David Kahane, at National Review Online, finds fuel for the next box office blockbuster in some recent headline.

[W]e still can’t sell scripts about “Muslim terrorists,” but a celebrity death match between the Central Intelligence Agency and the person who stands second to the vice president in the line of succession to the White House should any, you know, unfortunate accident befall the leader of the free world, is right up our alley. Which is why I was first off the mark last week when Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi, the flower of Baltimore and the pride of San Francisco, accidentally pulled the pin on a live hand grenade in front of the fiercely independent Washington press corps and blew herself up.

She wasn’t trying to, of course. She was trying to explain to a bunch of less-than-enchanted media stenographers who would rather be covering Michelle Obama’s workout, or even Bo the dog’s breakfast, that the nasty, un-American CIA has deliberately “misled” her when discussing just precisely how they were going to insert bamboo shoots under the fingernails of a caterpillar that they would then waterboard and introduce into the cell of some totally innocent mujahedin caught up in the lawless Bush-Cheney dragnet during the hysteria that followed the inside job that was 9/11 and . . .

Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

In the other corner we have the Central Intelligence Agency, which we in Tinseltown have been depicting for years as just about the most malevolent organization in the world, outside of the Catholic Church, the Club for Growth, and the Cheney family. In movie after movie, the shadowy CIA guy always wound up as the villain in the last reel. So imagine our surprise when, during the Bushitler interregnum, we discovered that the CIA is on our side, and has been for decades! Screwed up the whole Shah of Iran thing and opened the way for the mullahs? Check! Consistently overrated and then failed to forecast the sudden disintegration of the Soviet Union? Check!! Never did quite figure out what Osama bin Laden was up to? Check

To top it all off, along came super-top-secret agent/Vanity Fair babe Valerie Plame and her dashing, Graydon-Carter-tressed hubby, Joe Wilson, running a sting operation against the hapless Bush White House, whipsawing the president and the veep with Joe’s unprovoked New York Times tale of sipping mint tea with Colonel Kurtz up the Congo and all of sudden there’s shouting about the “sixteen words” in Chimpy’s State of the Union address and Valerie is outed by Cheney flunky Scooter Libby — okay, by Colin Powell flunky Dick Armitage, same thing — and then Judy Miller goes to jail and . . .

Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

[H]ere’s the script that just made me a cool $1.5 mil plus five monkey points plus two first-class tickets to the premiere: Three Days of the Dodo Bird.

We open in Abu Ghraib prison, post-“Mission Accomplished,” where a SHADOWY CIA AGENT gets the bright idea to strike fear into the hearts of America’s “enemies” by photographing completely innocent prisoners in outrageous situations (piled naked on top of each other, led around on a dog leash by a woman, forced to wear panties on their heads) calculated to offend and inflame the sensibilities of the Religion of Peace. Now, you and I both know that these kinds of things happen every week at the right Hollywood parties, and they’re tons of fun, but for some weird cultural reason the photos are deemed offensive, the super-top-secret psy-war campaign winds up on the front page of the Times every day for a year, and the Shi’ites hit the fan.

Read the whole thing.

Recent political developments have made Ayn Rand’s masterpiece timely and topical and Hollywood.com reports that financing may be in the works to begin production of the film version.

Charleze Theron seems to have replaced Angelina Jolie as the front runner to play Dagny Taggart.

Ryan Kavanaugh is said to be circling the eternally stuck-in-development-hell big-screen adaptation of Ayn Rand’s self-styled ‘magnum opus,’ Atlas Shrugged.

Kavanaugh’s Relativity Media, according to the Risky Biz blog, could come aboard to finance the Baldwin Entertainment project with Lionsgate.

While Angelina Jolie was the most recent name attached to play protagonist Dagny Taggart, the blog says that other stars now interested include Charlize Theron, Julia Roberts and Anne Hathaway.

Given the book’s themes of individualism that resonate in the era of Obama, government bailouts and stimulus packages, this could be the perfect time to finally get the book to the screen.

“This couldn’t be more timely,” Karen Baldwin, who along with husband Howard is producing, told BIZ. “It’s uncanny what Rand was able to predict—about the only things she didn’t anticipate are cell phones and the Internet.”

With the recession, the book has experienced a resurgence. As of today, it is listed as top seller on Amazon in the Literature & Fiction Literary and Classics categories.

The story first appeared at Hollywood Reporter’s Risky Biz blog.

Bear Mountain Sports turns around a clichéd Hollywood situation in this terrific commercial.

1:04 video

Also via Jon Henke.

Wanted (2008)

Angelina Jolie, since Laura Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), has made something of a personal specialty of portraying female comic book (or video game) heroines with superhuman abilities at striking both targets and cool poses.

In America, chicks-with-guns is (Example 1, Example 2) is a popular pin-up picture and video genre, but Puritan statism’s hostility to guns is far more advanced in Britain.

Just watching voluptuous Angelina Jolie strike provocative shooting poses could shatter British phlegm and impel legions of bowler-hatted, umbrella-toting Essex men to fly their cubicles and turn to Quentin Tarantino-style orgies of violence, or at least so evidently supposes Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority which has banned the 0:35 minute trailer for Angelina’s new film.

The Guardian reports:

A television advert for the film Wanted, in which Angelina Jolie was shown firing a bullet towards the audience, has been banned by media watchdogs for glamorising violence.

The promo for the DVD release of the action blockbuster showed Jolie kissing co-star James McAvoy during a high-speed car chase before the pair turned and fired their guns in the direction of the viewer. For good measure, a voiceover described Wanted as “the coolest movie of the year”.

The advert received just one complaint from the public, but the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it suggested that “using guns was sexy and glamorous”, which breached the code for television.

The move follows the ASA’s decision in September to ban billboard posters for the film’s theatrical release. These featured Jolie and McAvoy holding guns in a variety of positions in a comic book-style montage of pictures.

Some news agency

They banned this 0:35 trailer.

They probably really wouldn’t like the 2:23 long version any better.

Andrew Breitbart’s new group blog forum for film industry conservatives launched yesterday. First day’s posters include Andrew Klavan, John Nolte, Orson Bean, Melanie Graham, and “Veritas Obviam” (who obviously does not want to lose his career). Perhaps this one will fill the badly needed role of main conservative outlet for commentary on new movie releases and the ideological excesses of the establishment film industry.

