A Porn Star, an Elf and Two Crooners: The Startling Past Lives of HBO Stars

May 21, 2012 2 Comments

Like many great HBO shows, the current hit Game of Thrones features a varied and evolving ensemble, packed with compelling characters.

One character who has become more important in the ongoing second season is Shae, the prostitute friend of Tyrion Lannister portayed by Turkish German actress Sibel Kekilli.

Kekilli is a highly respected actress in Germany, and has bagged two Lolas (the German equivalent of the Oscars) for her film work in that country.

But in a huge scandal that exploded in 2004, just as Kekilli was rising to fame, it was revealed that she previously made twelve hardcore porno movies under the name Dilara!

I may or may not have viewed one of these films strictly in the name of research, and suffice it to say, it was not tame by any stretch.

In other words, Kekilli’s convincing performance as a sex worker in Game of Thrones isn’t much of a stretch for this experienced actress. And it’s the latest triumph in a career that’s quickly turning her porn past into not much more than a footnote…

Although her parents apparently excommunicated her when they found out about her dirty doings, I think “Dilara” Kekilli’s backstory is actually kinda cool. I think every HBO show should have an actor with porn experience on it (James Deen would be perfect for Girls).

Besides, she’s not the only HBO star with a surprising past life.

For some time now, Major Beans and I have been tracking the amusing and bizarre careers that HBO actors had BEFORE they headlined shows like Game of Thrones, Extras, and Flight of the Conchords. Here are the best finds we’ve uncovered.

This is probably the revelation that made me laugh the hardest.

Did you know that Ricky Gervais, creator of the original The Office along with HBO shows like Extras and Life’s Too Short, began his entertainment career in an 80s synthpop group called Seona Dancing?

Here’s an incredible video of Gervais performing live in a vividly belted white jumpsuit, making a game attempt at smoldering in New Romantic fashion.

Seona Dancing released two singles and pretty much flopped in the UK, so the group broke up and Gervais moved on to DJing and music managing, including serving as the manager of Suede early in their career. He finally wound up at XFM London, where he teamed up with Stephen Merchant, and with his help, launched the TV career that continues to this day.

But a funny thing happened with Seona Dancing’s single, “More to Lose,” in the meantime — an incredible tale uncovered by Allmusic. In 1985, a Filipino radio station, DWRT-FM, picked up the single and started playing it, and the song became a massive hit in the Phillipines!

DWRT-FM was extremely elusive about the identity of its new smash, which it called either “Medium” by Fade or “Fade” by Medium, depending on the day. DWRT even recorded its own station identification over the track so rival stations couldn’t play the song, and all the while it became a bigger and bigger cultural force. By the time the other stations figured it out (Shazam would have been helpful, but it wasn’t invented for another 25 years), “More to Lose” was a certified uberjam in Manila.

As Allmusic’s Michael Sutton explains:

In one part of the world, Seona Dancing’s “More to Lose” became an ’80s anthem as ubiquitous as Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes,” but with the eternal hipster cool of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” Its opening piano riff — conveying the sound of falling teardrops — became the soundtrack of countless high-school dances in Manila, Philippines during the ’80s and even beyond.

So there you have it. Before he gained fame as a master purveyor of cringe-inducing comedy, Ricky Gervais wrote and sang the one of the most essential 80s hits in Phillipine history.

Here’s the studio edition of “More to Lose,” along with a simply amazing 80s Gervais publicity photo.

And Ricky Gervais isn’t the only HBO star with a mildly embarrassing musical act in his past…

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Tonight’s Oscar Winners: A Cheat Sheet [DB]

February 26, 2012 Leave a comment

ROTI’s top gun when it comes to awards season, DB, is back to predict the winners of tonight’s ceremony. You always can find his work at his own site, I-am-DB.com, where this article premiered on Friday. After you get done trouncing everyone at your Oscars party picks contest by relying upon DB’s prognostications, I highly recommend you add his intelligent stylings to your bookmarks bar or RSS feed, like, pronto. 

