Photo: Chuck Zlotnick

I’ve had a boner for Seven Psychopaths ever since it was announced, and now we’ve got the first pictures (courtesy of EntertainmentWeekly, obvi). Writer/director Martin McDonagh’s follow-up to In Bruges, it stars Sam Rockwell, Colin Farrell, Christopher Walken, and Woody Harrelson, stepping in for Mickey Rourke, who apparently wanted too much money and now says of McDonagh “he can go play with himself.”  But Harrelson or Rourke, I would definitely go pick up high school chicks with these guys. Oh, and the movie sounds pretty good too.

A savage gangster (Woody Harrelson) goes on a rampage after his beloved shih tzu Bonny goes missing, snatched by an out-of-work actor (Sam Rockwell) who pays the bills by helping a professional dognapper (Christopher Walken) pick up pooches and return them for the reward money.
Colin Farrell plays a screenwriter who struggles to find the handle on his script, called Seven Psychopaths. He gets drawn into the dognapping escapades of his friends (played by Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken).
“The comedy elements in this one are probably stronger or more to the forefront than In Bruges,” says McDonagh, who got an Academy Award nomination for that script. (He won an Oscar for the 2005 short Six Shooter.)
Harrelson’s character, Charlie, “adores his shih tzu,” McDonagh says. “Really, we all adore Bonny!” (That’s the real name of the dog, which was adopted from a shelter in real life, and now lives with its trainer.) “He loves that dog more than anything in the world and would do anything to protect it.”

Wait, it gets better!

Tom Waits turns up as Zachariah, a rabbit-petting weirdo who offers up strange stories from his past for the Seven Psychopaths screenplay. [EW, Deadline]

A lovable rogue’s gallery fighting over cute, fuzzy animals, as written with brutal violence by a vulgar Irishman? My God, this is so in my wheelhouse it’s stupid.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tip: If you're an actor who is suspected of a famous murder, never appear on screen in an eyepatch.

The death of actress Natalie Wood is one of the more famous unsolved mysteries in Hollywood. Short story: she was out on a boat with Christopher Walken and her husband, Robert Wagner, she fell overboard, and she drowned. Longer story: all that plus fishy circumstances. Longest story: this new book that includes previously unheard information about that night from the ship’s captain (a scant 30 years after it took place — timely!). From TMZ:

In the book — “Goodbye Natalie, Goodbye Splendour” — [author Marti] Rulli and Splendour Captain Dennis Davern write about the night Natalie drowned. They say before Natalie disappeared from the boat, she was drinking and taking Quaaludes with her husband, Robert Wagner and actor Christopher Walken.

According to the book, Wagner became enraged when he saw Wood and Walken speaking, and smashed a wine bottle, yelling at Walken, “What do you want to do, f**k my wife? Is that what you want?”

At that point, Walken returned to his cabin and Natalie and Robert went to their state room. According to the Captain, he heard a loud argument between the couple and thumping sounds, and eventually silence.

A short time later, the Captain went to the deck and was told by Wagner, “Natalie is missing.”

The book claims Wagner refused to let the Captain call the Coast Guard.

Based on this new information, some of which conflicts with original accounts of the night of Wood’s death, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department has reopened the case as a murder investigation. They haven’t spoken to any of the parties involved yet, but as Uproxx’s Chief Legal and Space Jam Correspondent, my official analysis of the situation is that the police officers that eventually question Christopher Walken about the events of that night will do a horrible impression of him while telling people about it at cocktail parties years later.

WOMAN AT PARTY: Ooo, you worked on the Natalie Wood case? You can tell me… what really happened?

COP: Well, I’m not supposed to say anything, but [Walken voice], she fell off the BOAT after taking QUAA-ludes. [impression slowly starts turning into Borat] It was a real love tri-AN-gle. I was going to make her MAH WIIIIFE.

