Dennis Hopper’s manager confirmed that the 73-year-old has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and will be canceling all commitments to focus on treatment — a story USA Today chose to accompany with this banner ad asking “who is pop culture’s biggest mover and shaker?” with pictures of Kate Gosselin, Ivanka Trump, and Khloe Kardashian. Maybe it was their subtle way of saying, “Perhaps not being alive right now wouldn’t be the worst thing.”
Manager Sam Maydew says the 73-year-old actor and artist is being treated through a “special program” at the University of Southern California. Asked about Hopper’s prognosis, Maydew said, “We’re hoping for the best.”
In related (crappy) news, Nic Cage’s father (and Francis Ford Coppola’s brother), August Coppola, died of a heart attack yesterday at age 75.
Coppola taught literature and served as dean of creative arts at San Francisco State University. Besides Cage, Coppola is survived by sons Christopher and Marc and three grandchildren.
So that’s pretty crappy. Making a joke about this would be in pretty poor taste, so I’ll simply go out on a limb here and say that Weston Coppola Cage will be wearing black to the funeral.
This is It premiered last night and everyone loved it and blah blah blah. Michael Jackson was the King of Pop, he was one of kind, an extraordinary entertainer — really, we get it. That doesn’t make this any less of a tacky media circus. And please, for the love of God, can we stop writing articles that read like they should have Chariots of Fire playing in the background? From the LA Times:
It was just plain weird that Michael Jackson wasn’t at last night’s world premiere of his concert film “This Is It” at L.A. Live’s Nokia Theatre.
Really, L.A. Times? It was weird that Michael Jackson wasn’t at the premiere of a movie that wouldn’t have been released if he was alive? Now I’m no professional journalist, but it seems to me like it’d be bad thing for your first sentence to be complete bullsh-t.
The people behind the Michael Jackson movie This is It have always maintained that the movie would only have an oh-so-classy limited run of two weeks. And if you believed that, punch yourself in the face for being a dipsh-t. Turns out, before he died they re-recorded videos for “Thriller”, “Man in the Mirror”, and “Earth Song”, and of course you’ll be able to see those. IN 3-D! And possibly… 4-D! That’s a lot of D!
The intention was to use the new videos as transitions into the performed versions of the songs, transitions that are a long way from the original. Choreographer/associate producer Travis Payne promises that the new “Thriller” is nothing like the boy on the date with the girl, while at the same time, “We didn’t touch what we considered the sacred inside of it.”
And while the new version of “Thriller” and the other songs will be screened with This Is It in plain old 3D next week, that’s not how they were intended to be seen, and that might not be the last we see of them either.
Ortega also revealed that there may be a 3D re-release of Michael Jackson’s This Is it later on, including the revamped music videos that were originally to be broadcast during the concerts in 3D. But that’s not nearly as elaborate as how the videos were originally intended to be shown. The plan was to have the audience members don 3D glasses in the middle of the concert, but it was going to be much more than just 3D screens in the corner. As Payne explained it to me, “We had 3D and also frontal elements and overhead elements that actually created a 4D environment that the audience was sitting in.” [CinemaBlend]
That’s right, they were sitting IN A TIME MACHINE! We could watch the extinction of the dinosaurs, the Big Bang, or the Kennedy assassination, BUT F-CK IT, LET’S GO TO A MICHAEL JACKSON CONCERT. Looks like I won’t be needing this anymore! (*lights Intro to Physics book on fire*)
Henry Gibson, leader of the Illinois Nazis in Blues Brothers, the creepy neighbor in The Burbs, original member of Laugh-In, apparently at some point a Ferengi, and most commonly known as “you know, that guy from that one movie”, is dead at age 73. Cancer again.
Gibson’s breakthrough came in 1968 when he was cast as a member of the original ensemble of NBC’s top-rated “Laugh-In,” on which he performed for three seasons. Each week, a giant flower in his hand, he recited a signature poem, introducing them with the catch phrase that became his signature: “A Poem, by Henry Gibson.”
After “Laugh-In,” he played the evil Dr. Verringer in “The Long Goodbye” (1973), the first of four films in which he appeared for director Robert Altman. Their second collaboration came in “Nashville” (1975), in which Gibson earned a Golden Globe nomination and a National Society of Film Critics supporting-actor award for his performance as unctuous country singer Haven Hamilton. He also wrote his character’s songs.
Born James Bateman in Germantown, Pa., on Sept. 21, 1935, Gibson began acting professionally at age 8. After graduating from Catholic University, he served in France from 1957-60 as an intelligence officer with the Air Force, then studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
Back in New York, the actor developed the comic persona of “Henry Gibson” (a pun on the name of playwright Henrik Ibsen), a humble, wide-eyed poet laureate from Fairhope, Ala. [THR]
I know we’re all mourning right now, but take solace in the fact that Gibson’s memory will live on forever in my heart, which I eventually plan on transplanting into an indestructible sexbot, whose exploits will be the envy of the entire galaxy for all eternity. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy sexbot, amen.
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Two obit posts in a row??!? Welcome to 2009, the year Death acted like a total butthole. Anyway, it appears earlier reports that Patrick Swayze might be recovering thanks to an experimental procedure (after being diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer in January ‘08) were just false hope. Swayze died yesterday in LA at the age of 57, which is pretty much the lamest thing ever. Gawdammit, the only time you’re allowed to declare Patrick Swayze a dead man is after he tells you there’s always barber college.
He was Dalton, he was Bodhi, he saved Baby from the corner, where she surely would’ve been aborted by parents who didn’t understand the dance. Has anyone else ever been in so many bad movies that everyone loves? Not to mention, he was the best part of Donnie Darko and co-starred in arguably the most memorable SNL sketch of the 90s. I don’t normally like to gush about dead people, because when an a-hole dies he doesn’t magically become not an a-hole, no matter what anyone says about him. You have to honor an a-hole’s memory by remembering him for the a-hole that he was (see: Hunter S. Thompson on the passing of Richard Nixon). But in all honesty, anyone who doesn’t have at least two or three glowy, pop-culture nostalgia memories involving Patrick Swayze is a two-bit liar and a charlatan, and I wouldn’t sit next to him if it was the last seat on an escape pod. Maybe if you doctors spent half the time you spend giving people who shouldn’t be boning anyway boners you’d have this cancer crap licked by now. So stop playing grabass back there in the lab and get going on some serious research, the kind that involves stethoscopes and bunsen burners and all that sh’t. You already lost us Dalton, but I’ve got some important contributions to humanity that I’m maybe probably going to start working on tomorrow after I cook some food and put on my pants and maybe watch a little TV. And you wouldn’t want to miss out on it over a retarded thing like cancer.
