My Judd Apatow affinity reached a life long devotion when my Mom and I spent a Saturday night watching NBC burn off the final few Freaks and Geeks episodes. We laughed, drank Rolling Rocks, and the phone never did ring from that girl that went out with me the week prior. The girl never called but my Limited Edition Freaks and Geeks yearbook edition gets lots of consistent attention.
Until then watch Michael Cera blow his top1 on the set of Knocked Up:
The New York Times reports on Judd Apatow’s Family Values, a nice lengthy piece that profiles Apatow’s career trajectory from the high schooler who interviewed Jerry Seinfeld for his radio show to the eve of his second major motion picture’s release.
A thought provoking perspective on the gender politics in Knocked Up and the awkwardness of dealing with that pesky ‘Shmasmortion’ issue.
“I tried to believe that my own point of view and experiences were interesting, and that’s something I’d always had a problem with. I stopped doing stand-up comedy because I didn’t believe that I was someone who people would find fascinating.”
– Judd Apatow
Us government trying to seize new Michael Moore film says producer.
Harvey Weinstein fires latest shot in battle over healthcare documentary
Charlotte Higgins in Cannes
Saturday May 19, 2007 The Guardian
Cannes is smacking its lips in anticipation of filmmaker and provocateur Michael Moore’s latest jeremiad against the US administration, which receives its premiere at the film festival today. Sicko, a documentary tackling the state of American healthcare, focuses on the pharmaceutical giants, and particularly on health insurers.The film has already caused Moore – who won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2004 with Fahrenheit 911 – to clash with the American authorities. Now, according to movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, whose Weinstein Company is behind the film, the US government is attempting to impound the negative.
According to Weinstein, the US Treasury’s moves meant “we had to fly the movie to another country”- he would not say to where. “Let the secret service find that out – though this is the same country that thought there were weapons of mass destruction, so they’ll never find it.” He added that he feared that if the film were impounded, there might be attempts to cut some footage, in particular the last 20 minutes, which related to a trip to Cuba. This, said Weinstein, “would not be good.”
In March, Moore travelled to the Caribbean island with a group of emergency workers from New York’s Ground Zero to see whether they would receive better care under the Castro regime than they had under George Bush. He had applied for permission to travel in October 2006 and received no reply.
In a letter dated May 2, the treasury department notified Moore that it was investigating him for unlicensed travel to Cuba, or, as the missive put it, engaging in “travel-related transactions involving Cuba.”
Now team Moore is hitting back. Weinstein has hired an attorney, David Boies, who has lodged a request under the US freedom of information act to find out what motivated the treasury to begin its investigation. “They have to tell us why they did it and what they did,” said Weinstein. “And they are not too happy about it.”
Weinstein believes the investigation has a political agenda. “We want to find out who motivated this. We suspect there may be interference from another office,” he said. “Otherwise, I don’t understand why this would have come about.”
Weinstein named no suspects in this putative political interference, but referred to outspoken critics of Moore on the Republican right – who tend to accuse him of peddling propaganda rather than of undertaking serious journalism – including presidential hopeful Bob Thompson.
“Senator Thompson has come out with a tirade against Michael. Michael said he’d debate him, but Thompson turned him down,” said Weinstein.
He also said that insurers and pharmaceutical companies had “already sent out letters advising employees how to react when the film comes out”.
Weinstein appeared to be enjoying the brouhaha that the film is stirring up before it has even screened. “I’ve already told the Treasury that they are saving me money on advertising.”
In Cannes, the Weinstein Company’s offices are decorated with a mural of the rotund Moore sitting in a hospital waiting area flanked by a pair of skeletons, and Sicko sticking plasters are being given away as promotional gifts.
Moore’s underlying thesis in Sicko relates to the structure of American society. “Others see themselves as a collective that sinks or swims together,” he told Variety.
“It’s important to have a safety net and free universal health care. In America, unfortunately, we’re more focused on what’s in it for me. It’s every man for himself. If you’re sick and have lost a job, it’s not my problem. Don’t bother me.”
The insurance companies are a negative force, he believes. “They get in the way of taking care of those who are ill. They make it worse. We don’t need them,” he said.
The health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, may be surprised by Moore’s ringing – if strictly speaking, factually inaccurate – endorsement for the NHS. “The poorest Brit is healthier and lives longer than the wealthiest American,” he said.
Of his journalistic style, he said: “It’s the op-ed page. You don’t say that’s not journalism. I present my opinion, my take on things, based on indisputable facts. They could be wrong. I think they’re right.” Moore’s biggest hit to date has been Fahrenheit 911, which took $222m (£112m) worldwide. He made Bowling For Columbine, his acclaimed film about US gun culture, in 2002. The rightwing backlash has spawned a number of documentaries questioning his methods, including Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk’s Manufacturing Dissent. Moore has hired Al Gore’s former press secretary, Chris Lehane, to help him to deal with “the forces I’m up against”.
