Breaking the Line

The Passion of Bjorn Pork: Down in the Muck With Mel Gibson and Joe Ezsterhas

Under the heading of "I read it so you don't have to," I slogged through all 30,000 words of Joe Ezsterhas' Heaven and Mel and wrote up the results for Slate. Long story short: Mel Gibson is, as expected, a raving, anti-Semitic loon, with a curious email alias (in the above title) to boot. (Remember when he was the fun, wacky kind of crazy, rather than the I'll-just-take-this-butcher-knife-to-bed-with-me kind? Good times.) Ezsterhas, as expected, turns out to be a self-serving sleaze whose converstion to devout Catholicism has only added self-righteousness into the mix. Also, Mel Gibson's father believes that Pope John Paul I was murdered when a cardinal sat on his face. Enjoy.

Let Me Down Easy's Anna Deavere Smith on Healthcare, Nurse Jackie and the Future of Acting

Like a lot of people I've been interviewing of late, I've been following Anna Deavere Smith's career for night on two decades (or, to be more precise, since my college girlfriend, a theatre major, hipped me to Smith's work). Furthering the sense of personal connection, her latest play, Let Me Down Easy, began with interviews at Yale New Haven Hospital, where a family member of mine was successfully treated for cancer around the same time I was learning about Fires in the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles. So it was a special thrill to get a chance to interview her for the A.V. Club, even if some of the Philistine comments are making my blood boil just a bit at the moment. (To the writer who regales us with the story of how Smith's character impersonations were ridiculed at the recent Television Critics Association meeting by audience members who compared her rigorous embodiment of her interview subjects' speech and gestures to a character on SCTV, I'm sorely tempted to respond, "That's why they write about fucking TV." But I didn't, because I'm a diplomat.) Anyway, you can see a filmed version of Let Me Down Easy on PBS beginning this evening, so judge for yourself.

Bonus! A review of the filmed version of Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles from (gulp!) 2001.

Four Lions' Chris Morris: Suicide-Bomber Satire, But No 'Mad Guys With Beards'

Chris Morris' Four Lions was one of the best-reviewed movies at Sundance, but while lackluster romantic comedies with B-list stars got snapped up, Four Lions languished without a distributor for nine months. The fact that it's a comedy about suicide bombers might have something to do with that. (Respect due to the newly formed Drafthouse Films for stepping into the breach, and starting their new venture with a bang.) A well-known, if not always well-liked, British comedian, Morris is an expert at pushing people's buttons, by which I mean making genuinely confrontational art that shocks to a purpose and makes you laugh at its audacity as much as its keen wit. Exhibit A is his TV show Brass Eye — think Da Ali G Show without characters — in which Morris dupes politicians and public figures into throwing their weight behind non-existent causes, like the campaign against a fictitious drug called Cake. ("One kiddie cried all the water out of his body," says one of Morris' marks. "Can you imagine how his mother felt?") Brass Eye's assault on media hysteria and malleable celebrities peaked with the one-off special known as "Paedogeddon," in which Phil Collins cheerily endorses a bogus charity called "Nonce Sense."

Morris, who got his start with Steve Coogan and Armando Iannucci on the surrealist news satireThe Day Today (and its radio predecessor On the Hour), has been a notoriously tough man for the British press to interview, but he softened his stance as Four Lions release approached. Back at Sundance, though, I was one of only three journalists to interview him, and I've been waiting all year to unleash our talk on the world. It's now up at the A.V. Club, where the commenters are as usual doing me proud. I also reviewed the film for the Philadelphia City Paper, which is here. And now, a few of Morris' greatest hits:

   

The Tillman Story: The Outrage Keeps on Coming

I'm not one of those "You owe it to yourself to watch this movie" people; it feels too much like you're doing the advertising department's work for them. Put it this way: I'll be mad if you don't see The Tillman Story. I thought what I knew about the cover-up of former NFL star Pat Tillman's combat death in Afghanistan, how the military circulated disinformation to disguise the fact that he was a victim of friendly fire, was bad enough, but in Amir Bar-Lev's deeply enraging documentary, it gets worse. It turns out, based on interviews with soldiers from Tillman's unit, that his death was less a consequence of the fog of war than it was the posturing of gung-ho troops more eager to participate in a potential firefight than to be sure what they were shooting at. Not only did they fire once at Tillman, who had gone ahead and doubled back to check on troops stuck fixing a broken Humvee, but they fired, repositioned themselves to get a better shot, and opened fire again. The documentary's original title, I'm Pat Fucking Tillman, reflects Tillman's last words, an anguished and disbelieving plea that no one stopped shooting long enough to hear.

I didn't have much space for my review in the Philadelphia City Paper, but I hope it's enough to spur you to keep an eye out for this essential documentary when it comes your way. You owe it to yourself.

