and what's your daily page production rate?
"Take the quiz: will your marriage last?"
"Of course our marriage will last. Though if you weren't so annoying, it would last longer."
(Don't send me your answers. This is just a little way to expand your horizons. Honest.)
The FedEx guy must think our house is the "House of the Slovenly Woman." He shows up before 10 in the morning a few mornings in a row and gets greeted by this schlump in a blue robe with a head full of long, crazed, curly hair.
I'm Gladys Kravitz!
Darin and I went to see Bowfinger this afternoon. It's the story of Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin, who wrote the script), a completely hapless producer, whose accountant friend writes a script named Chubby Rain (and the logline is as dreadful as the title). Bowfinger thinks it's great and gets his usual suspects--star/diva Christine Baranski, cameraman/equipment "borrower" Jamie Kennedy--together to make this movie.
He doesn't have the money to make it, however, so he slithers over to Head Honcho Robert Downey Jr. (very funny in a minor role), who knows what Bowfinger is but plays along, saying if Bowfinger can get megastar Kit Ramsey to star in his movie, it's a go picture.
Problem: Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy #1) is the biggest star in the world and isn't going anywhere near someone like Bowfinger. So Bowfinger figures he will shoot Ramsey with the other actors using a hidden camera and edit in the footage with the rest of the film. He needs Ramsey for some shots that he'll never get Ramsey to do, so he hires hapless errand boy Jiff (Eddie Murphy #2), a Ramsey lookalike, to do those scenes.
Chaos ensues.
Bowfinger is a very funny movie, but it's very shallow. Every character is a type; no one has any depth. Darin thought the movie would have been better with fewer characters who were explored in more detail, but I disagreed: I think characters in a farce are by necessity pretty shallow. Eddie Murphy is great in both roles: he's a really good actor. He totally goes for Jiff in a way that you don't suspect a big star would: there's no winking to the audience that Jiff is really a suave, cool guy.
We both had a problem with the ending (not the end-ending; the part before that), because we in the audience have seen this godawful movie Chubby Rain being made; what the hell are we supposed to think of the end product?
But I laughed a lot in the meantime. I don't know if everyone will find the Hollywood humor as funny--Martin includes the old joke of the starlet from Ohio (Heather Graham) sleeping with the screenwriter to get somewhere. But rest assured: this is not really how movies get made.
Does anyone else feel ripped off if there isn't a new entry on Columbine's page each time you check, no matter how many times per day you check?
And if Beth doesn't have an entry up by 9am, I start getting antsy.
You see the cost of being productive? Just post every so often, the way I do.
And in case you think no Americans have a sense of humor about the tragic developments in Kansas (at least for any Kansas school graduates who want to go on to study Biology at a major university), Snopes has a piece about weird doings in Mississippi this week.
(Note the disclaimer at the bottom and the fact that the story resides in The Repository Of Lost Legends.)
The answer to Wednesday's question: the Israeli Justice Ministry is releasing the memoir of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi officer responsible for implementing "the Final Solution." He began the memoir in 1960, after being captured by Israelis in Argentina and extradicted to Israel. He was executed for war crimes two years later.
Surprisingly, the memoir has been sent to Germany for study. Evidently, they have more Holocaust scholars there. Hmmm.
An excerpt from the memoir was published in Die Welt this week.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com