To commemorate the US release next month of Stephen Soderbergh’s Che biopic starring Benicio Del Toro, Reason’s Nick Gillespie takes a skeptical look at the community of fashion’s love of Communists used as iconography.

8:33 video

Clara Moskowitz describes how Hollywood updates message Sci Fi cinema. In the end, audiences will find that Keanu Reeves is no Michael Rennie.

If aliens ever visit Earth, they’ll be coming to reprimand us for bad behavior.

That’s the premise of the 1951 classic sci-fi film “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” as well as the brand-new Fox remake of the same name, in theaters Friday. In the intervening 50 years, humanity hasn’t gotten any better, the filmmakers seem to conclude—we’ve just switched to new transgressions.

In the mid 20th century our most pressing concern about ourselves was the threat of humans annihilating each other with nuclear weapons. The original film follows Klaatu, a human-looking alien who comes to Earth with his bodyguard robot Gort, to warn people to cease and desist with the nukes before we contaminate the rest of the Galaxy with them.

The new version of the film focuses on a more contemporary preoccupation: the threat of climate change and environmental degradation. The new Klaatu, played by Keanu Reeves, couldn’t care less if we blew ourselves to bits, but would we mind not taking out the rest of the species on Earth, as well as our rare habitable planet, with us? ..

..It falls to astrobiologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) and her stepson Jacob (Jayden Smith, son of Will Smith) to convince Klaatu that humans aren’t beyond redemption, that we really can change our gas-guzzling, trash-dumping ways.

“In re-imagining this picture, we had an opportunity to capture a real kind of angst that people are living with today, a very present concern that the way we are living may have disastrous consequences for the planet,” (deep-thinker Keanu) Reeves said. “I feel like this movie is responding to those anxieties. It’s holding a mirror up to our relationship with nature and asking us to look at our impact on the planet, for the survival of our species and others.”

In a sign of its own commitment to change, Fox designated “The Day the Earth Stood Still”as its first “green” production. Though some trees were doubtless harmed in the making of this film, the studio endeavored to produce the picture with the smallest possible environmental impact. That meant less paper printing of photo stills for the art department, the use of recyclable materials and biodegradable products to create sets and props, and lumber from sustainably-managed forests.

The studio even enforced an “idle-free mandate,” whereby any member of the crew sitting in a production vehicle for more than three minutes had to cut the engine rather than idle while waiting.

In another grand gesture, Fox plans to transmit the entire film into space on Friday via dish antenna through the Orlando, Fla.-based Deep Space Communications Network firm. In what the studio is calling “the world’s first galactic motion picture release,” the movie will be broadcast in the direction of the closest star system, Alpha Centauri, where eager aliens waiting with popcorn could view it by 2012, when the signal arrives.

Some might suggest that physically transmitting the complete set of distribution prints into deep space would be even better.

0:21 video

The second batch (David Lynch and M. Night Shyamalan) is much better than the first.

I think of myself as a cinemaphile, but I had no idea who Diablo Cody, Jason Reitman, Kevin Smith, and Wes Anderson were. Once I looked them up, I had at least heard of their films.

Second batch: Diablo Cody/Jason Reitman David Lynch, M. Night Shyamalan 4:11 video

First batch: John Woo, Kevin Smith, Wes Anderson 3:18 video

Why not Quentin Tarrantino and the Coen Brothers?

Via LabRat.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

The Telegraph reports an especially flagrant case of Hollywood partisanship.

The studio has temporarily blocked the release of the DVD version of the 1987 film Hanoi Hilton, which will feature an interview with John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, about his imprisonment in Hoa Lo prison during the war.

The film, which gave a favourable portrayal of US prisoners, will now be released on November 11 – a week after the election.

Warner Brothers’s decision is likely to raise suggestions that it did not want to aid Mr McCain’s campaign by highlighting his wartime acts. The Republican candidate, who was a Navy pilot, was tortured during his imprisonment after being shot down over North Vietnam in October 1967.

Barry Meyer, the company’s chairman and chief executive, last month attended a fundraising dinner for Barack Obama, Mr McCain’s Democratic opponent.

The move has angered Lionel Chetwynd, the film’s writer and director, who is a well-known conservative.

“Finding someone in Hollywood who says they don’t want to affect the election is like finding a virgin in a brothel,” Mr Chetwynd told the New York Times.

Paul Reiser, another HuffPo spokesman for Hollywood, sees McCain supporters as schoolyard bullies picking on him, and stealing his lunch money, read: the democrat party’s presidency.

He’s so self-righteous and annoying, you can see how bullying him would be very gratifying. No presidency for you, you little wimp.

“I wish I didn’t have to take your lunch money, but you should’nt of hadda brung it.”

We’re in the 3rd grade again. The skinny, smart kid who just moved in to the neighborhood is getting roughed-up by the asshole bully. The kid who hits you in the head with your hand and says, “Why’re you hitting yourself? Why’re you hitting yourself?”

“Um, actually I’m not. You’re hitting me.”

“You calling me a liar?”

“No, I’m just pointing out that…” SMACK!

“Why’re you hitting yourself?”

And there seems to be no one to appeal to. There’re no grown-ups around when you need ‘em. No one to step in and say, “Alright, that’s enough now. We don’t do that here, fella.” And in the absence of any authority, the asshole gets to keep doing it.

“Why’re you hitting yourself? SMACK! Why’re you hitting yourself?”

From the few minutes of the GOP convention I could stomach watching, all I could think was that Giuliani and Sarah Palin were doing some big-person, lethal version of “I know you are, but what am I?”

America: “Well, respectfully, Governor Palin, it could be argued that you are, in fact, relatively inexperienced.”

Her: “I know you are but what am I?”

“Hm? No, perhaps you misunderstood. We are talking about you.”

“I know you are but what am I.”

“Well, Governor, just listening to your speech, you seem awfully caustic.”

“You are.”

“And, frankly, a little bitter.”

“You’re bitter.”

“I mean, where’s your sense of humility?”

“I’m rubber, you’re glue. It bounces off me and sticks to you.”

“My God – you’re… dangerous.”

“I know you are, but what am I?”

Maybe that’s the problem. Obama treats us like adults, and McCain’s team treats us like children.

Obama seeks to inspire and raise us as a nation. McCain’s people want to reduce us to infants.

Obama asks us to be deep. And courageous.

