Judd Apatow and Pete Davidson opt to conquer Staten Island from home
And we introduce another new recurring feature here at Formerly Dangerous!
It’s Monday, April 27, 2020, and here’s what I’m reading…
By far, one of my favorite things about the newsletter so far has been the Friday Spotlight.
I like having that anchor for the week. I like the shape it gives things. But there’s no anchor on the opposite end of the week, and I feel like that’s a problem. When I started this newsletter and I asked you guys what kind of things you’re interested in reading, a surprising number of you asked me to revisit some old article formats from different places I’ve published in the past. Not all of them would still work for me, but there was one in particular that you guys asked about that I think I can adapt into something that works for me. With that in mind, let me introduce…
THE MONDAY READ
There was a good reason The Morning Read was unsustainable at HitFix. If it had been my only job, I could have done it every day, but doing it well was impossible if I was also going to be breaking news and writing features.
The point of the daily column was to shine a spotlight on the good work that other writers were doing all over the Internet and to give you an idea of just how much there is out there beyond just the clickbait headlines. It was a fun column, and it gave me room to write about all sorts of things. I would run a link to an article, comment briefly on it, and then move on. I didn’t have to turn every little thing into an individual article, and in some cases, I would only include a single sentence that was a hotlink. I went back to look at a few of them recently and they’re a mess now. Not only did Uproxx mutilate much of the archive of HitFix, making almost any link anyone ever ran to one of my articles pointless now, but there are so many of the articles I linked out to that are also gone that it just reads like swiss cheese at this point.
So I don’t think I’m going to bring it back the same way, but I am going to establish The Monday Read, where I’m going to send you to read some things that are being published out there. It may take me a few weeks to get back into the habit, but I like the general format, and I think it’s important to point out good work when it’s being done. After all, if I’m going to launch this site with a blast of vitriol about the state of things, then maybe I should point out examples of what I think is good about our business.
I’ll point you today at Jeff Goldsmith’s Backstory magazine, easily the best ongoing publication about screenwriting today. They’re doing good work in every issue, but they just put out a particularly good read about a legendary almost, the notorious Arrive Alive. What’s Arrive Alive, you ask? Well, my old buddy Jeremy Smith answers that question in 2900 very good words:
In the early 1980s, journalist Mitch Glazer and former Saturday Night Live head writer Michael O’Donoghue joined forces to tell the oddball story of Mickey Crews, a deeply unprincipled Miami hotel detective who gets caught up in a mess of Floridian intrigue involving a decapitated whale trainer, a crooked land development deal and the Miccosukee Indians—just for starters. The script, Arrive Alive, has the sleazy, sun-worn color of a Carl Hiaasen noir, but there’s a misanthropic quality coursing through its corroded veins that bears the unmistakable DNA of O’Donoghue, the savage wit who penned such dark little ditties as “The Vietnam Baby Book” for National Lampoon. It’s funnier, crazier and far more dangerous than your average pulp yarn, and this combination excited producer Art Linson (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Untouchables) enough to shop it around to the major studios.
The film ended up crashing a mere 18 days after it started filming, and it barely made it in front of the cameras in the first place. I will not share any more of Jeremy’s story with you… you really should take the plunge and support Backstory overall, and Jeremy’s piece is just one example of why… but I will tell you my own Arrive Alive story.
I was working for the Assistant Director’s Training Program, part of the Director’s Guild of America, when the Northridge earthquake hit. At the time, the building we were housed in was in Encino, right on Ventura Blvd, and we were across the hall from the MPAA. That earthquake literally tore our building in half, and every business moved to a building in Burbank, right next to Warner Bros. Many of us got jammed together into new half-offices or suites that we shared with other businesses, and for the ADTP, we ended up sharing a suite with The Humane Society. Specifically, their film division, the one that supervises all of the animal action in movies.
Their job was to read every script that was in development at every studio and generate a report about it, detailing any scenes that had animals involved and deciding whether or not a supervisor from the AHS needed to be on-set. Most of the time, they just wrote a basic “Approved for supervised animal action” or “Not approved for supervised animal action,” and occasionally a “No supervised animal action required” when it was clear everything would be faked.
