Monthly Archives: May 2010

The Great Televised Rage Machine …or: Why Can’t Joe Accept The Truth?

Joe: Worst show that lasted more than two seasons.

Steve: Oh jeez.
We’ll never get to the bottom of that list.

Joe: Yeah, okay, worst sitcom then.

Steve: Pssh.
Same response.
The Jeff Foxworthy Show.
The George Lopez Show.
Anything with that sort of title.
Grace Under Fire.

Joe: Oh my God, I always forget that show existed until someone brings it up, then I get headaches.

Steve: Yup.

Joe: Okay, how about this: show that should have lasted three years that got cancelled prematurely.

Steve: Firefly.
Dollhouse.
I can see already this list is going to be Whedon-heavy.

Joe: I have one easy answer “The Dana Carvey Show.”

Steve: I thought that show was on for a long time.

Joe: Nope.
Like 4 episodes tops.

Steve: I never actually saw it.
Chappelle’s Show.
It was 3 seasons, but it should have been a lot more.
Same with The Tick.
The animated one, not the crappy-ass live action one.

Joe: The producers said “do a sitcom as if it were a late night show.”
To which Dana replied, “You don’t really want that.”
To which the producers replied, “Yes we do.”
To which Dana Carvey replied:

To which the producers replied “Yeah, we didn’t want that.”

Steve: Huh
So it was terrible?

Joe: Mmmm…it was a late night show with Dana Carvey completely at the helm.
Can’t let artists do whatever they want. You get really amazing stuff and really shitty stuff with no balance.

Steve: I thought you were saying you liked it.

Joe: I did.

Steve: Oh.
Well then you were wrong.
Because this clip is dog shit.

Joe: It’s one small clip.

Steve: Ah.

Joe: Do you remember the election of 1996, Clinton v. Dole?

Steve: Yeah.
Nothing but great Norm MacDonald sketches.

Joe:

Steve: haha
Okay, that was good.

Joe: Watch the opening clip of this.

Steve: Wow, I can’t even get through that one.
No offense Joe, but I would have canceled this show too.
Maybe not quite so quickly.

Joe: You know what’s weird about that show?

Steve: What?

Joe: Steve Carrell, Steven Colbert, the guy who did Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and Louis CK were all on it.
That’s a lot of funny in one show.

Steve: Definitely.
I was a huge fan of Dana Carvey’s movies.
You ever see Clean Slate?

Joe: I think so.

Steve: It was great.
And Trapped in Paradise.
With him, John Lovitz and Nick Cage.
That movie was freaking funny.
Not to mention the Wayne’s World duelolloelogy.

Joe: Skip to 11:20 on that last one.

Steve: Nice.
I think I’ve seen that one before.

Joe: Like I said, extremely hit or miss.
If this came on today, it’d be Comedy Central’s best show, but some jackasses put it in primetime in the mid-90′s. Way too soon.

Sigh…


Steve: I just swung by the official Final Draft website to see about buying a legal copy.

Joe: How much?

Steve: 249 freaking dollars.
IT’S A FREAKING WORD PROCESSOR!
They’re basically just hanging a sign on it that says “Pirate me.”
Recently I bought the game Batman: Arkham Asylum.
It represents thousands of hours of R&D, dozens of paid name actors, backbreaking 3d modeling, lighting and rendering work, a brand new gameplay and physics engine designed just for that game and tons of testing, retesting and hair-pulling to get it just right.
It cost $50.
The program that arranges words in a predetermined format costs $249.
What are they thinking?

Joe: To be fair, it is their product, and there is a smaller market for their product than there is for a video game… but that pricing is retarded. It’s not like it sells the script for you.

Steve: Seriously.
I mean, they kind of have the market cornered on screenwriting software.
So they can pretty much charge whatever they want.
But they’d sell a lot more if they didn’t gouge like that.

Joe: True.

Anvil: The Story Of Anvil

Steve: Anvil: The Story of Anvil is the greatest documentary I’ve seen in years.
But I figured out why metal bands always end up on drugs and stuff.

Joe: Why?

Steve: Because if my freaking brain makes me listen to “Metal on Metal” one more motherfucking time, I’m going to have no choice but to start killing it with alcohol as quickly as possible.

