Tom Cruise Hates Cripples!

Actually, that’s not fair. It makes a nice headline but technically, Cruise isn’t the producer on this film. More accurately, Joe Roth hates cripples. Or maybe it’s producer/director James Mangold that hates the cripples; but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’ve been on movies sets far and wide. Low budget Indies in the fields of Illinois, no budget pornos in farmhouse in Norwell, moderate budget comedies in run-down Lowell, mega-budget Clint Eastwood films on the banks of the Mystic River. I only point this out to show that I’m pretty jaded, but there still is something akin to awe when you step on set of a Tom Cruise film.

It’s massive. Tents, trucks, recreational vehicles, a sea of cars, honey wagons that are actually cleaned daily, canteen trucks and huge bar-b-q stoking up for the day, filling the air with wood smoke and anticipation. So many teamsters standing around doing nothing, you think you’ve wondered into a refuge camp.

I was book for one day this week on Mangold’s WICHITA, an action comedy staring Cruise and, for some reason, Cameron Diaz. I guess no one had seen THE BOX before they hired her. They had taken over a huge parking lot behind the World Trade Center on Boston Harbor for their base camp.

I was just background. An extra. Just a drab guy waiting for the bus as these two mega-watt stars throw off some sparks. Towards that end, I was asked to show up at 6:00am in bland clothes, and bring some bland options incase the wardrobe shrew, Robert Q. Mathews, didn’t like my first choice.

I’m working on a theory that the real reason LUCKY NUMBERS, 50 FIRST DATES, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, CONSTANTINE and UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL all sucked is because Robert Q. Mathews worked on them, but he also did the wardrobe on THE PRESTIGE, which I liked, so I’ll give him a pass.

How-some-ever, Mathews didn’t give me a pass on my ensemble for WICHITA, all drawn from my closet. Khaki pants and a tan button down shirt over grey t-shirt. Granted, it was about 6:30 in the morning when I first went to wardrobe, but he gave me the quick once over and said, ‘Great, you’re wearing all white. Tell me you brought something else’.

You know what, I take it back. LUCKY NUMBERS and all those other movies sucked because they had a color blind Costume Supervisor, plain and simple; but I’m just an extra, so who am I to point out his horrible disability on the set? He pick a dark brown polo shirt and a pair of jeans out of my bag and told me to go put those on.

I asked Robert Q., the man in charge of the department, where I could change. He told me, “Oh, I don’t know. Ask a PA”. That’s movie talk for, ‘Don’t bother me. Go spend the rest of the day looking for some unpaid intern to answer your question, which he more than likely won’t be able to do, but at least it is no longer my problem’.

Surprisingly, I found a PA that actually knew where the dressing rooms were fairly quickly. He pointed to a row of trucks and said, ‘There are dressing rooms back there.’ I found them. Two tents erected at the end of the wardrobe trucks in the middle of this parking lot. The tent on the right said ‘Woman’, leaving one to guess that the tent on the left was for men.

I entered slowly, in case my guess had been wrong, and the tent was empty. Not empty in the sense that there was no one in it, man or woman. Empty in the sense that it was totally devoid of content. No people, no chairs, no tables, no mirrors, no hangers. Nothing. As barren as Tom Cruise’s little shark-eyes when you talk to him on the street.

That shouldn’t be a problem, right. Just changing my shirt and pants. Kick off the shoes, zip, zip, zip? Unfortunately, several years ago I shattered my knee and various parts of my leg doing a stunt on a horrible John Savage film, and now I get the best parking at Wal-mart. Of course, I’m also a pathetic cripple, but you can’t beat the parking.

This also means that it is physically impossible for me to take off my shoes and change my pants without laying down, or in a painful pinch, sitting in chair. Laying in the dirt, in a vacant tent, in the middle of a parking lot, with little or no chance of getting myself back on feet when the job was done, wasn’t a prospect I relished. Especially not for the $138 SAG Extra Rate I was going to be paid for the day. So, I searched out my friendly PA again.

