Stardate 10102003
Part One : They Meet
The biggest most important thing happening this weekend is the opening of KILL BILL.
GO! FIGHT! WIN! KILL BILL as you know stars a bevy of voluptuous assassins out to castrate the patriarchal status quo with some Hong Kong Fooey straight to the `nads.
Okay, it’s not EXACTLY about that, but that’s in there somewhere. I guarantee it.
I went to the premiere, because I’m cool like that. Harvey Weinstein called me and was all, “Hey Thom, how’d you like to meet Lucy Liu? There’s fifty bucks in it if you show.”
“Gee, Harv, that’d be swell but I gotta call the Chess Club first. This is the first week of our elimination rounds.”
“Okay, fine, a hundred,” Harv said.
“One-fifty and Lucy’s got herself a date. She does know I’m gay, right?”
“Two hundred and you don’t say a word and try to feel her up at least once.”
“Rightio, boss.”
Except Harvey Weinstein isn’t my boss and I didn’t get paid shit for reporting on the red carpet. However, I did lock eyes on Harvey with a look that said, “I got your number, biotch.” And then I busted out with some high-karate Matrix style-y moves which impressed Ike Turner so much his handler said, “Shit, Ike, you gotta get some moves like that.” And then she was all, “C’mon honey, we gotta get as much of this shit as we can.” And they ran off to the next reporter.
Ike Turner, Media Whore. Oh yeah. He’s got a song on the soundtrack.
Even Kevin Smith showed up, chatted briefly with one of those broadcast entertainment shows like ACCESS HOLLYWOOD or the like and then high-tailed it into the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. “Keep my seat warm, bitch,” Harvey said. And then later when all the flashbulbs stopped popping and the crowds began to thin, Harvey took his seat and Quentin Tarantino and Smith took their place behind the concession stand. “Do you want anything to drink with that?” Rodriguez nodded knowingly at them from the ticket booth. I saw CECIL B. DEMENTED, I know what’s up.
Uma Thurman did not resist capture.
Look at all the beautiful people who are more important than you.
Part Two: They Fall In Love
After the KILL BILL premiere, because I’m Mr. Hollywood, I walked across the street, trailed by Daryl Hannah, to the green room of JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE. Daryl was a guest on the show that night, along with Evander Holyfield. Andy Milonakis, who is now a regular cast member on the show, invited me over to hang out with Kermit The Frog, who was co-hosting. Kermit’s got a mad posse. After being wined and dined at the open bar and hors d’oeuvres buffet, I went to a super-new, super-stylin’ bowling alley just around the corner from the El Capitan where KIMMEL is taped, with Andy, Jimmy Kimmel, Sarah Silverman and a host of other Kimmelites to celebrate the 37th birthday of one of the writers.
THIRTY SEVEN!?!
(Aahah, that was so sneaky to put that little joke in there)
I can’t remember said writer’s name, but he kept licking my face and calling me sassy. Another of the writers showed me his absurdly large toe. It was the “middle” toe and it was at least twice as wide as his big toe. It was like two toes fused together into ONE GIANT MAN-EATING TOE!
He was all, “Hey, you wanna see my big one?”
And I was all, “Hell yeah, I do.”
And then he started taking off his shoe and everyone gathered round. The crowd went silent. Someone produced a flashlight and shined it on the still enrobed foot. Uncomfortable anxiety turned into fear. He slowly peeled off his slightly dingy gym sock (his detergent must not have whitening power) to reveal the aberration of nature.
Horror swept across the huddled mass. And that horror gave way to something meaner, something cruel, something that said, “You are different and different is bad.” We all pointed at him and started chanting, “FREAK! FREAK!” And then he leapt at us and clawed at our faces and shouted, “I’M JUST LIKE YOU! JUST LIKE YOUUUUUUUUUUU!!!” and then began sobbing.
So we got him a lite beer and that cheered him up again.
Andy tells me he saw Drew Barrymore at this same bowling alley making out with some guy, like “get a room” making out. How saucy is that?
And now, the anti-sauce.
Part Three: They Have a Fight
Generic corporate rock blows. I went to go see Switchfoot at the Avalon Ballroom in Hollywood and not only were me and my friend Marcy the oldest people in the audience, we were by far the most tuned-in to ACTUAL rock and roll. However, we did have one thing in common with most of the people at the show. We were on the guest list.
