Ask 411 Movies for 11.10.08: Everybody is Kung Fu Naki!

Posted by Leonard Hayhurst on 11.10.2008

Porn stars hit the mainstream, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, famous movie combos, Cuba Gooding Jr., Elvis at the box office and my own celebrity tales

Samuel L. Jackson dubbed as the voice of Megatron got some good comments last week, so this week we have Jackson as an ice hockey coach. Again, I don't think I need to say more than that.



Writer and filmmaker Michael Crichton, 66, died last Wednesday of cancer. Crichton had several of his novels turned into films, wrote original screenplays and even directed a few movies in Looker, Runaway, Westworld and Coma. Others films based on his works included Jurassic Park, The Lost World, The Andromeda Strain, Rising Sun, Congo, Twister, Disclosure, Sphere and The 13th Warrior.



Q: One thing I have learned over the years, is to NEVER EVER let marketing/fan response detract from something for you: Fight Club fits into that model.

Yes, jackasses love the film. But so do people who are NOT jackasses. Not to go all logical metaphor on you BUT:

Most people who ride motorcycles rode bicycle's first. Most people who ride bicycles don't end up riding motorcycles.

Morons like Fight Club. That doesn't make Fight Club BAD.
-Mr. X

A: I didn't say last week that the movie was bad or that fan response turned me against it, but rather the fan response got me to reevaluate the film. Fight Club is anti-anti establishment in a cynical way and can be read as a satire on masculinity and the depowering of the American male in modern society. Fan boys see it as people beating the crap out of each other. The movie has social commentary, but doesn't fully explore its themes and is more of a pop psyche exploration.

As I have said before in the column, The Matrix was a movie I saw several weeks after it came out and the fan boys had embraced it as being so new and original. However, to me the stunt work isn't much different from classic Hong Kong action cinema wire work and the storyline isn't too far off of classic sci-fi. So that was certainly a case where the hype got to me and the movie didn't live up to it in my estimation. Over the years I've softened my stance a bit as I'm able to take the film for what it is, but I still don't view it as being so groundbreaking in story and special effects as is continually mentioned of it.

Q: Has there been any porn stars who have had mainstream movie/TV success? I know that Traci Lords is in Zack and Miri and Melrose Place and I think Jenna Jameson was in Private Parts. BTW, I do not mean Playboy Centerfolds nor sex tape people like Pam Anderson, Jenny McCarthy, Anna Nicole Smith, Screech or Chyna.
-John

A: JMAC wrote in the comments section last week that it was announced that Sasha Grey will be appearing in Stephen Soderburgh's new film and that Andrea True had a top forty hit in the seventies with "More, More, More."

Several known pornographic actors and actresses have broken into the mainstream, but usually can't shake the stigma of being in porno. Most continue to do porn, or eventually wind up going back such as Ginger Lynn. One of the few to break out was Traci Lords who notoriously lied about her age and started in porn at the age of 16. Since breaking away in 1988 she's made several B-movies and guest appearances on television, even starring in the short lived sci-fi series "First Wave." In a reverse, former child actor Scotty Schwartz, who memorably got his tongue stuck to a flag pole in A Christmas Story, made several porn movies in the mid-nineties. He was usually comic relief and didn't engage in sex.



As you mentioned, Lords is in the new Zack and Miri Make a Porno as is Katie Morgan who plays Stacey in the movie. Jenna Jameson did appear in Private Parts and a couple episodes of "Nash Bridges."



Another Private Parts alum and good friend of Jenna's is Janine Lindemulder. She's made several R-rated movies, including Caged Fury with Erik Estrada and served as a manager on the short lived sports entertainment show "Thunderbox."



Marilyn Chambers was the actress who launched the seventies porn boom, but before she made Behind the Green Door she had bit parts in 1970's The Owl and the Pussy Cat with Barbara Streisand and Wes Craven's first movie as director, Together in 1971. After she got into porn, Chambers starred in the Roger Corman produced Rabid in 1977. She plays a woman who gets a weird skin graft after a motorcycle accident and develops a taste for blood. It was one of the first pictures directed by David Cronenberg. In the late eighties and early nineties, Chambers became the grand dame of porn and leant her name to several soft-core flicks.



