Most people know that Men Who Stare at Goats was based on a non-fiction book by Jon Ronson, and that some of the most preposterous parts of the movie were reportedly the most faithful to things that really happened. Before it was a book or a movie, Men Who Stare at Goats was a Channel 4 documentary series, The Crazy Rulers of the World. In the above clip from the show, you can see Ronson, who talks like Little Lord Fauntleroy, interview the guy who claims to actually have knocked a goat down with his mind from an adjacent room. His superiors later bring in 30 numbered goats, and ask him to use his mind bullets again on a specific goat. He fails, but only because he took down the goat next to the goat he was supposed to.
“There was this one picture that we have of like, St. Michael the ark angel, and he’s just got his sword in there like that. I got that picture in my mind, and I kind of sent it over to where the goat was. I pictured that St. Michael got his sword and was going [stabbing sounds], through the goat, and attacking it down to the ground. And after about 15 minutes, I said ‘Lenny, you better go see.’ And he said ‘Oh, it’s down.’”
This reminds me of when I was in 10th grade, and all through Study Hall I’d just stare at Tracy Mayling, trying to will her skirt to fly up and show me the sweet, sweet goodness she hid inside. It never really worked, but once, just once, I accidentally sh-t my pants.
Wes “Little Lord Fauntleroy” Anderson took time out of his busy v-neck sweater-buying schedule this week 
to talk to David Poland about the “beef” between him and his DP, Tristan Oliver. Oliver had previously said of Anderson, who’s been taking heat for directing The Fantastic Mr. Fox via email from Paris, “I think he’s a little sociopathic, I think he’s a little OCD. Contact with people disturbs him.” Well la di da, Mr. I Have Human Friends. Here’s what Anderson had to say:
The word that I think gives one pause is ’sociopath’. That is the unexpected one. Well, I have another DP I’ve worked with for many years. There are moments in production…where I think he would have unkind words to say about me as well. Because movies are hard to make, and sometimes you’re making people do things that are the last thing they want to do, and the last way they want to do it. And with this movie, there are a lot of things that people who work in stop motion are used to doing digitally, and I wouldn’t do it.
Tristan said a bunch of stuff that is a bit outrageous for someone to say about their boss, while they are working for them. I didn’t know the details of it, but i knew some of it. And he was obviously a bit mortified because he spoke completely out of turn. But our relationship got better after that. [Oliver's quote was from April] By the time the piece [the LA Times article from Sunday] comes out, it’s a bit of a drag because it puts a wrinkle in a relationship that we’ve already smoothed out.
Leave it to captain bow tie to explain their disagreement with a fancy clothing metaphor. Obviously I’m disappointed they’re not fighting more, but what can you expect from guys named “Wes” and “Tristan”? I imagine they’d settle disagreements through barbershop quartet. Otherwise Wes could get grass stains on his breeches, and that makes the headmistress ever so cross.
(That Zach Galifianakis would show up to my work and pour bleach in my boss’s coffee was always a dream of mine)
I posted the teaser a while back, and now here’s the full trailer for Up in the Air, from director Jason Reitman (Juno), starring George Clooney and Vera Farmiga. Hey, am I the only one who constantly misreads her last name as “farm nigga”? Wait, is that racist? …I should just drop this, shouldn’t I. It also stars the ever delightful JK Simmons, and has at least a cameo from Zach Galifianakis. I like the director and the cast, but the trailer doesn’t do much to make the story seem interesting.
Below you can watch the newest trailer for The Fantastic Mr. Fox, the movie Wes Anderson email-directed, featuring voice work by handsome father figures George Clooney and Bill Murray, plus Meryl Streep, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, and others. It looks like they’ve given this new trailer the full Wes Anderson treatment, by which I mean it has big yellow text and Rolling Stones songs. It’s not 3D or CG… and I like that. Not to mention, Willem Dafoe as a rat? He was born to play this role.
I posted the first clip earlier, and now Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air has a trailer. We see cameos from Zach Galifianakis, Danny “I’m in every movie now” McBride, and Jason Bateman, all of it set to a George Clooney voiceover that seems really deep, but it’s probably just the piano music.
“How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you’re carrying a backpack. Now, I want you to pack it with all the stuff you have in your life. You start with the little things: the shelves and drawers and nicknacks. Then you start adding larger stuff: clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV… Your backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, your car, your home. I want you to stuff it all into that backpack. Now, I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office. Then you move into the people that you trust with your most intimate secrets. Brothers, your sisters, your parents, your children. And finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack. Feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake, your relationships are the heaviest components of your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets and compromises. The slower we move, the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other, to live symbiotically over a lifetime: star-crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We. Are. Not. Swans. We’re sharks.”
I bet the hardest part of this for Jason Reitman was figuring out how to pitch such a philosophical concept to a bunch of movie execs. But then one day he had an epiphany: “GEORGE CLOONEY… has a backpack… full of SHARKS.”
Pictured: The best JanSport ad ever. [video via /Film]
