If the least funny thing on Earth is someone trying to explain comedy, then surely someone trying to explain comedy to the New York Times has to be at the bottom of that bottom tier. It's right down there with AIDS, Darfur, and Carlos Mencia (I also blog at cheapzings.com). Oh, and it's filmed in black and white? Perfect. But whatever. We don't look to the New York Times for laughs. We look to it for powerful stories about hipsters getting locked in bars, and harrowing on-the-ground reports of what's going on with the cats in Iraq.
Stately interviews with jokesmiths Seth Rogen and Will Ferrell after the jump. SPOILER ALERT: they're both just doing comedy to get laid.
If anyone still cares (because it was okay to care for five minutes in 2005 as part of a complete Star-Jones-hating package) whether or not Star's ex Al Reynolds is gay, he has finally broken his silence to the ironically titled Celeb TV:
(Via Best Week Ever) It's funny because he's like "Oh my god, does anyone care anymore about the thing I used to not want to discuss? Nevermind, let's discuss it!" Also, he speaks so slowly that this seems like one of those "drunk" Jeff Goldblum videos. And I imagine the Celeb TV people had fun both writing and reciting this info-chocked sentence:
He still loves Star, they had a prenup, he has no regrets, and he's not fading away.
I don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but those interviews we read with celebrities are bullshit. Oops! Sorry, but it's true. They're painstakingly placed by a team of publicists who will blacklist a writer or magazine if they aren't happy with the final product. Everyone knows that, and we all just accept celebrity puff pieces for what they are, because despite being stupid and embarrassing, they don't really hurt anyone. But there's a darker flip side to the eyerollingly gushy celebrity interview: the has-been ambush interview. This is when a writer contacts a former celebrity who seems vulnerable, acts like he wants to give him or her a platform for a comeback, and then lets the celebrity dig him or herself into an out-of-context-quote crazy-hole. Steve Guttenberg, or as he may or may not call himself or joke about calling himself, "The Goot," fell victim to just such a trick in the pages of The New York Observer yesterday, and blogs like Gawker are understandably all over such quotes as:
"I'll lie to make myself feel better," he said. "If I feel shitty, and someone says, 'What are you working on,' I'll get really pissed off and go, 'Yeah I'm doing a thriller with, you know, George Clooney.' I make myself feel better by that--that's an addiction to whatever that is, to make myself feel better, to take the pain away."
And, yeah, the interview is weird. But someone needs to be a Guttenberg apologist, here. Lines like "He estimates he's slept with over 600 women." are the result of one of the oldest cheap tricks in the book -- ask for a fact like a number, and then make the answer, be it an estimate or a joke or what, seem like it was offered. So "How many women?" "I don't know, 600 maybe? Who knows, hahaha." becomes "He estimates..." This interview is chock-full of that kind of shit, and I don't believe it for a second. Steve Guttenberg may be a weird dude, and he did choose unwisely to do the interview, but I don't think there's a human being out there who isn't an A-lister with a top-notch team of publicists who can come out ahead when the reporter's only goal is an ambush.
When I first read that the film critic Elvis Mitchell had a new interview show on TCM called Under The Influence, I thought he was going to interview famous people while they were drunk. I blame the entire rest of television for that sad easy mistake. Instead it's a kind of much less annoying Inside The Actor's Studio where actors talk about the movies that influenced them. The show premiered last week with the late Sydney Pollack, and last night the subject was the rarely-interviewed Bill Murray. Here he talks about the part of acting that nobody ever thinks about -- the part where you're crouching next to a camera making faces at your scene partner so they can give a good performance in their close-ups.
This weekend, The Washington Post did an interview with Sam Mettler, creator and executive producer of the disputed best reality show on TV, Intervention. Mettler talks about the show's success rate (70%) and its power to change people's lives. Also, his dad's bad cologne was the "addiction" that gave him the idea for Intervention, and he ingested heroin once on the show by mistake:
On his inspiration for the show:
One day, I called my sister and I said, "We gotta do an intervention with Dad on his cologne." I had been trying to come up with an idea for a new show . . . and I thought, " 'Intervention.' That's it."
On accidentally doing heroin because of a contact high:
I was sitting on floor interviewing her in her very tiny girls' pink bedroom full of teddy bears in Salt Lake City. The room was filled with heroin smoke. I was not realizing that what she was missing with her straw was being drawn right into my lungs. I stood up and immediately I fell down onto her bed. I could not stop shaking and drooling. I felt horribly sick. It lasted maybe 45 minutes.
(The best reality show on TV airs Monday nights at 9 on A&E.)
Angelina Jolie says that some of the fake tattoos on her emaciated arms in the ridiculous movie Wanted were tributes to Winston Churchill:
The words in gothic script on her upper arms come from a speech Sir Winston made on the day he took office in 1940.
In an interview for US television, Jolie said: "We tried to focus the tattoos on themes related to this sense of justice.
"From Churchill's speech, 'We have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat', I had 'toil' and 'tears'."
"'Know Your Rights' is printed in English on the back of my neck, and again in Latin as well."
That is just the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. No, Angelina Jolie. From now on just pick random words. Some 13-year-old somewhere is going to hear about this and associate Winston Churchill with bad movies for his entire life. (Will everyone please go see Wanted so we can all laugh at it together without spoiler alerts? I mean (spoiler alert) the rats! OMG, the rats.)
In an interview with MTV for his new movie Journey to the Center of Who Cares, Brendan Fraser was asked about his cameo in the upcoming G.I. Joe movie, and instead of being a human being about it, he gets very "where's my lawyer".
"Excuse me, this is the press junket for a movie no one cares about. I don't think it's very appropriate for you to ask me questions about something else no one cares about. I knew I should have sold some plasma and hired a publicist." It would be different if God was being interviewed about his new Book and the interviewer broke off to ask Him about why there's so much evil in the world, but Brendan Fraser needs to relax. I know he thinks the world is still reeling from his work in Bedazzled, but we're living in a post 9/11 world now. Bedazzled just doesn't have the same resonance it did when I can't keep this joke up any longer.
Last night's #1 segment on Countdown With Keith Olbermann was an interview with Jason Bateman that started out about how Hancock is making him "a star at last," but then took a turn for the not-boring exactly halfway through when Bateman's Arrested Development co-star David Cross stopped by. After some gay marriage announcement jokes, Cross and Bateman fuel speculation about a potential Arrested Development movie that someone needs to seriously confirm or deny already. (Despite reports, they don't really confirm it here.) It's kind of odd to watch a Will Smith-obsessed Olbermann, a junket-weary Bateman and a who-gives-a-fuck Cross bounce jokes off each other:
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