Would a hyrax by any other name...

In what may go down as one of the weirdest press releases ever, uh… released, Miramax has announced a partnership with The Weinstein Company to produce sequels of Miramax’s most popular titles.  Planned sequels mentioned in the release include (*deep breath*)…

• Bad Santa
• Rounders
• Shakespeare in Love
• Bridget Jones’s Diary
• Copland
• From Dusk Till Dawn
• Swingers
• Clerks
• Shall We Dance
• The Amityville Horror

Uh… don’t Clerks, From Dusk Till Dawn, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and Amityville Horror already have plenty of terrible sequels?  And I’m pretty sure there’s not a queer alive who was hoping for a Shakespeare in Love sequel.  Anyway, if you guessed these are being planned as “special edition home entertainment products”, DING DING DING!  You win the prize.  That’s right, Miramax and Weinstein are going into the crappy, direct-to-DVD sequel business.  I imagine the hardest part will be rewriting all those roles for Eugene Levy.

The Company Men played to largely positive reviews at Sundance (I couldn’t get in so I saw Winter’s Bone instead, which was probably better anyway), and The Weinstein Company finally released a trailer. From the looks of it, ol’ Ben Affleck’s gettin’ downsized.  One day he’s all, “Eh Tawmmy Lee Jones, check me out, I shawt an eighty fo-ah this mawnin.  It’s my new cawss rekid!”  But then his boss is all like, “Sorry, Bawbby, ya fackin’ fiyuhd ovah heah.  No offense a nuttin.  We been makin’ some hahd fackin’ cutbacks in these pahts.  ”

And then Ben Affleck is all like, “Oh gawd, I lost my fackin’ jawb?  I’m such a losah!  I wish I could stawp cryin’ like so much of a queah!  Now I’m gonna hafta go be a cahpentah wit’ Kevin Costnah, my wife’s fackin’ hahd on brothah.  Hey, what’s goin’ on, is my accent gettin’ thickah ova heah?”  And then BOOM! the tagline:

“In America we give our lives to our jobs.  This fall… it’s time to take them back.”

“Hey, jawb: ya think ya bettah den me? Yoah retahded.  I’ll downsize ya mothah. I’m fackin’ Ben Affleck, how ya like them apples?  GO SAWX.”

(Frank Miller: “Did someone say ‘edgy?’” {*disappears into darkness*})

Perhaps no one has summed up what a Kafka-esque, orangutan circle-’bate the system of getting studio notes on your screenplay is as well as Patton Oswalt in ‘Death Bed‘ (“When you sell a screenplay, you then go through a one-year notes process that will make you want to stab yourself in the eyes with your own d*ck that you’ve torn off, shellacked, and turned into a letter opener.”) Well today we have a corroborating story, this time from Cory Edwards.  Cory Edwards had a deal to write and direct a Fraggle Rock movie at the Weinstein company.  According to his blog, he was recently replaced as the writer (he’s still directing, as far as anyone knows).  The reason?  His script wasn’t ‘edgy’ enough.

They have begun the search for a new writer, presumably to rewrite my entire script from scratch. The only overall note coming from the studio is this: “Not edgy enough.”

“EDGY.” That’s the note. That’s what they are trying to do to the Fraggle Rock movie. EDGE it up! [...]WHAT is edgy?? Faster edits? Rock music for the score? Boober wearing some gangsta bling? I have no idea. What I DO know is that the word “edgy” should not be anywhere near this movie.

Oh, Cory, the meaning of ‘edgy’ depends on the context in which you hear it.  For instance, a couple years ago, edgy meant ‘in the style of The 300.’  These days, it means ‘featuring popular songs, like Glee.’

A lot of people don’t know, I was a professional writer before I started FilmDrunk (I stress, before).  I still vividly remember a particular assignment I had in which my only mandate was to deliver “edgy.”  Then, a few days later when I turned in my copy, they called it “virulently anti-Semitic.”  It’s like, jeez guys, make up your minds.  Of course, they still paid me.  I wasn’t about to let them Jew me out of that one.

Butter is a Jason Micallef script “that uses a butter-carving contest at the Iowa State Fair as a metaphor for 2008′s Hilary versus Obama Iowa caucus showdown,” which won a Nicholl Fellowship and made the 2009 Black List.  Ergo, it’s probably pretty good.  So what has The Weinstein Company done to it?  Why, they’re trying to hire Kate Hudson and Jim Carrey, according to Vulture:

Carrey playing a philandering, Bill Clinton–esque repeat sculpting champion who is forced to stop competing because he’s “termed out.” When his long-suffering wife (Jennifer Garner is already signed on) finally steps up for her chance to become America’s next top dairy queen, she’s pitted against a 12-year-old African-American girl in foster care. Hudson would co-star as the Carrey character’s illicit paramour.

That sounds like a promising concept.  And although Jim Carrey and Kate Hudson were both at one point in their careers actors I enjoyed (Eternal Sunshine, Almost Famous), after like 15 Bride Wars and Fun with Dicks and Jane in a row, their presence is now a net negative.

I hate how studios try to cast comedies the same way they would an action movie — get big-name actors, any big-name actors, just to raise the project’s profile, rather than just using comedians or unknowns (consider that the cast of The Hangover were once considered too under-the-radar to warrant funding).  Sony did the same thing with Bad Teacher and Cameron Diaz, another black-list comedy.  It doesn’t work that way for comedy.  Yes, Jim Carrey, Kate Hudson, and Cameron Diaz are all stars with high profiles.  The problem is, they’ve also become known for being in crappy comedies.  Giving them a good script to work with is like getting Louis CK to write jokes for Larry the Cable Guy.  They might be funny, but the audience that would actually enjoy them ain’t gonna hear them.

You’d better get your cousin Timmy a bowl of ice cream and a hanky for his tears, because little kids shouldn’t have to hear stuff like this.  Sadly, it’s true, Timmy, Miramax is dead.  The 31-year-old company founded by Harvey and Bob Weinstein (they left to form The Weinstein Company in 2005), which gave Quentin Tarantino his start, among other things, is packing their sh*t and leaving town like one of your stepdads.

My Left Foot, Reservoir Dogs, The Piano, Pulp Fiction, Sex Lies and Videotape, Clerks, The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, The Crying Game, The Talented M. Ripley, Chicago, The Aviator, Kill Bill I and II, Ciderhouse Rules, Good Will Hunting, Swingers…

Eighty people will lose their jobs. The six movies waiting distribution — “Last Night,” “The Debt,” “The Tempest” among them — will be shelved, to gather dust, or win a tepid release.

“Miramax wasn’t just a bad-boy clubhouse, it was a 20th century Olympus,” filmmaker Kevin Smith wrote to TheWrap.

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