McCain prays that we’re simple. And cowardly.

Now everyone is calling for Obama to “get angry.” “Get out there and frown this way, curl your lip that way, and clench your fist like so.” And, I don’t know….. That’d be cool. Sure. But I don’t think the fix can come just from him. There’s only so much the guy can do. It’s going to have to be us. I don’t know what exactly we need to do, but I know we’ll do it. I have to believe—I mean I really have to believe we’re big enough, strong enough and smart enough to reclaim what’s ours. I love my children too much to let the assholes take over the school yard.

Another class act from Huffington Post: the screenwriter of the preachy agitprop box-office bomb North Country*, Michael Seiztman heard Sarah Palin in her ABC interview choose the George W. Bush-preferred pronunciation of nuclear, and proceeded to go ballistic on all you Americans who fail to measure up to his personal standards of pronunciation, deportment, and political correctness.

*Budget $30,000,000—Gross revenue $23,624,242

Repent immediately, or else!

I realized three things tonight. For one, if you are a McCain/Palin/Bush voter, you and I do not have a difference of opinion. We have a difference in brain power. Two, she really is as ignorant as I feared. And, three, she really is kinda hot. Basically, I want to have sex with her on my Barack Obama sheets while my wife reads aloud from the Constitution. (My wife is cool with this if I promise to “first wipe off Palin’s tranny makeup.” I married well.)

Now, I want to be clear and speak directly to those of you who LOVED that Palin interview. You’re an idiot. I mean that. This is not one of those cases where we’re going to agree to disagree. This isn’t one of those situations where we debate it passionately and then walk away thinking that the other guy is wrong but argued well. I’m not going to think of you as a thoughtful but misguided person with different ideas who still really cares about the country and the world. No, sorry, not this time. This time, if you watched those interview excerpts and weren’t scared out of your freakin’ mind, then you’re mentally ill, mentally disabled, or mentally disturbed. What you are NOT is responsible, informed, curious, thoughtful, mature, educated, empathetic, or remotely serious. I mean it.

But I like to think that anyone can change.

Stop voting for people you want to have a beer with. Stop voting for folksy. Stop voting for people who remind you of your neighbor. Stop voting for the ideologically intransigent, the staggeringly ignorant, and the blazingly incompetent.

Vote for someone smarter than you. Vote for someone who inspires you. Vote for someone who has not only traveled the world but who has also shown a deep understanding and compassion for it. The stakes are real and they’re terrifyingly high. This election matters. It matters. It really matters. Let me say that one more time. This. Really. Matters.

Face it, Seitzman, George W. Bush graduated from three better schools than you did.

We live in a tragic age, in which control of far too great a portion of the arts is in the hands of witless vulgarians, like Seitzman, who respond to the quirks of fate allowing pseudo-intellectual clods like themselves too near the center of the stage with complacent self-infatuation and Neronian fantasies of the exercise of political power.

I’ve rarely seen a blog post which demonstrated, so definitively, its author’s complete lack of the supposed superiority which forms the entire basis of his diatribe.

Mac may be humiliating poor old PC in those amusing television commercials, but both of them have been caught napping by the penguin in the high tech world of special effects, Stephen J. Vaughn-Nichols reports at ComputerWorld.

While top animation and FX (special effects) programs are run on Macs and some of them, like RenderMan Pro Server are being ported to Windows, it’s on Linux clusters that the really serious movie and television visual effects are created. As Robin Rowe writes at LinuxMovies.org, “In the film industry, Linux has won. It’s running on practically all servers and desktops used for feature animation and visual effects.”

Rowe’s not just being a Linux booster. It’s the Gospel truth. The animation and FX for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; Star Wars: The Clone Wars; WALL-E; 300; The Golden Compass; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; and I Am Legend, to name but a few recent movies, were all created using Pixar’s RenderMan and Autodesk Maya running on Linux clusters.

The really short version for why this is so comes down to Linux clustering enables you to put massive computational firepower into rendering 2D and 3D images. It’s ironic. While getting the most out of NVIDIA and ATI graphic cards on a Linux desktop is still a pain and there’s always some trouble dealing with proprietary video formats on Linux, the top animated and FX-heavy videos usually have their start on Linux systems.

Specifically, most photo-realistic special effects are created with programs using Pixar’s RISpec (RenderMan Interface Specification) compliant programs. RISpec is an extremely detailed open-standard set of APIs (application program interfaces) for 3D graphics rendering programs. To be more precise, RISpec isn’t quite an open standard. While Pixar, the animation giant owned by Disney, has published the specifications for all to use, and no longer even requires a no-charge license to create a RISpec-compliant rendering program, Pixar doesn’t go out of its way to specify exactly how developers can, or can’t use RISpec.

That said, there are open-source RISpec-compliant programs like Pixie and other rendering programs such as Blender, which can be used as a source for RISpec software. Pixar’s RenderMan software suite itself, while it relies on Linux in most animation and FX shops, is unlikely ever to be open-sourced.

So, while you can’t point to animation and special effects software as a major win for open-source software, there is absolutely no doubt that every time you gasp at a breath-taking escape by Indy or grin at a particularly clever visual bit of fun in Ratatouille, you’re appreciating the power of Linux.

Paul Collins at Stale tries some recipes from Vincent Price (Y 1933)’s 1956 cookbook.

My wife and I—she being the Mary to my Vincent—began our day of all-Price cooking with one of his great culinary loves: pancakes. They’d already come a long way from the days of a 1935 cookbook like Someone to Dinner, where the recipe for crêpes Savannah reads, in full, “Pancakes, the ordinary size, served with hot maple syrup.” No such fainthearted stuff for Vincent: The name Banana Pancake Flambé Stonehenge alone murders all culinary competitors. You wrap sautéed bananas into crêpes, vigorously stab strips of bacon atop them, and flambé it all in banana liqueur. It’s a dish that rewards sleepy incompetence: If you don’t flambé it properly, the pancakes immediately soak up copious amounts of hooch, leaving you woozily imitating lines from The Abominable Dr. Phibes while you twirl a villainous moustache and choose your victims for lunch.

Amusingly enough, we’ve got a sinister bottle of banana cordial (inherited from Karen’s mother) right here in the house. It is certainly an appropriate elixir for Price-ian crêpe preparation. I often hear it whispering, whispering very softly, to me as I pass the liquor cabinet.