Alright, we’re two days from the big night and it’s time to lay the cards on the table. As usual, the outcome of some categories seems set in stone, while others still have some suspense going for them. Other Oscar pundits are saying that all but two or three categories are completely sewn up, yet it’s never as cut and dry as they’d like to claim it is. There are always more races that could fall in different ways than anybody ever seems willing to admit. Which are which this year? Let us see…

BEST PICTURE

When the Academy announced last summer that they were reconfiguring the Best Picture competition such that the number of nominees would fall somewhere between a minimum of five films and a maximum of ten, they pointed out that they applied the calculation model to the previous ten years worth of ballots and found that some years would still have yielded only five nominees, while others would have seen six, seven, eight or nine make the list. Considering that this was a somewhat underwhelming year for movies, most pundits were expecting seven, maybe eight. But we got nine. And now that the ceremony is upon us, there’s only one being talked about. With the full muscle of Oscar maestro Harvey Weinstein behind it, The Artist is the film to beat on Oscar night. It collected plenty of critics awards during the season, and its standing was affirmed by wins from the Producers Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America, the British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA) and its win for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy) at the Golden Globes. Some might argue that The Help has a chance as well, based on its three wins at the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the fact that it’s the most commercially successful film of the bunch. It clearly has the love of actors – the largest voting block within the Academy – but that won’t be enough to carry it all the way, especially when it missed out on key nominations for Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Editing. The only nominees that might surprise are The Descendants and Hugo, but The Artist is the movie that seems to be making everyone and their mother feel that special feeling. As a paean to the early days of Hollywood and the magic of moviemaking, I think Hugo is a more successful film, and certainly one with more depth than The Artist. But by this point the silent charmer’s victory seems assured. And I suppose it’s nice that the movie was made without any aspirations for awards whatsoever. It’s a small film made from a place of love and affection, whose entire creative team has been genuinely overwhelmed by the outpouring of acclaim. That’s kinda nice.

Prediction: The Artist 

Personal Choice: None of the nine movies truly captured my heart, but Moneyball is the one that most closely meets my barometer for what a Best Picture winner should be.

BEST DIRECTOR

This award, of course, usually goes hand in hand with Best Picture. I don’t imagine this year will see a split, despite some saying that Scorsese may win his second. The legendary lion did take the Golden Globe, but the better indicator is the DGA award, and that went to Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist. I expect the Academy will follow suit.

Prediction: Michel Hazanavicius 

Personal Choice: The Tree of Life is too imperfect to deserve Best Picture, but in this category I’m less inclined to fault a movie’s flaws than I am to reward a director with vision and ambition. In that respect, none of this year’s nominees can match Terrence Malick.

BEST ACTOR

A category that was looking reasonably predictable in mid-January is much more in flux now. George Clooney had been out ahead, but Jean Dujardin has closed in tight. Not only did he snag trophies from SAG and BAFTA (both of which share some members with the Academy), but he’s kept visible these last couple of weeks with an amusing Funny or Die video in which he auditions for the villain role in a number of high-profile franchises, as well as a cameo in an Artist-inspired, French-themed Saturday Night Live sketch. Clooney and Dujardin are both charmers who would be enjoyable at the microphone, so no help determining who has the edge on that score. And even with the two of them seemingly neck and neck, this is the category that feels to me most poised for an upset. Brad Pitt stars in two Best Picture nominees, did great – many have said career-best – work in both of them, and has continually pushed himself as an actor. The personal investment he had in getting Moneyball made and the struggles he endured in doing so were well documented, and they add a nice, emotional narrative to his nomination. Toss in his charity work and general good humor and graciousness, and I think he could pull off a surprise victory. Gary Oldman is a longer shot, but some voters may want to reward him for an incredible career thus far. As for Demián Bichir, his nomination and the attention it brings to a film that puts the complex immigration issue in a personal light will be the extent of his reward. (An essay by journalist Jose Antonio Vargas about the importance of Bichir’s film and his nomination was published recently in Entertainment Weekly.) So…Dujardin’s victory in the more recent contests may tip the scales in his favor, making him the smart bet. But whether it’s because my gut tells me Clooney has broader support, or because I personally don’t see Dujardin’s performance as Oscar-caliber (not that personal feelings should ever govern these picks) or because I’m an idiot…I’m sticking with Clooney for the win.

Prediction: George Clooney

Personal Choice: Again, there’s nothing here that I can passionately go to bat for, but I was probably most affected by Bichir’s performance. And if Pitt somehow takes it, I’ll be all smiles.

BEST ACTRESS

This year, it’s the Best Actress category that best exemplifies the change of winds that can occur between the first half of the awards season – dominated by the regional critics awards – and the second half of the season, where the guilds, Golden Globes and national critics awards (mainly the Broadcast Film Critics Association prizes) are handed out. The first half of the season indicated that Michelle Williams was the force to be reckoned with for her impressive take on Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn. But it only takes a few key events to change the course the race; it’s down to Meryl Streep and Viola Davis now. Davis took the awards from SAG and the BFCA, while Streep won the BAFTA award and the Golden Globe (for a drama; Williams won the musical/comedy Globe). So this thing is pretty evenly split.

