Every time a big movie flops and a smaller one succeeds, people who cover Hollywood write articles predicting The End of the Movie Star Era! and blah blah blah. The same article comes out at least twice a year. But nothing ever changes that much, because movies with people we know in them are always going to get more attention than movies with people we don’t, and because these articles are usually based on a fallacy or on deliberate distortions. From a Reuters article “Hollywood rethinks use of A-list actors”:
Hollywood studios are now thinking twice about splurging on A-list movie stars and costly productions in reaction to the poor economy, but also because of the surprising success of recent films with unknown actors. After buddy comedy “The Hangover,” a movie with a little-known cast, made $459 million at the global box office this past summer, several films have shown that a great concept or story can trump star appeal when it comes to luring fans.
Ever since it came out I’ve been hearing how The Hangover was a cast of unknowns. Unknown to who, your grandma? Zach Galifianakis was a hugely popular comedian and Ed Helms had been on The Office for a year and The Daily Show since 2001. Bradley Cooper was sort of unknown, but how well do you need to know “the really good-looking guy?” As your mom will attest, not very.
Aside from Carrey and “Carol,” which cost at least $175 million, A-listers who suffered boxoffice flops recently have included Bruce Willis (”Surrogates”), Adam Sandler (”Funny People”), Will Ferrell (”Land of the Lost”), Eddie Murphy (”Imagine That”) and Julia Roberts (”Duplicity”).
Chances are, you’ve already seen three or four movies starring all those people, and a couple of them weren’t very good. So when one of their movies comes out, it’s not as big a deal as, say, a movie with that really funny comedian or dude from The Office you haven’t seen in a movie before. Really, all these articles are saying is that it’s better to cast a star on the way up than it is to cast one on the way down. Brilliant deduction. That’s so obvious there might as well be a Dr. Phil episode about it.
(That Zach Galifianakis would show up to my work and pour bleach in my boss’s coffee was always a dream of mine)
I posted the teaser a while back, and now here’s the full trailer for Up in the Air, from director Jason Reitman (Juno), starring George Clooney and Vera Farmiga. Hey, am I the only one who constantly misreads her last name as “farm nigga”? Wait, is that racist? …I should just drop this, shouldn’t I. It also stars the ever delightful JK Simmons, and has at least a cameo from Zach Galifianakis. I like the director and the cast, but the trailer doesn’t do much to make the story seem interesting.
I posted the first clip earlier, and now Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air has a trailer. We see cameos from Zach Galifianakis, Danny “I’m in every movie now” McBride, and Jason Bateman, all of it set to a George Clooney voiceover that seems really deep, but it’s probably just the piano music.
“How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you’re carrying a backpack. Now, I want you to pack it with all the stuff you have in your life. You start with the little things: the shelves and drawers and nicknacks. Then you start adding larger stuff: clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV… Your backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, your car, your home. I want you to stuff it all into that backpack. Now, I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office. Then you move into the people that you trust with your most intimate secrets. Brothers, your sisters, your parents, your children. And finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack. Feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake, your relationships are the heaviest components of your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets and compromises. The slower we move, the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other, to live symbiotically over a lifetime: star-crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We. Are. Not. Swans. We’re sharks.”
I bet the hardest part of this for Jason Reitman was figuring out how to pitch such a philosophical concept to a bunch of movie execs. But then one day he had an epiphany: “GEORGE CLOONEY… has a backpack… full of SHARKS.”
Pictured: The best JanSport ad ever. [video via /Film]
Here’s the latest episode of Funny or Die’s Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis, the show that single handedly makes up for the other 85% of their videos starring unfunny celebrities. I don’t have much to add because it’s funny already, but I like the part where Charlize Theron is talking about her dog that has cancer, and Zach Galifianakis holds a video game in front of her face.
ZACH: “What’s his name?”
CHARLIZE: “Old Boy.”
ZACH: “Like, ‘Oh Boy I wish my dog wasn’t sick’?”
Ahh, Zach Galifianakis. He’s like crack for lazy bloggers.
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(Daddy, why do they use communion wine to test the mattresses?)
Variety repots that Zach Galifianakis is in negotiations to join the cast of director Jay Roach’s upcoming comedy Dinner for Schmucks. The flick would team Galifianakis opposite Steve Carell, Paul Rudd and Lucy Punch. Per Variety:
Based on the 1998 French film written and directed by Francis Veber, “Schmucks” centers on the most pathetic guest to ever grace one man’s weekly dinner gathering. Galifianakis will play an assistant manager of a mattress store who is dating Carell’s ex-wife.
Hang on, did you just say “assistant manager of a mattress store”? Sweet, that’s exactly what the girl in my basement and I thought you said. Personally, I can’t think of a more simplistic-yet-effective character description than to say that someone is the assistant manager of a mattress store. You see, several years ago, when I arrived by ship to Los Angeles, I was excited at the possibilities of what lay before my fellow minorities and I. But what we eventually failed to receive in opportunity, the city of L.A. more than compensated for with it’s over saturation of mattress super stores and their advertisements. Seriously, after 8:00pm on Hollywood Boulevard, you can score a California King almost as easily as crack rock.