 

Kristen Schaal & Rich Blomquist: The Sexiness of Sexy Sex

If you've left this house this summer, chances are you've seen, or at least heard, Kristen Schaal in something — she has roles in Toy Story 3, Dinner for Schmucks, Get Him to the Greek and the upcoming Going the Distance — and if you haven't, you've probably seen her on The Daily Show, or if you've been catching up on your DVDs, as Flight of the Conchords' obsessed fan, Mel. Perhaps even as a switchboard operator in the Mad Men pilot. You get the point: she's all over the goddamn place. Schall's boyfriend, Rich Blomquist, is less of a household name/face, but he's got an impressive comic pedigree as well, including 5 Emmys as a Daily Show staff writer.

As you might expect, then, my joint interview with the loving couple on the subject of their jointly authored tome The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex, was a boisterous affair, made more so by the noisy postgame celebration of New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand's office softball team, who invaded our formerly quiet midtown bar about halfway through. (Luckily, Schall and Blomquist's end of the conversation came through loud and clear; even more so, my end was basically obliterated.) Needless to say, the conversation focused on sex — or, as Schaal put it, "twats and etcetera" — encompassing bestiality, the malodorous nature of medieval sex and the legendary baby-dragging death of Jonathan Swift. (That last part might have been a joke.) We also got into what it was like for a stand-up comedian who's used to being the sole judge of her own material and a veteran of the collective atmosphere of TV writers' rooms to collaborate on the same project, the continually dispiriting state of American politics, and the story of how they met, which is quite a sweet one despite involving a talking snake and vomiting into a trash can. More, along with the usual mix of delightfully perspicacious and deliberately idiotic comments, at the A.V. Club.

Take This Cord and Shove It: A Guide to (Mostly) Free TV

Also in Salon (or "on" — I can never decide which preposition I prefer), a brief guide to getting TV without paying for cable. As I detail in my mildly indulgent intro, my family and I have been doing thusly since we moved last spring. I'd been boiling over Comcast's obscene rates for some time — upwards of $100 a month for basic cable with digital and high-def add-ons and a DVR "rental" — and the specter of inviting them to drill holes in our brand-new walls was more than I could bear. Combined with the (then-)upcoming digital transition, which promised over-the-air HD broadcast and the arrival of the (now-discontinued) DTVPal DVR, that was all we needed; as long as we could get Lost in widescreen and hear that 24 "whoosh" in surround sound, paying a la carte for the rest didn't seem so bad. (The latter, incidentally, is what sold my initially skeptical wife on our flatscreen in the first place. 42 inches of plasma TV seemed like an absurd luxury until the added thrill of high-def Jack Bauer kicked in.) It's not an easy process, as some commenters have been quick to point out, but it's not as complicated as you might think. I've been surprised at how little my otherwise much smarter-than-me friends know about alternatives to cable and satellite, taking advantage of which only gets easier as new TVs and DVD players come with built-in tuners and internet capabilities. There are some up-front costs, and a significant investment in time, to be paid up front, but once you've got it humming, there's a special thrill in watching CSI: Miami in all its glorious absurdity while silently telling your former cable provider to go fuck themselves with each indrawn breath. Or maybe that's just me.

The "Hurt Locker" Reality Show: Bad Idea or Blessing in Disguise?

It's taken me most of the week to catch up on my two weeks off, so I'm hilariously behind on posting. (There was a brief bat-removal interlude as well.) Let's start with the present and work backwards, beginning with this Salon opinion piece about the miniature controversy surrounding the G4 network's announcement that it plans to air a reality show titled Bomb Patrol: Afghanistan next spring. Given that G4's usual programming lineup includes stuff like Cheaters and American Ninja, the prospect of them venturing into a war zone has understandably been met with a combination of skepticism and alarm, but it's worth pointing out that many of the outlets who are harrumphing over the potential hybrid of news and entertainment tend to present much more of the latter. I'm not crazy about the potential for Bomb Patrol to turn out as Kabul Shore, but given the appalling lack of in-theater coverage devoted to a war that has tragically outlived most Americans' attention spans, I'm inclined to welcome any coverage at all, especially some that might reach G4's core audience of 18 to 34-year-old males, the kind who are a lot more likely to enlist in the armed forces than sit through an hour of Frontline.

