You might remember the other day when I posted a quote from Albert Books telling Adam Carolla about one of his least favorite screenwriting tics — when characters constantly, unrealistically address each other by name, just so we don’t forget their names.  Specifically, Brooks said:

“There are things I can’t stand in movies, that can be so easily fixed. I don’t like peoples’ names. [...] Just to say it all the time… it’s sloppy writing.  I’ll tell you a fun game when you have nothing to do: watch Titanic and count how many times he says ‘Rose.’  It must be five thousand. [...] I think he even says it underwater.”

That seemed like a great idea, so right after I transcribed the quote, I opened the zippered ear hole on Oliver’s gimp suit and whispered, “Hey, you should make a mash-up of that,” and then hit him in the crotch with a wiffle bat.  Being the good slave/video editor that he is, after he came, Oliver delivered a video even better than I could’ve imagined.  Not only does Leo say “Rose” a ridiculous number of times, Kate Winslet says “Jack” an equally-ridiculous amount. Jack! What is it, Rose? Jack, don’t die, Jack!  ROSE! Not without you, Rose! I love you, Rose!  Don’t marry Billy Zane, Rose, he doesn’t know the Rose I know!  Jack, I love you too, Jack! Jack, I’m married to Billy Zane but really it’s Jack that I love, Jack! Jack! Rose! Rose! Jack! …

We even made a game out of it.  So which do you think they say more?  Place your bets below…

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Here’s Danny DeVito playing Ghandi in an Inside the Actors Studio-parody Funny or Die video directed by Pulitzer-winning writer/director/playwright David Mamet.  You know, in case you were wondering what that might be like.  It’s hard to say why David Mamet is doing Funny or Die parodies now, but in David Mamet’s hands, it’s less a straight parody than a meditation on the recent rise in sequels and remakes (in the form of Danny DeVito talking about a fictional remake of a famous Ben Kingsley role, obviously).  I wouldn’t call it traditionally funny (I smiled a few times) but it’s definitely David Mamety.  This wins the David Mamet-memorial Oscar for David Mametiness.

[hat tip: Examiner]

(“The f’ckin’ leads are weak???”)

That’s one of my favorite headlines I’ve ever had to write.  It’s true. Just to reiterate: Disney was paying David Mamet to write a movie about a girl who dies in the Holocaust and they rejected it because it was TOO DARK.

The writer who took on ethnic politics in the play “Race,” and sexual politics in works like “Oleanna,”  [not to mention the politics of Tim Allen learning Jiu-Jitsu in Redbelt. -Ed.] takes on modern anti-Semitism in “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

But the screenplay is not a retelling of the famous Holocaust drama taken from the diaries of Frank, but about a contemporary Jewish girl who goes to Israel and learns about the traumas of suicide bombing.  “It’s very intense, and dark and scary,” said the executive. “It’s not a film version of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank.’ The story evolved into something more intense.” [TheWrap]

That’s a shame, Disney, it really is.  You wanted a guy to write a movie about Nazis murdering a little girl, and here the guy gives you something intense and scary.  What’s wrong with people these days.  Anyway, I think the obvious solution is to make the Nazis a pack of wolves and the Franks a family of squirrels.  It’ll still be scary, but now the characters will be covered in soft fur.

(“Uh, I’m here for the gangbang?”)

Despite the fact that this sounds like a pitch for an SNL sketch (in the vein of Patton Oswalt’s “Midnight in the Olive Garden of Good and Evil”) David Mamet really is writing a screen version of The Diary of Anne Frank.

The film will be an amalgamation of the famed diary; the stage adaptation by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich; and Mamet’s own original take on the material that could reframe the story as a young girl’s rite of passage. Frank, who died at 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, became an icon of the Holocaust after the post-war publication of the diary that she kept during the two years that her family hid in a secret attic apartment in Amsterdam. [Variety]

Yes! That’s what The Diary of Anne Frank was always missing: witty, fast-paced dialog!

Say Anne, whaddya think about keepin a diary?

Keepin’ a diary?

That’s right, a diary.  A book where ya put ya thoughts, ya dreams… ya philosophizin’.

I know what a diary is, ya wiseguy.  Why should I keep a diary?  Why I ain’t nothin but a little Jewish girl, hidin’ out, tryin’ ta keep away from da Nazis.  Ooh I hate dem big, ugly goodfanuttin Nazis!

Sure, but like I said, it’s a place where you put your hopes, ya dreams.

I just tole ya, my dream’s ta keep away from da Nazis, what I need a book for?

…Okay, I admit, my David Mamet parody might’ve gotten infected with The Three Stooges.  It happens. Still, I’m excited for this.  Almost as excited as I am for Joss Whedon’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Aaron Sorkin’s Les Miserables, Sam Mendes’ Transformers 3.  Or the George Romero remake of State & Main, State & Main & Zombies.  (it’s a metaphor).

Jeremy Piven recently announced his abrupt departure from David Mamet’s play Speed the Plow after missing two shows, citing an illness brought on by “high mercury count.”  (Too much sushi?)

The show’s producers weren’t returning calls, but Daily Variety reached out to David Mamet, who wrote the showbiz satire and seemed skeptical of the reasons for Piven’s departure.

“I talked to Jeremy on the phone, and he told me that he discovered that he had a very high level of mercury,” Mamet said. “So my understanding is that he is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer.” [Variety]

In a strange and coincidental turn, Piven’s illness was also diagnosed by High Mercury Count (homeopath, Krishna) who pulled up to Piven’s house in a ’92 Cougar, ignited a ring of sandalwood-scented sparklers around him in a circle, and shouted “Alla-Kazooey!” while balancing on one foot and flicking his ponytail.  He warned Piven about mercury in addition to dangerously misaligned chakras.