Category Archives: Entertainment

musings about film, television, music and other things entertaining… or not

Record crowds flock to Palm Springs International Film Festival

link: Record crowds flock to festival | mydesert.com | The Desert Sun.

Yesterday was my final day of working for the Festival as one of their box office supervisors.

If you read the article linked above, you’ll see that Peter Bart (from Variety) says that the PSIFF has become more and more important in the film festival calendar, and that in many ways is a more important film festival than Sundance, which is or has become “more of a marketplace.”
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They beat attendance records. That’s good to hear; it’s the town’s signature event during the high season that pumps up the local economy.

Despite my work schedule, I managed to see a few films, including The Double Hour, Bibliotheque Pascal, and Little Murder. (more on them later)

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A Primer on Gay Gym Selection

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYvnETRieXc[/youtube]

OK, I know I haven’t been blogging. The hours at the Film Festival are kicking my ass. It’s been a great little gig, but I’m pretty happy it’s all over on Sunday, or more accurately, it’s all over for me on Sunday.

They still screen Best of Fest this coming Monday, Martin Luther King Day. Buy your tickets now! I’m sure it will be busy. I went to a screening last night which was SRO for a Josh Lucas/Terrence Howard film called Little Murder. More on that later.

Since my brain is fried, I’m not writing anything original here, just reposting this video, which I just found very funny. If you don’t live in LA or you’re not a part of the U.S.gay demimonde, you might not find it instructive, but I know some of you will really enjoy this!

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Palm Springs International Film Festival anticipating record crowd!

Palm Springs International Film Festival anticipating record crowd | mydesert.com | The Desert Sun.

Hey, check out this story and the accompanying photo, which should include me but I’m obscured by intense ticket buyers. That is, if they took the photo yesterday, which I think they did, I was selling pre-sale tickets in this Regal window all day. So I’ve missed my claim to a photo-op in the Desert Sun? Drat!

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Go if you can. Even though ticket sales are great, there’s lots still available for this marvelous event.

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Ronni Chasen, Lourdes Kelly, Brian McDevitt and my tenuous connection to the Gardner Heist speculation

Gardner Museum in Boston

Brian McDevitt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continuing from yesterday – the weird coincidences between my script The Lourdes Kelly Story and the all-too-real murder of publicist Ronni Chasen in Beverly Hills last month.

When reading of the bizarre “suicide” of the person of interest at the Harvey Apartments near Santa Monica Boulevard and Western in L.A., reports said that other rumors regarding Chasen’s demise pointed to an art world fraud. (see comments section on that piece)

In The Lourdes Kelly Story, a feud between a high-powered female publicist and a crackerjack entertainment reporter ends in murder. The publicist’s fictional boyfriend is an art world conman whose most intense dream is to be a Hollywood screenwriter.

I based this character on someone I really knew, Brian McDevitt. As the Boston Herald story tells it, McDevitt had always been a suspect in the still-unsolved Gardner Museum Heist.

I met Brian in 1991, when I worked at Paramount and was tasked with helping put on a 50th Anniversary Celebration for the movie Citizen Kane. I got a call from him out of the blue. He said he was a staff writer on “The Wonder Years” and “was his name on a list or where would his tickets be sent?”

What?

Not wanting to piss off an important writer, I put his name on a list and told him if we had any extra tickets I would call him back. I thought, at the time, as an aspiring writer, it would be good for me to have a writer acquaintance who had an actual writing job and connections.

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I never checked his credential. Brian was the type of person who could sell you a sack of shit and not only have you believing that it was full of gold bullion but that it smelled like lilacs, too.

Of course, we did have a couple of extra tickets and Brian and his girlfriend made it to the CK party. After that, we developed a friendship. It evolved to the point where he was going to help me develop and hone my movie script; I would help him get a pitch meeting with Paramount brass who I interacted with (in my lowly way) every day (his script was about a Russian art theft…).

We would go to lunch, he would regale me with tales of WGA politics – he was involved somehow with them in administrating an early internet chatting protocol called a BBS.

He even gave me a script he said he’d written – it was a screenplay for Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One, which was odd, since it had already been made into a movie in 1965 with Waugh, Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood as credited writers.

Then, one day all hell broke loose with the revelation in the trades that he had faked his WGA credentials and all his credits and was really just this Boston conman. He had apparently irritated the wrong person at the WGA, someone who actually had the interest and capacity to really check on his background. His crimes, lies, and the prison time, etc., all came tumbling out.

