ho Ho Heil!”
KM: [Laughs.] Yeah. I can’t get on board with Roger Ebert about A Christmas Carol. I think he’s one hundred thousand percent wrong.
BC: Did Roger Ebert like it? Wow. What’s going on with that man?
KM: I don’t know. Maybe he likes misery and horror for children.
The fact that Robert Zemeckis, the guy who directed fucking Back to the Future, flushed his career down the motion capture toilet is offensive enough. That he felt he deserved laurels for this “achievement” is truly staggering.
This article from La Tercera, also discovered by FilmDrunk and translated from Spanish, reveals some quotes from Zemeckis that betray amazing arrogance. He compares his achievements in motion-capture to the animation innovations of Walt Disney himself and suggests he should not only win an Oscar, but a SPECIAL Oscar acknowledging his unique talents.
“I would say it would be appropriate to create a new category, as when Walt Disney made the first animated film. He was given a special award because no one had done that before,” said the pioneer in applying new technologies to cinema.
Zemeckis’ henchman Jack Rapke is also quoted in the article saying that Carrey deserves an Oscar for his performance. Why don’t you jokers (a) stop toppling masterpieces of Western culture and (b) stop awarding yourselves Oscars for at best mediocre, and at worst blasphemous, cinematic diarrhea.
Luckily for me, the market intervened. Disney watched in horror as James Cameron greatly surpassed Zemeckis’ “achievements” in motion capture technology.
Avatar has its critics, but one thing that’s universally acknowledged is that it is a technical masterpiece that manages to bridge the uncanny valley. The Na’vi were believable figures on the screen, rather than horrifying dead-eyed monsters. Not only that, but Avatar’s massive box office gross completely wiped the floor with Zemeckis’ “Carol.”
So let us stand and applaud as Disney drops the guillotine on Zemeckis’ reign of terror.
Walt Disney Studios pulled the plug on Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture company on Friday, the latest in a string of cost-cutting moves. ImageMovers Digital, which is based near San Francisco and employs 450 people, will slowly wind down production over the next few months.
In some ways, the ghost of Christmas past paid Mr. Zemeckis a visit. His hugely expensive “A Christmas Carol” was a big disappointment for Disney, especially considering how much promotional muscle the studio put behind it. And despite his pioneering work in motion-capture technology, Mr. Zemeckis has been leapfrogged in the genre by James Cameron and “Avatar.”
[...]
Mr. Zemeckis said in a statement, “I’m incredibly proud of the talented team that we assembled.” He added, “Their pride and dedication to making quality movies is evident in everything we have produced.”
If by that you mean, your studio was obsessed with plastering crappy special effects over everything, besmirching great works of art in the process, then I completely agree.
Were I to obtain a DeLorean with the ability to go back in time, I would have to consider heading to the mid-90s in order to slap some sense into Robert Zemeckis.
He used to be such an awesome director. Now he’s an delusional joke dwelling deep within the uncanny valley. I’m just thankful that his corporate parents realized what many of us have known for years – it’s high time to pull the plug on his operations.
I guess the fallout from the economic apocalypse isn’t ALL bad.