I found him on his third bowl of oatmeal at the craft services tent and explained the problem in my clear and even-tempered way, and he said, “Well, you’ll just have to make do,” and went back to what I hoped was a macrobiotic diet to help fight the ravages of extremely painful stomach cancer. Of course, he’s just a PA and isn’t expected to know anything about human decency or the American’s With Disabilities Act. So I went to find a 3rd or even 4th AD. Maybe that far up the food chain they would know how to help.

Like I said, the set of a Tom Cruise movie is an impressive beast. Rows or trucks and cars and tents and teamsters, but not a lot of helpful people. After about a half hour of stumbling around asking everyone with a walkie talkie were I could find even the lowliest of Assistant Directors and getting blank looks that made the dressing room tent look absolutely prolix, I figured I wasn’t getting paid enough for this shit and went home.

I did email the casting agent, just so she’d know why I wasn’t on the set. She emailed back, later in the day, “Thanks for letting me know about the situation, I was not aware. I will pass this along to the appropriate people and I apologize for your disappointing experience on set.”

I figured I’d let the Screen Actors Guild know too, since I pay them an ungodly amount twice a year to be a member. They have yet to respond, but then again, SAG in Boston is a bigger joke than anything you’re likely to find in the script for WICHITA. Of course, I say that without having read the script, but originally it was going to be a Chris Tucker vehicle, so I think I can safely guess how unfunny it really is.

So what does this all mean? Nothing really. James Mangold in working on a feature version of the documentary MURDERBALL, you know, that bastard child of Donkey Basketball they play in wheelchair and erroneously call ‘Rugby’? Maybe he’ll learn some respect for cripples on the set there, but it’s unlikely.

The producers did just change the name of the movie from WICHITA to KNIGHT AND DAY on Wednesday. I wonder if they were worried I might file an ADA lawsuit and the title change would confuse me? All I know is because I had to leave the set, at least I didn’t have face the moral dilemma I had been fearing all day: what if Katie Holmes had slipped me a note begging, ‘Help me escape’? Would saving her and little Sushi be worth losing my $138 for the day?

Na.

This Just In...

David Mamet is writing the script for Disney’s new Anne Frank movie? I can see it now:

“All attics smell vaguely of shit. It gets so you don't mind it. That's the worst thing that I can confess. You know how long it took? How long I had to stay. That ...thing? A long time. So what? You get befuddled by a middle-class morality? Get shut of it. Shut it out. You ever take a dump made you feel like you'd just slept for twelve hours?”

I can't wait!

Comic-Con 2009

Because Tweeting is shorthand for thinking, I’d like to share with you some of my tweets from Comic-Con 2009:
　
Unless IRON MAN II has a scene where she scarfs Hagen Daz and then purges, I’m not buying that Scarlett Johansson does her own stunts.

Cameron Diaz just walked by in a wife-beater and a vest. Did her sleeves grown a nose and take their own lives?

Can not keep a straight face while Diaz talks about THE BOX. Even she seems to know it sucks.

Is Don Cheadle running for office? Anything to keep him from making TRAITOR II.

Megan Fox is not as hot as she thinks she is. ..But she’s still pretty damn hot.

Peter Jackson and James Cameron are being carried through the crowd on the backs of naked Philippino boys.

Jackson is throwing hundreds into the crowd. Cameron dove in after them.

Jackson, “Blab bla bla, DISTRICT 9, blab blab HOBBIT bla”.

Cameron, “Give me that hundred. It’s not yours”.

Oh, I get it Peter. The peaceful aliens are just like the blacks living under apartheid. Hmmm.

Where were you 20 years ago when this movie would mean something? Peter? Peter?

Tom ‘Spongebob’ Kenny says he’ll be the voice of Capt. America and Iron Man in new cartoon.

Is Denzel running for office? Anything to keep him from making CITY HALL II.

Someone who looks just like Kristen Stewart is shooting up in the men’s room stall next to me. Is that Rob Pattinson dry heaving in the corner?

PR rep swears there are over 200,000 people here. Facebook’s Yoville must be a ghost town.
I forget. Is Audrina Patridge the one that played the tambourine?

Someone forgot to introduce Robert Downey Jr. on stage. Everyone thinks he’s Chris Kittan.