It was a like an ocean of mall people swaying to the syncopated Clear Channel beat. It was like a Krispy Kreme donut. All air and fat and sugar with no nutritional value whatsoever.
Where was the rebellion? Where was the passion? Where was anything that felt the slightest bit genuine? SOMEONE GAVE ROCK AND ROLL A LOBOTOMY AND THAT SOMEONE MUST BE DESTROYED!
Maybe Switchfoot is just caught up in the big man's game, but I didn't think the band or the show had anything of value to add to the spirit of Rock.
And I get that they are probably happy to be signed to a major label and getting a tour and they now have to prove themselves and sell records and such, but the whole thing was way too safe not to mention bland. Rock and Roll is not supposed to be safe. Even Avril Lavigne, bless her "I don't know anything about the musical tradition I am trying to be part of," has an edge that redeems her ubiquity.
I do not predict big things for this band.
Being at the concert made me feel ... dirty. icky, slimy, yuck. I had to flee. RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!
I think it would be better if I just forget this incident ever happened rather than
me going on a tirade about slick, plastic-wrapped, phony rock and roll.
I KEEEEEL IT! I STAB IT DEAD!! DIE, PHONEY ROCK AND ROLL, DIE!!!
AAAIIIIIYAAAAAAH! KARATE CHOP TO THE HEAD!!!
Part Four: They Make Up
The LION KING DVD has dropped. Yes, Disney held a premiere and had Elton John sing and everything for the release of a DVD. Disney is mad hardcore when it comes to promoting their shit. The LION KING premiere release thingy was pretty cool too. Disney lined the front of the El Capitan along Hollywood Boulevard with fiberglass boulders that looked like the background in the LION KING with patches of real grass and an African-like drum and dance group. And a lion cub and lots of Matuta Hanana’s or whatever that saying is. Hanuna Matata. Banana Hai-Karate. I don’t know. It basically means “High Cockalorum.”
Elton John RAN down the red carpet, wearing pretty much what he wore on THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO which finished taping maybe an hour before he was to be at the El Capitan. He did this sort of sideways shuffle with a perma-grin, which was good of him, really so that the quick on the draw photogs could get the money shot. As you can see from my lack of Elton Johnage, that I was merely a witness to the spectacle.
Cheech Marin also whizzed on down the red carpet, and rebuffed any reporter’s attempts to get his attention. I wanted to ask him about how feels about Tommy Chong’s arrest for selling bongs. But he’s probably answered that question to death. And also, I wanted to talk about bongs at a Disney event. And not just any Disney event, because KILL BILL is Disney, as is JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE (see, I’m Disney’s little reporter bitch lately. C’mon in Thom, meet the family.) but this was the child-friendly, “family” entertainment face of Disney so talking about bongs would be extra taboo. The KILL BILL premiere, which is a Miramax film, was a little, how do you say … edgier. Henry Rollins showed up, grey hair and all. He looks really good with his new dark silver locks.
At LION KING, however, in spite of the jungle theme, the guests were considerably more tame. The defector Hillary Duff made an appearance. She is now 16 and reminding the world that she is no longer “tween” entertainment. Which was a smart career move, letting go of Lizzie McGuire like that. Duff is younger than the Olsen Twins and everyone thinks they are still seven.
Give ‘em hell, Hillary.
Part Five: They Move In Together
In the annals of gimmicky red-carpet interviewers, Jay Leno has Ross the Intern and those two dumb blonde girls whose names don’t even matter, Kimmel has Uncle Frank and Andy Milonakis, Conan has Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, E! has Joan Rivers (I have to tell you a sad Joan Rivers story after this) and MoviePoopShoot.com has Thom Fowler.
We should join forces and take over.
Christophe Beck celebrated the release of his CD, the score of UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN with a lavish Tuscan-style buffet at Café Med in West Hollywood. Beck, some BUFFY fans may know, also composed the score for each episode of the show and won an Emmy for one of those episodes. I came, I ate, I took pictures and then I ran. I never felt so out of place in my life. I mean, I expect to eat half my meals at a buffet celebrating some one thing or another, but I went to this thing dateless so I had no one to at least enjoy dinner with and I wore jeans a t-shirt and on the back of my t-shirt was a silhouette of Dracula – it was a very unintentioned vampire theme. I stayed for maybe 30 minutes, the whole time of which I felt like the grubby kid perched precariously on the good furniture at grandma’s house.
