I remember reading in Details magazine leading up to the film Magnolia that John C, who was playing a police officer wanted to write in scenes of him mimicking an episode of Cops. It led to the scene where he does a little soliloquy about his job and its day to day aspects, the shot is fairly close one shot as he speaks. After the release the payoff of his speech, the shot cuts to a two shot where you find out that no one else is in the car. "I drink your milkshake" is good and all, but give me John C in that scene, the cut of him sitting on the edge of his bed watching the Today show and suddenly laughing as if he was suddenly amused at some innocuous barb by Katie Couric everytime. And if not that then give me the scene in Boogie Nights when he and Marc Wahlberg fight the studio manager for their demo tapes. There are outakes on the DVD, get it. The scene in front of the intrepid in State of Grace as Stevie. In the Details piece he relays a story of how, when he came up with the idea of using Cops as inspiration, friend and director, Paul Thomas Andersen would grab his camera and they would go over to Philip Seymour Hoffman's house, unbeknownst to him, and play out a scene from cops. That's a platinum fucking grill-piece, right there.
Hoffman in his own right, after trying to kiss Dirk in Boogie Nights, throwing a fit of sexual frustration. Or his tough guy in Punch Drunk Love, there's so much but I will always keep an eye on Along Came Polly when it comes on because of the basketball scenes but more importantly for the boardroom scene towards the end when he clears his throat for 5 minutes. The point is that these two actors are brilliant, they may even be brighter than the Constellation of Logic itself.
So, what's up with this dude...
What a slick faggot (my apologies to my homosexual friends who wouldn't be offended so much by my use of such an epitath but more because I would lump him into the gay community)...
20 years ago that dude was screaming "give me my firebird keys!"--he played the heavy's nameless cohort in "One Crazy Summer." John Cusack literally made him. I used the to dig the guy--eccentric, manic, he plays it well. But all this shouldn't be happening because of a show like "Entourage." People love that fucking show. I think it is the most overrated piece of jump the shark before the shark can even jump garbage. I liken it to when people fawn over the band Oasis, they have four albums and three good songs...THREE. Critics of Oasis say the ripped their best riffs and harmonies from the Beatles, I take it one step further and say Oasis ripped their best material from Badfinger...
I was psyched to find out that he was going to be in a David Mamet Play. I know, Speed the Plow was done years ago, infamously by Madonna, I tuned out like Mr. Blue. Mamet is great, Glengarry GlenRoss will go down as one of the finest pieces of writing anyone will ever get to see put to stage or screen...
Point is I wanted to see it, and now Piven can't seem to hold his fish--using mercury poisoning as an excuse for his exile. Couldn't have been all the boozing and no doubt cocaine you've snorting off of stripper's asses downtown could it. I mean, we're all big kids here in NYC Jeremy, this ain't no hick rodeo, you can't just storm off broadway and cry mercury poisoning. That's like Wahlberg getting all upset about the dead-on "say hi to your motha' for me" impersonation by Andy Samberg. At least Marc did a funny that weekend with Lorne, and Andy on SNL, the best part of which is him not even paying attention to Sarah Palin, when he accosted Lorne Michaels for Samberg's whereabouts. A guy I dig these days is Justin Timberlake, he just gets it. He makes himself fairly available and plays against his looks and dignity on a regular basis. He and Samberg make a good team. But Piven, Piven has himself holed up like he's reprising his role in Smokin' Aces...
I'm calling bullshit, Jeremy, you sign the deal you walk the fucking line, people paid good money to see you, not Elizabeth Moss (who I could take or leave, I didn't like her work on the West Wing and I don;t get all the hub-bub about Mad Men) and the other hothead, I didn't know he was alive into I saw the comercial for the play, he might as well been seating me at a table in Applebees. So I say fuck you Piven, fuck Ari Gold, you let get to your head, and I'm not having it...
There's a scene in Singles where Piven's store clerk recognizes Cambell Scott as an old college DJ he used to love, he's talking about how he used to spin records and he excitedly asks Scott's character if he would come to a throwdown his buddies are having later that night "its going to be major..." he then notices he is ringing up a pregnancy test for Scott and his amped expression fades dead away, "so, I guess your busy then," he says...
That's gold. Ari can go suck a dick...
3 comments:
I am pretty sure I have seen a film version of True West.
I dig Sam Shepard. Netflix that right now.
Weird that Mamet is usurping our communal thoughts. I recall that his wife, Pigeon did something biographical about him/their relationship. I do not think it was flattering, akin to Coppola's wife's Heart of Darkness, the Apocalypse documentary.
I have to see that, she sort of reminds me of you, physically and in her way. She was great in the Spanish Prisoner.
I love Heart of Darkness, the whole fact that she secretly recorded phone conversations like the one where he tells the studio that Martin Sheen won't die unless he tells him he can die. Larry Fishburne and his mom, that film is crazier than Kurtz. That's where the oft used, "I swallowed a bug" comes from.
There was an animated Apocalypse Now The Musical on The Critic. It was the funniest thing Jon Lovitz ever did.
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