China’s answer to Justin Timberlake was just signed to play Kato in THE GREEN HORNET car wreck.

Hmmm Mentos Soda, for those times you want to taste like a douche bag without chewing.

Michael Keaton will play a Ken Doll in TOY STORY 3, which makes sense because he’s anatomically incorrect too.

Is there something they could put in the water around here to keep these people from mating?
This kid was standing in line for 3 hours for a free LOST poster.

Drunk Warner rep screaming about Gary Oldman and all the things he’d say to his face if the rep had any sack. Too funny.

Sam Bayer is comparing his ‘reboot’ of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET to Nolan’s BATMAN. Too sad.

Local hookers look very bored and have given up any hope of making a dime with this crowd. Of course, there is always Robert Downey Jr.

It was nice to see Lloyd Bridges up and around. Too bad it was only Jeff.

I swear Megan Fox just walked by dress as Princess Leiha.

Is Billie Dee Williams running for office?


You can follow the further adventures of my tweets at: http://twitter.com/lancernorris

GLAAD BAGS

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation just released their third annual ?Network Responsibility Index?, as if the networks had a responsibility to any one special interest group. It?s rather telling that HBO led the list and were rated as ?good? because there was a 42% representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people on the network, while CBS came in last and got a ?failing? grade with only 5% of their characters being openly lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (and they only got that because of a couple of smoes on SURVIVOR and THE AMAZING RACE).

NBC also got a failing grade with 8% ?LGBT? representation last season, but they plan to bump things up a notch with some hot lesbian action being added to HEROES later this year. A senior spokeslesbiangaybisexualtransgender said ?We hope that CBS and NBC will be able to better reflect the American scenes on their shows?.

Granted, CBS?s 5% is pretty bad, but CBS has pretty much sucked at everything they?ve ever tried to do and I?m a stock holder so I can say that. What I don?t get is why HBO is only rated as ?good? with 42% representation? I?m told only 10% of America is LGBT, so I?d say 42% is a little more than ?good?. In fact, it?s going overboard. It?s gayer than Lifetime for the love of God and all that?s holy.

I say CBS blows the doors off GLAAD next season with a couple of little tweeks:

Doogie Howser is already gaying up HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, but what if John Cryer finally came out of the closet on TWO AND A HALF MEN?

Would it be that big of a leap for David Caruso to spoon with a fella or two once a week on whichever CSI he?s on?

NUMB3RS, a show about a cop that is really, really good at math is already a pretty gay show, not a whole lot left to do there; but THE MENTALIST is real dreamy, very clean and doesn?t have a girlfriend. You don?t have to be able to read Rip Taylor?s mind to see where this is going. And who hasn?t thought a little girl or girl action would be just the thing for MEDIUM? ?I sleep with dead people?. Does GLAAD cover necrophilia or do they have their own paramilitary terror-lobbyist?

Come on CBS. This is 2009. Leaving a few unasked questions about Jessica?s long time companion on MURDER SHE WROTE isn?t enough. Either one of the NEW ADVENTURES OF OLD CHRISTINE involves D-rings, a flannel shirt and tickets to a kd Lang show, or we?re talking boycott.

This Just In...

This is why I'd never make it in the Hollywood Studio System: Sony just extended their contract with Michael De Luca becasue they are so happy with the work he's done for them as producer. He's the guy that brought us THE LOVE GURU, GHOST FIDER, ZATHURA: A SPACE ADVENTURE and A MAN APART and yet Sony just renewed his 'first look' deal through 2001 because, as Amy Pascal (co-chairman of Sony Pictures) says, 'He brings us fantastic projects... and he so loooves movies'. The extra 'o's in loves are hers.

Due, only in part I'm sure, to the hits Sony took on De Luca's choate folio of films, Sony laid off 3.5% of their workforce earlier this year, but hey, Mike loooves movies, so that's ok. Maybe his Paul Bettany vehicle, PRIEST, will turn things around for Sony. It sure smells like a winner. It's about a reble priest who tosses off the yolk of church law and tracks down the vampires who kidnapped his niece... I shit you not.

