Hey folks, Harry here with Mr Beaks wooing a 12 year old girl like he was a female MJ! Well - read this disgusting display and wonder if he lives in your neighborhood, haunts your Junior High School and if he does indeed drive the Oscar Meyer Weiner Mobile! Here ya go...
Last Saturday, after I returned from the HELLBOY junket, I found this email in my inbox:
Dear Mr. Beaks,
My name is Yolanda Brigman. I am twelve years old, and I live under a shovel store. Recently, I have been diagnosed with a rare blinking disorder. Basically, I blink uncontrollably at all hours of the day. It’s like being Hugh Grant without the stammer and constant influx of hot pussy. At any rate, the last time I was unaffected by this condition was when I read your series on the Brian De Palma retrospective at the American Museum of the Moving Image. Don’t get me wrong; I think De Palma’s a Hitchcock thieving hack, and your fawning defense did nothing to sway me on the matter. Still, there was something in your halting prose that calmed my eyelids. Occasionally, when the blinking gets too much, I find myself yearning to reread those pieces, but, unfortunately, the site’s wonky search engine stymies me at every turn, causing me to blink even more furiously.
I’m prattling. You’re probably wondering where this eleven year-old got such an expansive vocabulary. Sir, I got it from reading your pretentious piffle. Though I think you must be a horrible bore in real life, you are, at the very least, a magician with words. And that’s the problem. What’s with the fucking interviews? Sure, I enjoy reading the hastily typed transcriptions of your conversations with cool filmmakers, but they haven’t the power to assuage my damnable blinking. I need Beaks uncut. Uncensored. Live on the Sunset Strip. With a special opening appearance by the Busboys. I want that sweet, that nasty, that gushi stuff. Do it for a girl with a quirky affliction that could only be dreamt up by a rogue comedic genius. Lay it on me, B.
Your friend,
Yolanda
P.S. Don’t get any ideas. I’m twelve, and, contrary to what Clint Eastwood says in THE BEGUILED, that is *not* “old enough for kisses”.
Suffice it to say, I was in tears after reading this letter. For hours afterward, I sat in my office and cried like a talk backer, picturing poor Yolanda blinking madly as she typed her email. Then, I turned the television on and realized that Stanford was about to get upset by a sub-par Alabama team, so I dropped everything, uncorked a bottle of Francis Coppola Claret, and watched my NCAA bracket get torn to shreds.
But when I awoke in a stupor the next morning, struggling to form complete sentences for my ONIBABA review for The DVD Journal, I found my thoughts turning back to Yolanda. She was right. I have been remiss in my writing for the site. But I’ve not only been robbing her; I’ve been robbing myself, too. These are wicked times. Wars are raging across the globe. Politicians are lying with shocking impunity. My gym stopped carrying ESPN in the afternoon, so now I can’t watch AROUND THE HORN and PARDON THE INTERRUPTION while I hit the elliptical. By not contributing a weekly column to this site, I’m only deepening this cosmic despair. No longer. From now on, you’ll be able to find me here at least once a week, opining on shit for the greater good. For you, the devoted AICN reader.
“For Yolanda.”
Tina Fey Superstar
I’ve been meaning to write about MEAN GIRLS since I saw it well over a month ago, but I kept holding out thinking that I’d be able to talk it up in a piece praising this year’s unusually strong comedy slate. Unfortunately, I still haven’t seen two of the more promising films – DODGEBALL and ANCHORMAN – in that group (though I’ve read their scripts, and found them both pretty damn hysterical); ergo, I’ll let MEAN GIRLS fly solo.
Directed by Mark (brother of Daniel) Waters, who helmed last year’s solid FREAKY FRIDAY remake, the film is largely a showcase for the precision-guided wit of writer/co-star Tina Fey. (“Precision-guided wit”, eh?) In what essentially amounts to a glossy updating of HEATHERS sans the murder, Fey targets the much-discussed “Queen Bee” phenomenon (this has nothing to do with DOLEMITE, though you’ve got to admit that a teenage madam with kung-fu hookers has serious potential) that makes high school such a living hell for young girls. Here’s how it breaks down: Lindsay Lohan plays Cady Heron, a socially aloof transfer from Africa who’s dropped into this poisonously facile hierarchical system where she becomes something of a project for the school’s three most popular girls, the “Plastics”. Though Cady has already struck up a friendship with two likeable misfits – presumed lesbian Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and flamingly out-and-proud Damian (Daniel Franzese) – she accepts the Plastics’ “kindness” if only to glean an amusing insight into their superficial world. But popularity proves a powerful narcotic for Cady, who soon falls hard for the boyfriend of head Plastic, Regina (Rachel McAdams). This sets off a nasty power struggle in which lies and humiliation are the order of the day; one that Cady, after sustaining a few initial lumps, learns to play quite well. When the girls’ manipulative warfare threatens to upset the delicate social balance of the school to literally riotous effect, the well-meaning, recently divorced Ms. Norbury (Fey) is forced to intercede.