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Okay, the sad Joan Rivers story. I was on plane years ago when I was in high school on my way to Hawaii with the family for a week of whatever happens when you take teenagers on a family vacation that they don’t want to go on because they would rather stay at home and have the house to themselves. THAT is the ideal teenager family vacation. So I go on this vacation and I’m plugged into the in-flight audio entertainment and one of the channels is an interview with Joan Rivers. The flight from San Francisco to Honolulu is like 5 hours long and the interview is about 45 minutes long, so I listened to it about four times. At the time, I thought Joan Rivers was funny and it was just after her husband had died but before the latest round of plastic surgery but it wasn’t so funny to listen to her talk about her bulimia and the way she described being in a restaurant bathroom, shoving her hand in her mouth, on the floor with her face in the toilet bowl, praying to puke up everything she had just eaten.
Gus Van Sant’s new movie ELEPHANT is in theatres now. The film is a creative retelling of the Columbine massacre but there is one scene that I’m not sure if it’s funny or pathetic of three girls who are friends who go into the bathroom after lunch and in the midst of their ordinary world-shaking conversations about parents, boys and homework, they all take a stall and begin retching. What they don’t know is right about that time, their two schoolmate gunmen are wandering the halls, picking off kids like 2-D characters in a video game. What I liked most about this film, and what none of the reporters asked Van Sant about at a recent press conference about the film, is that the two gunmen are not just best friends, they are also lovers who consummate their relationship the morning before the shootings.
Part Six: They Break Up
Now I don’t know if you can say they were gay, though. Because my best friend in junior high and high school became my boyfriend of sorts in 9th grade. At least, that’s when our friendship became sexual and stayed sexual throughout high school and up until we were 20, when we drifted apart. He was hot, too. He was all into heavy metal whereas I, of course, was into New Wave. All the girls wanted to get with him, and I was the one givin’ it to him night after sweet night. He used to draw comic strips and I’d write dialogue. We’d play with our He-Man action figures by day, and then have our own he-man action at night.
I was the luckiest boy in the whole wide world. He used to always say, “We’re not gay, because we don’t kiss.” It turns out, that actually he wasn’t gay, but not because we didn’t kiss. He’s married now and has two kids in spite of my efforts to make him my life-partner and love-slave. He just didn’t think he could live a gay life what with all the pressures of his family. It was so sad. He always had a straight life on the surface anyway with lots of girlfriends. But he always came home to me. It was so romantic.
Wherever you are now, I give you a big non-gay hug for helping me grow up feeling like a normal person and having a normal teenage relationship with normal teenage sex.
That covers the basics, Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll. Turn on the house lights, the party’s over.
Speaking of parties being over. Phillip Seymour Hoffman narrates a documentary exploring the American political landscape through the eyes of the 2000 presidential election with footage and interviews of Republicans, Democrats and the bust-out contender in 2000, the Greens. The film is called THE PARTY IS OVER and I’m not sure when it will be in theatres, but soon. It’s probably opening against THE MATRIX: REVOLUTIONS. That would suck, but maybe there is a crazy kind of synergy at work there. Hoffman is not the best journalist/interviewer but his presence gives the doc a Hollywood angle and the reaction shots of him are worth more than any of his journalistic aspirations. Hoffman even interviews Michael Moore when Moore was in the midst of creating his own break-out documentary BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE which didn’t feature any kind of gay teens at all. The film makers did manage to get some great footage from the campaign trail that shows just how indistinct the two major parties can be at election time.
Part Seven: They Meet Someone New
And now for my encore. I ran into David Cross last week. I was hanging out with Andy Milonakis and walking him back to work when Cross comes out of the ABC offices and Andy was all, “Hey David” and David was all, “hey” and then he scuttled off into the horizon. I wanted to tell him that I gave his CD, SHUT UP YOU FUCKING BABY, to my niece so she could be properly indoctrinated. But I didn’t.
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