Ginger Lynn retired from porn in the late eighties and made a few B-movies, most notably the Vice Academy sex comedy series. She also had small parts in Young Guns II and the horror move Buried Alive with vets John Carradine, Robert Vaughn and Donald Pleasence. She was back to doing porn by the mid-nineties.



Long time porn queen Nina Hartley served as a consultant for the movie Boogie Nights and played the always fornicating wife of Little Bill. It is reported that she and William H. Macy are now very good friends.



Asia Carrera is the other girl in the Logjammin' movie scene in The Big Lebowski having sex with Bunny and Karl Hungus. She also served as Jennifer Tilly's body double in 2001's Fast Sofa. Looking at her filmography, she has also been in pornos with some of the best names I've ever heard, including Bangkok Booberella, Nude World Order, Encino Housewife Hookers, Samurai Pervert 2 and Pussy Auction

Trying to find non-nude photos of the above was a tough challenge, but not an unpleasant one.

Q: The combo of Jack Lemmon & Walter Matthau have appeared in 11 movies together as major characters. Have any other duos been in more films together, if not what are some of the other major duos that have appeared in multiple films together over decades, not counting playing the same characters like Abott & Costello, Laurel & Hardey, or multiple movies in a series like Halloween or Friday the 13th.

I know back in the early days of earlier years of film it was not uncommon for actors/actresses to sign multi film deals and appear in numerous films with the same leading lady & leading man as different characters but they normally came out within a close time frame if i recall correctly. I was wondering if any combo had the longevity of Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau working together for close to 50 years.
-Patt

A: Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn appeared together in nine movies over 25 years. Bing Crosby and Bob Hope appeared together in 21 movies over 32 years. Crosby would often cameo in Hope films and Paramount liked to dump all their big stars into various movies with cameos on a regular basis. Hope and Crosby did seven "Road" pictures. It was a loose series, but not directly sequels to each other.

Q: I know that Halloween is over, but I caught this movie Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. It has this slasher feel to it. What did you think of this movie?
-Dwayne



A: There be spoilers below, so don't bitch if you read it.

From 2006, Leslie Vernon (Nathan Baesel) is setting himself up to be the next great psycho slasher and invites a documentary crew to follow him around with Taylor (Angela Goethals) as the interviewer. They get to see how he stalks his victims and sets up the scene of the big night. Taylor finally decides they must intervene, but maybe it's what Leslie really wanted. Horror stalwarts Zelda Rubinstein and Freddy Krueger, playing a Dr. Loomis type character, have small parts and even Kane Hodder gets a cameo.

I found the first two thirds to be darkly comic in its sending up of documentary and slasher film conventions. Baesel gives a great performance that helps to progress the film, because at first you don't know if Leslie is serious or not. He just comes off as kooky and somewhat charming. The final third switches into standard slasher mode that is a bit of a letdown, but it is interesting to see how everything set up pays off. The twist of having Taylor being the survivor girl isn't evident until we find Kelly having sex, because there is no reference to Taylor being a virgin before this or how Leslie contacted her, so that's a bit of a cheat in the narrative. Also she kind of falls into Leslie's plan when right before they left for the big evening, Eugene and his wife told her that two things to do is just run as far away as you can without looking back, or if you're the virgin to get laid. When Taylor realizes she's the survivor girl in the hayloft she's got two guys and time to get going. They should have just started having group sex. That would have been a funny ending. Having sex saves you in a horror film. I was also a bit jarred by the sequence in the library when we shift from documentary cameras to standard Hollywood film. When it happens in the final third after Taylor says "the documentary is over," it works. It also works for the flash forwards when Leslie is describing how the night will go. However, at the library there is no reason for the shift and it breaks the narrative flow and visual style before there is a reason too. I would recommend the movie to any slasher film lovers.

Q: Wooo.... GAH film. Man, I'm marking out more than the time I met Gary Gygax at the Hard Rock Cafe back in 1989. (Yes, I'm a dork)

When will you take some photos and post them of some of the kick ass celebs you've met? What about some stories about some celebs you've run into? I'd love to hear how they are when they're not in front of the camera and all.

Okay...question time.

Can you think of any big stars who pretty much fell off the map and haven't done much since winning an Academy Award?

How about actors/actresses who have won the Oscar and then gone onto do junk films? (exception for Cuba Gooding Jr.)