The reports themselves weren’t terribly interesting to me, but for 1993/94-era Drew, access to every script for every film being made in Hollywood was like suddenly being given a Christmas gift every day. Their records went back about twenty years and they had active files on everything. All of those file cabinets were in the same exact storage rooms as all of our file cabinets, and thanks to a buddy who worked for them, I was given carte blanche to read what I wanted discretely. Dear reader, I wish I could tell you I resisted temptation, but I did not. I did not repeatedly, and it was awesome. I read everything. I read stuff that had stalled out in development. I read early drafts of things that were radically different when they were finally made. It was amazing and deeply educational.
One of the files I spotted one day was for Arrive Alive. As a raving Michael O’Donoghue fan, I was startled to see the title and thrilled that I might finally get a chance to read this long-rumored legendary bit of nastiness. I pulled the file and opened it, surprised to see how thin it was. Keep in mind, they were required to keep a copy of every script so they could reference anything they mentioned in their report. Some of the reports were pretty exhaustive, going line by line through scenes.
Not this one. This was just a single letter to Art Linson and Paramount.
“We have reviewed your screenplay for your proposed motion picture Arrive Alive, and we have found it completely unsatisfactory. We reject this project completely at this time and will not participate in any of the described animal action.”
That was it.
My first reaction was intense frustration. My second reaction was delight. I hoped Michael O’Donoghue and Mitch Glazer got to see that letter. I bet they laughed their asses off if they did.
Come on. Admit it. Now you’re curious. Me, too. What better time to finally check out Backstory? You’re not reading this one anywhere else.
DOG PUNCH-UP
Judd Apatow’s new film The King Of Staten Island should have had its big debut at the SXSW Film Festival last month, and by now, we’d have plenty of opinions out there about whatever it is he’s made with Pete Davidson. I’m intensely curious about the movie, more because it’s been a while since Judd felt like making a movie and less because of Davidson, but that’s fine. In some ways, I’m the perfect audience here because I’m not pre-sold. I don’t dislike Pete, but I have yet to have that moment where I really feel like he’s the right guy for the lead in something. I’m open to it. I’m ready. Just hasn’t happened. Could. Hasn’t.
So this appeared on Instagram this morning:
And Universal has indeed already got the poster ready and they’re good to go. This is happening. And when it happens, one more step gets taken towards a permanently different theatrical landscape.
I don’t think theatrical exhibition is going anywhere. I also don’t think it’s coming back Friday, no matter what the lunatics in the state of Texas think. Reason and responsibility are going to have to lead the way as we move back towards gathering together in public spaces for anything. No studio wants to release a giant blockbuster and then see headlines about a new wave of deaths because people showed up in those theaters. That would haunt me, and I’d be cautious to the point of being ridiculous right now rather than risk that.
I’m happy they’ve made this decision. I’m excited to see the film. I think this is the biggest of the films to announce this strategy so far, and it’s clear that Universal’s been the quickest to adapt to this new world overall out of the major studios. They turned The Hunt and The Invisible Man and Emma. around immediately when those films saw their theatrical debuts cut short by the beginning of stay-at-home orders, and Trolls World Tour must have done enough business to convince them that this is a viable way to move forward.
That’s fair. I’m ready for new movies right now. I know it’s not great that we’re not going to see them in theaters. I’m going crazy about how much I miss the theatrical experience right now. But there’s stuff out there to keep us busy, and if that means some of these mid-sized movies that are aimed at grown-ups end up playing the small screen instead of a theater right now, then so be it. Judd Apatow’s career is just fine. This isn’t a demotion. Nobody needs to spin this into some larger referendum on the industry. It’s just a fact that things are different right now and will be for the foreseeable future.
If anything, I think it’s encouraging that we’re embracing this for a while instead of living like everything’s on pause. I think there’s something unhealthy about that because it pretends that reality is elastic and that there’s a default it has to return to. That’s not the case. We don’t know what it looks like six months from now. So I look forward to seeing this in June and enjoying the conversation around it then. We’ll be hungry for it, and I hope it’s great.
