You’d probably get a lot of different answers for that question. But ask Eddie Murphy and he’d probably tell you Meet Dave. Meet Dave is the new (soon-to-be-gone) Eddie Murphy movie about 100 martians that come to Earth in a human-shaped spaceship… that looks like Eddie Murphy. It’s your classic fish-out-of-water, martian-comes-to-Earth-and-falls-in-love piece of garbage. So pretty much Earth Girls Are Easy minus the entertainment value.
I refuse to acknowledge that 80’s fashion is back until I see somebody wearing a black and blue paisley leather suit with leather gloves and a silk scarf. Stop kidding yourself.
What does that have to do with a tranny? Not much. But you may remember that back in 1997, Eddie Murphy was stopped by police with a transvestite prostitute. We all know how that feels. The following months were a PR nightmare for the star that hurt the opening of his next movie. Holy Man opened 5th at the box office on a little over 2000 screens and made $5.1mn — which is bad but not horrible given the situation. Holy Man also scored a miserable 10% on Rotten Tomatoes.
How did Meet Dave fare in its opening weekend? The short answer: “Eddie Murphy should stick to voice acting”. This crappy Earth Girls Are Easy ripoff was showing on about 3000 screens (50% more than Holy Man) and finished SEVENTH with $5.25mn. OK, I know it’s harder to score a hit in the summer… but he couldn’t do better than Steve Carell’s sloppy fourths (Get Smart has been out for a month). This won’t gross more than $25mn domestically and Eddie Murphy movies haul in $104mn on average. I mean, I’d expect a piss poor performance like that out of somebody like Jason Statham… but Eddie Murphy? I’ve offered similar advice to Leelee Sobieski; FIRE YOUR AGENT, EDDIE!
Last week, the roommates and I ended up watching Surviving The Game. I can’t remember if we DVR’d it or if we watched it as it came on — but we watched it wire-to-wire.
My first thought when watching it was: “How did they trick all of these guys into being in this movie?” The cast includes Rutger Hauer, John C. McGinley, Gary Busey, and Ice-T (pre-badass-actor-stage). Rutger Hauer plays one of the cheesiest characters of all time. The basic story is that Ice T plays a homeless guy they recruit to be the target of human hunt. Rutger Hauer is the brains of the operation and once they get Mr. T to the cabin in the woods, he’s MERCILESS with the overt-foreshadowing. It’s almost laughable as during the dinner scene when Hauer tells him to “savor the meal” and when Gary Busey lets him know that you “can steal the pig’s soul by looking into its eyes”.
No matter what experience you hope to draw from Surviving the Game, you will be entertained. There are many moments of high tension — like when Ice T tries to shoot his assailants with a shotgun from 200 yards away. But the best moment, BY FAR, has to be the story of Prince Henry Stout.
While we were watching this part, we couldn’t really decide how much of this Busey ad-libbed. This short clip (thanks for sending, Brad) definitely challenges The Wicker Man in terms of pure insanity. It barely beats out the scene where Busey tackles Ice-T and tries to kill him.
Clearly, this was during Gary Busey’s hey-day. Surviving The Game was in the middle of his Under Siege-Surviving The Game-Black Sheep-Drop Zone streak. It’s unfortunate that his niche, crazy cocaine-fueled diatribes, also sparked his downfall. Hey, at least his career didn’t tank as badly as his son’s after Tomcats.
UPDATE: Alex found a transcript of an interview with Busey where he talks about the “Prince Henry Stout” story. Unsurprisingly, most of the speech was ad-libbed. Busey is god. He was on the I Love Money Casting Special and one guy said to him “I want to be on the A-List like you used to be!” Gary Busy was on the A-List?
Gary: That is not in the film. What’s the other character you said? Surviving the Game! That was fantastic and when it came time to do the story about how I got into this game of surviving the game, the line was about three inches long. I told the director, Ernest Dickerson, I said, “Ernest, this is not enough tell the people why I’m here. Can I enlarge this?” And he said, “Yes you can.” And I said, “You have just watered my garden! Thank you.” So out came the story about me fighting Prince Henry Stout, the bulldog—life and death. And all that was improv. It’s used in film studies now at colleges and universities to talk about the power of improvisation and spontaneity. And here is the key to spontaneity. This is a quote. Spontaneity comes from an invisible idea that is there before the creation begins—end quote. We all have it. We all have it in us, this a natural gift.
“As an American I am ashamed and embarrassed that this film was made. I pray that it’s a huge failure.”
Those were the words of Kevin from College Station, TX. He would like to apologize to the rest of the world for the piece of shit that is Sex and the City. I actually respect SATC as an entertainment property but think that it does have a negative effect on our society. Prepare yourself for my SATC Weekend posts. It’s going to be fab.
Want to be famous by seeing your name on my blog? Email a tip or potential quote of the day to officialchrisduncan@gmail.com.
One of the days leading up to New Years, I was enjoying some frosty brews at a friend’s house and my good friend Trey Pool decided to dial up YouTube. He said something about The Wicker Man, which I hadn’t seen, and I was mesmerized by what was on the computer screen. I couldn’t tell if it was real or fake, but apparently it’s all real. I’m not sure if it goes in chronological order, but the video is below along with my recap of the highlights.
