Go to any Starbucks in New York or Los Angeles and you’re guaranteed to find yuppie after yuppie, hunched over their MacBooks, working on a “screenplay.” By “screenplay,” of course, I mean Facebook…or online poker…or SuicideGirls – hopefully. There are a lot of screenplays floating around out there, though, and only an infinitesimal percentage of them will ever make it to the big screen one day. Why? Because most of them are shit. 99% of them are makeshift, amateurishly conceived pats on the back. Most movies are bad, so writing a screenplay must by extension be a piece of cake, right? Yeah, no. Even the most bloated, awful Hollywood blockbusters start out with a good screenplay. Hard to believe, but it’s true.
“It all begins and ends with Animal from The Muppets.”
-Rainn Wilson
Robert “Fish” Fishman is in his early 40s. He spends his days as a quiet pencil-pusher in a Cleveland office park and his nights trying to forget about the time, 20 years ago, when he was the drummer of a rising pop-metal band called Vesuvius and was unfairly bounced from their lineup before they blasted off into the rock n’ roll stratosphere. On the eve of the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he decides to distract himself by doing a little drumming for his nephew’s high-school garage band, led by the talented Curtis (singer Teddy Geiger) and the cute Amelia (Superbad’s Emma Stone) and that’s when fate opens up a window for an unlikely second chance at rock glory.
Rainn Wilson called up SuicideGirls recently to talk about The Rocker – how he relates to late-bloomers like Fish, why he thinks drumming is “inherently funny” and whether hair metal bands actually belong in the Hall of Fame.
“They handed Franco the bag of weed. They gave me the lighter.”
– Seth Rogan
Seth Rogen is not a pothead. He only plays them in movies. His Knocked Up character sat around smoking all day, and his newest movie, Pineapple Express, is an action comedy about a stoner and his dealer on the run after witnessing a corrupt cop shooting.
“Making wine… it just went from obscurity to sexy.”
– Jody Savin
It’s commonly referred to as the “Judgment of Paris,” a blind wine tasting staged thirty-two years ago that pitted a number of French reds and whites against some upstart competitors from California’s Napa Valley. The organizer of the event, a British wineshop proprietor named Steven Spurrier, made no secret of his belief in the superiority of the French labels and was shocked (as was the whole wine world) when the results came back and Napa had bested all competitors.
“How many sequels are better than the original?”
– McG
McG still has some childhood issues to work out. The director is a successful Hollywood mogul with several TV series currently on-air and a diverse resume of films. Yet he still gets sensitive when people make fun of his name.
“The thing you loved as a kid is the thing you should do when you grow up.”
– Larry Charles
Real Time comedian Bill Maher and Borat director Larry Charles are men on a mission: to destroy societys blind faith in God. The medium they chose to convey their doctrine is not a dusty old book, but an entertaining documentary which highlights the ridiculous aspects of religion, hence its name, Religulous.
This Sunday (Jan 16th) our very special in-studio guest will be award-winning music video director Doug Freel, who is the filmmaker behind the Al Jourgenson / Ministry documentary Fix. He’ll be talking about his new rock doc, and sharing stories of life (and death) on the road with the band that defined the industrial genre.