Daddy Dearest Redux

I have always maintained that Top Ten Lists are short hand for thinking, and have avoided them like George Lucas should avoid writing love scenes; so you can imagine my reaction when Barry Nolan's producer, Gary, asked me to come on Nightbeat the other night and give a Top Ten Father's Day Movies List. I sat right down and put finger to keyboard to come up with a list.
Number one is simple, 1983's MR. MOM. Written by the great John Hughes and directed by Stan Dragoti, the guy who gave us the American remake of THE MAN WITH ONE RED SHOE and LOVE AT FIRST BITE. Before he was a director of mildly amusing, mid-80's cheese, Dragoti spend the 70's married to Cheryl Tiegs. That's when Tiegs was still hot, so he is obviously a man to whom attention should be paid.

The cast of MR. MOM was perfect. Michael Keaton before he had thoughts of getting sober and becoming 'an actor'. Teri Garr as the mom before she started looking like a mom. The lovely and talented Martin Mull and Jeffrey Tambor. It's also the film that added the phrase "220, 221, whatever it takes" to our vernacular, and for that we will be forever in debt.

Another John Hughes script from 1983 came in at number 2. Based on a short story he wrote for National Lampoon back in 1979, VACATION. An ode to those nightmarish trips we all suffered when dad would pack the tribe into the Family Funster and we'd all head off for adventure. Chevy Chase was that loveable lug of a dad we all wish we had, while Beverly D'Angelo was the Madonna/Whore of a mother Dr. Freud claims we all wanted. Harold Ramis directed this one before he got sober and became 'a director'.

Unfortunately he didn't direct this one before test audiences started to rule Hollywood. A test audience strongly disapproved of the movie's original ending, where Chevy take Roy Wally and his whole family hostage and forces them to dance for his entertainment, and they had to re-shoot a new, lighter ending, featuring John Candy. It's not a bad ending, but Anthony Michael Hall had a three inch growth spurt after principle photography was over, which is why Rusty starts the film the same height as his mom, but towers over her once the reach the amusement park.

VACATION might be dismissed as easy to churn out, light comedic piffle, but go watch THE JOHNSON’S FAMILY VACATION and you'll see just how hard it is to make a family trip funny. Chevy Chase made it work three times before he slammed into the wall with VEGAS VACATION. Cedric The Entertainer crashed and burned before he even got out of the driveway.
While Chevy was the father we wished we had had , Randy Quaid's Uncle Eddie is, unfortunately, the father many of us ended up with, which leads us to Top Ten Father's Day Movie number 3, THE GREAT SANTINI.

Pat Conroy has long be one of my favorite novelist. My oldest daughter is named after the suicidal poet, Savannah, in Conroy's "Prince of Tides". But 12 years before Barbara Streisand turned that book into a star turn for her finger nails, Lewis John Carlino played way over his head and brought us THE GREAT SANTINI (or THE ACE depending on when you first saw it). He also brought Oscar Nominations to Robert Duvall and Michael O'Keefe. Yes, Danny Noonan was once nominated for an Oscar!

Not only is THE GREAT SANTINI a great study on the struggle between and boy and his father, it's the film debut of David Keith, and without David Keith we wouldn't have... Well, David Keith actually hasn't done much that Kiefer Sutherland or Gary Buesy couldn't have handled in his absence, but the movie is a great reminder that Blythe Danner was actually something before she became known as just Gwenyth Paltrow's mom.

The home used in the movie is known as the Edgar Fripp Home. I love houses that are know by names. My is just "that place with the farmer's porch where the old crank lives". The Edgar Fripp House is the same house in South Carolina that Lawrence Kasdan would use to film THE BIG CHILL. I only mention THE BIG CHILL because Kasdan also wrote the script for perhaps the ultimate Father's Day Movie: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. The only reason Empire didn't make my Top Ten List is my pangborn hatred of George Lucas.