I remember calling his girlfriend that morning and telling her I just wanted to know “why.” I never heard from Brian again and I think he left Hollywood pretty much immediately.

In the Boston Herald piece, it says he died of kidney failure in 2004. Well, maybe. And perhaps that’s just a lie and he’s living the high life in Rio. I don’t know.

What I do know is that was the last time I ever trusted anyone in Hollywood, which is a valuable lesson to learn, even if it came a little later than it should have.

Yet – he was an absolutely delightful person. Pathological liar, maybe, but an engaging, smiling, articulate Irishman (you can’t tell from the B&W picture but his hair was mostly red). Wherever you are, Brian, I wish you well.

 

UPDATE 11/5/18 – If you’re a fan of true crime or art heists or whatever, let me direct you to this fabulous podcast “Last Seen,” which is about the Gardner Heist and Episode 8 is all about Brian McDevitt. Well worth your time! Produced by WBUR and The Boston Globe. Link:

http://www.wbur.org/lastseen

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Ronni Chasen Murder Only Gets Stranger…

ah Hollywood

Since the horrible news of the murder of publicist Ronni Chasen last month, I was struck by some similarities between her death and a script I had written originally in the late 1990s, concerning a rivalry between a publicist and a reporter that ends with, well, a murder.

Except that in my script (The Lourdes Kelly Story), it was the reporter who got killed, not the publicist. But still, weird. Now, today, I’m reading about the related shooting last night and see that some of the speculation surrounding Chasen’s death have to do with possible art fraud.

OK. OK. Since the co-conspirator in my fictional story is an art world conman (boyfriend of the publicist), I’m thinking this whole thing is just really too strange.

Check out the logline and synopsis of The Lourdes Kelly Story from 2005:

Logline: The Lourdes Kelly Story is a contemporary dark comedy about a Hollywood publicity diva who, when faced with an imminent, disastrous news report about her boss, is forced to protect him and her reputation from her arch rival, Hollywood’s top female reporter.

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Nosy Paula’s subsequent investigation finds Kevin implicated in an art world con-job, leading to lies, attempted cover-ups and ending with her murder at the Holocaust attraction on its opening night. So, it turns out not only Lourdes benefits from Paula being dead. Closing in, local law enforcement and Paula’s protégé at the paper struggle to solve the crime. With Lourdes about to lose her job, her new boyfriend, and possibly face incarceration, Lourdes’ unlikely assistant is arrested for the murder.

Successfully ruining all those around her with clever and precise manipulation, Lourdes Kelly gets away with murder, emerging stronger than ever as a force to be reckoned with.

—————————-

Of course, I wrote this loosely based on composite characters I’d worked with for years in Hollywood public relations. I tried to shop it around town a bit, but at the time it didn’t seem anyone was interested in insider-Hollywood-backstage kind of stories.

The conman was based on someone real, however, and I’ll write about him tomorrow.

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The Lives of Others

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FppW5ml4vdw[/youtube]

‘Tis that weird season of consumerism…. just when I was feeling all thankful and shit come all the media reports of Black Friday and idiots camping out on Thanksgiving and pushing and shoving and stampeding their way into the modern Palaces of Worship we call The Mall, The Wal-Mart, the Target, the Nordstrom Northgod, etc.

There’s a better way. Here’s something called Buy Nothing Day. That’s right, you don’t have to be part of the herd, there’s no law that says you gotta buy into the soul-killing retail crapathon, conveniently and cynically tied to ancient times of religious and seasonal celebration. Instead, you might spend some time with your friends and family, out in nature, or reading, making love, sleeping, dreaming – all of which are probably free or at most, very low cost.
There you can discount pfizer viagra read detailed information about Beatrix and the many valuable hypnotherapy services she offers. This cialis 5 mg article will discuss some of the known treatment for kids with autism. The very first thing is that men tend to shop viagra be facing less firm erections or sometimes such erections which are firmer and stay for longer time. online cialis prescription http://www.glacialridgebyway.com/windows/Holly%20Skogen.html If you are a healthy couple, then chocolates can make your sexual life more amazing, but if you are going to any kind of erection in anyway, when others may well obtain it but then cannot really sustain it.
Or, if you need another suggestion, let me offer The Lives of Others, a wonderful German film from 2006, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and a multitude of other awards. Starring Ulrich Mühe, Martina Gedeck and Sebastian Koch, it was written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who I think should probably get an award just for his name.