Aside from a few sly twists, MEAN GIRLS’ narrative trajectory is fairly predictable, but it’s elevated to “potential classic” status thanks to Fey’s trenchantly observed script, which is probably the smartest of its kind since Todd Solondz’s WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE. Those brave souls who endure the rough first forty minutes of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE just to reach the “Weekend Update” already know Fey’s one of the keenest comedy minds going, which makes it all the more exhilarating to find her reinvigorating the oft-traversed teen comedy genre with such a well-crafted screenplay. Though I haven’t read the myriad on the subject, it’s not hard to imagine popular girls keeping “Burn Books” in which they savage their classmates and teachers, or being humored by overly accommodating mothers like the one played by the great Amy Poehler, who pines for her own daughter’s approval with the same tenacity evinced by the girl’s peers. For all of the broad comedy on display, there’s an undeniable ring of truth to Fey’s satire.
One of the happiest surprises in the movie is Tim Meadows, who snags some big laughs as the Joe Clark-wannabe principal, Mr. Duvall. Suffering from an acute case of carpal tunnel that forces him to sport a rather unwieldy wrist brace, Meadows plays Duvall as a self-aware loser who’s not above hitting on Fey’s Ms. Norbury in front of her class. Meadows’s best moment comes when he’s dressing down the entire student body, baseball bat in hand, after breaking up a wild melee. “My first instinct is to cancel the Spring Fling. (Stony pause.) But I can’t do that ‘cause we already paid the D.J.” Also worth noting are Caplan and Franzese, who have a blast as Cady’s cynical outcast pals. I still crack a smile every time I think of Franzese unabashedly belting out Christina Aguliera’s “Beautiful” in front of a hostile audience. This movie has lots of memorable moments like that, which is a credit to Mark Waters’s nimble direction.
Like CLUELESS before it, MEAN GIRLS is the kind of teen film that will play to a surprisingly wide audience *if* Paramount is able to get the word out that they’ve got something special. The theatrical trailer is pretty cookie cutter, making use of the only scene that struck me as false in the cut that I saw. Lohan accidentally falling headfirst into a trash can might be a nice easy laugh for the commercials, but it doesn’t belong in a film this smart. Until the third act group therapy session settles the film into a familiar groove, Fey’s script miraculously avoids such clichés. Hopefully, MEAN GIRLS is just the first in a long succession of inspired scripts from this immensely talented writer.
There! I made it all the way through my review without saying how fucking sexy she is.
What If They Threw a Film Festival in Bermuda and Beaks Couldn’t Go?
The great tragedy of this week, besides the wheels falling off the Cleveland Cavs playoff drive, is that I’m stuck here in Los Angeles doing poopy things while I could be at the seventh Bermuda International Film Festival watching movies and hanging out on the beach. I was offered a spot, but my work load forced me to turn it down, which means I’m missing my chance to finally see such raved about films like Lars Von Trier’s THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS, Jonathan Demme’s THE AGRONOMIST, Kim Ki-Duk’s supposedly sensational SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER… AND SPRING, and tomorrow’s closing night selection (along with ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND), YOUNG ADAM, in which Ewan McGregor once again goes the “Full Obi”.
But what I’d most like to see is DFK6498, which is also playing tomorrow. It’s the last film by sixteen year-old Cameron Duncan, whose brave struggle with bone cancer inspired Fran Walsh, Howard Shore and Annie Lennox to write “Into the West” for THE RETURN OF THE KING. Fran has said of DFK6498 that, “Cameron made this film because he had to; it was his way of coming to terms with the crappy stuff that was happening to him in life. In this film he gives articulation to thoughts and feelings that would otherwise have remained unsaid, finding levels of honesty, intimacy and artistic expression that are truly surprising.” Fran’s passion for this unique work is the only endorsement I require. Though it’s a tragedy that someone with as much potential as Cameron was taken from us so soon, it’s somewhat heartening that he left us with this final testament.
The Jury at the Bermuda International Film Festival is being headed up by Willem Dafoe, and is filled out by such notable artists as Guillermo Arriaga and Carlos Cuaron. Sounds like a party. Damn everyone who was able to make it.
Beaks Runs Out of Gas
Well, this column is running longer than it was supposed to, mostly because of the smart ass intro. I’ll cut it short, and promise to be back soon with some tantalizing news about THE WATCHMEN, a HELLBOY review, and loads of interviews from last week’s HELLBOY junket.
Yolanda, honey? Has the blinking stopped?
Faithfully submitted,
Oh, okay. One last bit…
Beaks About Town
Was that Kevin Spacey seen staggering drunk out of West Hollywood hot spot Formosa last Saturday night? Not unless he suddenly grew six inches, put on 200 lbs., and sprouted a shitload of facial hair. Come to think of it, that looked a helluva lot like Rick Rubin. Besides, it’d be awfully tacky for Spacey to hang out at Formosa since that whole Veronica Lake scene from L.A. CONFIDENTIAL was shot there. Forget I mentioned it.