Streep gives another great performance (no surprise), especially in her many scenes as the elderly Margaret Thatcher. This is her record 17th nomination, and she hasn’t won since 1982; she’s lost the last 12 times. The Hollywood community has undying adoration and reverence for her, and whenever she wins an award at another event (and she’s won many in the last decade alone), she’s always funny and down to earth. The crowd loves seeing her up there. But they always know that Meryl Streep will be back within a couple of years and they’ll have another chance. The same can’t be said for Viola Davis, who will have a much harder time finding another lead role that could put her back in the Oscar race anytime soon. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way the industry works. Davis is a wonderful actress who has earned the love and respect of many filmmakers over the years, but the opportunities for her to play rich leading roles are few and far between. She might not have even gotten the part in The Help if it hadn’t been for 2008′s Doubt, which earned her a Best Supporting Actress nomination for just two scenes (both opposite Streep). Davis has given heartfelt and moving speeches at her other wins this season, and her peers seem thrilled that she’s finally getting her moment to shine. And lest we forget, she’s excellent in The Help as a maid weary from years of service and dehumanization. She carries it in every step she takes, suggesting so much more internally than she ever has the chance to say out loud. Meryl Streep’s time could be upon us again, but it feels more like Davis’ moment…and I’d wager that even Streep is voting for her.

Prediction: Viola Davis

Personal Choice: Streep is overdue for Oscar #3, and she rocks it in The Iron Lady, but I’m rooting for Davis. I’d be fine with Williams too. She’s terrific in a part that seems so unlikely for her. It’s easy to imagine Meryl Streep will hit a bullseye playing Margaret Thatcher. It’s harder to imagine Michelle Williams hitting a bullseye as Marilyn Monroe, but she absolutely does.

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Oscar Nominations Eve: Predicting Tomorrow’s Picks [DB]

January 23, 2012 Leave a comment

The Oscar nominees drop tomorrow morning at 8 eastern, and at the 11th hour, ROTI’s official Oscars expert — DB, the eponymous author of I-am-DB.com — is here to give you tomorrow’s news today. His guesses are below. Check back at ROTI for more Oscars crossposts from this great new movie & TV site.

Predicting the nominees has been a bitch this year.

For starters, everyone seems to agree that 2011 wasn’t all that strong a year for movies. There was a lot of good and not much great…yet almost every category sports an abundance of worthy nominees. And while a few frontrunners are starting to emerge, no win feels inevitable. Usually by this time, the countless critics awards and initial guild nominations have helped clarify the field a bit, with at least one or two categories sporting a sure-fire winner. Not so this year. Without the usual sense of passion centered around a handful of films, things seem more prone to change between now and late February. All of which makes it an exciting race, but not an easy one to forecast. The new Best Picture rules don’t exactly help either. What new Best Picture rules, you may ask? Well let’s get the party started and find out…

Oh, a note for the nine of you that have actually read these in the past: normally I include my personal nomination picks for each category, but I’ve decided to hold off on that this year since there are still a few key movies that have yet to arrive in the Bay Area or which I just haven’t had a chance to see. They include The Iron Lady, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Coriolanus and Albert Nobbs. I missed the boat on a few others, including the acclaimed indie Tyrannosaur, but once again I’m pleased to say that I’ve seen pretty much everything that’s part of the conversation (I even saw Margaret during its super-quick theatrical run! ). Anyway, at some point between now and the awards, I’ll be sure to publish my own picks. Because I’m way smarter than the Academy.

BEST PICTURE

The Artist
The Descendants
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Help
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life

Now then: rule changes. Note that on the list above, I’ve included eight movies. The especially astute among you will further note that eight is less than ten. Remember two years ago, when the Academy decided there would be ten nominees for Best Picture instead of the traditional five? The change benefited movies that, it’s safe to say, wouldn’t have made the cut on a five-film list. (Think The Blind Side, 127 Hours and District 9, to name a few.) Well last June, the Academy announced it was shaking up the process even further. The number of nominees will now fall somewhere between five and ten, and we won’t know the tally until the nominations are revealed.

Those of you familiar with Johnny Dangerously will understand if I pause at this point to quote Roman Maroni, who always had a colorful way of putting things.