Joe: True.
As much as I felt sorry for those guys, if you’re on tour with Bon Jovi and other major bands and you don’t get signed, it means you aren’t good enough.
That fake British accent was annoying.

Steve: Yeah, I agree about the accent, but I think they were pretty good.
I went to their website.
They’re actually doing really well now.
Did a world tour opening for AC/DC
Played the Independent Film Awards, where Dave Grohl ordered everybody in the room to watch the movie.

Joe: Good for them.
Maybe some dentistry work will be on tap.

Steve: That would be so cool.
For everyone.
You gotta think though.
When Lars Ulrich and Slash cite your band as an influence and you’ve never been signed…
That’s just weird.

Joe: Agreed.
But there are a thousand examples of that in stand up comedy. Guys who were just never that big but who watch lesser comics get TV shows, movie deals, bigger headlines, etc.
I mean, I hate Sarah Silverman, but every comic loves her and she can’t do better than a shitty Comedy Central show.
Public appeal and artist appeal are way different.

Steve: Yeah, I guess so.
That and being Canadian really can’t be good for your thrash metal image.
I mean…
I’m sure there are a couple of violent people in Canada.
But that’s hardly common knowledge.

Joe: True. Not the right nation to be from. Better in Eastern Europe, Scandanavia, Germany or the U.S.
Those are the metal nations.

Steve: Yeah.
Countries with guns and bloody history books.

Joe: Yep.

Steve: Not hidey-holes for draft dodgers.
Yeah, I said it.

Joe: Ha.

Steve: Everyone should go watch Anvil: The Story of Anvil right now.
http://www.anvilthemovie.com/

Jonah Hex and the Destruction of Hollywood Starlets


Steve: Yeah, I think the Jonah Hex movie looks like it might be really cool.
But that whole giving him a superpower thing scares me.
It implies that they think comic book fans won’t come see it if he doesn’t have a superpower.
Which will have the exact opposite effect, because those are the very people who will know they just twisted the whole concept of the character.
<Gasp> Not all comics are superhero comics. It’s just a western comic. So make a western movie.
That’s not so hard.

Joe: Right, I think it’s a grab at the general audience who may not know the comic but who will go see comic book movies.
I think Brolin will be good, the rest won’t.

Steve: Malkovitch will too.
And I don’t mind Megan Fox, but it depends on how they use her.
If they use her the way most movies use her, it’ll be terrible.
But it looks like they might actually be letting her wear clothes part of the time.

Joe: We’ll see.
I think that’s a comic that should be left alone when it comes to movies, but Hollywood never met an idea they didn’t want to destroy and put Megan Fox’s boobs into.
Seriously, can she just turn 40 and pose in Playboy already?

Steve: I disagree. I think Jonah Hex is perfect movie adaptation material, but they’d be better off not advertising it as a comic book movie.

Joe: It’s not that I think Hex is bad movie material, just that I think Hollywood can’t adapt stuff like that without destroying it. Can you imagine LOTR produced/directed/shot in Hollywood, or anywhere near America?

Steve: Yeah, true.
And I agree about Megan Fox.
But whenever there’s a new chick in her place in society, there’s always a part of me that hopes things won’t end that way for her.
Like maybe this time she’ll actually have a decent career, not become an unwed mother, not get divorced six times, not pose in filthier and flithier magazines until she dies of a drug overdose…
There’s always hope.

Joe: I agree with you on hoping actresses don’t get willingly exploited, but there’s not a lot of positive history when it comes to that sort of thing.
The other path is to turn into Sharon Stone, do Basic Instinct 2 and gross out the universe.

Steve: Yeah.
One or two of them could become Sandra Bullocks.
But even she’s getting divorced now.

Joe: Well, she chose to marry a guy who was married to a porn star. You really can’t have any clearer indication of what you’re getting yourself into.
So, that’s all on her in my opinion.

Steve: I didn’t know that detail.

Joe: It’s less tragic to me than it is retarded.

Steve: Impressive.

Joe: Yeah, anyone who is shocked is also shocked that politicians hire slutty interns, bankers manipulate financial systems and premarital sex leads to unwanted consequences.
What!?  Sleeping with my boyfriend lead to herpaids!?  Oh my!

Steve: Seriously.