The Other Guys' Adam McKay: Will Ferrell's Partner in Crime

Posting has been and will be a tad light, as I'm headed out for a couple of weeks, but I've been stockpiling interviews like a squirrel prepping for winter, so they'll be flowing regularly, albeit with less preamble than usual. Here's my A.V. Club chat with Adam McKay, the director and co-writer of The Other Guys, as well as Anchorman, Talladega Nights and Step Brothers. (Should you have overlooked it, Paul Rudd and I talked Anchorman at some length only last week.) McKay was a generous subject and a fast talker — the transcript ran nearly twice as the one from my imminently upcoming interview with Patricia Clarkson, which ran only a few minutes shorter — which worked out well since he has several dozen projects in the works and I tried to touch on as much as reasonably possible.  Most surprising, and spattered with less fanboy drool than his adaptation of Garth Ennis' comic The Boys, is a biopic of legendary/infamous political consultant Lee Atwater, whose greatest hits include the notorious Willie Horton ads that harnessed racist stereotypes to put George H.W. Bush in the White House. McKay's political leanings have mostly been confined to the virtual pages of the Huffington Post, but it would be fascinating to see him turn his talents to more pointedly satirical ends.

Ain't That a Kick in the Head: Inception Explained

"Wait — whose subconscious we going into now?" Ellen Page's question, posed at a particularly dense moment in Christopher Nolan's twisty dream thriller Inception, serves an escape value for viewers whose brains have been tied in knots. Nolan's movie is not hard to follow — he establishes clear goals for his characters, and charts their progress diligently — but understanding how they get from A to B takes some doing. In an article for Salon, I go over the movie's plot in exhaustive (or, if you like, exhausting) detail, and try to mop up some of the questions Nolan leaves tantalizingly unanswered, "Was it all a dream?" foremost among them. Pose further questions in the comments, here or there, and I'll do my best to come up with an answer.

Strange Bedfellows: Danger After Dark Makes Nice With Philadelphia's Queer Film Fest

If not necessarily better, things in the Philadelphia film festival community have sure been getting interesting of late. After the messy divorce between the Philadelphia Film Festival and the Philadelphia Film Society, the founding and subsequent financial failure of the new Cinefest (run by the old PFF's programmers and occupying its April dates) and the "new" PFF's relocation to mid-October, a new landscape has gradually come into focus. Last week, IFC's Ryan Werner and Magnolia's Tom Quinn were named as the PFF's new programmers, a move that adds a welcome dose of professionalism while taking a substantial chunk out of the festival's local identity. (They've previously programmed at Woodstock and Nantucket, a roster of idyllic vacation spots that made Philadelphia the only logical next step.) Given Werner and Quinn's day jobs, conflicts of interests are sure to surface, but their collective taste is irreproachable. It should be fascinating to see how things shake out over the next few months. 

Cinefest is still dead, or at least slumbering heavily, but former PFF/Cinefest programmer Ray Murray, who doubles as the head of local chain TLA Video, is pressing onward with QFest, the new and welcome name for the former Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival. Before Murray was handed the reins to the foundering PFF, which had been rudderless since the ouster of founder Linda Blackaby, PIGLIFF had been a for-profit operation, which means that even though it's now presented under the aegis of the newly formed Philadelphia Cinema Alliance, it should be no problem keeping QFest out of the red.

The orphan in this alphabet soup is the (former) PFF's popular midnight movies series Danger After Dark, founded by programmer Travis Crawford. Or I should say was, since this year Danger After Dark and QFest will run side-by-side. I'd call it a festival within a festival, except I doubt too many gym queens are going to be dashing from the the latest boy-meets-boy rom-com to catch Big Tits Zombie 3-D.

Danger After Dark kicks off this evening with Giorgos Lanthimos' unsettling Dogtooth, in which Greek parents raise their children to adulthood without ever allowing them contact with the outside world. My review is in this week's City Paper, along with my take on another DAD highlight, Gaspar Noé's phantamagoric mindfuck Enter the Void. (I'm not particularly high onNightwatch director Ole Bornedal's Straw Dogs retreat Deliver Us From Evil, but I say a few words on that as well.) Beginning with its stroboscopic credits, Noé's movie is an imagistic ordeal that acts like a jumper cable hooked to your optic nerve. If that sounds even remotely like something you might enjoy, you owe it to yourself to see this one on the big screen.

One movie I couldn't review, owing to a series of bum screeners, is Simon Rumley's Red White & Blue, but the 43 minutes and change I saw was enough to convince me the movie has greatness in its grasp. Gorgeously shot and elliptically edited, its first third details the evolving relationship between prostitute Amanda Fuller and neighboring creepazoid Noah Taylor (whose appearance crosses one name off my mental "What happened to...?" list). Then the story shifts to suburban punk rocker Marc Senter, which is about the point at which my DVD goes kablooey, but it's pretty clear there's a shoe waiting to drop, and substantial quantities of blood will be spilled when it does. Chances are good I'll be there for the finish on the 17th, along with the rest of you sickos — and Fuller, who is scheduled to attend the screening.