What’s that? What is it saying?

It wants me to show Karen’s new basset hound the special amontillado in the basement?

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers (Y 1975).

There’s already a trailer out for David Zucker’s anti-Michael Moore comedy satire, opening in theaters October 3rd.

2:05 video

Hat tip to Dirty Harry’s Place.

Stephen Hayes reports that David Zucker has in production a satirical new film, titled An American Carol, a comedy whose humor comes at the expense of the anti-American Hollywood left.

An American Carol is based loosely—very loosely—on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. ...

The holiday in An American Carol is not Christmas and the antagonist is not Ebenezer Scrooge. Instead, the film follows the exploits of a slovenly, anti-American filmmaker named Michael Malone (played by Kevin Farley), who has joined with a left-wing activist group (Moovealong.org) to ban the Fourth of July. Along the way, Malone is visited by the ghosts of three American heroes—George Washington, George S. Patton, and John F. Kennedy—who try to convince him he’s got it all wrong. When terrorists from Afghanistan realize that they need to recruit more operatives to make up for the ever-diminishing supply of suicide bombers, they begin a search for just the right person to help produce a new propaganda video. “This will not be hard to find in Hollywood,” says one. “They all hate America.” When they settle on Malone, who is in need of work after his last film (Die You American Pigs) bombed at the box office, he unwittingly helps them with their plans to launch another attack on American soil.

The entire film is an extended rebuttal to the vacuous antiwar slogan that “War Is Not the Answer.” Zucker’s response, in effect: “It Depends on the Question.” ...

Jon Voight plays George Washington. Dennis Hopper makes an appearance as a judge who defends his courthouse by gunning down ACLU lawyers trying to take down the Ten Commandments. James Woods plays Michael Malone’s agent. And Kelsey Grammer plays General George S. Patton, Malone’s guide to American history and the mouthpiece of the film’s writers.

Andrew Bolt, in the Melbourne Herald-Sun, agrees with Andrew Klavan: Batman is George W. Bush.

Ironically, Hollywood has found a way to smash box office records which it is not going to like: well-executed action movies with conservative themes. Pity that John Wayne is gone.

Finally Hollywood makes a film that says President George W Bush was right.

But director Christopher Nolan had to disguise it a little, so journalists wouldn’t freak and the film’s more fashionable stars wouldn’t walk.

So he hides Bush in a cape. He even sticks a mask on him, with pointy ears for some reason.

Sure, when the terrified citizens of Gotham City scream for Bush to come save them, Nolan has them shine a great W in the night sky, but he blurs it so it looks more like a bird.

Or a bat, perhaps.

And he has them call their hero not Mr Bush, of course, or even “Mr President”, but . . . Batman.

And what do you know.

Bush may be one of the most despised presidents in American history, but this movie of his struggle is now smashing all box-office records.

Critics weep, audiences swoon – and suddenly the world sees Bush’s agonising dilemma and sympathises with what it had been taught so long to despise.

Well, “taught” isn’t actually the exact word.

As this superb Batman retelling, The Dark Knight, makes clear, its subject is a weakness that runs instinctively through us – to hate a hero who, in saving us, exposes our fears, prods our weaknesses, calls from us more than we want to give, or can.

And how we resent a hero who must shake our world in order to save it, or brings alive that maxim of George Orwell that so implicates us in our preening piety: “Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

Strippers and zombies – that just about completely covers all one’s spiritual needs.

1:44 trailer

In Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail (1998), Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) explains to Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) the divinatory capabilities of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972):

Kathleen Kelley: What is it with men and the Godfather?

The answer to your question is “Go to the mattresses.”...

———————————————————-

John C. Hulsman and A. Wess Mitchell agree with Joe Fox, and proceed to view US Foreign Policy post-9/11 as a kind of re-enactment of The Godfather.

9/11 is the shooting of Vito Corleone at the fruit stand. Different members of the Corleone crime family propose different responses to the crisis. Consigliere Tom Hagen, the Liberal Institutionalist, insists on a policy of negotiation. Santino Corleone, the Neocon Hardliner, overrules him and implements a unilateralist policy of armed force with unfortunate results for Santino.

Our authors think the US should reject the extreme policies of Tom and Sonny, and rely instead upon the Pragmatism and Realism of Michael Corleone, and conclude with a certain smug note of triumph at having pulled off their extended cinematic metaphor.

It seems to this reader, though, that these moderates must have left the theater a bit too early. Michael’s moderation is actually only a pretense, a pose of weakness intended to induce the Corleone family’s enemies to drop their guard. Michael proceeds not only to “hit” all the heads of the Five Families, he even eliminates a family member, his own brother-in-law, who betrayed the family by acting as an informer to the enemy.

If George W. Bush were to have behaved like Michael, he would have given some conciliatory speeches, negotiated a deal with Iran, and then arranged—while the inauguration ceremony for his second term was underway—to nuke Pyongyang, Teheran, Riyadh, Moscow, and Beijing, while also taking care to have the editors of the New York Times and Washington Post taken for a ride.
———————————————————-

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Rocky

AP:

A grizzly bear that appeared in a recent Will Ferrell movie killed a 39-year-old trainer with a bite to his neck Tuesday and had to be subdued with pepper spray.

Three experienced handlers were working with the bear at Randy Miller’s Predators in Action facility when the bear bit 39-year-old Stephan Miller on the neck, said San Bernardino County sheriff’s spokeswoman Cindy Beavers. Stephan Miller is Randy’s cousin, she said.

The center’s staff used pepper spray to subdue and contain the bear and there were no other injuries, she said.

A county Fire Department traumatic injury response unit responded about 3 p.m., but could not revive Miller.

The Department of Fish and Game will decide the bear’s fate after an investigation, Tiffany Swantek, a spokeswoman for the Big Bear Sheriff’s Station, told the San Bernardino Sun Tuesday.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Dave Phelps said the bear was a 5-year-old male named Rocky. The Predators in Action Web site says Rocky is 7 1/2 feet tall, weighs 700 pounds and appeared in a scene in “Semi-Pro” in which Will Ferrell’s character wrestles a bear to promote his basketball team.

Complete story.

When Charlton Heston was elected president of the National Rifle Association in June of 1998, he posed holding a rifle, and delivered a jab at then-President Clinton, saying, “America doesn’t trust you with our 21-year-old daughters, and we sure, Lord, don’t trust you with our guns.”