GOOD TIMES GONE AND YOU MISSED THEM
It’s safe to say Beastie Boys Story flattened me.
I’m a pretty easy mark, though. I love the band, and I think the run of albums from Paul’s Boutique to Hello Nasty is one of the best runs any American band has ever had. More than that, though, I am the exact age the Beasties were, and the influences that drove them to form their band are the same influences that drove me to discover their work. I look at Beastie Boys Story, and I see the story of my own love of music as a silent parallel. Watching the film on Friday night with my entire family was interesting because my girlfriend and I are both old enough to have long and dense histories with the music, while my kids only vaguely know about the group.
There are a few songs that have already broken through for them. “Sabotage” was part of Toshi’s childhood because he grew up watching the JJ Abrams Star Trek on a loop. He’s always known that song, even if he didn’t know what it was or who it was. I’ve played other stuff around them, and “Intergalactic” seemed to stick, popping up on Toshi’s own Spotify playlists. For both of the boys, this served as a crash course, and there’s better way than having Adam Horovitz and Mike D. walk you through the entire history of the band personally.
The film is a document of several live shows in Brooklyn last year that were held in support of Beastie Boys Book, an amazing account of their entire history. The shows are like interactive live versions of the book, and if you put them together, what you’ve got is a rich, vibrant document that captures the scene that gave rise to the group as well as the personalities that surrounded them in those early days. Almost an hour of the film is given over to those very early days, and that’s how it should be. Those are the most vivid, beautifully-etched memories in the piece, and it does a great job of making you feel like you were there with them, like we’re all just old friends sitting around sharing stories about those days. Maybe that’s because Spike Jonze, an old friend who helped them shape some of their most famous art, is the director of this film. Or maybe it’s just because Horowitz and Diamond are so terrifically charming and so good at telling these stories by now.
I miss Adam Yauch so much. I think his evolution as an artist and a human was a pleasure to watch. The film is a lovely tribute to him, but it also serves as a great record of the early days of hip hop in New York. There’s amazing footage and intimate photos and it’s often very funny and, yeah, I cried a few times. It’s just a feast, a big warm hug of memory and music, and considering how much Beasties I’ve heard playing in the house since Friday, it’s clear I wasn’t the only one here who was affected by it. This is easily one of the best things I’ve watched in months, and if you have even a passing interest in this band or this scene, then Beastie Boys Story on AppleTV+ is an absolute must.
OH, HELL!
Hellraiser is one of those properties that has been brutally mishandled over the years. Whoever let that degenerate into a direct-to-video franchise may have helped some filmmakers get their hands on recognizable toys at a very low-budget level, but it hasn’t done many favors to the reputation of the original film.
There was a point when my writing partner and I were invited to pitch on a Hellraiser reboot. At that point, they gave us a few treatments that different people had put together, and when I read the Pascal Laugier version that they passed on, I knew for sure we weren’t going to get the job. His work, and Martyrs in particular, is so perfectly suited for this world and this mythology, and the treatment he wrote was smart and dense and explicit and sexually provocative. It was everything Hellraiser should be. If they weren’t going to make that, they weren’t going to make anything I might have brought to the table, either.
For some reason, the rights-holders have sold the potential of this particular horror series short for a long time. It seems like maybe that’s changing. They already announced a new film that David Bruckner is going to direct, and that’s got potential, certainly, but the announcement today makes me think they might actually finally turn it around for real.
HBO Max is planning a series with David Gordon Green directing several episodes and with Mark Verheiden and Michael Dougherty writing. Vertigo Entertainment and Rough House are both involved, and it sounds to me like they’re finally laying out a canvass where they might explore some of this stuff in the right way. FINALLY.
I am not above the idea of franchises. If you have a big idea that supports more than one story, then by all means, feel free to explore that. What really grinds me is that Hellraiser is one of those properties that plenty of talented people would have happily taken on over the last 20 years, and it was always the people who owned it who decided to make it cheap and sleazy and invest nothing in it. Clive Barker never imagined this as some rinky-dink little monster movie you slap together every few years with new riffs on old costumes and no ideas at all. Like most of Clive’s work, Hellraiser seems to suggest a vast and horrible world, leaving so much open to interpretation and just barely etching the shape of his mythology.