Congratulations are in order! Colby Buzzell’s My War: Killing Time In Iraq won the 2007 Lulu Blooker prize,which recognizes the best book that began as a blog on the Internet. This comes in the same week that U.S. military abruptly blocked soldiers’ access to Myspace, Facebook, MTV, YouTube, and other sites because of “bandwidth” issues.
Listen below to Buzzell discussing that issue on Talk of the Nation.
30 Rock’s over for the season and thankfully it’ll be back next year even if Alec Baldwin has to pretend to troop through it so his public doesn’t have to concern themselves any longer with his parenting abilities.
Let’s be honest Thursdays have been lonelier and a lot lighter on laughs without Tina Fey & Co. The Office is unevenly funny most of the time and Scrubs keeps trying too hard to maintain any vitality.
Before the withdrawal shakes get too intense:
Go here, to catch up on any episodes you may have missed.
Check out Jesse Thorn’s hysterical interview with Jack McBrayer (Kenneth the page) on The Sound of Young America—available in both audio and video(!) formats.
If anything it’s worth listening to just for this exchange:
Jack: I haven’t made any major irresponsible purchases yet. Oh, I can’t wait to.
Jesse: What’s the first thing you’re gonna buy?
Jack: I’m gonna buy a futon. A futon made of baby skin.
Below, Tina Fey’s trip to the Howard Stern show from last November, in which she dishes on her pre-marital inability to even give it away, SNL, and of course that certain blonde Fraggle-haired-walking-STD who’s currently crusading to further prove that not everyone has to abide by our country’s laws.1
If you’re still fooling yourself that Paris Hilton’s going to do 24 consecutive hours let alone a minute of jail time, let me take this opportunity to welcome you to this country.[back]
WNOV-AM (860) Milwaukee has barred talk show host Michael McGee for comments about the death of Katherine Sykes. Sykes, the mother of conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes, WTMJ 620 AM, died earlier this week in a fire at her Mequon home.
...”Mother Sykes, she dead. To me it’s the vengeance of God. I ain’t got no tears. Matter of fact a woman that would have a fool like that deserve whatever is coming her. She raised a sure enough idiot,” McGee said on his radio show. “My instincts say Charlie Sykes killed his momma, cuz she live out in this big palace in Mequon all isolated. He got tired of waiting for her money.”
Today, WNOV suspended McGee1 indefinitely, and replacing him on the air will be his son, the equally bigoted alderman Michael McGee Jr.2
While Charlie Sykes mourns the untimely loss of his mother, Sykes is no stranger to the having his hand slapped over racist comments. He’s not big on Hispanics, immigrants of perceived illegal nature, and of-course the McGee’s who Sykes’ swung his share of verbal haymakers in their direction.
While talk radio seems to thrive these days on bickering over where the line on hate speech is these days, what do these talking heads manage to create beyond the further polarization of the community in which them spew their views?
Guess that doesn’t matter, just so long as they get paid.
Why does the city of Milwaukee and it’s community tolerate these assclowns? They can run their mouths, and but we don’t need to listen. This city has enough noise.
for some fun filled reading check out McGee’s glee at forming a Black Panther Militia back in the 90s. He was intent on bring organized violence to Milwaukee because this was going to help the inner city be heard [back]
When author Kurt Vonnegut died last week at the age of 84, the first person EW rang was Vonnegut’s longtime friend John Irving, who was Vonnegut’s student at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in the mid-’60s. Irving — the writer of The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Widow for One Year — was in a reflective mood, so we just listened as he talked at length about his sad and funny friend. If you like good Kurt Vonnegut stories, read on.
JOHN IRVING: ‘’I met him in ‘65, and I was in the Workshop from ‘65 to ‘67. I spent the lion’s share of my time at Iowa with Kurt, and we’ve been close friends ever since. The only criticism he ever made of my writing was making fun of my fondness for semicolons, which Kurt never liked very much. He called semicolons ‘’transvestite hermaphrodites.’’ [Laughs] And so whenever we had a correspondence I would try to write him a letter that was one sentence connected by an infinite number of semicolons. [Laughs] But he was a great guy, and a particularly important influence on me at a young time, because I certainly knew from reading Dickens that you could break the rules in terms of putting comedy and tragedy in the same story or even the same scene. But Vonnegut was such a flaunting example of that in contemporary terms. He could write the most condemning stuff about human nature while being both funny and kind.
‘’I watched the Six-Day War in Vonnegut’s kitchen in Iowa City. My now-eldest son Colin was then two years old, and Kurt didn’t have any kids that age, so there weren’t any toys around for Colin. Kurt and I were trying to watch the war, but it’s tough to watch a war with a two-year-old. So Kurt got the idea that if we took all the pans and pots out of the kitchen cabinet, and gave Colin a couple of wooden spoons, then he could entertain himself, and we would have the appropriate background music for watching a war. And so that’s what we did. We gave Colin two wooden spoons, and all the pots and pans in Vonnegut’s kitchen, and turned up the volume.
