I always thought MacGruber was kind of a stupid sketch and I can’t believe they’re making a movie out of it. But with a hard-R rating, a guy from The Lonely Island directing, and Val Kilmer playing a villain named “Cunth,” who knows, maybe the good can out weigh the Lorne Michaels. Here’s the synopsis the studio just released:
MACGRUBER April 16, 2010
Genre: Action comedy
Cast: Will Forte, Ryan Phillippe, Kristen Wiig, Val Kilmer, Powers Boothe and Maya Rudolph
Screenplay by: Will Forte, John Solomon, Jorma Taccone
Directed by: Jorma TacconeOnly one American hero has earned the rank of Green Beret, Navy SEAL and Army Ranger. Just one operative has been awarded 16 purple hearts, 3 Congressional Medals of Honor and 7 presidential medals of bravery. And only one guy is man enough to still sport a mullet. In 2010, Will Forte brings Saturday Night Live’s clueless soldier of fortune to the big screen in the action comedy MacGruber.
In the 10 years since his fiancée was killed, special op MacGruber has sworn off a life of fighting crime with his bare hands. But when he learns that his country needs him to find a nuclear warhead that’s been stolen by his sworn enemy, Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer), MacGruber figures he’s the only one tough enough for the job.
Assembling an elite team of experts-Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) and Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig)-MacGruber will navigate an army of assassins to hunt down Cunth and bring him to justice. His methods may be unorthodox. His crime scenes may get messy. But if you want the world saved right, you call in MacGruber. [Collider]
Haha, “Cunth.” Gets me every time.
NY Magazine caught up with Bill Hader outside a Paper Heart screening recently, where they asked him about the upcoming Macgruber movie. He said he’s read the script (by Will Forte, Jorma Taccone, and John Solomon), which tells us there’s actually a script, and that it’s… *gasp* rated R.
It’s like a hard-R comedy, and it totally works. It’s hilarious. It’s kind of in the vein of, like, eighties action movies, like there’s a very definitive bad guy. I don’t know if I can talk about the plot too much, but it’s hilarious. The thing that kind of blew my mind about it is that it’s like a HARD-R movie. I was like, “What is this? This is f*cking ugly. You guys are really going to do this?” And they’re like, “Yup.” And I was like, “That is awesome. That is f*cking hilarious.” [Vulture]
Unfortunately scripts have a way of changing once the people paying the bills get ahold of them. And putting out an R-rated SNL movie would take some serious balls, a rarity these days everywhere but your mom’s underwear. As ThePlaylist points out, there hasn’t been an R-rated SNL movie since Blues Brothers, and the conventional wisdom is that they’d lose a big chunk of their network-TV friendly audience by making an R-rated film. But I hope they do it. Not because cussing is inherently funnier, but because that would at least give it some separation from the sketches, which kinda suck. It could be really good if Macgruber was more like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando, cutting peoples’ arms off and feeding deer and carrying tree trunks on his shoulder and swearing. And then sometimes a naked girl would walk by for some reason. I guess what I’m saying is that it could be good if it’s nothing like Macgruber.
Trying to fill two hours of movie with a premise that could barely fill 90 seconds of sketch seems like a really bad idea, but that apparently didn’t stop the project from getting fast tracked. Oh well, I guess it can’t be worse than View-Master. Now Jorma Taccone, the Lonely Islander who co-wrote the sketches, has been hired to direct, and we’ve got a couple tentative cast members and a synopsis.
Ryan Phillippe and Val Kilmer are in negotiations to star. Will Forte and Kristen Wiig are reprising their roles from the skits.
Forte and Taccone wrote the parodies with John Solomon. The trio wrote the feature script, in which the legendary, much decorated MacGruber is pulled out of retirement as a monk in Ecuador by a colonel, who needs him once more to fight on behalf of his country. This time the mission involves going up against the evil Cunth, who has a nuclear warhead; the mission is personal because Cunth killed MacGruber’s bride. Phillippe would play Piper, an Army officer forced to pair up with a reluctant MacGruber. Kilmer would be Cunth.
“MacGruber” movie is fast-tracked and at this stage looks like it could make it to the screen before a “MacGyver” movie, which is in development at New Line. [THR]
Well I wasn’t so hot on this before but now that I know there’s a bad guy whose name is almost “cunt” I’m sold. On being asked if he’d play the part of Cunth, Kilmer said, “Lunch?”
AGENT: “No, Cunth.”
KILMER: “Lunch?”
*agent slides sandwich across table*
KILMER: “That’s what I thought.”
Sorry I couldn’t get to this before you may already have seen it on GorillaMask, but here’s this week’s SNL Digital Short, “Jizzed in My Pants” (also in YouTube format below, for you international types). The big news is that /Film is reporting that it’s also the first single off Incredibad, the forthcoming The Lonely Island album, which they say will be released February 10, 2009. You may remember The Lonely Island from “Just 2 Guyz,” which I posted a few weeks ago. “Just 2 Guyz” will also be on the album.
The other big news is that you’re now apparently allowed to say “Jizz” on network television. Things overheard as a result:
John Madden: “Here it comes - BOOM! Boy, for my money, Pat, no one jizzes on a secondary like Brett Farve.”
Lou Dobbs: “One day America will wake up and realize that we cannot continue to let these illegal Mexicans come in here and jizz all over our culture.”
Top Chef host Tom Colicchio: “Look, you can’t take a lump of tuna, jizz sauce all over it, and call it a tartar. That’s just not how it works.”
Barbara Walters: “It’s amazing to walk the streets of New York these days. You can almost see the hope Barack Obama has jizzed into the eyes of the American people.”
Bill O’Reilly: “Dammit, people, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times, the thing about Barney Frank is - Hey, what the f-ck? Can’t you cocksucking motherf-ckers hold the motherf-cking camera still? Jesus f-cking Christ. Look you jizz monkeys, I can either do the f-cking show or hold the f-ckin camera steady, I can’t do both.”
Lindsay Lohan [during an interview with Billy Bush]: “You can’t believe every rumor you hear, Billy. Samantha and I are still very much in love. But I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t miss getting jizzed on.”
