What?!! This Column!?? 06.24.08: Issue #114
Posted by Bryan Kristopowitz on 06.24.2008
How Robert Davi can save HBO, George Carlin thoughts, "Fear Itself" thoughts, and other stuff.
George Carlin is dead.
To say that it's a sad day in the comedy world, that the entertainment world just got a lot less funny, that the world of "independent" thought and biting social commentary lost a major force would be great understatement. No one was quite like Mr. Carlin, and odds are no one ever will be again. John Stewart was right when he referred to Carlin as a member of the "Holy Trinity of Stand Up Comedy," because pretty much everyone in the field has copied him, riffed off him, or aped his material (that's what good stand up comedians do, so it's not a slight. It's a compliment). Now, Carlin gets to join the other members of that Holy Trinity, Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, in the infinite cultural zeitgeist.
They're gone but not forgotten.
They'll always be funny.
They'll always matter.
Mr. Carlin, thank you for the laughs, for the memories, and for the moments where you made me think. It sucks knowing that there isn't a new Carlin special on the horizon, that the last special you did, "George Carlin: It's Bad for Ya," is actually your last special. Stand up just isn't going to be the same without you, physically present. I guess we're going to have to try to rely on Bill Maher and Lewis Black for "good" and thoughtful comedy. They're both quite good, but they're not George Carlin.
But, as many people have said over at my colleague (a href=http://www.411mania.com/movies/columns/78549/A-Tribute-to-George-Carlin-.htm>Jerome Cusson's column about Carlin, Carlin would probably be pissed off that anyone is sad about his death. Just what the fuck are you doing crying for me, motherfucker? He'd probably say something like that.
Well, here, listen to the man hisself:
So very right, George. So very right.
So go fuck yourself, George. I know you'll appreciate it.
RIP George Carlin 1937-2008
***
These are some of my favorite Carlin quotes. Not all of them, surely, but some of them. Pretty much everything the man said is worth listening to and noting. But, again, here are some of my favorites:
"Undisputed heavyweight champion. If it's undisputed what's all the fighting about?"
"This is the best we can do, folks, it's what our system produces. Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish ignorant citizens, you are going to have selfish, ignorant leaders."
"The people suck."
"Fuck hope."
"We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance."
"See I don't worry about the little things: bees, trees, whales, snails. I think we're part of a greater wisdom than we will ever understand. A higher order. Call it what you want. Know what I call it? The Big Electron. The Big Electron...whoooa. Whoooa. Whoooa. It doesn't punish, it doesn't reward, it doesn't judge at all. It just is. And so are we. For a little while."
"Sties are caused by watching your dog shit."
"Most people aren't particularly good at anything."
"I'm not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a part of hell will break loose... it'll be much harder to detect."
"There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past."
"Lead, follow, or get out of the way. I obstruct."
***
According to aint-it-cool-news.com, HBO2 is going to pay tribute to Carlin this Wednesday and Thursday night starting at 8PM. The network apparently plans on airing several of his HBO comedy specials, starting with the first one, "George Carlin at USC." As of this writing I haven't seen that reflected in my cable guide, so be on the lookout for that.
***
Much has been made recently about HBO, Home Box Office for those of you who still say Home Box Office (you know who you are), losing its hip and edgy critical reputation and ooh ah artistic integrity because of the lack of upcoming compelling series. "The Sopranos" and "The Wire" are long gone, and while shows like "Entourage" and "Big Love" get their share of attention and applause, they're not the ratings powerhouse "The Sopranos" was, and neither show makes the major TV critics foam their collective pants like "The Wire."
Yeah, sure, there's that Pacific Theater WWII thing that Spielberg and Tom Hanks have been cooking up for what seems like a decade now on the horizon, and... well, I don't know what else is on the horizon. There doesn't seem to be much interest in trying another three camera sitcom ("Lucky Louie" didn't get much love), and, since George Carlin is "fucking dead," there isn't much to look forward to comedy special wise (yeah, I know, Robert Kline is funny, but he's not George Carlin. And Dane Cook blows). I don't know if the network plans on going the historical drama route, copying rival Showtime's "Tudors" show. It just doesn't sound like a "boom" time for HBO right now.
But all of that could change if the network decided to do a drama style they haven't tried yet.
You want to know what HBO should try? A "villain-of-the-week" cop drama.