Based on how many of the roughly 6,000 Academy members return their ballots and make selections in the Best Picture category, the accounting aces at PricewaterhouseCoopers will determine what percentage of first place votes a movie needs to earn in order to secure a nomination. According to the Academy’s press release on the topic, this new system means that the nominated films will more accurately reflect Academy members’ favorite movies. The downside is that because of the way the calculations work, a significant number of voters’ ballots will essentially be tossed out. It’s a system that favors consensus but means not every voting member will have their voice heard. For statistical nerds out there, Steve Pond of TheWrap.com is an expert in crunching Oscar numbers and has examined and explained the process in detail.

What this boils down to for schmucks like me is that predicting the Best Picture nominees just got a lot trickier. But schmucks we are, and predict we shall.

Count on The Artist and The Descendants, which have grabbed the lion’s share of the critics awards and each took home top Golden Globes recently (the former in the musical/comedy category, the latter for drama). The Help and Hugo are close to certain, and Midnight in Paris is probably in there too. After that, the real guesswork begins. Two movies with late December releases that were widely expected to be contenders are War Horse and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. But War Horse, despite strong reviews and good box office, has failed to gain traction with the industry. While cited by the Producers Guild of America and the American Cinema Editors, it went unnominated by the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America (which has been generous to Steven Spielberg over the years) and the American Society of Cinematographers. Those omissions hurt. Has War Horse been left out to pasture?

As for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, it was the last move of the year to screen for critics and guilds, with some of the season’s first voting critic circles convening before they’d seen it. The lack of recognition by the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild could be due to ballots being cast before the movie was seen. But mixed reviews and the same lack of guild support slowing down War Horse‘s chances indicate the movie just hasn’t caught on. There have been a smattering of nominations from this group or that, and it could factor into a couple of races further down, but Best Picture no longer seems in the cards.

The unlikely beneficiary of those two movies’ lackluster showings appears to be The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which in contrast to both, has scored big time with the guilds. It’s been nominated by the PGA, ACE, ACS and most surprisingly, the DGA and WGA. With all that support, its Oscar chances look better than anyone would have expected (and better than it probably deserves, but that’s another story). Then there’s The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick’s poetic rumination on life, death, the universe and really gorgeous swirls of color. It was admired by critics, and no doubt it has ardent supporters within the Academy. The question is whether it has enough to earn the necessary number of first place votes.

An assured ten-picture field might have opened the conversation up to movies like The Ides of March, My Week With Marilyn, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Drive, or even some populist choices like Bridesmaids, Rango or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. (Don’t laugh; Potter was one of the year’s best-reviewed movies, and even within the industry a lot of people feel it deserves recognition as the closing chapter of the most financially successful franchise ever.)

War Horse could still muster the support it needs, while The Tree of Life may not have the necessary backing. Moneyball is a question mark too. But this is the list I’m going with.

BEST DIRECTOR

Michel Hazanavicius – The Artist
Alexander Payne – The Descendants
Martin Scorsese – Hugo
Woody Allen – Midnight in Paris
Terrence Malick – The Tree of Life

This category has three sure things: Hazanavicius, Payne and Scorsese. Two spots remain, and a lot of people are in the mix for them. The affection for Midnight in Paris will probably carry Woody Allen, but I wouldn’t call him a lock. Although The Help is a safe bet for Best Picture, its director Tate Taylor has been largely ignored throughout the season. The film’s direction isn’t especially dynamic (not that it needed to be), so he’ll probably fall prey to bigger names and bolder visions. If War Horse misses in Best Picture, it will kill any chance Spielberg has…which I sense isn’t much at this point anyway. David Fincher, on the other hand, could benefit from the lovefest that has swarmed Dragon Tattoo.

If the Academy goes with Hazanavicius, Payne, Scorsese, Allen and Fincher, it will match the DGA’s nominees five-for-five. That rarely happens. In the last 25 years, it’s only happened three times (1998, 2005, 2009). When the two bodies diverge, the Academy often favors an auteur or an indie filmmaker. (Mulholland Drive‘s David Lynch, City of God‘s Fernando Meirelles, The Sweet Hereafter‘s Atom Egoyan and Red‘s Krzysztof Kieslowski are among those who scored Oscar nods but weren’t cited by the DGA.) This year, that could mean good news for Drive‘s Nicolas Winding Refn, who took the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival last summer. But Drive is feeling more like a critic’s darling and less like a movie that’s connecting within Hollywood. The more likely nominee would be Terrence Malick for The Tree of Life. While the movie is divisive and it certainly isn’t perfect, Malick is a visionary filmmaker and one who has the admiration of many colleagues. Whatever the movie’s chances in the Best Picture race, I think it has a good chance of landing here.

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Playing the Starbond Market: Hits and Misses from the Hollywood Stock Exchange

December 5, 2011 2 Comments

For over a decade, I’ve been an avid player on the Hollywood Stock Exchange. 

