While FilmDrunk is technically a general-information humor site about movies, we do have our favorites. Those generally go, in order of importance, Gary Busey Stories, Steven Seagal Stories, and Pictures of Rape Vans. We know what we like and we have a good nose for it. Our own Chareth Cutestory recently chanced upon a new Busey story, as recounted by Paul Scheer on the latest Doug Loves Movies podcast (which I assume he found only after he’d finished listening to every FilmDrunk Frotcast). We pick up with Scheer describing the Busey incident.

SCHEER: “I was in a movie that Gary Busey was in, and I talked to the lead actor, and I was like, what was it like working with Gary Busey? And he goes, ‘He kicked me in the stomach!’”

Paul Scheer and Gary Busey were both in Piranha 3D Piranha 3DD so it’s pretty safe to assume that Piranha 3DD is film in question. As for the lead actor, I would imagine he means Steven R. McQueen, who played the main kid in Piranha 3D, who was the closest thing to a protagonist. Though I think it sounds a lot better if you leave all that out and just say, “Didjou hear Gary Busey kicked Steve McQueen in the stomach??” It doesn’t matter that Steve McQueen died in 1980, people will believe it. It’s Gary Busey. Anything’s possible. (Wrong movie, my bad).

“And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he says, ‘Well I came on set,’ — and he’s the lead of the movie — ‘I came on set and I introduced myself to him, and he goes ‘Get outta here with that bullsh*t!’ And he kicked me in the stomach. And then he said ‘Get that guy off the set!” And they did! They got him off the set! The lead actor, they dragged him off the set.”

Knowing what we know about Gary Busey, that he becomes agitated whenever commercials come on TV and demands that they be muted, even if he’s at a crowded sports bar at the time, because, as he says of commercials, ‘It’s bullsh*t!” (as recounted to us by a guy who was Busey’s assistant on a film a few years back), I’ve pieced together a likely scenario. Gary Busey probably heard the sound of a commercial, and at the same time was confronted with a stranger trying to introduce himself. He had no choice but to assume that the commercial was coming from this stranger’s stomach. So Busey kicked him in the belly, attempting to mute the tiny television inside (the same way he handles the television at home). When this failed, he demanded that his assistants “get rid of the bullsh*t”, his frequent last resort with televisions playing commercials when he can’t reach them with his foot, which is the only way to keep his brain from being unnecessarily bombarded with crass commercialism. And that’s important, because Busey knows that that’s how the coyotes trick you. And once you’ve been fooled by a coyote, you have to pay him off with highlighters and spare change, and that’s no good, because you’ve probably got important stuff to highlight.

When it was announced that Dimension’s worldwide smash cult quasi-hit Piranha 3D would have a sequel, the obvious joke going around was that it should be called “Piranha 3DD”.  You know, because of all the titteez. The Piranha franchise being dedicated to nothing so much as running with an obvious joke (especially if it involves titteez), Dimension has announced that the official title will actually be Piranha 3DD (Piranha 3 double D). I’ll be expecting my royalty check any day now, you guys. Though I will also accept payment in the form of, you guessed it, titteez.

From the latest press release (via distributor The Weinstein Company).

Principal photography is now underway in Wilmington, NC on PIRANHA 3DD, being directed by John Gulager (FEAST).

There’s something in the water . . . again.

You’d think they would’ve learned not to go in the water by now, but… they haven’t.

And this time no one is safe from the flesh eating fish as they sink their razor sharp teeth into the visitors of the best summer attraction, The Big Wet Water Park.   Featuring a talented ensemble cast including Danielle Panabaker (THE CRAZIES), Matt Bush (ADVENTURELAND), Chris Zylka (THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN), David Koechner (ANCHORMAN), Meagan Tandy (UNSTOPPABLE),  Paul James Jordan, Jean-Luc Bilodeau, Hector Jimenez, Adrian Martinez, Clu Gulager and more cast to be announced soon.

I enjoy that they take great pains to trumpet the involvement of Hollywood A-lister Jean-Luc Bilodeau but say nothing of the fact that the script was written by the guys behind Saw V, VI, and VII.  Probably a wise decision. Take this as a lesson, guy who insists on writing “From the mind of M. Night Shyamalan” on stuff.

HUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR….

Dimension has hired Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, the screenwriting team behind the last few films Saw V, Saw VI, Saw 3D, to pen the script to the Piranha 3D sequel. And they have hired a director John Gulager, who they found through the last season of Project Greenlight and helmed the Feast series (which was written by Melton and Dunstan). [SlashFilm]

So you got the Saw guys to write the sequel to a horror parody?  Awesome.  This will be just like the time Michael Bay directed Airplane 2.

The ever-lovable Josh Brolin recently sat down for an interview with our buddy awkward Josh Horowitz over at MTV (video below the cut).  Horowitz asked Brolin about Jonah Hex, and whether he was proud of the film.  Candid as always, Brolin says no, which is one of the reasons he’s so damn cool.  But he did have a few caveats:

Awkward Josh: “Reassess the Jonah Hex situation for us, are you proud of the film?”

Keep Brolin Brolin Brolin: “You mean now that I don’t have to promote it? No.”

“We had an original intention and that got away from us a little bit. Everybody did do their best to try and create the best movie with what we had, but I think it got so derailed at a certain point that the assemblage of what we could use was so disconnected to what our original intention was that it just got mixed up.”

“I still think it’s a lot of fun if you go in and see that movie.  That’s what I told the marketing people at Warner Bros. I said, ‘I can’t lie about this, so I have to look for a truism that I can go with. So I do think that if you go in there, kind of like with ‘Piranha 3-D’ — when you go to see that movie you go, ‘This is ridiculous and this is fun’ — so if you went into ‘Jonah Hex’ with that, I think you had a good time.”

You’re wrong, Josh Brolin, I had a GREAT time.  Piranha 3D was okay, but I had a way better time at Jonah Hex.  The wink-wink, tongue-in-cheek stuff like Machete and Piranha 3D can be great if it’s done well, but it will never be as good as when you can sense that there was an  earnest attempt to create a serious movie.  It’s the difference between a clown wearing wacky clothes for attention, and John Malkovich showing up to the bar dressed like this, going “What? What are you guys looking at?  I thought we were partyin.”

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When the LA Times ran a story about Lake Havasu residents hoping to “dispel rumors” that their lake was infested with piranhas because a ridiculous movie was filmed there, mainly I was confused by Havasu’s strange approach to publicity. Now that their local paper is running ANOTHER story, I’m wondering if everyone there might actually be clinically retarded.  Wait, what am I saying, I’ve been there. I know they are.

In the business of tourism, image is everything.  And in the week following the release of “Piranha 3D,” city officials are hopeful future visitors see the film as tongue-in-cheek humor and aren’t scared off by the over-the-top partying or the vicious prehistoric fish.

I always find people who say “image is everything” aren’t nearly as worried as they should be about getting punched in the face.

“I think both towns [the fictional one in the movie and Lake Havasu] looked absolutely beautiful and they sure look the same,” Visitor’s Bureau President Doug Traub joked. “For the most part, you see young people observing the law and having a good time in the movie. However, morally, if you see people wearing less than full body armor [derp], you may be offended. … I would agree that it was way overblown because it was a movie and again I wouldn’t take it seriously.”
Another possibility, however, is that people avoid the lake in the same way millions avoided the oceans near Martha’s Vineyard, where the 1975 film “Jaws” was filmed.

Yes, that is indeed a plausible scenario.  I’m so glad I read this article.
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