I didn’t follow the Phil Spector murder case all that closely when it happened, and I admit I just assumed it was another Robert Blake/OJ Simpson case, where a dude murdered a female acquaintance and then tried to use the “but I’m famous!” defense. But David Mamet’s Phil Spector movie on HBO, which I watched at least half of the other night, seems to suggest that maybe Spector didn’t do it, and he was just lumped in with Blake and OJ, and people wrongly assumed he was a murderer on account of him being weird old A-hole. With Spector currently serving 19 years for second-degree murder, you’d think his people would be happy with any publicity of the Phil-Spector-not-being-portrayed-as-a-murderer variety, but it seems his wife, Rachelle Spector, is actually none too thrilled with HBO and Mamet. Her big beefs? Party invites and improper wig depictions, it seems. Seems like a real stable lady.

Mrs. Spector claims she explicitly was not invited [to the March 14 screening the cable network participated in at LACMA].
She tells THR that her PR rep received an invite for another client, prompting the rep to call HBO, which said it couldn’t accommodate her. That’s when Rachelle, who married Spector in 2006, did what any self-respecting wife of an incarcerated music legend would do: She crashed it.
“Pretty amazing I had to sneak into a screening of a movie about my husband,” the 32-year-old posted March 14 on Facebook. Seems she didn’t realize the screening was public. But she walked out while director David Mamet spoke. “Mamet said that he had access to my husband’s hair, which he calls wigs, and he measured them so he could get the height right,” she says. “I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s interesting, I didn’t know somebody snuck into my house and had access to my husband’s hair.’ ”
An HBO rep says Mamet used photos to gauge Phil’s hair size, as he said at LACMA, and that Rachelle was offered a private screening. [THR]

So who are you going to believe, HBO, or the lady who came up with the idea of sporting this hairstyle and outfit to murder court in the first place?

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When Al Pacino plays an eccentric, megalomaniacal music producer in a biopic written and directed by David Mamet, you can bet it’s a recipe for ACTING, with a capital A. The script might as well be in all caps, and when it premieres on HBO March 29th, you might want to add a sneeze guard to your flatscreen to keep from getting sprayed like the first two rows at a Shamu show. STAND BACK, EVERYONE! PACINO’S GONNA SHOUT SOME WORDS!

Regardless, Phil Spector should slake your thirst for goofy wigs and opulence until Soderbergh’s Liberace picture hits later this year. Spector tells the uplifting story of Spector’s relationship with his defense attorney, Helen Mirren as Linda Kenney Baden (who also worked with Casey Anthony), as Spector’s first trial for the murder of Lana Clarkson ended in a mistrial, and eventually got him 19 years for second-degree murder in a second trial. Pacino reportedly refused to meet with Spector, which probably helped him deliver lines like “FIRST time you got felt up – guess what? You were listenin’ to one a my sawngs!” with a straight face.

In any case, you can watch the trailer below, and click on for a cataloging and naming of all of Pacino’s wigs. This one up top, we call that the John 3:16.

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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.