Number four on the list was 1973's PAPER MOON, a true family affair from the get go. Back when John Huston was going to direct it, he wanted Paul Newman and his real life daughter Nell Potts to star in it. Too bad Potts didn't take the role, because the movie won Tatum O'Neal a Best Supporting Actress Oscar (beating out fellow cast member Madeline Kahn) and started years of resentment from her co-star, real life dad Ryan O'Neal.

Directed by Hollywood's ultimate name-dropper, Peter Bogdanovich; a guy who knows a thing or two about 'Daddy Issues'. He was young Dorothy Stratten's boyfriend when she was murdered by her husband (a story of betrayal/murder/suicide/necrophlia entertainingly told in Bob Fosse's STAR 80, and the reason Mariel Hemingway got implants). Bogdanovich then married Stratten's little sister, the 19 year-old Louise, a move that sceeved out most people, even those in Hollywood, a people that aren't sceeved out easy. But before Bogdanovich became James Stewart in VERTIGO, he made PAPER MOON, a classic in the Black and White, Father/Daughter, Traveling Con Man in the Depression Era genre.

PAPER MOON’S script was by Alvin Sargent, who also wrote WHAT ABOUT BOB? which almost made this list but didn't, mostly because I didn't feel like watching it again. Alvin Sargent's brother was the great Herb Sargent, who was an original writer on Saturday Night Live along with Chevy Chase, and Chevy Chase was supposed to play Lester Burnham in AMERICAN BEAUTY, the movie that came in number five on my Father's Day Movie List.
Talk about Oscar bait. Director Sam Mendes got one. Kevin Spacey got one (for the role that rightfully should have been Chevy's). Annette Bening got herself nominated for this movie, and Mena Suvari should have gotten one, just for being Mena Suvari. Alan Ball also got an Oscar for his screenplay. He used to write for the TV show "Cybill", which starred another of Bogdanovich's girlfriends, Cybill Shepard. There are those that argue Paul Snider killed the wrong girlfriend.

Add to that the fact that AMERICAN BEAUTY’s Lester Burnham is an anagram for "Humbert learns", a tip of the hat to Professor Humbert in Stanley Kubrick's LOLITA (oh and the novel too, I guess), and LOLITA was remade in 1997 by Adrian Lyne, and Adrian Lyne directed FOXES with starred Randy Quaid, who was everyone else's dad in VACATION and the symmetry becomes almost too much to bare.

Peter Bogdanovich rears his pointed head again on our list, because he was one of the many names Robert Evans approached to direct number six: THE GODFATHER. Thankfully, Bogdanovich turned him down and the movie fell to Francis Ford Coppola by default.
Easily the bloodiest of all my Father's Day movies, with a body count of 18, including a horse, The Godfather may be the ultimate in familial commitment. The cast list all most reads like a who's who of Actors in the 70's. Marlon Brando, James Cann, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall; all the big guns got Oscar nominations, and Brando even won, although he had a phony Indian squaw accept it for him. The only guy missing from the first Godfather was Robert DeNiro, but he got even. He beat them all out on my list by starring in The Number Three Father's Day Movie of All Time: CAPE FEAR.

Not the original CAPE FEAR, but the one that Martin Scorsese made in 1991 with DeNiro, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange and Juliette Lewis. Based on the novel "The Executioners" by the great John D. MacDonald, it's unbelievable that this movie's screenplay was written by the same guy that wrote THE SAINT. CAPE FEAR hammers on the fears of every father, and that thumb sucking scene between DeNiro and Juliette Lewis got them both nominated for Oscars. Nick Nolte got nothing on the other hand, except for his mistress beat up, his houseboat sunk and his dog killed. But that's ok, because Nolte was also in Father's Day Movie Number Three: I’LL DO ANYTHING.

You might have missed this one. It snuck out under the radar in 1994, with Nick Nolte as the unsuspecting dad to an amazing Whittni Wright. Directed by James L. Brooks, the guy that helped bring The Simpsons, Mary Tyler Moore and Taxi to TV (but then again, he's also the guy that directed SPANGLISH, so what can you do?). Organically the movie was a musical, with songs by Prince, but again, test audiences hated it and the songs were removed. Script Dr. Elaine "Ishtar" May was brought in to neuter the screenplay but still, some brilliant moments shine through and like I said, the little girl, Whittni Wright, who went on to star in Jean-Claude Van Damme's hockey movie SUDDEN DEATH and then disappeared, was amazing. Not a dry eye in the house at then end, but then I am an old softy.