Think about it. Pretty much every major show from the network has been an ongoing, soap opera type drama, where the audience has to watch each and every episode to understand what's going on. The network has been very successful with that formula. But perhaps that formula, at least for now, has run its course. Perhaps it's not as "cutting edge" as it used to be. Maybe what HBO, and premium cable drama needs is a "back-to-basics" approach to a one hour TV show, ie a cop drama. Every week, the main character, a police detective, a private detective, it doesn't matter which, does battle with a different bad guy every week. The show would contain the usual type of stuff that premium cable shows can get away with: profanity, nudity, and gory violence. The show could get "name" stars for "special guest star" stints or just the new weekly villain. One week it could be Anne Hathaway, the next it could be Tim Thomerson, the next it could be George Clooney in a two-parter, etc. You just know they'd be hip to that kind of show since there wouldn't be many restrictions on what a villain could do.
So, who could star in a show like this?
Robert Davi.
You all likely remember him as the great Bond villain Franz Sanchez from "Licence to Kill," or as Jake Fratelli in "The Goonies," or perhaps as Agent Bailey Malone on the great TV show "Profiler." I tend to remember him as Det. Sean McKinney from the "Maniac Cop" sequels. He can do the suave, sophisticated tough guy thing, the ass kicking tough guy thing, the seething anger thing, and he can be quite funny when he has to be. Davi is the total acting package. He is intensity personified. And he'd be perfect as the star of a down and dirty, one hour, villain-of-the-week cop show on HBO. It's obvious from his filmography that he can act in anything, can act any part. And the man has extensive TV experience, so doing a thirteen episode season isn't foreign to him. He's been there, he's done it, he knows what it takes to get the job done.
And, most importantly for a network likely looking into cost cutting, while Davi can be just as intense as James Woods, Davi will most definitely cost considerably less than James Woods, so, at least at the beginning, there won't be any bullshit about paying an exorbitant amount of money to the series star (no, in this case they'd have to save the "real" money for the big name guest star. Tom Hanks doesn't come cheap, you know). The "real" money would be Davi's in the second season, when the show is a bonafide hit and his agent renegotiates his contract so he can get better residual money from reruns. He'd probably do something like that. He seems like a pretty cool, shrewd guy.
Just imagine Davi showing up at the crime scene, cigarette dangling out the side of his mouth, pushing annoying people out of the way, engaging in massive profanity with the captain or a crime scene technician, then driving back to the station to engage in more profanity. And it would go on like this until the end when he gets to shoot the bad guy. And it would be the greatest show ever made for HBO.
Well, maybe it'd be a pretty dang decent show, one of the better ones made. But it most definitely would be cool.
So, anyone else want to watch a show like this? With Robert Davi starring? Want to start the letter writing/e-mail campaign now? Some want to call "Bob" to see if he's interested?
You wanna fuck with this guy?
***
Well, I finally got a chance to see the first three episodes of the NBC horror anthology show "Fear Itself," which airs Thursday night at 10pm. The show certainly isn't as gory or as "risky" as its predecessor "Masters of Horror," but it's much bloodier than I thought it was going to be. The show seems to be "getting away" with more than one would normally think for regular TV (unless it's a crime scene cop show, the major networks seem to be rather squeamish when it comes to blood and gore and potentially scary subject matter). In that sense, I can't wait for the DVD to see what was "cut" out.
Of the three episodes aired so far, the only stinker has been the second episode, the Brad Anderson directed one with Eric Roberts in the lead role. It wasn't all that scary, was incredibly slow in spots (when your hour long show feels like it's taking three hours to get where it needs to go your hour long show has serious problems), and didn't feature much of a pay off. And Eric Roberts, who is usually a pretty reliable actor, looked bored out of his mind as the detective who hates guns. Although I will say it was quite refreshing to see a show outside of the "Law & Order" universe featuring child killing. Kim Richards indeeed.
The first episode, the one by Breck Eisner, had just the right amount of action, suspense, gore, and monsters to make the hour fly by. I loved the bit where, I think it was Jeffrey Pierce's character, unloads a gun on the vampire at point blank range and the only time we get to "see" the creature is during the barrel flashes. Yeah, it's a cheap trick, but it sure does do the job. The hanging body dripping blood into the pan thing was pretty neat, too, especially for network television. And the ending, where the surviving woman looks at Pierce as he realizes what happened to him during the scuffle with the creature, is one of the creepiest things I have ever seen on television. Top notch stuff.
The third episode, directed by the Ronny Yu, is the best of the bunch so far. You could see the ending coming a mile away after the premise of the episode is set up, but the ride there is worth the corny ending. And Yu should be very proud of himself for staging one of the best T-bone car crashes in television history.
