New Hollywood

After Saw 6’s “underperformance” (all of a sudden second place is underperformance?) at the box office this weekend, some entertainment industry wags are wringing their hands about whether this is the End Of The Sequel. I don’t know about you, but I find this hand-wringing to be a little premature.

First off, I am 100% sure that Saw 6’s failure to capture the weekend’s number one spot is the result of a torpedo job by the American health insurance industry.  When the triumphant climax of the latest chapter in the most successful Western giallo franchise in recent history is (SPOILER ALERT) an orphan boy injecting hydrofluoric acid into every square inch of a health insurance executive’s body because the exec denied coverage to the orphan boy’s father when he needed a life-saving treatment, you know that Blue Shield and Pacificare and Cigna are going to do their best to make that film disappear before the general public starts getting some ideas of their own.

I think the lesson we’ve learned from the Saw 6 first weekend numbers is not that sequels are dying, but that there’s a lot more scary muscle behind the health insurance industry than any of us expected. I applaud Saw 6 for going after this monster instead of playing it safe. To those chickenshit film execs solely worried about the bottom line, I say don’t throw out the idea of the film franchise. Without the Idea Of The Sequel, we might never have gotten to enjoy Beetlejuice 2.

Author’s note: Director Kevin Greutert in no way influenced my positive review of Saw 6, but in the interest of full disclosure I should note that he did provide me with some Flamin’ Hot Funyuns and Veuve Clicquot Saturday night.

Travis the swine

Sorry for the dearth of posting the last few days. I went into an abandoned mine early on Saturday, and the rest up until now has been kind of a painful blur.

The doctor says it’s just the flu.

Dogme31

Twitter version:

Full length is here and here.

Magic bottle

When I clicked on a metafilter link yesterday labeled “1930s dogs in clothes,” I wasn’t prepared for this:

Different drummers, beware

2009 is shaping up to be a bad year for wonderful creative maniacs. First, noted Nazi memorabilia collector World War Two buff Ron Asheton is found dead, and now film auteur and musician Ray Dennis Steckler (a/k/a Cash Flagg, a/k/a Sven Christian, a/k/a Sven Hellstrom, a/k/a Harry Nixon, a/k/a Michael J. Rogers, a/k/a Michel J. Rogers, a/k/a Wolfgang Schmidt, a/k/a Cindy Lou Steckler,  a/k/a Cindy Lou Sutters) has left our midst.

I know you’re not going to believe this, but I managed to obtain some exclusive footage of RDS as he passed from this world to the next:

Wow, dying looks scarier than I thought.

Please be careful in 2009, friends. I consider you all to be wonderful creative maniacs.

Next time just let her borrow your umbrella

My friend Carolyn noted recently that I hadn’t yet written a post about puppets. As it is Carolyn’s birthday today, I intend to rectify the situation immediately with a gem from renaissance man Patrick McGuinn’s film oeuvre. The following was an entry in a Hostess Foods contest some years ago, where the entrants were required to make their own commercial for Twinkies snack cakes (WARNING – if you’ve ever partaken in a late-night drinking session with me at my home, I’ve probably already made you watch this):

According to Patrick, he won second prize in the contest, receiving a Twinkie the Kid watch and a billion cases of Twinkies. He has since gone on to even bigger and better things, but I will always be grateful to him for introducing me to Vincent.

Big break

I’m thinking about taking Joaquin to this audition found (by defamer) on craigslist:

CASTING Hamster for short film

I am looking for a hamster.

I know I could buy one, but then I would own it. So , I was hoping to just rent one for 50 bucks for a couple hours.

The Hamster will be work in a studio shoot on a greenscreen. He is playing Rocky, the captain of a boat.

please send a picture

We are shooting for a couple hours on saturday, that is this coming saturday the 28th in Hollywood.

I know Joaquin is technically a cat, but with all his boating experience, I think he’s a shoo-in for the part.

Published in: on June 26, 2008 at 12:33 pm Leave a Comment
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