I thought long and hard before picking the last movie on my list. So many greats to choice from. Classics like the first FATHER OF THE BRIDE or FATHER GOOSE. Modern crap like FATHER‘S DAY. Maybe THE SHINNING or DADDY DAYCARE "? Anything by Steven Spielberg has it's share of father issues in it, but when the dust settled I went with 1995's BYE BYE, LOVE.

Built around an actual McDonald's in upstate New York that is famous for being the exchange point for kids between divorced couples when their weekend visits are over, BYE BYE, LOVE has Matthew Modine heading a great cast that includes Paul Reiser and Eliza Dushku (even Janeane Garofalo is stomachable in this movie), but what makes this movie so good isn't just the examination of the effects of divorce on the relationship between fathers and their kids and the family paradigm, but the fact that it was directed by Sam Weisman, the greatest director to ever speak through a bullhorn and crack a riding crop, and he is currently in pre-production on THE MIRACLE OF ST. ANTHONY and I really want him to cast me. Please, please, please?

BYE BYE, LOVE also co-stars Randy Quaid, that's the third time he's shown up on the list and thus makes him the best cinematic dad ever. Sorry, can't argue with scientific evidence.

Hey, wait a minute, you might ask. That's only nine. That's right, because Top Ten List are mental short hand. A Top Nine List is an exercise in discipline. Something the Great Santini would have liked. You have been warned. Happy Father's Day

Just Another Reason To Hate SEARS

Real live, hot off the griddle, correspondence between SEARS and myself:

I am emailing you because I tried to call your 1-800-960-9405 number and the woman transferred me to another number and after 15 minutes on hold and the retelling of my story, I was told there was nothing she could do about it and gave me another number to call. For a preferred member, you guys are really giving me the run around here.

I took my Chevy S-10 into your auto center in Kingston, MA on 4/7/09 because there was a loud noise coming from the underside of the truck. They told me that it was the exhaust pipe and it just needed to be welded. I was told it would take about an hour and a half. Two hours later I came back to the store and was told that they were waiting on gasket and then your salesman went on to sell me windshield wipers and other stuff that I really didn’t need.

Two hours later my truck was ready. I paid, got in and drove off, but the noise was still there once I got on the highway. I returned with the truck on the 13th, my first free morning. They told me that it was the right front barring that was making the noise and they would have to order the part. I told them to order the part and I would pay for it today (the 13th) and bring the truck back on the 14th to get the work done, so we weren’t sitting around waiting all day.

I brought the truck in on the 14th and was told it would take about two hours. I returned two hours later and was told that it wasn’t ready because they were waiting on a special tool to be delivered so they could get started. I asked why the tool wasn’t ordered yesterday when I paid for the part (to avoid this kind of waste of time) and was not given an answer.

Two hours later they were done and I paid for the labor and on my way out the door, the salesman told me, he changed the right front barring, but it the left front barring that is making the noise No manager was on duty so I asked that the manager call me at home as soon as he got it (which I was told would be the 15th).

I started my truck and my ABS light for the brakes came on! So, not only have I spent hundreds of dollars and several hours and not gotten the repairs I asked for, now my ABS light is on. Today is the 20th and I have still not heard from the manager of the auto center in Kingston, MA. I would like to hear from him/her. I would like to be told that you will order the part and tool to fix my truck as we first agreed. I would like an appointment to have the service completed and I expect that some of the mark-up on the bill will be knocked off for all the time you wasted for your preferred member #704207336253. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Lance Norris
PO Box 110
Cohasset, MA 02025
lancernorris@hotmail.com


Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:56:43 -0500
From: Custrel@customerservice.sears.com
To: lancernorris@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: National Customer Relations - NC_Complaint_Management (KMM3799310I15977L0KM)

Dear Lance Norris,

Thank you for your recent correspondence regarding your experience with our Kingston, MA auto center. We are always interested in hearing from our customers, and regret it was this type of situation that prompted you to contact us. We apologize for the poor customer service you received. We have forwarded your message to the Auto Center Manager. They will contact you within two (2) business days. Once again, thank you for contacting us.