Bloomberg has a nice tribute:

Heston stood 6-feet-3-inches, and his baritone voice, iron jaw, aquiline nose and rippling muscles lent masculine strength and sex appeal to many of his roles, any number of which he played bare-chested. He gained fame as Moses in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille epic, ``The Ten Commandments’’ and owned the role ever after.

Heston also played Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Thomas More, John the Baptist, Cardinal Richelieu and Mark Anthony among dozens of others on stage, television and the movies. He made more than 70 films.

He was the “actor of choice for historical drama’’ in the 1950s and ‘60s, Robert Osborne, host of Turner Classic Movies on cable television and a columnist for the Hollywood Reporter, once said of him.

“Charlton Heston looked like he came from another era,’’ Osborne said in a June 2006 interview. ``He looked like he was kind of chiseled out of granite. He looked heroic.’’ ...

..his conversion to conservatism began in 1964, when he saw a billboard for Republican Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign. It said: “In your heart, you know he’s right.’’ Concluded Heston: “He IS right.’’

Heston’s career surged in an era when “the difference between good and evil, and the eventual triumph of the good, the reward of the virtuous, of the heroic, was almost always recognized,’’ he said in a 1995 interview. “Yet, more and more, we see films made that diminish the American experience and example, and sometimes trash it completely.’’

Heston saw a cultural war “raging across our land, storming our values, assaulting our freedoms, killing our self confidence,’’ he said in speeches.

He decried affirmative action and feminism, complained of bloated government. And he changed his mind about gun control, becoming a vehement opponent of it.

Heston became president of the National Rifle Association in 1998, holding the job until 2003 and touring the country protesting efforts to restrict gun ownership. He developed a mantra dear to NRA crowds: Raising a rifle overhead he would shout that the only way gun-control advocates could take it would be to pry it “from my cold, dead hands.’’

In defiance of President Bill Clinton’s call for increased gun controls, NRA members sometimes put bumper stickers on their cars that read “Charlton Heston is My President.’’

Even the Washington Post printed an admiring tribute:

He was the hawk.

He soared. In fact, everything about him soared. His shoulders soared, his cheekbones soared, his brows soared. Even his hair soared.

And for a good two decades, Charlton Heston, who died Saturday at 84, was the ultimate American movie star. In a time when method actors and ethnic faces were gradually taking over, Heston remained the last of the ramrod straight, flinty, squinty, tough-as-old-hickory movie guys.

He and his producers and directors understood his appeal, and used it for maximum effect on the big technicolor screen. Rarely a doubter, never a coward, inconceivable as a shirker, he played men of granite virtue no matter the epoch. He played commanders, Biblical prophets, Jewish heroes, tough-as-nails cowpokes, calm aviators, last survivors, quarterbacks and a president or two.

Later in his life, he took that stance into politics, becoming president of the National Rifle Association just when anti-gun attitudes were reaching their peak. Pilloried and parodied, lampooned and bullied, he never relented, he never backed down, and in time it came to seem less an old star’s trick of vanity than an act of political heroism. He endured, like Moses. He aged, like Moses. And the stone tablet he carried only had one commandment: Thou shalt be armed. It can even be said that if the Supreme Court in June finds a meaning in the Second Amendment consistent with NRA policy, that he will have died just short of the Promised Land—like Moses.

I’ve had a link to the NRA membership page with a picture of Chuck Heston on it in the right hand column, since I started this blog.

Alex Gibney (William Sloane Coffin’s stepson) sporting orange ribbon

The Washington Post reports on Tinseltown’s latest de rigeur fashion accessory seen everywhere at the recent Academy Awards celebration.

There was a dollop of politics. When Alex Gibney won for his documentary “Taxi to the Dark Side,” about the use of torture in the war on terror, the director said he made it to honor his father, a former Navy interrogator, who was outraged at abuses revealed at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. “Let’s hope we can turn this country around and move from the dark side to the light,” Gibney said.

Out on the red carpet, Paul Haggis (the director whose “Crash” won Best Picture in 2006) said he didn’t know what accounts for all these deeply dark, brooding, troubled films. But isn’t it obvious, he asked, flashing an orange ribbon on his lapel. Orange, why orange? “It’s Guantanamo,” his Max Azria-clad wife, Deborah, said, showing off her orange bracelet, which read: “Silence + torture = complicity.” Suddenly, we noticed—orange ribbons and bracelets everywhere.

Paul Haggis & Deborah Rennard

If you’re writing a sceenplay, you need to be aware that personal computers work differently on the big screen. Here’s a FAQ explaining some of the key differences you need to understand.

Examples: In Hollywood movies,

All text must be at least 72 point.

Incoming messages are displayed letter by letter. Email over the Internet works like telegraphs.
——————————-

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Who knew that the German Army had such strong feelings about the followers of L. Ron Hubbard?

Reuters reports:

Germany has barred the makers of a movie about a plot to kill Adolf Hitler from filming at German military sites because its star Tom Cruise is a Scientologist, the Defense Ministry said on Monday.

Cruise, also one of the film’s producers, is a member of the Church of Scientology which the German government does not recognize as a church. Berlin says it masquerades as a religion to make money, a charge Scientology leaders reject.

The U.S. actor has been cast as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, leader of the unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Nazi dictator in July 1944 with a bomb hidden in a briefcase.

Defense Ministry spokesman Harald Kammerbauer said the film makers “will not be allowed to film at German military sites if Count Stauffenberg is played by Tom Cruise, who has publicly professed to being a member of the Scientology cult”.

“In general, the Bundeswehr (German military) has a special interest in the serious and authentic portrayal of the events of July 20, 1944 and Stauffenberg’s person,” Kammerbauer said.

Here in America, we expect movie stars to be members of strange cults.

Things you would never know if it weren’t for the movies…

Large, loft apartments In New York City are plentiful and affordable, even if the tenants are unemployed.

It doesn’t matter if you are greatly outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts. Your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one… dancing around in a threatening manner until you have dispatched their predecessors.

You’re very likely to survive any battle in a war unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.

A man will show no pain while taking the most horrific beating, but will wince when a woman tried to clean his wounds.

Complete article

The London Times thinks that the box office failure of Quentin Tarantino’s latest homage to cinematic genre trash demonstrates that high budget parodies filled with obscure references to the director’s own personal cinematic obsessions are just too esoteric and too demanding to bring in the popcorn-eating mass audience needed to recoup their cost.