Speaking of CGJr, what happened with him? Is it just that he picks some really bad films, or is it that he's been typecast as a guy who will do anything for a buck? He used to be a superb dramatic actor (a Murder of Crows was amazing). What happened with him?

I was flipping channels the other day and stumbled upon an Elvis flick (Charro I believe) and it got me wondering... have there been any other musicians who made the jump to TV or movies that actually stayed there? (Mark Wahlberg is the only one I know of... and MAYBE Cher)

Were any of the Elvis films actually profitable?

Has there ever been a film that you thought was great until the last 10 minutes, which ruined it for you? I felt this way after watching Premonition and Less Than Zero. (although Less Than Zero really made me see Robert Downey Jr. in a whole new light.)

Are there any horror/thriller films out there that you think are truly terrifying?

What about Christmas? It's coming up soon, and I'm really wanting to start a whole "watch one holiday film per day until Christmas" starting on Dec 1. I need some recommendations.
-Dirk

A: I'm not a photo guy. I've got a face that breaks cameras. So I don't really have any pics of me with celebrities. They would just serve to remind me of how dorky I am. I have related some stories in the past and some that were related to me.

From Chiller that I talked about last week, Bob, who also helps with Creepy Classics, was outside taking a call from his wife. Robert Hegyes, Epstein of "Welcome Back Kotter," came up and asked for a cigarette. Bob left his inside, but another guy close by held out his pack. Hegyes goes to get one and says "can I have two" and steals two cigarettes off this guy. On Sunday, my friend Dan went out into the C-list tent and got an autograph and picture with Jamie Luner, who we both remembered from "Just the Ten of Us." She then offered to pose for candid shots for Dan and he's got some cheesecake shots of her on his camera. Later, she was walking through the dealer's area and said out loud "I'm out in the tent and I'm hot." Whether she was hot temperature wise or in a good looking dame way is up to interpretation.

My friend Shawn and I drove Kevin McCarthy to the airport after a Monster Bash. We took the scenic route, so it was over an hour ride. Among stories he related was how he was a co-founder of the actor's studio with Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. Brando asked McCarthy of Clift "does Monty always act like he's got a Mix Master shoved up his ass." Another, in the seventies he was doing an off Broadway play with Rip Torn. McCarthy went over to Torn's house to run lines and found him peeing in the corner of his own kitchen. Needless to say, drugs were involved.

Met William Smith at another Monster Bash. He said during the final fight scene in Any Which Way You Can Clint Eastwood broke two of his ribs, but Smith never told Eastwood because he didn't want him to have the satisfaction.

At this past Monster Bash I was hosting The Giant Gila Monster and got to talk the movie over with star Don Sullivan. He said the only professional actors on the movie were himself and the sheriff, Fred Graham. Graham told Sullivan that when he got back to Hollywood if he saw John Wayne to say hi because they had just done a movie together. My searching of imdb reveals this to be The Horse Soldiers. Anyway, a couple weeks after getting back to Hollywood from shooting in Texas Sullivan sees Wayne at a party and goes up to him. He says that he just got done making a movie with Graham and he says hi. Wayne looked at Sullivan for a second, said "yeah" and turned his back on him. Sullivan said he felt about two feet tall and slinked off.

When I was in college, director Curtis Hanson spoke in the same building as the library I worked in was at. He was shooting Wonder Boys. He took questions from the audience and I asked him about making Losing It with Tom Cruise. Basically, my question was what is it like to make a movie that is low on the studio radar and he took it to be what is like to make a crappy movie. I talked to him after and apologized and he said he really wasn't mad and he appreciated that I knew the film, because at that time most everyone thought he had only made three movies; being L.A. Confidential, The River Wild and The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. He said Losing It was also bad memories studio wise because he was stripped of the final edit and the soundtrack he wanted.

I hung out one night with Barret Hackney, who was the lead hockey goon in Dogma. He was the friend of a friend. I actually don't remember a lot that was discussed. Hung out a couple different times with Chris Wylde. He was the member of an improv troop that came up to Pittsburgh a few times for an Improv-a-thon we had at a show called Friday Night Improvs I used to frequent. He was always on, you know.

