Every Expendables movie has that sweet spot where it’s awesome and not sad and lame, which usually happens a few weeks or months before the cameras roll. If they could just take the movie out of these movies, they’d be set. An idea this fun could only be ruined when you try to execute it. We’ve just entered that stage with Expendables 3, as word has it that Wesley Snipes has joined the cast. Fresh out of prison for tax evasion, Snipes is exactly the kind of person the Expendables would recruit in real life, if only he had a knack for wisecracks and his conviction was a government frame job as retribution for knowing too much.

TwitchFilm and Moviehole both reported the Snipes story, which was apparently based on a Tweet from Sly himself. He’s since deleted the tweet, and no one knows yet what to conclude from that. You never know with Sly, the mix of HGH and those tiny iPhone buttons is a recipe for disaster. One tweet he did leave up, meanwhile, was the one about getting Mel Gibson to direct. …Oh please oh please oh please…

No , I was kiddiing about , but seriously , what about Mel Gibson directing EXPENDABLES 3?Opinions anyone ?Curious…..

— Sylvester Stallone (@TheSlyStallone) April 11, 2013

Mel is a MAGNIFICENT director! Pure passion on every level . we’d be blessed to have him.. A REAL long shot, but LIFE is a long shot -right?

— Sylvester Stallone (@TheSlyStallone) April 15, 2013

No one uses caps lock to punctuate his revelations like Sly Stallone. In any case, at this point, I’m not too interested in Sly’s fantasy camp for aging action stars, but if he gets Mel Gibson to direct Wesley Snipes in it and we get a Some Kind of Monster-style documentary about the making of, I’d pay $100 for a ticket. The combination of The Expendables’ silly name conventions and Wesley Snipes’ penchant for staying in character alone would priceless. I imagine Mel Gibson screaming racial slurs at everyone on set while Snipes refuses to come out of his trailer and communicates only by post-it notes signed “Felt Penn.”

Wesley Snipes was convicted of tax evasion in 2008, and sentenced to three years after losing his appeal in 2010. Snipes claimed he was misled by his financial adviser. But according to a piece in Forbes, he may have been part of a radical anti-tax group who, instead of money, would basically send a letter to the IRS every year saying that the IRS didn’t actually have the power to collect taxes. See if you can guess how that worked out.

A July decision by the 11^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding Snipes’ conviction and sentence recounts how after becoming involved with the American Rights Litigators organization, Snipes failed to file individual federal returns from 1999 to 2004, despite grossing more than $37 million during those years. According to the decision, instead of 1040s, Snipes sent the IRS correspondence advancing various theories as to “why the IRS was powerless to collect income taxes from him” including “that he was a `non-resident alien to the United States,’ that earned income must come from `sources wholly outside the United States,’ that a `taxpayer is defined  by law as one who operates a distilled spirit Plant,’ and that the Internal Revenue Code’s taxing authority `is limited to the District of Columbia and insular possessions of the United States, exclusive of the 50 States of the Union.’’’

Needless to say, saying “this is why I don’t need to pay” to the people who get to decide what you pay is not a very good idea. The government threw the book at him, and even after he had Judge Joe Brown as a character witness! Is nothing sacred? But now is not the time to dwell on the past, Wesley Snipes is a free man!

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Here on FilmDrunk, obviously we spend a lot of time discussing our favorite batsh*t actors, whether it’s Daniel Day-Lewis’s insane methods, Gary Busey’s general nuttiness, Terrence Howard’s schizophrenic Earth mother/beatnikness, or everything Steven Seagal has ever done. But I fear we’ve slept on Wesley Snipes. Ever since Patton Oswalt explained how Snipes refused to leave his trailer for anything but close-ups on the set of Blade Trinity and communicated with the director only by post-it notes signed in character as “Blade,” I’ve been a glutton for any and all Snipes stories. We should’ve known when he called Judge Joe Brown as a character witness in his tax evasion trial. Snipes has been in federal prison since 2010 and isn’t scheduled for release until this summer (probably a cupcake white-collar prison where they prisoners shoot pool and play ping pong all day, but still). But a movie he shot pre-hoosegow recently got picked up for distribution and now has a trailer. It’s called Gallowwalkers. It’s got zombies, pro wrestlers, and zombies (with krazy kontact lenses, of course), backed by dub-step and rock that would attract Tommy Tapouts like moths. Oh, and the director’s last name is “Goth.”