When a high-profile $100 million movie flops at the box office Hollywood groans. When that movie has been directed by two of the hottest hitters in town, produced by the best in the business, filled with sex, violence and stars, and yet it still flops, then the entire industry panics.

Such is the case for Grindhouse, the new double-feature homage to 1970s exploitation movies, directed by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. The movie, a three-hour self-aware smorgasbord of genre action, zombies and killer cars, represents the creative apogee of the relationship between its directors and their long-time producers Harvey and Bob Weinstein. (The movie takes its title from the down-at-heel venues that once specialised in sceening B-movies).

Tarantino and Rodriguez are the Weinsteins’ golden boys, responsible for such commercial and critical Weinstein smashes as Pulp Fiction , Desperado , Kill Bill and Sin City . These two — more than any within the Weinstein stable (which includes the likes of Kevin Smith and Anthony Minghella) — have given the producing brothers their brand identity as the masters of populist yet edgy “indie-wood” entertainment.

The shock was thus all the more profound when Grindhouse managed to turn in only a paltry $12 million (£5.9 million) from its opening Easter holiday weekend. Things got even worse last weekend, when figures revealed that audience members were walking out halfway through the movie, unaware that it was a double bill. Others were complaining about the degraded nature of the film footage (itself a nod to Seventies production values), while the movie was often playing to near-empty theatres (14 people per screening was the average).

Read the whole thing.

I must admit: I haven’t made it out to this one yet myself, and I’m a strong Tarantino aficionado.

Easter weekend doesn’t really inspire in most of us a major yearning for a 1970s exploitation flic. I really like Tarantino’s work, but I see Robert Rodriquez films grudgingly. It’s one thing for Quentin to show up in a bit part in a Rodriquez film, or even to write one as a lark, but combining the work of Rodriquez with his own, and marketing them together on an equal basis does not strike me as a really great idea.

Variety previews this coming weekend’s release of the Quentin Tarrantino/Robert Rodriquez doublebill Grindhouse.

The 1970s exploitation movie gropes, bites, kicks, slugs, blasts, smashes and cusses its way back to life in “Grindhouse,” a “Rodriguez/Tarantino double feature” that lovingly resurrects a disreputable but cultishly embraced form of era-specific film production and exhibition. A pair of pictures devoted to re-creating their progenitors’ grubby aesthetics and visceral kicks, but with vastly greater budgets, higher-end actors and a patina of hipster cool, they part company when it comes to talent and freshness. The numerous marketing problems for this bizarre pop-culture artifact begin with the three-hour-plus running time and young auds’ unfamiliarity with the format. But the B.O. strength of “Sin City” and “Kill Bill” alone suggests the helmers’ loyal followings will produce a very potent opening frame, with fairly steep fall-off thereafter in the manner of most horror films.

Read the whole thing.

Another Tarantino homage to one of the cinema’s more disreputable genres is bound to be a hoot.

Dagny Taggart?

The New York Times reports that Randall Wallace, screenwriter of Braveheart (1996) and We Were Soldiers (2002) is inching toward completion of a script for the filming of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

The challenge, Mr. Wallace said, was immediately tempting. As for how he is distilling Rand’s novel and its Castro-length monologues to a two-hour screenplay, Mr. Wallace insisted he had the material under control and was on course to deliver a finished draft this month.

“I can pretty much guarantee you that there won’t be a 30-page speech at the end of the movie,” he said. “I have two hours to try to express what Rand believed to an audience, and my responsibility is not only to Ayn Rand, but to the audience, that this be a compelling movie. More people will see the movie than will read ‘Atlas Shrugged.’ And the movie has to work.”

Of course, Randall, that has to mean that you outrank Rand.

A film production of Atlas Shrugged lacking John Galt’s speech would be like a performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony omitting the Ode to Joy. If you don’t think John Galt’s speech is a key part of the novel, if you don’t like John Galt’s speech or find it intrinsically boring, you don’t really connect with Ayn Rand, and have no business trying to do a screenplay version of her work.

No, I wouldn’t advocate a word-for-word performance, but Atlas Shrugged without the Speech would be like the New Testament without the Resurrection.

Not even Angelina Jolie as Dagny is going to save this turkey.

And can you imagine? The Times reports that they were able to buy full creative control from that worm Peikoff. Rand must be spinning at 78 rpms.

Earlier Story – 27 April 2006.

Hollywood Reporter:

FBI memo to Hollywood: If it’s not too much trouble, could you please portray our counterterrorism efforts with a bit more realism?

Hat tip to Michael Lawler.

LA Times film critic Carina Chocano contemplates changes in American society and the cinema.

The contrast between what is glamorous now and what was glamorous in the days of Cary Grant and Norma Shearer says much about how American society has changed. Glamour used to present an idealized version of adulthood. Now it presents an idealized version of adolescence. In the old days, glamour was all about unattainability, i.e., fantasy projection. These days, it has become unthinkable that a major Hollywood director might echo Cecil B. DeMille, who instructed Edith Head’s department at Paramount to make clothes “that make people gasp when they see them. Don’t design anything anybody could possibly buy in a store.”

Today glamour is tied to the idea of shopping to maintain the illusion that you are (a) kind of famous, or (b) on your way to being famous, or© essentially the same as famous people, because you share the same taste in home furnishings, core values and dog shampoo.

Pamela McClintock reports in Variety

Ayn Rand’s most ambitious novel may finally be brought to the bigscreen after years of false starts.

Lionsgate has picked up worldwide distribution rights to “Atlas Shrugged” from Howard and Karen Baldwin (Ray), who will produce with John Aglialoro.

As for stars, book provides an ideal role for an actress in lead character Dagny Taggart, so it’s not a stretch to assume Rand enthusiast Angelina Jolie’s name has been brought up. Brad Pitt, also a fan, is rumored to be among the names suggested for lead male character John Galt.

“Atlas Shrugged,” which runs more than 1,100 pages, has faced a lengthy and circuitous journey to a film adaptation.

The Russian-born author’s seminal tome, published in 1957, revolves around the economic collapse of the U.S. sometime in the future and espouses her individualistic philosophy of objectivism. The violent, apocalyptic ending has always posed a challenge but could prove especially so in the post-9/11 climate.

