UPDATE: For your listening pleasure, I uploaded the Fake Bret Remake (“Squirrels in the Sky”) separately, and you can listen/download that HERE.

This week on the Frotcast, aside from our usual talk of poop transplants and an amazing Fake Bret Remix song sent in by Waqas, I talked to Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, writers of this week’s Bad Teacher, as well as The Office, and a Ghostbusters 3 script that Bill Murray has thus far steadfastly avoided reading. The interview begins at 22:15.

(the player below may take a second to load. here’s a direct link to the podcast. right-click “save link as” to download file)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Other Notes from the Interview:

Read the rest of this entry »

"I'm going to chug vodka from this skull and punch a girl," he seems to be saying.

If you read movie news at all, and God help you if you do, you probably saw yesterday’s story about Dan Aykroyd saying that writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg* (The Office, Year One) had done “a strong first draft” of Ghostbusters 3 that he was “excited about working on.”  A bunch of sites took that to mean Aykroyd was rewriting the script, which seemed strange, because A., if everyone was as happy with the script like he said, why would he need to rewrite it?  And B., because Dan Aykroyd seems a bit nutty these days.

Anyway, the reason there are a million Ghostbusters 3 stories going around is the same reason there are a billion Arrested Development movie stories going around — lots of people involved. For the project to go forward, all the original players have to agree: Aykroyd, Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis, and Bill Murray.  In order to make it, the studio (Columbia/Sony) has to keep everyone feeling like they’re involved, which is why the story seems to change depending on who you talk to.  I asked a source close to the project who I trust about it, and this was the update I got:

Aykroyd is involved enough that the studio will listen to his input, but he’s NOT doing a rewrite of the script, which the director (Reitman) and studio (Columbia) are already happy with.

Stupnitskenberg are currently the only writers on the project and as of now the studio has no plans to replace them

Ramis, Reitman, and Aykroyd have all signed on, and the script is going out to Bill Murray now.

Without Murray, there’s no movie. (And he’s always seemed pretty wishy-washy on it, but that’s kind of his thing).

If he agrees, pre-production will start early next year for a late spring/early summer start date and a Thanksgiving or Christmas 2012 release.

I usually try to stay away from the he said/she said stories about projects that have a million people involved, because honestly, I don’t care enough about any movie to write 10 separate speculative stories and corrections.  Sometimes I think the world would be a better place if everyone was as lazy as me.  But other times I think, hey, I wonder what’s on TV. Hey, I should go jerk off and eat a sandwich.

*I heard they once spike stripped Kurtzman and Orci at the annual male screenwriter duo tandem bike race.  Meanwhile, both teams agreed Hawk and Ostby are total fruitcakes.

MTV’s awkward interview guy had a chance to accost Ivan Reitman at an event recently, where Reitman confirmed rumblings that he’d be directing Ghostbusters 3.  Another rumor had Bill Murray coming back as a ghost, which Reitman declined to address.  From MTV:

Reitman said that the script from “Year One” writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky is in and that a second draft is currently in the works. “We are working our way through another draft… good work is being done and all of us have our fingers crossed.”
Asked about Weaver’s recent comments [about the Bill Murray ghost], Reitman laughed and kept things light.
“There’s some very cool things in the new draft, let’s just put it that way,” he told us.

I like Bill Murray as much as the next guy, but Ghostbusters seems like the epitome of a movie that could only work in the 80s — Yeah, yeah, and then there’s like this ghost. But not like, like a human ghost, but like this big ball of slime that gets snot on everything… *snorts another line* — so I’m not sure why they’d choose to make a sequel now.  Reitman of course directed the first two Ghostbusterses back in the 80s, but is perhaps best known for the 1997 classic, Father’s Day.  Haha, a tie for a mustache, good one, Robin!

Cameron Diaz is set to star in Bad Teacher, a script by Office writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky that made the 2008 black list, set to be directed by Jake Kasdan (Walk Hard).

Story centers on a foulmouthed, gold-digging middle-school teacher who, after getting dumped by her boyfriend, competes with a colleague for the affections of the school’s model teacher.  Now that the studio has its leading lady, production is set to begin in the spring in Los Angeles. [Variety]

I actually read the script for this and it was really funny.  The lead is kind of a female version of Kenny Powers, or Bad Santa — simple concept, funny lines.  It’s disappointing the studio went with Cameron Diaz for this.  Not because I have strong feelings against her, it’s just that this kind of movie needs a talented comedic actress, not an established star trying to reinvent herself.  It’s this old-fart studio mentality that a comedy needs a marquee actor to carry it, so they just pick a famous person instead of finding someone that fits who’s, you know, funny.  Comedy doesn’t rely on stars to sell it, it relies on jokes.  And it’s that much better if it’s someone new — see: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, or Zach Galifianakis — rather than someone who’s already burned us a few times.   You put Cameron Diaz in this movie and for all the upside of it raising its profile, there’s twice the downside when people lump it in with What Happens in Vegas.  And no one wants another What Happens in Vegas.  No one except… you guessed it, Danny Masterson.

Jake Kasdan has come on a board to direct Bad Teacher, a script by Office/Year One/Ghostbusters 3 writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg which sounds basically like Eastbound & Down if Kenny Powers had a uterus.

Sold to Columbia pictures last August, the original screenplay concerns a foul-mouthed seventh grade teacher who is dumped by her sugar daddy and starts to pursue a colleague, which provokes conflict with the school’s model teacher. [THR]

[say /Film, who've apparently read it]: Screenplay revolves around Elizabeth Halsey, a teacher with a cussin’ problem who ends up in a bitter rivalry with her squeaky-clean colleague Amy Squirrel. Elizabeth is the sort of girl who wakes up at 3.40 in the afternoon, looks for breakfast in the fridge but finds only packets of ketchup, mustard and soy sauce so turns to her bong instead.

The good news is that the project was on the black list, and actually started with a screenplay, rather than some bonehead pitch by a studio exec (“What if… Kevin James… has to babysit a cat!”).  And Jake Kasdan has been around, last directing Walk Hard, which I thought looked pretty funny.  Then again, I never actually saw it.  So really, I guess it’s kind of like when a hobo asks me for money and I reach in my pocket for some change but then I think, “Ah, f*ck it.”