This online game lets you “invest” in movies, celebrities, and funds managed by other players. From an initial bank account of $2 million, I’ve grown my holdings to over $150 million with ground-floor investments in films like “Borat,” “The Simpsons Movie” and “The Hunger Games.” (Also, early in the site’s existence, a friend and I caused a minor run on the market by going on bulletin boards and claiming to represent a cabal that was going to drive stocks up and down at will.) Right now, I’m ranked about 13,000 out of almost 180,000 players. 91st percentile, trick!

While moviestock values are easily figured, given that each stock cashes out five weeks after the movie’s release at $1 per million the film grosses domestically — thus a $100m take after five weeks would lead to a moviestock cashing out at $100 — starbond values are a little more complex. They periodically adjust based upon market demand, as well as on a formula that reflects the success of the actor’s recent movie.

Or as HSX puts it, “The price of a StarBond reflects overall star power as determined by HSX Traders as well as how much money their films make at the box office as determined by their trailing average gross (TAG). Beginning with their second film, StarBond prices are adjusted to match the TAG when credited MovieStocks cash out. If a celebrity should happen to meet the end of his/her movie career, the StarBond is cashed out at TAG value.”

Got all that? Here’s a rundown of my recent successes — and letdowns — in the starbond marketplace.

SUCCESSES

Leighton Meester
Average paid: $9.61
Current value: $48.69
Percentage gain: +406.66%

Leighton Meester is quietly putting together an OK movie career!

Based on the bizarrely enduring popularity of ROTI’s hyperbolic Gossip Girl takedown, I was well aware that the young ladies and lady-boys of this show exerted a powerful force on the citizens of the Internet. That’s why LMEES was a good upside play with a very inexpensive bond in the single digits. But though her fame slowly grew throughout the late aughts, it was ironically the bomb Country Strong that established her bankability on the HSX market, because her bond had nowhere to go but up. It’s actually not a bad movie, either.

She followed that up with the decently successful thriller The Roommate, in which she terrorized Minka Kelly, and then played sidekick to Selena Gomez (see below) in Monte Carlo.

No doubt her beauty and notorious born-in-prison story have created quite an internet following for ol’ Meester. Her films have done OK too. Still, I think it’s time to sell high on this starlet before her next movie comes out — which also stars the next actor on our countdown. I love Meester, but I’m not convinced of her staying power as a movie star. Read more of this post

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Thinning the Herd in Michael Eric Dyson’s Jay-Z Seminar

October 17, 2011 1 Comment

Recently, news outlets including The Nation reported that eminent African-American scholar Michael Eric Dyson has been teaching a seminar on Jay-Z’s “art and craft” at Georgetown University.

Unsurprisingly, the class is a huge hit, with over 140 students enrolled.

While this number is cited by Dyson as evidence of the seminar’s success, it raises the question of how effective this class really is for the students taking it, as opposed to an occasion for Dyson to hear himself talk while TAs handle all the actual discussion groups…

Wouldn’t it be a more successful undertaking for everyone involved if the class size was pared down to the point that each student could expect to interact with the brilliant Dyson, and to work out their ideas in freewheeling discussions? That’s kind of tough to pull off with a group that’s four times larger than the average Georgetown class.

Dyson’s fellow Georgetown scholar, Kelley Wickham-Crowley, faced a similar quandary when she taught a class on “The Lord of the Rings” several years ago. (It was actually a sneaky way to get people to sign up for a medieval literature course with a side dish of Tolkien, but that was forgivable because it was a really GOOD medieval literature course.) Needless to say, students perusing the course catalog jumped when they saw a course based on such a compelling pop-cultural topic and the signups were off the charts. But to avoid holding the class in a cavernous lecture hall, Wickham-Crowley greeted the class on Day One with a test to ensure they had read and remembered “The Lord of the Rings.” Everyone who failed the test was kicked out. Brilliant!

Since Michael Eric Dyson is a busy guy, ROTI created this test to help him out. It’s a simple 15-question examination; get fewer than 10 questions right and you’re outta there! Administering this bad boy would separate the true Jay-Z scholars-in-training from the dumb-asses who just wanted to get 3 credits for a class about a rapper.

Let’s begin! Answers are at the bottom of this post.

1. According to the song “December 4th,” Jay-Z was concieved when his parents, Gloria Carter and Adnes Reeves, made sweet love under what kind of tree?
a) Weeping Willow
b) Oak
c) Sycamore
d) Dollar Tree
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