A pretty dead day in movie news.
Tribeca opened with a not-very-good doc, but got a 3-song concert out of Elton John… which really is the Tribeca Film Festival’s brand to date. This is all they have. What happened to Geoff Gilmore heating things up?
Jeremy Renner gets Bourne. Great. With all respect to Renner, who is a great actor, it’s nothing like a coup. The film will have to be sold from the ground up.
Deadline Hollywood paid Alison Hope Weiner for her sycophantic interview with Mel Gibson (no doubt arranged by Gibson’s loyal handler and the Summit PR team that are Nikki’s bestest friends). Summit is releasing The Beaver and must be desperate for something from Gibson. Weiner claims she gave the interview to Deadline because, “editors at other media outlets seemed inclined to use this story to pursue their own agendas.” You mean, like expecting you to behave like a journalist when you get access to someone with a sordid history? I mean, seriously, not a single real question in the entire interview. People might have bought it, but not EW… to soft for EW! I can softball with the best of them. I don’t need to get into anyone’s personal life to ask them about a movie. But if the only way you address the elephant in the room is to ask whether the smell offends your subject and then offer to clean up all the shit yourself because life is so hard for them… you are a lay down hack. Gibson gets to be forthcoming… and not say a single thing of note. But that’s why they handed him to someone safe… even while Deadline is trying to claim there were no ground rules. Pete Hammond does a tougher interview. Some examples of the weighty questions:
“Do you try to stay fit?”
“Is it hard to have a new baby at your age?”
“Let’s talk about The Beaver. It’s getting amazing reviews — there was just an incredible one by Richard Roeper.” (I believe in Foster and hope the movie is great, but Richard Roeper? The game show host? Really?)
“How did you find yourself in the position to make some of these many bad choices?”
“Did you ever question that you chose the wrong occupation — especially when the tapes were released? Did you think that, ‘I’m sick of this and I chose the wrong job’?”
“People don’t know very much about who you really are. You had this public persona that seemed easy-going and always happy and joking.”
“It seems like you’ve become really uncomfortable with your fame.”
“Don’t you find that a lot of your industry friends have different political beliefs than you?”
And my favorite… “You were going to do a small part in Hangover II. How did you respond to being asked to do that and then having cast members not want you in it? How did it feel to have them allow a convicted rapist [Mike Tyson] in the movie and not you?” which she follows up with, “That’s a very Hollywood hypocritical moment.”
Congratulations, Nikki… you bought yourself the least revealing interview from a guy who stopped giving interviews because someone might ask a real question since Eddie Murphy turned up on Inside The Actors Studio. Maybe Ms. Weiner can get that gig when James Lipton retires. And maybe you’ll set some higher standards for your site someday… but I ain’t holding my breath.
And Premium VOD launched on DirecTV. The Wrap is running an ad that allegedly has gone out to customers… though as a customer who receives my billing and everything else via e-mail from DirecTV, I have gotten nothing. Moreover, the “ad” looks like it has to be a page on the DirecTV website, as it has links at the top to “My Account,” My Programming,” etc, like on the website. But there is NO sign of Home Premium on the website and a search of the term or of Just Go With It leads nowhere. The only offering of any kind that I have been able to find remains the link on the guide, right next to all the other $5 movie rentals, that I noted earlier today on The Hot Blog.
Tribeca opened with a not-very-good doc, but got a 3-song concert out of Elton John… which really is the Tribeca Film Festival’s brand to date. This is all they have. What happened to Geoff Gilmore heating things up?
Jeremy Renner gets Bourne. Great. With all respect to Renner, who is a great actor, it’s nothing like a coup. The film will have to be sold from the ground up.
Deadline Hollywood paid Alison Hope Weiner for her sycophantic interview with Mel Gibson (no doubt arranged by Gibson’s loyal handler and the Summit PR team that are Nikki’s bestest friends). Summit is releasing The Beaver and must be desperate for something from Gibson. Weiner claims she gave the interview to Deadline because, “editors at other media outlets seemed inclined to use this story to pursue their own agendas.” You mean, like expecting you to behave like a journalist when you get access to someone with a sordid history? I mean, seriously, not a single real question in the entire interview. People might have bought it, but not EW… to soft for EW! I can softball with the best of them. I don’t need to get into anyone’s personal life to ask them about a movie. But if the only way you address the elephant in the room is to ask whether the smell offends your subject and then offer to clean up all the shit yourself because life is so hard for them… you are a lay down hack. Gibson gets to be forthcoming… and not say a single thing of note. But that’s why they handed him to someone safe… even while Deadline is trying to claim there were no ground rules. Pete Hammond does a tougher interview. Some examples of the weighty questions:
“Do you try to stay fit?”
“Is it hard to have a new baby at your age?”
“Let’s talk about The Beaver. It’s getting amazing reviews — there was just an incredible one by Richard Roeper.” (I believe in Foster and hope the movie is great, but Richard Roeper? The game show host? Really?)
“How did you find yourself in the position to make some of these many bad choices?”
“Did you ever question that you chose the wrong occupation — especially when the tapes were released? Did you think that, ‘I’m sick of this and I chose the wrong job’?”
“People don’t know very much about who you really are. You had this public persona that seemed easy-going and always happy and joking.”
“It seems like you’ve become really uncomfortable with your fame.”
“Don’t you find that a lot of your industry friends have different political beliefs than you?”
And my favorite… “You were going to do a small part in Hangover II. How did you respond to being asked to do that and then having cast members not want you in it? How did it feel to have them allow a convicted rapist [Mike Tyson] in the movie and not you?” which she follows up with, “That’s a very Hollywood hypocritical moment.”
Congratulations, Nikki… you bought yourself the least revealing interview from a guy who stopped giving interviews because someone might ask a real question since Eddie Murphy turned up on Inside The Actors Studio. Maybe Ms. Weiner can get that gig when James Lipton retires. And maybe you’ll set some higher standards for your site someday… but I ain’t holding my breath.
And Premium VOD launched on DirecTV. The Wrap is running an ad that allegedly has gone out to customers… though as a customer who receives my billing and everything else via e-mail from DirecTV, I have gotten nothing. Moreover, the “ad” looks like it has to be a page on the DirecTV website, as it has links at the top to “My Account,” My Programming,” etc, like on the website. But there is NO sign of Home Premium on the website and a search of the term or of Just Go With It leads nowhere. The only offering of any kind that I have been able to find remains the link on the guide, right next to all the other $5 movie rentals, that I noted earlier today on The Hot Blog.
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