My buddy Dave Jose works in the film business in the Pittsburgh area. Haven't seen him in a couple years, love to hear from him. He was working on The Mothman Prophecies and they put him in charge of hanging out with Richard Gere and keeping him out of trouble. At the end of the shoot, Gere bought Dave a brand new Lincoln Town Car. Dave also told me a story a friend told him that I related before. Dave's friend was working sound on The Prophecy III with Christopher Walken. They were shooting in a park and there was a fountain behind them that Walken kept staring at. When they broke for lunch, Walken stripped off his clothes and jumped in the fountain. He floated there with the water up to his eyes. When lunch was over, he got out, put his clothes back on, looked at Dave's friend and said "For lunch, I was a crocodile."

As a newspaper reporter I've interviewed former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, former Redskins lineman Ray Schoenke, indy wrestler Ashley Lane, Cory Wells of Three Dog Night, a few members of Sha-Na-Na, Ben Vereen, country singer Jake Owen and Jake "the Snake" Roberts. I was also about ten feet from Barack Obama.

Pretty much if you disappear off the radar after winning an Oscar you get regulated to junk films. I can't think of anyone who was a really big star and dropped off after winning an Oscar, aside from a few who died shortly after.

Two exceptions I can think of off the top of my head involve non-actors. Harold Russell, a real World War II veteran who lost both his hands, won an honorary Oscar and best supporting actor for Best Years of Our Lives in 1946 and he didn't make another movie until Inside Moves in 1980. Russell said that Lives director William Wyler told him to quit acting and go back to college to get his degree, which he did. Dr. Haing S. Ngor was a Cambodian physician who won the best supporting actor award in 1984 for The Killing Fields based on the war he had lived through. Ngor had minor parts on television and in a few films after that. He was found shot to death in 1996 in a parking garage. Many feel this was retribution from the Khmer Rouge back in Cambodia for his opposition.

Kevin Spacey had a pretty big drop off after winning in 1999 for American Beauty. Pay It Forward, The Big Kahuna, Life of David Gale, K-Pax, the Shipping News and Beyond the Sea did little at the box office and got mixed reviews. Superman Returns got decried big time. 21 did ok at the box office, but was no big whoop. F. Murray Abraham has always worked steady, but there's nothing major on his resume. Art Carney didn't do much of note. Cliff Robertson was pretty much off the radar until he played Uncle Ben in Spider-Man movies. Louise Fletcher blipped up a couple times in the mid-eighties, but nothing too major. Simone Signoret made Ship of Fools, but pretty much abandoned Hollywood after winning for Room at the Top in 1959. Anna Magnani was a similar case. Don't be surprised if the same thing happens to Marion Cotillard from this year.

Cuba Gooding Jr. was doing all right after Jerry Maguire until we hit this decade and then the bottom fell out. Everything has either been a financial or critical failure and usually both. He's done Pearl Harbor, Snow Dogs, Rat Race, Boat Trip, The Fighting Temptations, Radio, Home on the Range, Dirty, Shadowboxer, End Game, Norbit, What Love Is and Daddy Day Camp, but he did have a part in American Gangster. Gooding seems to be trying the old ‘one for them, one for me' technique, but his choice of material on either respect hasn't been the strongest. I'm also guessing he doesn't turn much down offered to him. He's doing Hanes commercials with Michael Jordan for crying out loud.

Most of Elvis Presley's movies were profitable, that's why they made so many of them. They were cheap to make and easy to market. Plus, you had the bonus of the soundtrack for added revenue. The soundtrack sold the movie and the movie sold the soundtrack. About the only Elvis movies that didn't do well at the box office were the ones where he strayed from formula, like Charro!. The soundtrack for Blue Hawaii spent 20 weeks at number one and the G.I. Blues soundtrack spent over two years on the album charts. His most profitable movie was Viva Las Vegas which was made for under a million and grossed over five million at the box office. Back in the mid-sixties that was huge profit.

Outside of Mark Wahlberg and Cher who you mentioned, the most successful singer turned actor is probably Will Smith. Smith is a Grammy winning, platinum selling rapper with two Oscar nods under his belt and several box office hits including I am Legend, Independence Day, Men In Black, Men in Black II, Bad Boys, Bad Boys II, I Robot, Hitch, Hancock and Wild, Wild West…ok, scratch that last one.

You had a lot of good questions, with emphasis on a lot. I'm going to hit the rest next week, so be sure to tune back in same bat channel, same bat time.

Don't die.

"I'll tell you, never hang out with a virgin. You got a virgin in your crew, either get somebody in her pants or get the hell away from her."