I’m not sure if these panel notes are necessarily fascinating for you the reader, but since I sat through them and took notes, I figure I might as well share.  I’ll try to keep it interesting and skip to the good stuff whenever possible.  Deal? (*spits on hand, extends for handshake*)

Notes from the Community Panel

- With the whole cast joining him onstage (minus Ken Jeong, who must be off filming another Seltzer-Friedberg movie or something), creator Dan Harmon comes on to talk about how he’s always getting grief from the network and the censors, and he wants to show us the real Community, the way he originally intended it.  Then he shows some clips from the show with fart sound effects edited in to make it look like Britta has a gas problem.  They aren’t just the original clips with fart sounds slapped in there willy-nilly, they’ve actually been included in such a way that it makes them seem like farts are a plot point.  It’s nice.  You can always tell when someone’s truly putting their whole heart and soul and inspiration into a fart joke and not just farting through the motions.

- The moderator, whose name I didn’t catch and who looks like a less beardy version of Kevin Smith in his Superman t-shirt and trench coat (note from the future: this guy), asks some blah blah blah questions of the cast.  All the actors are pretty witty and good with the crowd (especially Chevy Chase, who picks his moments to speak but clearly knows how to generate a laugh {even though he seems like an asshole based on what I’ve read about him, but that’s another story…}).  But there’s still a lot of that old standby, actors-being-asked-to-pop-psychologize-the-character-they-play.  WOOF.  First of all, if it doesn’t come up directly in the story, no one gives a sh*t about your character’s inner life and motivations.  Secondly, you’re an actor.  Nothing against actors, but if you didn’t write the character, everything you say about his or her motivations, backstory, aspirations, stifled desires, etc. is just a bunch of made-up, improvised bullsh*t.  It takes talent to do well, but really, don’t bother. No one gives a sh*t.

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The Informant is director Steven Soderbergh’s return to plot-driven comedy after a few years of smaller films like Che and The Girlfriend Experience.  I generally enjoy Soderbergh movies (Out of Sight is an underappreciated classic and I even liked Solaris), and I’d probably see this one based on the Matt Damon wallpaper alone (see above).

‘The Informant’ is about Ivy League Ph.D. Mark Whitacre (Damon), a rising star at Decatur, Illinois-based Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) in the early 1990s who wound up blowing the whistle on the company’s price-fixing tactics. [WAMG]

Apparently the case had to do with Lysine price fixing and a class-action suit about high-fructose corn syrup.  This is neither here nor there, but I think if you were were trying to tough-talk some bigwigs in the corn industry, saying “Oh yeah?  Well I pick pieces of guys like you out of my stool,” would be a really apt insult. Haha, good one, Jay.

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Yes I have two non-movie related Friday Free for All clips today, what of it?  This clip was on The Soup, but even if you saw it then, it deserves another look.  As the deliciously androgynous Joel McHale explains, a morning show about binge drinking inexplicably cut to a split-second shot of a cat eating spaghetti.  I’m thinking the editor must be a FilmDrunkard.  Or perhaps was FilmDrinking on the job.

[Thanks to RoboPanda for the tip] 

Director Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight, Traffic, Ocean’s 11) is clearly up to something.  The cast of his upcoming thriller The Informant includes:

The Soup host Joel McHale, Scott Bakula of Quantum Leap, Mike O’Malley from Yes, Dear (apparently it’s a show), comedians Andrew Daly, Tom Papa, and Rick Overton, and a couple others you’ve probably never heard of.  Oh yeah, and Matt Damon.

Bakula and McHale will play FBI agents working with agri-business insider Mark Whitacre (Damon) to stop a price-fixing scam. The film is based on Kurt Eichenwald’s 2000 best-seller "The Informant: A True Story."

So what’s up with the weird casting?

Although the subject matter is serious, one behind-the-scenes informant said Soderbergh is looking to create a thriller with dark comedy elements. He chose comedic actors who haven’t been overexposed on film, planning to have them play their roles seriously and have a humorous tone emerge naturally. [Hollywood Reporter]

An intentionally unintentionally funny movie; very interesting.  However, I can’t imagine it’ll work without the master of unintentional comedy, Nic Cage.  Unless Wicker Man was intentionally funny, in which case Nic Cage is a genius; a frozen-faced savant.  I’ve already cast him as the lead in my Schindler’s List miniseries, alongside Mickey Rourke, Paul Walker, Nick Nolte, Mini Me, and Olympia Dukakis.