Commandeering a Bike - This opening clip shows that Nicolas Cage clearly won’t take shit from any woman dressed like she churns butter. He pulls a gun on her — pretty extreme, right? Except he soon starts throwing haymakers at any woman he can find…
How’d It Get Burned? - I get the feeling that if she knew how it got burned, she would tell him. But there’s never any harm in asking more than once. It’s a proven interrogation tactic. The trick is to increase your volume and the intensity of your facial expression. You can review some 24 DVDs if you need some pointers.
Cold Cocking the Old Woman - This scene was fucking classic. After much deliberation, it ended up being my second favorite scene. There’s not much to say about jacking some old woman in the face — just enjoy the laughs.
Murder by Face-Kick - I used to say “that girl that looks like Leelee Sobieski dies from a kick in the face?”. Maybe she dies from hitting her back on the wall of picture frames. They can be deadly. Then I saw that it actually WAS Leelee Sobieski according to her IMDB page. She was also in the new Dungeon Siege movie that made $80,000 in its last day as listed in theaters (1338 of them). For the math challenged, that’s $60 per theater. Fire your agent.
Take Those Masks Off - Unfortunately, there’s no intense way to knock a mask off of a 8 year-old’s face. Also, I’m pretty sure the kids would just pick up and put them back on as he runs away.
Project Grizzly - No, not Troy Hurtubise’s Project Grizzly… but Nic Cage’s superb disguise — he really blends in with the crazies. In case you were wondering, it’s still possible to crank a woman in the face while wearing a full bear suit.
It’s Murda - When you’re about to be killed by people who wear ridiculous masks and worship honey, your last resort is to reason with them. Hopefully, you’re a master tactician like Nic Cage that can highlight the legal implications of their actions. If you don’t find yourself quite as comfortable with legalese, you’re absolutely fucked.
Bees in Your Eye - This is my favorite scene. Hear me out. I definitely did not laugh as hard at this scene at first. But consider the fact that those are CGI bees. Nicolas Cage is reaching deep into the depth of his acting talent that brought us the likes of Cameron “Learning Disability” Poe to summon this raw emotion. The phrase “NOT THE BEES NOT THE BEES ARRRGHHHGHGHGRRRRGH OHHH THEY’RE IN MY EYES MY EYES ARRRGHGHHGARARGHHGHG” will always send a chill down my spine.
CGI bees freak me out too
In conclusion, I wish that I could be as funny as the mofos that unintentionally created a hilarious movie. It takes a lot of hard work to let your creative juices flow and completely lose sight of anything that makes sense. I haven’t seen anything lately that is so bat-shit-crazy in a good way. On top of that, you need “A Nicolas Cage” to bring it to the silver screen… or YouTube. From the bottom of my heart, I thank everybody involved in this production.
The Bucket List opens tomorrow. Is anybody going to see it? I was walking through the subway yesterday and saw the poster for it and Jack Nicholson’s teeth are scary. You can check that out on the official site here. Maybe you want to add The Bucket List’s facebook application! Sweet viral marketing.
I actually think The Bucket List will do well this weekend. Why? Two big time stars. There’s nothing opening that’s going after the same audience (First Sunday, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything: A Veggietales Movie… longest titles ever?). They could be hurt by parents taking their kids to Veggietales. TBL opens on 2800 screens tomorrow (per Hollywood Reporter) and it killed in its opening weekend (limited release, 16 screens) with a per screen of $20,989. For comparison, I Am Legend did $21,411 in its opening weekend (but on 3000+ screens).
I see The Bucket List taking in about $14-16 million this weekend. I feel like Veggietales will pull in around the same amount but more — but that’s a complete guess. This weekend will be a lot like last weekend with a handful of movies bringing in similar revenue. But after the first week, TBL will not have staying power. You can look at the daily chart and see that it’s averages have dropped dramatically in its 3rd week of limited release. This drop will be magnified when it’s in 2800 screens and I would be surprised if it made it past 6 weeks. I think the domestic gross will be close the $45 million production budget, making it a profitable movie (don’t think it’ll crack $60 mn domestically). But you’d expect more out of this duo. Another thing: it’s written by a 36 year old writer. That’s probably why a handful of reviews called it “manipulative”.
It’s borderline insane to think this much about The Bucket List in this depth. It’s probably because I’m really against this movie. I just think it’s going to be crap — maybe I’ll be wrong. However, this is from the same guy who had high expectations for Wild Hogs…. and I enjoyed the hell out of that movie.
UPDATE: Veggietales is only on about 1000 screens, so that prediction will be completely wrong. The Bucket List opens on 2919 screens.
OCD was launched in early 2008 by the Official Chris Duncan. He writes about pop culture and current events including entertainment news, trashy reality TV, sports, politics, and celebrity culture.
#2 From VH1s Scream Queens speed up to the 1:15 mark http://www.vh1.com/video/play.jhtml?id=1600883&vid=324490 And don't give me shit, I caught this randomly flipping through...
This is indeed the D.A.S. Wassup Forum. I nominate you to be the official keeper of the DAS Wassup encounter thread. And don't worry, I'm crafting a few gay porn sites right now!
