Man, today’s movie news is boring.  My favorite thing I’ve seen today is this guy named “Fagley Dork.” Anyway, here’s Inside the Actor’s Studio’s James Lipton onstage with Charlie Sheen at his Violent Torpedoes of T-Shirt Slogans tour last night in New York.  Charlie brought James Lipton up so that James could ask Charlie his favorite curse word, and James Lipton was like, “F-ck it, I’ll come onstage for three seconds. I ain’t doin nothin.” Charlie’s answer, which he probably had at least a day to come up with was:

“It’s either ‘f*ck’… or ‘Denise!’”

Hahahahahahaha get it?  It’s funny because that’s the mother of his children.  Oh, Charlie, you rogue. My question is this: is there any situation you could put James Lipton in where his presence would be at all surprising?  I swear that guy could be onstage with Gaddafi helping a Ukrainian nurse roast a goat and no one would bat an eye.  As for Charlie Sheen, everyone agrees that his show is boring as hell.  My favorite account of one of his shows was of a heckler shouting, “THIS IS THE WORST THING I’VE EVER SEEN!” at the top of his lungs.  And then seconds later, “THIS IS WORSE THAN CHERNOBYL!”  That’s quality heckling right there. They should just combine this with the Spider-Man musical and let the crowd shoot paintballs at them.

[via GotchaMedia]

Franco demonstrates his "witnessing gay sex" face

James Franco takes acting seriously, and being a serious actor requires proving your commitment to the craft by doing things like gaining or losing 60 pounds, shaving off your eyebrows to play a cancer patient, or most importantly, research.  People say Jane Goodall started as an actress preparing for a movie about apes who just took things a little too far.  Franco was recently on Inside the Actor’s Studio talking about preparing for his role in Sonny, in which he plays a male prostitute.  Naturally, he did this by hanging out with a gigolo. The gigolo serviced both men and women, and at one point during Franco’s research, sh*t got pretty real.  Franco describes hanging out with the guy in the back of a strip club when the guy suddenly got a call. Get a call, slide down a pole — sounds just like being a fireman.

He says, ‘Oh, you’re playing a male prostitute?  You wanna do some real research?  Come with me right now.’  And I said, ‘Well I’m not gonna do anything…’  and he said, ‘Aw, this guy’s so coked out of his mind, he won’t even know you’re there.  Just sit in the chair in the corner and take your shirt off and it’ll be fine.’”

In related news, that describes every note from a director Channing Tatum has ever received.

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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]

Judd Apatow recently filmed an episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio that airs tonight, in which he shows up looking all clean cut like a 6th grader on picture day while James Lipton is his usual eccentric, sycophantic self.  In this clip, Apatow reveals that the scene in Knocked Up where Katherine Heigl kicks Seth Rogen out of the car on the way to the gynecologist was actually autobiographical.

APATOW: One thing I thought would be fun would be to sort of capture the intensity of some of these moments between couples. And just how heated it gets.  I think at the time I was realizing just how frustrating I was to be around.

LESLIE MANN (Apatow’s wife): I did throw him out of the car on the way to the gynecologist.

APATOW: And that is a complicated moment, because I have no money, and I’m five miles from the gynecologist…

MANN: How did you do that?

APATOW: I took a cab.

MANN:  How did you pay?

APATOW: I blew the guy.

Apatow and Mann go all Abbot and Costello at the end there, but you can tell they were super pissed at each other at the time.  That’s rough.  I’ve never had to hitchhike five miles to the gynecologist, but I have been kicked out of the examination room for making foghorn sounds.  And impersonating a doctor.