GALLOWWALKERS is the story of a mysterious gunman, Aman (Snipes), the son of a nun, who breaks her covenant with God to ensure his survival. Her break with God curses her son to be hunted by all those who die by his hand – When he takes revenge on a gang that murdered his love, the gang rises as a cursed crew of undead warriors and hunt him mercilessly, seeking their ‘dying’ revenge. The film stars Snipes, Diamond Dallas Page, Simona Brhlikova and Jonathan Garcia, and is directed by Andrew Goth and Joanne Ray. [JoBlo]

BAD GUY: AMAN! You old son of a nun, I’m gonna send you to HELL! It sucks there, and I should know… because I’m a zombie.

SNIPES: You’re like a bad meal, Connor. I never get tired of sendin’ you back. (*sword clang, gunshot, severed head*)

The tagline is “Live by the gun. Die by the gun. Come back for more.” So basically this sounds awesome.

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Our favorite comedian, Patton Oswalt, recently sat down with the AV Club for their Random Roles feature, and while the entire thing is worth your time, Patton’s encounter with FilmDrunk’s Best Supporting Actor Nominee for 2012, Matthew McConaughey obviously deserves some special attention.

Failure To Launch (2006)—“Techie”
PO: Again, one scene. Me and Sarah Jessica Parker. She was a delight. I remember doing the table read with Matthew McConaughey before she was cast, and his dad was not played by Terry Bradshaw. It was Paul Dooley. He was the best. I said, “You are my favorite movie dad.” He was in Sixteen Candles and Breaking Away. And I think the mom was played by Kathy Bates, who was also amazing at the table read. Then McConaughey shows up in bike shorts and no shirt for the table read. I was sitting across from him, and I could see his right testicle.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: of all his skills, Matthew McConaughey’s best feature is how good he is at being Matthew McConaughey. The genius of Magic Mike was giving him a character that was even more McConaughey. Watching him was like watching a tiger crush a tapir’s neck in a nature film. Just A+ at being a tiger.

AVC: He literally was shirtless for a table read?

PO: Yes. If I looked like that, I’d be shirtless, too. I think he showed up on his bike, so he legitimately had been out biking.

As good as any McConaughey story always is, I think I was more intrigued by his story about Wesley Snipes on the set of Blade Trinity, who would sign post-it notes “Blade.”

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Woody Harrelson’s Reddit AMA famously went down in flames when a commenter brought up a story about Woody supposedly crashing his prom and banging someone’s date, which was a shame, because Woody Harrelson always seemed like such a likable good ol’ boy. Today, Grantland has an Oral History of White Men Can’t Jump, and while I’d urge you to read the whole thing, there were a few anecdotes in particular that I especially enjoyed.

On the subject of Woody Harrelson being a good old boy:

Rosie Perez: I spoke to [Director] Ron [Shelton] about [Perez's nude scene] and he said, “You will not do anything that you are uncomfortable with. As you know, as we discussed before you signed the contract, there is going to be nudity.” We choreographed the scene and then he goes, “Let us know when you’re ready.” I stayed in that bathroom forever. I just couldn’t come out. Woody knocked on the door and was like, “Are you OK?” I said, “Yeah, I just need a second.” He said, “Well, you know, you’ve been in there for 30 minutes.” I was like, “I’m going to feel weird because you’re going to see my body.” He said, “I have the utmost respect for you and love working with you and there is nothing but respect for you from the whole cast and crew and we’re going to take it slow.” I open the door and I’m standing there half-naked and he goes, “Oh my God, look at your tits. They’re beautiful.” I slammed the door. I started cracking up. I go, “You’re such a pig, Woody.” He goes, “I’m sorry, they’re huge and you’re so tiny.” I go, “Oh my God, let’s just f*cking do this.” It was great. He took the edge off because he was so goddamn silly and he made it fun. I give all the credit to Woody and the director for that. The chemistry between us was there already.

Harrelson: You hear a lot of actors say that it’s really not fun and difficult and there is all the crew around.

Shelton: We filmed it with Steadicam or a little handheld and they got a little frisky.

Harrelson: I remember it being fun. It was really fun.

Oh, Woody Harrelson, you goofy pothead, you’ve ogled your way into my heart yet again. Let this be a lesson to you, guys, never pretend that you don’t enjoy staring at boobs.

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