The next episode is supposed to be the one directed by John Landis and features "Psych" star James Roday as a serial killer. The two "MOH" episodes Landis did were excellent, so I expect something equally as good this time around.
"Fear Itself" is worth watching, at least right now it is.
***
Am I the only one who thinks WWE should start running MSG house shows live on television like they used to back in the day? I've seen a few episodes of the "MSG Classics" show that typically airs on Wednesday nights for two hours, and it's amazing how not only good the old wrestling is, but how different the show and the wrestlers come off without all of the pyro and lasers and stuff. I completely forgot about how things "used to be." Very little talking, no crap, just wrestling. As a wrestling fan, I'd love to see more of that and less of the "backstage" skit crap that seems to happen on every show now.
But maybe that's just me.
***
This week, the "What?!! This Column!?? Douchebag of the Week" goes to the fine folks at Lionsgate for dumping "Midnight Meat Train" into a 100 theatre limited release instead of a much wider release. No one seems to know exactly why Lionsgate lost confidence in the movie, but it sure is shame that the company did. With Clive Barker's name all over it, you'd think that the flick would be a relatively easy sell with the regular horror movie going public. I mean, it's not like the movie was ever going to be a cross over hit (it's freaking called "Midnight Meat Train" for a reason), and while I'll admit that the hard R horror movie nerd world support has been fickle for past genre efforts (we're all still complaining about how "Slither" got shafted by the fans), that's not much of an excuse for completely eviscerating the wide release for a much, much, much smaller release.
I wonder what this sudden lack of confidence is going to do to the other Barker movies in the planning stages (you know, all of those movies based on the Books of Blood collection). I hope we actually get to see most of them, if and when they ever get made.
***
Well, the IRL race at Iowa was quite the humdinger, much better than the race there last year. There was action all over the track, with plenty of passing, and a great finish with Dan Wheldon squeaking out his second victory of the year. While I'm not a fan of A.J. Foyt IV, it was neat to see him moving to the front. He probably would have advanced a few more positions if the race was fifty laps longer. And what the heck does Tony Kanaan have to do to catch a break? I said it after the race at Milwaukee, and I'll say it again: Please, Tony George, please IRL, don't abandon oval racing. Don't become Champ Car or CART again. The ovals put on the best shows hands down. I can't wait for Saturday and the race at Richmond. Should be a hoot.
The NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Infineon Raceway (the old Sonoma roadcourse) was pretty decent, although seeing Kyle Busch win yet another race is getting pretty boring. Juan Pablo Montoya should go punch Marcus Ambrose in the face for that move in the loop there towards the last turn of the track. Yeah, I know, it's just racing and all, but Montoya has had a bad year so far and he needs a win. He most definitely could have repeated. And Ambrose should go punch whoever the heck knocked him out of the race. And after all of that is done, Tony Stewart should go kick Kevin Harvick in the balls for that incredibly fucking stupid move he pulled, taking out two cars while spinning widly because he tried to enter the turn faster than usual. You can bet your ass that if Stewart did that to Harvick Harvick would have been whining like a bitch after the race. I really can't stand "Happy" sometimes. What a punk. And when the heck is Boris "Mick Foley" Said going to catch a damn break?
***
Did you pick up a copy of the second season of "Jericho" last week? If you didn't, what the heck is wrong with you? Go here to order the second season. And you can go here to get the first season, and, if you've got deep pockets you can go here to get the complete series, both seasons one and two, in one set. We have to keep "Jericho" alive, and the only way we can do that is to buy the DVD sets and watch the show if and when it ever returns to Sci Fi. And don't forget to check out the following links for all kinds of cool "Jericho" information:
"Jericho" still rocks. Get out there and show your support.
Long live "Jericho"!
***
Well, I think that'll be about it for this issue. Don't forget to check out the 411mania.com movies zone podcast, which can be heard here. The show is on hiatus this week as the usual panel is off at a convention, I believe. But go check out old episodes you may have missed. They're all there, as far as I know. And please check out my other column here at the movies zone, The Gratuitous B-Movie Column. It's about B-movies.
"Peter: Hey Mort, do these suppositories come in other flavors?
Mort: Peter, are you eating those?
Peter: No, I'm shoving 'em up my butt. Of course I'm eating 'em!"
That's from "Family Guy," but I'm pretty sure you already knew that. I mean, I've been putting these quotes at the end of each column for months now.
