Burt Wonderstone is currently shooting in Las Vegas, with veteran TV director Don Scardino working from a script by John Francis Daley (the mouth-breather kid from Freaks and Geeks) and Jonathan Goldstein (Horrible Bosses). In the film, which I assume will be like a sitcommy version of The Prestige, Steve Carell and Jim Carrey play dueling magicians. Which I suppose would explain why Jim Carrey is dressed like Johnny Depp on an average day.

[pic source = MovieWeb, SocialiteLife]

Variety today reports that Kevin Kline has been added to the cast of Charlie Kaufman’s Frank or Francis, alongside Steve Carell, Jack Black, and Nic Cage. That’s great, because I’ve been waiting for Kevin Kline’s return to the comedic brilliance of A Fish Called Wanda since 1988. But, and perhaps more importantly, it gives us an opportunity to examine Kaufman’s latest, and what it’s about. The folks at ThePlaylist have had a chance to read the script, and holy Meryl Streep’s tits does it ever sound nutty.  Here’s the overview:

“Frank or Francis,” in our estimation, feels like a deliciously good and contemptuous (though self-aware) screed/send-up of the film industry, not only, the graffiti-with-punctuation bloggers, but the entire machine: fatuous filmmakers, vapid PR people, self-absorbed writers, blowhard actors, and last but not least it serves up a jiujitsu-like takedown on the ego-driven, vacuous meat-parade that is the Academy Awards. No stone is left unturned nor is there much of any kind of hero in the story as everyone is as equally moronic and narcissistic as the other. Still, as Kaufman denotes, it also says a lot of things about society, culture, human nature (and race) and human behavior—albeit some of it in his patently strange and sometimes baffling way.

Yay, jiu-jitsu and meat parades are my favorite things! Anyway, the main arc tells three parallel stories, of…

• Frank Arder (Steve Carell, presumably), a pretentious auteur whose film You, in which he plays all the characters, some in blackface, gets nominated for 29 Academy Awards.
• Francis (Jack Black), a “self-important, arrogant film blog commenter”, and…
• Alan Modell (Nic Cage), “a comedian with a faltering career who is known for his wildly popular, immensely moronic ‘Fat Dad’ roles.”

And then it gets even better (and waaay weirder) in some of the details. These might be spoilers, but you probably won’t understand them anyway (*covers soy chai with latest issue of The Atlantic*):

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Hey, girl, this is the trailer for Crazy, Stupid, Love, teaming Baby Goose with Steve Carell.  Haha, relax, girl, it’s just a title.  I don’t think love is crazy or stupid.  This time around, Steve Carell plays a schlubby, middle-aged divorcee, and Baby Goose plays the womanizing ladies man who helps him get his groove back.  It’s a bit of a stretch for me, girl, because in real life, I’m more of a kitties man.  If I want to help someone find their groove, all I need is my Jansport full of Swiss Miss and a Raffi tape.  Acting!  Haha, I love you, make believe.

/baby goose off

Holy sh*t, is this supposed to be a parody?  How many flaccid rom-com clichés could we squeeze into one trailer?  Besides the plot itself, we’ve got the trying-stuff-on-montage while the cool character nods or shakes his head, the Girl Who Changes Everything for the womanizer, the precocious random kid who gives spot-on love advice, the divorced couple that falls back in love (because that always happens…), the Marisa Tomei-nurses-a-broken-guy-back-to-health… Did I miss any?  How was this directed by the guys who did Bad Santa? I hope there was a buttf*cking scene they had to cut out, because otherwise this looks terrible.

[opens in July, HD trailer available at Apple]

Steve Carell will soon play a man whose dog is the only witness to his wife’s murder, and to solve the case, Carell will teach the dog to talk.  As if the only sticking point in getting dogs to speak had just been motivating someone enough to teach them.  I like to imagine Carell on the phone with Harrison Ford, Ford’s hair frazzled, his lab a mess of bunsen burners, computer equipment, and dogs in front of microphones. “I ALREADY WORK AROUND THE CLOCK!”

Steve Carell is taking a turn for the serious, attaching himself to star in Dogs of Babel, a drama for Mandate Pictures. Carell will also produce the project, an adaptation of a novel by Carolyn Parkhurst.
The novel, described as a tragic story of love and loss centers on a linguistics professor (Carell), who returns home one day to find his wife dead in their backyard. Though police rule her death an accident, the professor is not quite sure. With the only witness to the death being the couple’s dog, the grief-stricken man endeavors to teach it to talk in the hopes that he can uncover what really happened. [THR]

Hmm, a tragic drama, eh?  Not the way I would’ve gone with a talking dog movie, but… What do you think, Business Dog?

"Here, girl. I'll stand in this walk way so you don't get wet."

Baby Goose was interviewed by Steve Carell for this month’s Interview Magazine, and I think it goes without saying that we found the money quote:

GOSLING: I loved growing up in Canada. It’s a great place to grow up, because—well, at least where I grew up—it’s very multicultural. There’s also good health care and a good education system. So it’s a great place to be from, although, when I was 8, I was walking to school one day and I saw a frozen cat by the side of the road, and I picked it up and hit it against a tree.

Baby Goose later added, “I whacked and I whacked, but even after the ice had come off, it still wouldn’t move.  After that I cried and apologized to the tree for being so rough, and it was the saddest day of my life, because that was the day I learned kitties don’t live forever.”