Howard Baldwin said some people have pigeonholed “Atlas” as better suited for a miniseries. That’s why he sometimes pondered turning “Atlas” into two movies. In fact, a two-part script penned by James V. Hart (Contact) for the Baldwins envisions “Atlas” as two pics, although it’s likely to be reworked.

For years, producer Al Ruddy tried to make Rand’s definitive book into a movie, attracting the interest of Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway at one point.

But while Rand was still alive, she had script approval, complicating the process. After the author’s death in 1982, Ruddy continued his efforts and, in 1999, he inked a pactpact to produce “Atlas” as a miniseries for TNT. Ultimately, the deal faltered.

In 2003, the Baldwins acquired the film rights to the novel from Aglialoro, a New York businessman, after launching Crusader Entertainment with Philip Anschutz. Hart was hired at that time to adapt.

Anschutz, however, ultimately decided not to make the movie.

The Baldwins then took the project with them when they left Crusader and formed the Baldwin Entertainment Group.

“What we’ve always needed was a studio that had the same passion for this project that we and John have,” said Baldwin,

Generally speaking, Lionsgate keeps production budgets below $25 million. “Atlas” is likely to cost north of $30 million, but the studio will reduce its exposure through international pre-sales and co-financing partners. Actors would likely take less money upfrontupfront—a common practice for the indie.

Rand’s individualistic and character-driven stories have captured the imagination of Hollywood before. Warner Bros. made “The Fountainhead,” starring Gary Cooper as the maverick architect Howard Roark, in 1949.

Oliver Stone was attached to direct a remake of “Fountainhead” for Warner Bros. and Paramount, but the project has languished in development. Along the way, Pitt expressed interest in playing Roark.

Angelina Jolie as Dagny Taggart? We can all look forward to the love scene with Francisco on the railroad tracks.

This year’s Academy Awards were destined, it was believed by many, to deliver an important symbolic victory for the forces of progress over Middle America. An exceptionally talented director had taken a sad little story by a fine writer, a story of capricious fate producing human tragedy beneath the indifferent sky of a hard land, and with the magic of cinematography, transformed it into a Gay Pride Manifesto.

The Academy’s award for Best Picture was unquestionably going to a leftwing “message picture,” but the gloating of the Hollywood Homintern evidently reached a sufficiently shrill falsetto pitch that it apparently produced a backlash within the ranks of even Tinseltown’s politically correct voters. Brokeback Mountain was denied the final accolade, and Annie Proulx has responded with a meltdown in the Guardian.

The people connected with Brokeback Mountain, including me, hoped that, having been nominated for eight Academy awards, it would get Best Picture as it had at the funny, lively Independent Spirit awards the day before. (If you are looking for smart judging based on merit, skip the Academy Awards next year and pay attention to the Independent Spirit choices.) We should have known conservative heffalump academy voters would have rather different ideas of what was stirring contemporary culture. Roughly 6,000 film industry voters, most in the Los Angeles area, many living cloistered lives behind wrought-iron gates or in deluxe rest-homes, out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city, decide which films are good. And rumour has it that Lions Gate inundated the academy voters with DVD copies of Trash – excuse me – Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline. Next year we can look to the awards for controversial themes on the punishment of adulterers with a branding iron in the shape of the letter A, runaway slaves, and the debate over free silver…

..For those who call this little piece a Sour Grapes Rant, play it as it lays.

Ben Stein had some comments in the American Spectator.

Basically, the sad truth is that Hollywood does not think of itself as part of America, and so, to Hollywood, the war to save freedom from Islamic terrorists is happening to someone else. It does not concern them except insofar as it offers occasion to mock or criticize George Bush. They live in dreamland and cannot be gracious enough to thank the men and women who pay with their lives for the stars’ ability to live in dreamland. This is shameful.

The idea that it is brave to stand up for gays in Hollywood, to stand up against Joe McCarthy in Hollywood (fifty years after his death), to say that rich white people are bad, that oil companies are evil—this is nonsense. All of these are mainstream ideas in Hollywood, always have been, always will be. For the people who made movies denouncing Big Oil, worshiping gays, mocking the rich to think of themselves as brave—this is pathetic, childish narcissism.

The brave guy in Hollywood will be the one who says that this is a fabulously great country where we treat gays, blacks, and everyone else as equal. The courageous writer in Hollywood will be the one who says the oil companies do their best in a very hostile world to bring us energy cheaply and efficiently and with a minimum of corruption. The producer who really has guts will be the one who says that Wall Street, despite its flaws, has done the best job of democratizing wealth ever in the history of mankind.

No doubt the men and women who came to the Oscars in gowns that cost more than an Army Sergeant makes in a year, in limousines with champagne in the back seat, think they are working class heroes to attack America—which has made it all possible for them. They are not. They would be heroes if they said that Moslem extremists are the worst threat to human decency since Hitler and Stalin. But someone might yell at them or even attack them with a knife if they said that, so they never will.

I avoided watching the Awards show, but yesterday I read a comment by Ann Coulter noting that the award for Best Original Song went to a number titled It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp. (I won’t quote it. You can read click the link and read the lyrics if you like.)

Anybody willing to take seriously the aesthetic judgements, political opinions, and moral perspective of a community prepared to treat the expression of the point of view of a practitioner of that particular occupation as suitable entertainment fare, let alone the subject of an award for excellence, is obviously some kind of an idiot.

2004 Documentary on Republican in Hollywood reviewed:

Hollywood has a richly-deserved reputation as an extremely liberal town populated by celebrities who rarely hesitate to assail their audiences with their political opinions…

But just as there may be a few Britney Spears fans at a death metal concert, surely there must be some Republicans in Hollywood; and Democratic speechwriter and independent filmmaker Jesse Moss set out to find them in his short documentary Rated R: Republicans in Hollywood, which initially ran on the American Movie Classics channel in September 2004.

Iowahawk spills the beans:

Tinseltown Looks to ‘06 Rebound

Los Angeles – As the box office closes on the US film industry’s worst year since 1990, showbiz insiders are looking to a strong slate of 2006 releases to help the industry snap back from the financial doldrums.

“If we’ve learned anything this year, it’s that the market is really hungry for more good, slow, imponderable stories and dim lighting,” and industry analyst Tim Jarrard of the trade journal Hollywood Reporter. “The industry has listened, and I think the public will be pleased with the direction it will be taking in 2006.”

