(Edwards delivers a tearful farewell, flanked by his mistress and Autofellatio Walrus)

The John Edwards affair story is like a never-ending rabbit hole of sleaze and yuckyness about which you need only know that his mistress changed her name because her father electrocuted horses for insurance money.  No, really.  It’s not even the fun kind of sleaze, like Juggalos and Truck Nutz, it’s just gross.  If that weren’t bad enough, Andrew Young wrote a book about the saga, and Aaron Sorkin (West Wing, The Social Network) is writing the movie adaptation, which I’m sure won’t be annoyingly smug at all.

Andrew Young told the Hollywood Reporter that he could provide Sorkin with heretofore-unknown details he kept out of [his book]. “There was a ton of stories I could have put in there but didn’t because I couldn’t prove it,” Young said. “That’s something we’re going to work through. There’s a whole other side of the story that’s never been told.”

Gosh, I hope it involves a Dirty Sanchez like that Screech video!

Young wouldn’t elaborate on the untold stories, nor would he comment on whether the Rielle Hunter sex tapes he’s being sued over could make an appearance in the film [I'm guessing not, dipsh*ts, but thanks for crowbarring that mental image in there. -Ed]. The attorneys for Hunter, the mother of Edwards’ baby, claim Young stole the tapes and that their client should share in profits from the book.
“All they’ve told me is that it will be fast-tracked,” said Young, who declined to discuss financial terms. “This is going to be his (Sorkin’s) primary focus now.”

As Young recounted, Sorkin told him, “Andrew, I’m going to do a lot of things for you, but I’m sure your life isn’t going to go back to normal,” he said. “If you think the book was a big deal, the movie is going to be 100 times bigger than that.” [Yahoo/HollywoodReporter]

“…and before you knew it, he had his wiener in my mouth.  Hollywood, huh?”

Please. That girl's butt didn't go to Stanford.

David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s Facebook movie The Social Network opens in October, and though we’ve already seen a couple talk-rapey teasers, this is the first real trailer with footage from the film. It follows megalomaniacal Korean dictator Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s rough days at Harvard and his eventual rise to power.  You can tell it’s super serious because there’s a children’s choir singing the whole time.  If you’re keeping score at home, Children’s choir = profound artistic statement.  It stars Jesse Eisenberg, Scarfield, and Justin Timberlake.

I like David Fincher, but am I the only one who thinks this movie looks sort of slick and Oliver Stone-y?  His childhood slights stoke the fire that helps him succeed, but also the flaws that would come to define him!.  Hmm, not a lot of room for nuance, is there.  The guy founded Facebook. He’s not Joseph Stalin.

The Social Network started out sounding like one of those Magic 8-Ball/Bazooka Joe movie concepts (Facebook is popular!  It should be a movie!).  But then when we heard it was based on a book about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and that David Fincher was directing a script by Aaron Sorkin, we realized it was serious.  But even knowing that, before this new teaser trailer hit the web, I didn’t realize it was Inception-trailer-bass-sound serious.

“We have an idea that we’d like to talk to you about.”

(*BRAAAAAAAAHM*)

“Who should we send it to first?”
“Just a couple of people.  The question is, who are they gonna send it to.”

(*BRAAAAAAAAHM*)

“The site got twenty-two hundred hits within two hours?”
“Thousand. Twenty-two thousand.”

(*BRAAAAAAAAHM*)

“A million dollars isn’t cool.  You know what’s cool?  A billion dollars.”

(*BRAAAAAAAAHM*)

Their braaaahm sound isn’t as bassy as the Inception braaaaahm sound, which I assume indicates less gravitas. Still, it sounds pretty serious. (*BRAAAAAAAAHM*) It’s like the movie trailer equivalent of David Caruso putting on his sunglasses.

