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After Sunday night’s MTV Movie Awards, during which Tom Cruise reprised his Hollywood producer character, Les Grossman, from Tropic Thunder, for an insanely confusing dance routine with Jennifer Lopez (the mind reels, and then the mind just keeps reeling), Tom Cruise suggested to reporters that he would be interested in bringing that character back for a whole movie. Normally, when a human being says out loud that they have a terrible idea, that’s the end of it. Not when that human being is Tom Cruise. If Tom Cruise even THINKS about writing a young adult novel in which a boy from the jungle moves to the big city and becomes the world’s most powerful publicist using his unconventional jungle skills, $3,000,000 is immediately wired to his checking account. And so here we are, three days later, and there’s already an actual movie deal from an actual movie studio in place. Incredible. Of course, you can’t have a funny movie without a funny PRESS RELEASE, right, you guys? Who doesn’t love a FUNNY PRESS RELEASE! From CNN (CNN!):
Paramount and MTV Films announced Wednesday that they’re ready to give Grossman his very own untitled movie project to star in.
As the statement notes, this “announcement comes hot on the heels of Grossman’s groundbreaking and visionary production of the soon-to-be-Emmy award-winning 2010 MTV Movie Awards.” (We didn’t know the Emmy’s had an “outstanding use of excessive swearing” category.)
And those MTV promos with Grossman – played by Tom Cruise, of course – and Robert Pattinson? That was evidence that this Hollywood player is still in the game. According to the statement, “Tom Cruise, along with Ben Stiller and Stuart Cornfeld of Red Hour Films will produce and have secured the life rights to Grossman.”
Stiller, who introduced Grossman to moviegoers in 2008′s “Tropic Thunder,” said Grossman’s life story “is an inspiring tale of the classic human struggle to achieve greatness against all odds.” He added, “[Grossman] has assured me he plans to quote, ‘[Expletive] kill the [expletive] out of this movie and make Citizen [expletive] Kane look like a piece of crap home movie by the time we are done.’ I am honored to be working with him.”
“Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” screenwriter Michael Bacall will pen the script, although Grossman didn’t clarify what exactly it will be about. “To quote my great friend Kirk Lazarus, ‘I don’t read the script, the script reads me,’ ” Grossman said.
Really, CNN? You agree to play along with this? Because, I’m not journalist or anything, but just for the record: LES GROSSMAN ISN’T A REAL PERSON.
Ugh.
That aside, I can’t wait to see the hilarious life story of a Hollywood Studio Executive! Even with Tom Cruise and Ben Stiller involved, it will be hard for them to differentiate this movie from all the other uproarious comedies about the internecine power struggles of Hollywood’s most notorious assholes. There are just so many movies about that because of how much people who go to the movies WANT TO SEE THEM. In the end, I think the thing that is really going to put their Hollywood Powerbroker Komedy above the rest (of the Hollywood Powerbroker Komedies, of which, we have agreed, there are tons) is Tom Cruise’s superb use of JEWFACE. They should really drive that home in the promotional materials. “Hitler Killed 6 Million Jews In The Holocaust: But One Got Away. And Now He Is The Hitler Of Hollywood. Played Almost Insanely Offensively By Scientologist Tom Cruise.” GOOOOOOD TAGLINE! For a great movie.
Does anyone know what time Fandango opens? (Thanks for the tip, Daniel and Chris.)
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I think we can all agree that one thing our society needs more of is mildly anti-Semitic caricatures as portrayed by an actor who’s been driven insane by money and fame, in case there are no gay people.
To be fair Les Grossman, although offensive, was used in the movie in a pretty even manner.
The movie was an all out parody, from the “Golden Triangle” to the Movies themselves. They had a guy in black-face discussing the difference between “half-retard and full retard” for (enter your preferred deity’s name here)’s sake!
The thing that creeps me out about MTV is that they celebrate the caricatures without context. I’m not old enough to remember, but I’m pretty sure the MTV awards itself, started of as a parody of other award shows. The only reason people take them seriously now is because somewhere in between they (the Madmen) figured they can just sell cheap culture to impressionable kids without really understanding the product they are selling. It wasn’t like this back in Gabe’s and Hitchcock’s time, now any bozo can get on youtube and become famous by bungling a weather report. Did I get in all in there? OK good, I’m not going to be around as much now that i’m moving into my own pad with two sexy ladies. See you Sunday Werttrew and the rest of the Midwest Monster Chapter.