I’m not sure what HBO Max is going to look like. It sounds like they’re going to spend a ton of money to make it into a streaming giant that stands independent from HBO proper, and that may mean they’re willing to try lots of things when they debut next month that they might not try again a few years down the road. Whatever. I’m just curious to see what this particular creative collision comes up with, and I’m glad to see Rough House (the company that is run by Green, Danny McBride, and Jody Hill) really embracing horror, something they were literally contractually forbidden to do in their early days as a company. They had a deal that kept them from developing horror projects because it would have conflicted with another company under the same banner. Now, between this and Halloween, Green’s getting to be the guy that companies trust with their most famous monsters.
Not a bad gig.
AND FINALLY…
I’ve written before about how I use Columbo almost medicinally at this point. There are very few things that hit exactly that button when I’m looking for straight-up comfort food. Part of it is the way they build the plots, but most of it is simply that Peter Falk entertains me and is so compelling, even after seeing all of those episodes a few times, that putting the show on simply makes me happy.
There’s another show that works the same way for me, and we’ve reached the point in my unending and overwhelming stress load where I feel it’s necessary to break out the big guns. So, yeah, today’s newsletter is brought to you courtesy of the original two-part pilot for The Rockford Files. Jim Garner’s performance on that series is one of the purest delights to me, equal parts macho and bullshit, and I love how shambling and silly the show can be. I’m going to start peppering these into the playlists as well, and I suspect it will help me overall enormously.
It’s all wild out there, and we’re only going to get through it if we’re smart and if we’re all on the same page. Be good, gang.
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Image courtesy of Universal Pictures
Image courtesy of AppleTV+
Image courtesy of New World Pictures
Thank you, Drew. The voice of reason as ever. People need to stop spinning everything into the next prediction about the end of this, or the beginning of that. Please help keep us sane, Drew!
I love the Beastie Boys, but I think it's obvious not nearly as much as you do, Drew. For me, what you said about them, I feel 100% for REM. For me, they are the greatest American band of all time, whose run from their debut EP "Chronic Town" through to 1996's "New Adventures in Hi-Fi," their last album with Bill Berry, is unequaled. I'd put it up there for all-time status against the Rolling Stone's run from "Beggars Banquet" through "Exile on Main St." or Steely Dan's "Can't Buy a Thrill" through to "Gaucho." Maybe the Dan could've had a bettered REM had they kept going instead of entering semi-retirement for 20 years. But REM's run going on for 10 albums released over 13 years. It's awesome, it's seminal, and much like the Beastie Boys changed their corner of hip-hop, I'd argue REM changed rock music so completely that it was they, the proto-Alternative Rock band, not Nirvana, Alice and Chains, Soundgarden, or Pearl Jam who ended the reign of the hair band.
I can't wait to watch that Beastie Boys documentary. It sounds amazing. I can only hope one day someone does the same for REM, and in doing so, shines an even greater light on the music scene in Athens, GA and the University of Georgia in the 1980's and 1990's, a scene that gave birth to the B-52's, REM, Widespread Panic, Drive By Truckers, Modest Mouse, and more.
I know you've been stressed about covid-19, but hopefully you've been seeing a lot of stuff that isn't getting play in cable news, either side of the news (meaning from CNN, MSNBC, or FOX), from the tests being done in LA, Seattle, Boston, New York, and other big cities, and that's the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of more people in the country, likely in the millions at this point, with antibodies in their system. Meaning they had the virus in the last six months without knowing it, and they likely came through it without much discomfort. What that means is while the virus is highly contagious, it's not nearly as deadly as has been feared. Like, fractionally as dangerous and not more than anything so serious as the flu. That's backed up by real data. While there is still reason to stay safe and protect yourselves so as to not make those who are vulnerable (mostly the elderly) sick, it seems we're coming out the other side. Hopefully smarter with how we handle hygiene and interactions with strangers, of course. I think this is reason enough to be hopeful and happy. I'll take contagious but not deadly any day of the week after the month we all had!