Nikke Finke posted this item on her blog under the headline, "Why Hollywood Moguls Are Such Dickwads?" (The URL title is "Why Are Hollywood Moguls Such Asswipes?" I wish she'd make up her mind.)
I found this interesting: Tobey Maguire last night was a guest on Conan and said the Sony Pictures execs wouldn't give him the Spider-Man suit even after he shot the first and second movies in the franchise. (Insiders now claim he never asked...) Calling it humilating, he said he mentioned it on Oprah. Only then did the studio send him not just one but two Spidey suits.
I don't get how the headline fits the item. First off, it doesn't even pretend to tell us "why." And though not one person in this town would question that moguls can be dickwads — if not asswipes — this isn't much of an example of that.
Then, you have to presume he asked for one. Finke admits the record isn't clear on that. Secondly, you have to presume he asked the appropriate Hollywood Mogul. If he asked, say, the person in charge of wardrobe, they probably didn't have the authority to hand over studio property worth — what? — a hundred grand or so? These movies are an ongoing franchise and it's kinda possible that they might need those costumes again.
Plus, there's this: Mr. Maguire just signed for Spider-Man 4 and 5 for a reported $50 million plus a share of profits. If he wanted a costume, his agent could have just called up the head of Sony and said, "Hey, Tobey would also like two Spider-Man suits and a couple of Maseratis," and they would have had them at his door within the hour.
And there's really this: A man named Steve Ditko designed that costume. What Tobey Maguire gets paid per day for wearing it is probably more money than Mr. Ditko has earned in his entire life. That strikes me as maybe a bigger injustice than the fact that Maguire had to ask on Oprah to get one.
People keep e-mailing me links to articles that declare the "hoax" of Global Warming is over; that the e-mails that some are calling "Climategate" prove that beyond a shadow of a scintilla of a hint of a doubt. I might start to believe this if I saw these new disclosures convincing even one person who already didn't think Global Warming was a fraud. From what I see, these leaked e-mails prove nothing of the sort.
I have an odd viewpoint about Climate Change. I want to believe it's a myth. I think the best thing that could happen on this front would be for us to see some decisive proof that we have nothing to worry about. Don't you think that? I just see the case for environmental disaster as, at present, a lot stronger than the case against. It's like 80% in favor of the kind of stuff Al Gore and others are discussing, and 20% against...and the probable disasters if the 80% side is right are so cataclysmic that we can't just sit and hope they're wrong. Supposing there was an 80% chance a bomb was about to go off on your block and a 20% chance it wasn't. Would you just sit there and wait to see how things turn out? I wouldn't, even if it was only a 5% chance.
Of course, everyone can argue the percentages. I say 80/20. You might think 70/30 or 50/50 or 20/80. I think it's about 80/20. The new "Climategate" revelations don't budge the ratio for me...but even if they did, I'd still be at like 79/21. I also think — and I'll bet you agree with me on this — that there are a lot of looneys on both sides, offering up bogus "evidence" that their view is inarguable. When Mankind looks back on this controversy — assuming, of course, that there is a Mankind to look back on it — they're going to note that even a lot of people who were on the "right" side of the question were full of crap.
I have no idea who "Idiots of Ants" are, nor any idea of why I would want to know that. I guess the name is a play on "idiot savants" but whoever they are, they did this eight-minute interview with John Cleese. You might also enjoy reading this recent chat with the man for Vanity Fair. Both contain interesting insights about his work and (perhaps) a bit too much info about his private life...
I found this thanks to a link from my pal Aaron Barnhart. It's an article about the blacklisting that went on in the fifties, more specifically at CBS. What's chilling is that it incudes a reproduction of an actual "do not hire" list with names like Zero Mostel, Jack Guilford [sic], Leonard Bernstein, Howard da Silva, Gene Kelly, Burt Lancaster, Garson Kanin, Ruth Gordon and Philip Loeb. Philip Loeb is the actor who committed suicide because of what the blacklist did to his career.
December 5, 2009