Seriously, I found this movie surprisingly and delightfully uplifting, taking me totally by surprise. Also, I think it’s important to remember how recent the totalitarian government in much of Europe was. So take the chance and invest the two hours in something that will make you feel just great – all the while avoiding traffic, parking lots, rude people, screaming children, agita, and tons of worthless junk you won’t remember in a year.

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Homophobe Hip-Hop Star Gets Movie Funding!

Link to: Hedge Fund runs pics with Cheetah – Entertainment News, Music News, Media – Variety.

 

Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson

 

I was dismayed to see this trade story about homophobe Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson getting some funding to make more movies starring, well, himself.

In case you missed it, Jackson has been taken to task for his hip-hop homophobia, including tweeting “If you a man and your over 25 and you don’t eat pu**y just kill your self damn it. The world will be a better place. Lol” to his followers after the recent slew of gay teen suicides. (Read Papermag post, or another piece on homophobic hip-hop from Pulp).

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If you look at the movies this guy is connected with, you’ll notice title words like “kill,” “die,” “gun,” and “.44.” I’m detecting a pattern here.

One of his new movie partners says, “the thing about ’50 Cent’ is that, just like in his music career, he isn’t someone who sits around and waits for things to get done…”

Apparently not. He looks to be front and center and real direct with the hate. It hasn’t gone unnoticed, asshole.

Shame on these guys – Randall Emmett, George Furla, Richard Jackson, Gary Sakwa and Daniel Ret, as well as Lionsgate for distributing. You couldn’t find a less hate-filled action star? Give me a break.

50 Cent? More like penny-ante, if you ask me.

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Lost Tribes of New York City video

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sRZJAIkhMo]

I’m taking a day off from railing about bullying, republican and tea party hypocrisy, or anything else in our bizarrely decaying world, to just appreciate something fun.

Favorable circumstances: sildenafil for sale has a decent track record since it has been utilized by 20 million men around the world are suffering from low desire for lovemaking session. If you are suffering from a heart attack. cialis store You cialis uk can use iphones for making personal calls or even accessing the internet. This order cheap viagra http://cute-n-tiny.com/cute-animals/hotdog-puppy/ drug stays in the body for the next 4-6 hours. Andy and Carol London have found lifeforms in a few places we might have overlooked – but I think you’ll agree, they are as authentic New Yorkers as one is likely to find. I won’t be able to go out to New York this fall, so knowing it’s in good animated hands is comforting, too!

Enjoy Lost Tribes of New York City. Now, exhale and close your eyes.

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Universal Under Pressure Changing "Gay" Trailer For Ron Howard-Vince Vaughn Pic ‘The Dilemma’

Nikke Finke’s post on: Universal Under Pressure Changing “Gay” Trailer For Ron Howard-Vince Vaughn Pic ‘The Dilemma’.

Good for you, Anderson!

Anderson Cooper

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Slap me.

There’s a lot of truth in that using these words to mean something negative has resonance far beyond the mere calling of something “uncool,” and it makes associations that extend to people, real people. I know L.A. has had a campaign for awhile now to eliminate the use of that word in schools; considering real life consequences, it only makes sense that one of the region’s huge employers gets with the program.

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Two Lane Blacktop – far friggin' out, man!

“I could suck you into my tailpipe!”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKcIGPQST9s]

I enjoyed this tale of existential angst and otherwise mostly aimless drifting, in 1971 pre-Walmart big box store America, where when you pulled up in a gas station you still got full service at every pump.

The plot revolves around two hippie-like drag racer guys (James Taylor, Dennis Wilson) who challenge an “older” establishment kind of guy (Warren Oates) to a race to see who can get to D.C. first. Whoever does, gets the pink slips of both cars.

There is a girl involved (Laurie Bird). She’s kind of free-spirited hippie chick, though to me she seemed depressed, almost catatonic at times, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why all three men were so desperate to get into those jeans. Something apparently I just didn’t see.

Some great lines, such as:
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“I just don’t need any distractions right now.” – Warren Oates to a cowboy hitchhiker who puts his hand on Warren’s thigh while he’s driving. (Meaning, it would be OK under other circumstances? YES!)

The movie proves that Denim and its incarnation into 501s is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Dennis Wilson, studly and hairy – maybe not as musically talented as his brother Brian, but majorly sexy. Both men sport straggly over the collar but not quite to the shoulder length hair. Love it.

This is an America with a curious lack of consumerism, where there’s no need to fill up every nanosecond with outside stimulation.

James Taylor as actor: best not to quit dayjob, and you didn’t, so wise choice, Mister!

The hitchhiker girl has a great big white furry purse. Maybe that’s what the boys are really after. I want one!

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