It just makes me sad that stuff like this exists, not even just as an idea, but something that will eventually occupy a point in three dimensional space. More like multiple points. Come on, three dimensional space. You’re better than this.
I feel like I would be angry depressed about this, but I haven’t seen Tropical Thunder, and I hardly know what the MTV Movie awards are (I’m 75) so I’m just confused and lost (I’m always confused and lost, I’m 75).
You mean you haven’t seen Tropical Thunder?!
I told you, I’m old!
(And wow, that picture really gets to the point, doesn’t it? “Naw, naw, we don’t need anything above the mouth or below the ass.”
I’m completely numb to Hollywood coming up with bad ideas for movies and it saddens me that people will want to see this. Bartender, another shot of reality please.
Sometimes, movie deals like this come along and at first I’m like “GROOOANNN. Why doesn’t Hollywood just take, like, a year off and then come back with clear heads?” But then there’s usually this tiny voice in the back of my head that’s like, “But what if this is secretly the best movie you’ll ever see?” And then I get kind of sad.
History repeats itself. If my calculations are correct, not only will this Scientologist’s ill-conceived vanity project be one of the worst movies ever made, it will costar Forrest Whitaker (also totally buried under latex Jewface makeup), and there will be so many dutch tilts that even my throwup will throw up.
Upvote for DUTCH TILTS! Filmspeak! YAY!
Does anyone else remember “DUTCH TILTS ASIDE”? I can’t even begin to fathom which Videogum entry that came from (I feel like it had to do with Juggalos/ICP?), but I still love it.
Uh duh, you guys were talking about Battlefield Earth and that’s what the post with DUTCH TILTS ASIDE was about : http://videogum.com/162051/writer-apologizes-for-battlefield-earth-now-just-needs-to-apologize-for-his-apology/movies/really-bad-movies/
battlefield earth, MY GOD. My Mormon friends tricked me into seeing it in the theater in high school and I had no idea what Scientology was at the time, so I thought it was about the creation myth of Mormonism for far too long. I kept waiting for the garments, but there were only wigs and “accents.”
I read that as “dutch tits” and thought what a great movie that would be. Then I thought how great it would be to use dutch tilts in porn. That would be an even greater movie.
At first I said Ughhhhhhhhhh, but then I thought, BUT it’s an original idea. The theaters are littered with remakes and re-tellings and adapted screenplays… so we shouldn’t poo-poo an actual from-the-brain ORIGINAL idea… even though the original idea is based off another movie… so maybe I’m the asshole.
Actually, the concept of “angry Hollywood powerbroker” is something that is far too common. Ari Gold, Rob Lowe in “Thank You for Smoking,” Kevin Spacey in “Swimming with Sharks,” most characters in the movies made by the “For Your Consideration” folks — they LOVE angry, incompetent power brokers in Hollywood. (And the only thing better than them being played by regular actors is them being played by insane actors covered in face puddy and wearing a fat suit. Am I right, Eddie Murphy? That’s how you make things better!)
That said, the line “Hitler killed six million Jews in the Holocaust, but one got away…” was a massive deposit in my annual LOLK.
Give the people what they want, and by people I mean
That puppet freaks me out. I only recently learned that it exists. That thing gives me nightmares on so many levels.
I can’t believe Hollywood would resort to this, when there are still so many Street Fighter 2 characters that don’t have their own movies yet! Priorities, Hollywood, priorities!
Does anyone remember when CNN was a serious news source? Yeah, neither can I.
Don’t blame CNN, blame the world. Stuff like this is actually what people want to hear. It’s the same reason the half hour world news is followed by a full hour of celebrity gossip shows.
The questions should be: Does anyone remember when people wanted to hear serious news? Yeah, neither can I.
You’re right. To be fair, I was in a crummy mood this morning. Sorry CNN!
Gulf War! Which was, oh, 20 years ago? CNN is all holographic Jessica Yellin and Wolf Blitzer and his horrible beard. It’s terrible.
