Category: Movie Reviews
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S2E7: Dirty Laundry
If you really want to know what’s happening on any film or TV set, the last people you should ask are the executives. We know nothing of value. We may have a pretty good fix on where the budget is, but we have no idea who’s sleeping with whom. Film and TV sets are emotionally […]
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I Wrote A Jerry Lee Lewis Movie That Shoulda Been Made
Rock ‘n roll icon Jerry Lee Lewis passed away yesterday. It always sucks when rock icons die; there aren’t many left from the original batch. Jerry Lee was especially iconic. In the early days of rock, Jerry Lee was the unabashed rule breaker. He was cocky, arrogant, almost fatally full of himself. But, that attitude […]
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“Nobody Knows Anything”
“Nobody knows anything” was screenwriting god William Goldman‘s terse, brutal, spot on assessment of how show business works. The people at the top of the food chain – the decision-makers – will insist that a combination of logic and personal insight rule their thinking. But, at the same time, they’ll insist that past results can’t […]
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I ALMOST Cast Donald Trump In Tales From The Crypt
Casting a movie or TV show is make or break. We all know what happens when an actor inhabits a role completely. Also we know what happens when an actor and a role conflict with each other. Example: casting Donald Trump as President Of The United States. Curious as a stunt, utterly pointless otherwise. In […]
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I’ve Loved Working With My Film-Making “Idols”
Man, have I been lucky! Not only did I get to have a “Hollywood career”, that career allowed me to work with people whose film work I adored. It’s a stone cold fact: I’ve loved working with my film making idols! Looking back at my TV-film writing-producing career, the fact that I had a career […]
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Groucho Marx Inspires Me: An Ode To Groucho
Apropos of nothing, as I sat down to work this morning, a song popped into my head: Groucho Marx singing “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” in the movie “Horse Feathers“. That song inspires me especially in these here times. How can it not? In fact, Groucho Marx inspires me. He always has. I wonder […]
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Have I Ever Told Ya The Story About How Sly Stallone Used A Movie I Was Making To Break Up With His Girlfriend?
I have actually – right here on this blog! And I’m doing it again – bigger (and, okay, I’m biased) better – in a new podcast I’m making called the “How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast: The Making Of Bordello Of Blood”. Now, why you might ask, would anyone give a crap about a […]
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I Hope Meat Loaf Forgave Me For Hanging Him In A Meat Locker
Singer and actor Meat Loaf died today apparently from COVID. I’ll stick a pin in his anti-vaxxism for a moment out of respect for his musical contributions. He was an icon of a particular kind of rock n roll. When I was at Vassar College in the 1978, we danced with complete abandon to Meat’s […]
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“TRUMPOCALYPSE: THE MINISERIES” Casting Office — UPDATED Casting: “THE INSURRECTION CAUCUS”
So far, we’ve cast the Trumps — father, sons, daughter/sex partner & wife/handler. They’re all below today’s casting thoughts — THE INSURRECTION CAUCUS! I have a feeling we’re going to end up expanding this part of the story exponentially. What we saw, live on TV, was the tip of the iceberg that was planned; most […]
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Because It’s Halloween: The Deep, Dark Secrets Of A Horror Movie Writer
How do you scare people (who want to be scared)? It’s harder than it sounds because horror movie fans know horror movies the way evangelicals (think they) know the Bible. First confession: if you IMDb me, the impression you’d get from my credits is that I’m purely a horror/sci-fi guy: “Freddy’s Nightmares” (the Nightmare On […]