Anticipated major theatrical releases from Hollywood include:

Incident at Amity: Steven Spielberg directs this cerebral remake of Jaws slated for summer release. Insiders say the 31-year update will feature “additional points of view” and “be less judgmental to sharks.” Starring Willam H. Macy as the anti-shark fundamentalist, and Tom Hanks as the Great White.

Silenced Wood: George Clooney stars and directs in this drama about the climate of fear among ventriloquists during radio’s notorious Charlie McCarthy era.

Hershey Highway: Based on the Tony Kushner play, a candy factory worker (Phillip Sousa Huffnagel) and Amish teen (Joaquin Seymour Gyllenhall) find forbidden pleasure in this poignant love tale set against the gritty backdrop of Pennsylvania’s chocolate belt.

Me Billy: Based on the inspirational true story of a learning disabled man (Sean Penn) who rescues New Orleans from racist flood with a magical red cup.

Baby Doc: Jamie Foxx stars in this biopic about Haitian civil rights activist wrongly accused of despotism by LA police.

Reservoir Puppies: Director Quentin Tarantino teams with Pixar in this animated children’s holiday tale about six lost whelps and a botched burglary. Starring the voices of Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, and Mike Meyers as Mister Pinky.

Zaftig Pi: The Eigenvectress. Plus-size video game superheroine comes to life, as Oscar winner Kathy Bates battles Christian fundamentalist aliens with kung fu cartwheels.

The Vespa Diaries: Romantic revolutionary scooterist Pol Pot (Lysol Phoenix) and US intellectual Noam Chomsky (Matt Affleck) find gay rainforest love in this Cambodian remake of ‘Roman Holiday’ that had Sundance audiences cheering.

Fearful Silence: Courageous What’s My Line? contestant (Leonardo DiCaprio) refuses to answer panelist questions in this gameshow drama set against the McCarthy-blacklist era. With William H. Macy as Bennett Cerf and Kevin Spacey as Kitty Carlisle.

Angel Soft This: In a shocking and sometimes humorous indictment of the toilet paper industry, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock documents the ravages he suffers after 30 straight days of non-stop buttwiping.

Mugabe: Will Smith stars in this biopic about Zimbawean civil rights activist wrongly accused of mass starvation program by LA police.

Lunch Lady: poignant story of school cook-turned-playground strangler has generated advanced Oscar buzz for star Jennifer Lopez, who reportedly gained 400 pounds, facial tatoos and gum disease for the role

Fearful Deadly Fear: Blacklisted 1950’s screenwriter Damon Runyan (Tim Robbins) writes a secret screenplay about the the McCarthy-era blacklists, in this 1950’s blacklist drama set against the background of the McCarthy era blacklists.

Cold Humpcrack Creekwater: Two retarded Gay cowgirl sisters (Rene Zellweger, Jenna Jameson) defy a fundamentalist sherriff (Hovercraft Phoenix) and discover love in this 1930’s period piece set in the Appalachian outback of Nebraskansaw.

Redemption: the Idi Amin Story: Gary Coleman stars in this biopic about Ugandan civil rights activist wrongly accused of cannibalism by LA police.

Snow Fuji Mountain: Mothra (Toby Damon) and Gamera (Orlando Law) discover forbidden love while destroying Tokyo, in this story of nuclear-triggered sexual awakening.

The Girl is Fabulous: Totally straight New Yorker Ted (Tom Cruise) falls head over heels in hetero love with Marcy (Katie Holmes) in this completely ungay romantic comedy set against the backdrop of New York’s glamorous West Village.

Silence 1984: Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris interviews the survivors of Hollywood’s notorious Reagan era ‘Year of Fear,’ when only three McCarthy-themed movies were released.

Susan Cooper, an industry writer for LA Weekly, said that 2006 plans reflected “a renewed focus on real human stories,” after several disappointing 2005 action fantasy releases. She cited the planned spring release of Hollywood’s first non-documentary look at 9/11—Oliver Stone’s Inside Job—as evidence of Hollywood’s return to realism and a reason for industry optimism.

“There’s a really good buzz about it in Hollywood,” said “With a top director and an all-star cast, this studios are hoping for a blockbuster return.”

Stone’s $140 million September 11 epic stars Nicholas Cage, along with Haley Joel Osment as Osama Bin Laden, Robin Williams as Donald Rumsfeld, Dakota Fanning as Zacarias Moussawi, Val Kilmer as the ghost Richard Nixon, Harvey Fierstein as the International Neocon Zionist Conspiracy, Bubbles the Chimp as George Bush, and Jim Carrey as ‘My Pet Goat.’

“I think ‘Inside Job’ shows the public that we artists can make serious films on subjects that they care about,” said Stone. “Maybe then we can move on to collective healing, and you inbred flyover fundie hillbillies will finally shut the fuck up.”

Hat tip to Libertas.

Prenuptial Agreements are standard operating procedure among Hollywood celebrities these days. Sandy Cohen of AP reports:

LOS ANGELES - No mother-in-law sleepovers. Only one football game per Sunday. Mandatory sexual positions...

Prenups are the norm for most stars — even regular folks should have one, if you listen to Kanye West — and these documents can dictate far more than who gets what. Attorneys say some recent celebrity prenups include:

• Limiting the wife’s weight to 120 pounds or she must relinquish $100,000 of her separate property.

• Allowing a spouse to perform random drug tests, with financial penalties for positive results.

• Requiring a husband to pay $10,000 each time he is rude to his wife’s parents.

• The previously mentioned rules regarding mothers-in-law, football and sex.

“Everything is legal unless you’re dealing with custody of children or child support,” said Los Angeles divorce attorney Robert Nachshin, who has represented Barry Bonds (his ex signed the prenup the day before their wedding) and author Terry McMillan (who discovered the young hubby who brought her groove back was gay). “Everything else is up for grabs.”

“People have their own little peculiar peccadilloes they’re concerned about,” said attorney Leon F. Bennett, who has represented Marlon Brando, Kelsey Grammer and Dennis Hopper. “People of wealth have a sense they have power over others that their money can acquire, and reality shows it can.”

Infidelity clauses are common, Nachshin said. Michael Douglas agreed to pay Catherine Zeta-Jones millions should he stray, and Denise Richards made similar requirements of Charlie Sheen.