My first exposure to CNN was staying up all night watching the first Gulf War coverage, Jan 17, 1991. I was high on LSD. CNN’s reporting was excellent that night, btw, and maybe it was also their last moment of reportage excellence.
It’s time to give every supporting character its own movie: Puffy Diddy from Get Him to the Greek(life and times of…music producer? haven’t seen this), George H.W. Bush from W.(clearly called H.W.), and, like, that old lady from Billy Madison who says “If peeing your pants is cool, then I’m Miles Davis”(life of the peeing-est old lady ever).
Hollywood, think of how many movies you can make.
When I was a kid, for some reason I always remembered her as saying Miles Standish, which if you think about it, is way funnier.
now a lloyd grossman movie I would watch… that guy has the best accent!
and he can hold the most tomatoes!
Every time I use his pasta sauce, I like to imagine him pausing in the street, listening to the wind for a second then nodding almost imperceptibly to himself, knowing that he has done well.
Amish people are so lucky because they’re blissfully ignorant of things like this. I guess I could say the same about people in comas. Yeah, Amish coma victims have it good right about now.
I don’t think there are Amish coma victims since life support would count as technology and they don’t like that very much
Is it not possible that someone might be in a coma while eschewing life support? I thought that was a thing that could also happen. Otherwise, I hate to think what other health conditions soap operas have been liars about.
Life-long Amish coma victims definitely have it the best.
The Amish have Rumspringa, so generations of Amish have potentially experienced films akin to a Marty Grossman movie. Then they return home and live out their lives with memories of the horrors of modern Hollywood cinema.
So yeah, as long as the Amish person went into a coma before Rumspringa, they’re set.
I always thought it was Rumpspringa, which sounds much more enjoyable.
I’m fully ready for this movie, as long as his co-star is J. Lo:
http://bit.ly/bz3i75
I am so upset that this cannot be viewed outside of the US.
um but they still haven’t said what board game this is based on
Does anyone else suspect that this deal was in place already, and some fresh young thing at the PR agency said: “Wait until the MTV movie awards to say: ‘Hey, who WOULDN’T love a movie about this?” .
Otherwise, this seems to be the FASTEST OF FAST-TRACKS.
Yes, I’m 100% sure that’s what happened! There’s no other reason a character from a 2-year old movie would be featured so prominently in that stupid studio marketing “awards” “show.”
In related news, Hollywood is doing an A++ job of hastening 2012!!! Great job, Hollywood!
Hopefully Ari Gold will show up and they will fight about who can me the more racist, homophobic Jews in Hollywood!! Doesn’t that sound great?? (Seriously though, it’s probably already in the script.)
Show your work Tom Cruise:
Les Grossman= Tony Clifton + 30 years – funny
math.
(Pssst, you forgot to divide by Robert Evans)
Hmmm, I might read the YA novel “Jungle Boy: Big City Publicist” if it were written by anyone but Tom Cruise.
You guys, we need to be more excited about this. Ben Stiller is excited, Tom Cruise is excited. We need to ride that wave of excitement straight to the box office!
Les Grossman sounds like some kinda French movie.
Jules et Jim et Jewface
But Gabe, the Tom Cruise character dances HILARIOUSLY. The minstrel show analogy…wow, it really comes together, doesn’t it?
This just reminded me that I had a dream about Les Grossman last night. What? I don’t know.
Gross, man
For what it’s worth, this film sounds like it will be the Elektra to Tropic Thunder’s Daredevil.
But Tropic Thunder is already Elektra to Tropic Thunder’s Daredevil
Mission: Unwatchable
Tom Cruise just read this post, and just to show all of us he’s not anti-Semitic, he went back in time and made a movie about killing Hitler.
Does this mean that Legend 2 is still a no go?
Respect the schlock.
Magnolia reference!
Show me the money, because I’m a Jew, get it?!!!!!
What an angry response to something so benign and irrelevant…
Aren’t they already making an Entourage movie?
I really loved “Tropic Thunder,” but I also really hated Tom Cruise in it. It was similar to Cruise’s “shocking” turn in “Magnolia.” I don’t like him, and I don’t want him in movies, thanks. “Knight & Day” looks like it will provide plenty of unintended deposits into our LolK accounts, at least.
Gabe, please have Duh Afficionado do a cover feature on this development.