[via Pajiba]

The story of Facebook is set to hit theaters in October, starring Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) and Justin Timberlake as Napster co-founder Sean Parker, directed by David Fincher, based on the book by Ben Mezrich.  (*deep breath*).  The script, from The West Wing‘s Aaron Sorkin (your parents’ Joss Whedon), made the 2009 blacklist, and a review of it showed up on the Times Online a couple days ago:

Six years ago Zuckerberg created what was to become the internet phenomenon Facebook in a “tidal wave” of grief after being dumped by his girlfriend. The Social Network is a highly dramatised version told in flashbacks recalled in the drama of a court hearing. The film opens on the night of February 4, 2004 when Zuckerberg, then 19, is seen to be dumped in a Harvard bar by his girlfriend, Erica.
In the film Zuckerberg retreats to his college dormitory where, in a drunken fever, he writes the computer code turning Harvard’s annual collection of student photographs and biographies into a website where he and his male friends rank Harvard women as barnyard animals. Thirty minutes after “Thefacebook” goes live, it is so popular that it crashes Harvard’s computer network.
The film claims that after Zuckerberg quit Harvard his personal life spun out of control, with Parker helping him indulge his fantasies with a stream of “groupies”. Sorkin’s screenplay suggests Parker knew Zuckerberg was driven not just by money or fame but also sexual insecurity. While he is depicted as receiving sex in bars, Parker runs the business.

I never receive sex in bars, mostly because I measure my sex in complicated pie charts.  In any case, BroBible has posted the first scene from the script if you want to read it.  It’s exactly what you’d expect from an Aaron Sorkin script — characters with specific motives that will drive the story, illustrated through rapid-fire, borderline excessive dialog.  It describes Zuckerberg as a guy “whose lack of any physically intimidating attributes makes a very complicated and dangerous anger.”  To me that seems like it’s a pretty simple anger, but whatever.  Anyway, what I read was actually pretty good. I want to see this now.  But keep in mind I just sat through Robin Hood last night, which was like Braveheart meets Schoolhouse Rock for retarded kids. Any dialog seems genius compared to Cate Blanchett yelling “This one’s for Robert!”

Billy Beane explains what he looks for in a pair of titties.

That’s right, folks, Moneyball, Michael Lewis’ other, less popular book not about Sandra Bullock bringing pass blocking to the inner city, is once again set to hit theaters.  From Deadline:

Columbia Pictures is locking in a July start date for the Bennett Miller [Capote]-directed Moneyball. The picture is close to getting a green light after the above the line participants adjusted their deals to bring the film’s budget down from near $60 million to somewhere in the vicinity of $47 million.

The effort was helped by the delivery of the latest rewrite by Aaron Sorkin [your parents' Joss Whedon]. The participants seemed to take to heart the message of the Michael Lewis Moneyball book, which was about how Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane hurt his playing career becoming a bonus baby phenom who signed for the money, and then remade himself as a baseball executive who fielded winning A’s teams with a fraction of the payroll that rivals were spending.  I’m told everybody took deal haircuts, including Brad Pitt, who is certainly getting less than the $15 million he signed on for when he originally agreed to play Beane.

As I wrote about Freakonomics, the problem with turning a research-based non-fiction book into a conventionally narrative feature is that they take a book that doesn’t look like a movie and go, “Hmm, how could we make this look like a movie? What does a movie look like?”  And the next thing you know, they’ve turned all the interesting insights and unique structure into 50 f*cked-out clichés and it looks like every sh*tty movie ever.  That was basically what Sony signed on for with the original Moneyball script from Stan Chervin and Steve Zaillian.  Then Steven Soderbergh came in and actually tried to make a movie that was unconventional like the book, and Sony bailed on it three days before shooting.  Brad Pitt’s Moneyballs were probably pretty blue at that point. Now, they’ve got a respected writer and director (the guy who wrote West Wing and the director of Capote) on board, and it’ll probably be an okay movie, but with little chance to innovate. Like it or not (and keep in mind, it sucked) The Blind Side has set the movement back ten years.  It’s basically the film equivalent of Two and a Half Men.  And that’s why God made Sandra Bullock’s husband f*ck a Nazi.  The lord works in mysterious ways.