During the course of "Failure to Launch," characters are bitten by a chipmunk, a dolphin, a lizard and a mockingbird. I am thinking my hardest why this is considered funny, and I confess defeat. Would the movie be twice as funny if the characters had also been bitten by a Chihuahua, a naked mole rat and a donkey? I was bitten by a donkey once. It was during a visit to Stanley Kubrick's farm, outside London. I was the guest of the gracious Christiane Kubrick, who took me on a stroll and showed me the field where she cares for playground donkeys after their retirement. I rested my hand on the fence, and a donkey bit me. "Stop that!" I said, and the donkey did. If I had lost a finger, it would have been a great consolation to explain that it had been bitten off by one of Mrs. Stanley Kubrick's retired donkeys.
ETA: Also at Ebert's site, editor Jim Emerson has a few theories about why "Crash" won over "Brokeback Mountain" for the Best Picture Academy Award. I haven't seen either yet, so I have no opinion, but it seems to be something of a cause celebre in the film and gay communities.
Which, as Emerson points out, are not the same thing as much as some might think.
all the inane gab about how homosexuality is "no big deal" in Hollywood is just ludicrous. (Not Ludacris, ludicrous.) It may be generally true on an inter-personal level, but it were true about the business, why are so many major performers still closeted to the moviegoing public?
Because they're afraid it will hurt them in the industry, that it will cost them work and big bucks. That's why. The concern is not so much that fans will not accept them, but that the decision-makers who have hiring approval will consider the performer's sexuality as yet another "risk factor" for a given a production.
yes, West Hollywood is indeed a gay mecca. But that has nothing to do with the business end of Hollywood -- which is still a small, snoopy company town where half of the incessant gossip that keeps people awake nights (whether spreading it or fretting over it) is about who's really gay and who's really bi.
This reminds me of a few things. One is a recent interview with Amber Benson, the talented and lovely actress who played Willow's girlfriend on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", in which she talks about "having doors closed in my face because of it."
Another is to kind of reassure me once again that yeah, maybe the book is the way to go-because what are the odds I'm going to find actresses who look like/can play/and are willing to play Keitha & Annabel?
Also, it makes me finally understand why the regular cast of "The L Word" contains exactly one (1) openly gay actress. Some are known to be straight, some are kind of coy, but they all want to have a career that goes beyond "Lesbos Place."*
*Which is my new name for the series that I think I coined. It's meant to be a comment on the fact that I realized it's just "Melrose Place" with more lesbians and softcore sex, you see. This is the kind of wit that once led a friend of mine to dub me "An American Oscar Wilde, only heterosexual."
No comments:
Post a Comment