Boy, this is sad news. Every time Mickey Rourke drops out of a movie, the baby Jesus cries and my Ganesha statue stops drinking milk. The clay-faced tough guy with a heart of gold and a soft spot for whores, tiny dogs, kids with cancer, and Eric Roberts is the perfect addition to any cast, but apparently his soft spot doesn’t extend to Irish auteurs, because he won’t be joining In Bruges director Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths. Which is a shame, because Seven Psychopaths was once set to star Rourke, Sam Rockwell, Colin Farrell, and Christopher Walken, a cast so amazing it makes the Justice League look like four hobos pissing on a trash fire.

Now Mickey Rourke is out and Woody Harrelson is in, and Rourke says McDonagh is a “jerkoff.”

Back in October, it was reported that Mickey Rourke dropped out of ‘The Expendables 2′ so he could negotiate to appear in Martin McDonagh’s ‘Seven Psychopaths’ with Colin Farrell, Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell. About that: “The director was a jerkoff. He wanted a whole lot for nothing,” Rourke told Moviefone late last week during an interview for ‘Immortals.’ When asked to confirm that he won’t appear in the thriller, Rourke had this to say about McDonagh (‘In Bruges’): “He can go play with himself.” [Moviefone]

If anyone ever stops Mickey Rourke from being totally candid at all times, I vow before my colleagues and creator that I will fight that person. Hollywood needs inappropriate Uncle Mickey to keep shooting from the hip, if only to remind everyone else how completely full of sh*t they are 98 percent of the time. Anyway, it’s a bummer that Mickey’s out, but Woody Harrelson’s okay too, I guess. He’s no Mickey, but I could never be too disappointed with Pepper from The Cowboy Way.

Read the rest of this entry »

Any film where Colin Farrell karate chops a midget I’ll watch out of principle, but In Bruges was pretty good to boot. It was written and directed by Martin McDonagh, and now CBS Films is in talks to distribute his latest, Seven Psychopaths. Needless to say, it sounds awesome.

The film reunites McDonagh with his In Bruges star Colin Farrell, who plays a screenwriter who struggles to find the handle on his script, called Seven Psychopaths. He gets drawn into the dognapping escapades of his friends (played by Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken). Once the beloved Shih Tzu owned by a psychopathic gangster goes missing, the screenwriter finds himself fueled with all the drama he needs for his screenplay, if he can stay alive long enough to write it all down. The film’s produced by Graham Broadbent and Peter Czernin, with Tessa Ross set as executive producer. CBS Films executive vice president Scott Shooman will oversee it when it shoots in Los Angeles this fall. [Deadline]

Yep, Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, and last we heard, Mickey Rourke was also in it (MICKEY ROURKE F*CKING LOVES TINY DOGS!). Not only would I watch the ever-living hell out of that movie, I’d also like to commission a velvet painting in the style of “Dogs Playing Poker,” with those guys as the dogs, and a midget waiter walking around with a platter of cocaine and a revolver in his belt in case things go south. I would hang that on my wall, possibly my tombstone.

File this one under “Guys I would kill to party with.”  So Martin McDonagh, writer/director of In Bruges, possibly the most unique action-comedy of the last ten years, is preparing his next film, Seven Psychopaths.  The Christ-like Megan Ellison is financing, and so far the cast includes Colin Farrell, Christopher Walken, Mickey Rourke, and Sam Rockwell (homeless Paul Rudd!).  No midgets have yet been cast, but if craft services provides the booze and pills, I’m sure one will just eventually show up.

Story follows a screenwriter (Farrell) struggling for inspiration for his script, “Seven Psychopaths,” who gets drawn into the dog kidnapping schemes of his oddball friends (Rockwell and Walken).  This take a turn for the worse when a gangster’s (Rourke) mutt goes missing. [Variety]

Hmm, well that sounds pretty good.  And by that I mean I wrote this after a noise like a whistling tea kettle escaped my diaphragm and I passed out in anticipatory ecstasy on a pile of cats.  Speaking of which, is it weird that I imagine Sam Rockwell constantly being awoken by stray animals?  He has a real a-goat-licked-my-forehead-this-morning vibe about him.

[Christopher Walken in 1955. Source]