Sincerely,
Jennifer W.,
National Customer Relations
Sears Holdings Corporation



4/23/09:
You wrote on Monday the 20th that the manager in Kingston would contact me within two (2) business days. It is now Thursday the 23rd and I still have not heard from anyone. Why am I surprised? You have damaged my truck and I expect it to be repaired correctly.


Lance Norris


From: Sears Customer Relations (Custrel@customerservice.sears.com)
Sent: Thu 4/23/09 12:26 PM

Dear Lance Norris,

Thank you for your recent correspondence. We are always interested in hearing from our customers, and regret it was this type of situation that prompted you to contact us. Please accept our apology for any inconvenience you may have encountered with our Kingston Auto Center. We received a response from the auto center, and we feel that you should try to work this out with the Auto Manager.


By sharing your concerns, you have enabled us to address the issues and provide feedback to the appropriate person. Truly, your remarks provide forthright feedback that will enable Sears to achieve excellence in everything we do.


Again, we apologize for this inconvenience to you regarding your vehicle.

Sincerely,



Rosa Lee
National Customer Relations
Sears Holdings Corporation


15 minutes later I wrote:

"try to work this out with the Auto Manager"? He won't call me. Rosa, you need to straighten this out right now!


From: Sears Customer Relations (Custrel@customerservice.sears.com)
Sent: Thu 4/23/09 3:00 PM

Dear Lance Norris,

Thank you for your recent correspondence. We are always interested in hearing from our customers, and regret it was this type of situation that prompted you to contact us. We apologize for the inconvenience you have experienced and understand your frustration with the Kingston Sears Auto Center.

We received the following response from the Sears Auto Center Manager: Lance was here on the 14th to have his wheel bearing installed. It was ordered the day before and was waiting for him when he arrived. However the tech didn't have the proper socket to remove the old hub. So he went next door to borrow one. The job was completed in the 2 hour time frame that he was quoted. However when the tech drove the car after the service he noticed some noise coming from the other wheel bearing. We informed the customer of this at time of pick up. There is no possible way we could have found this prior to changing the other side because of the loud grinding that was coming from the bearing we changed. The other side had no play but was noisy. At that time the customer got mad, threatened to burn down the building, and left.

Once again, we apologize for your experience with the ABS lights. We appreciate your business, and value you as a customer. We certainly hope you will continue to make Sears Holdings Corporation your choice for quality and value.

Sincerely,

Brooke G.
National Customer Relations
Sears Holdings Corporation


At 5:16 I wrote:

I am looking at the invoice for the 14th right now. As it clearly shows the truck came in at 10:09 AM and the invoice was printed at 2:10PM . Add to that the fact that I returned for the trunk at 12:00 noon and was told they were waiting on the tool, I think we can state that your manager is either a liar or does not know how to tell time.

As far as his ‘threatened to burn down the building’ crack, that was a response to the salesman’s ramblings earlier in the morning about he was joining the military to ‘burn things down’. I suggested that if he really wanted to burn something down to help America, he should start with this auto shop. The manager was not in the shop, so he is just repeating a third hand statement and you might want to better screen your sales help.

Towards that end, as your manager has never spoken to me in person and refuses to call me, even after I was told my his staff that I would hear from him the next day and then by your office that I would hear from him in two business days, you might need to pull him in for a little more management training. He does not act like a team leader.

My ‘experience with the ABS lights’, as you call it, is that I brought my truck into your shop for work and when it was returned to me, the ABS light was on. Your apologizes aside, what does Sears plan to do that? If you did damage my breaks, they need to be repaired.

I noticed that you removed your ‘satisfaction guaranteed’ slogan. I was told earlier that this was, because of your steady decline in performance, quality and service, you can no longer stand behind your work; but I have always discounted that as an urban myth, like how Kentucky Fried Chicken stopped using real chicken in their meals, which is why they shorted the name to KFC. Please prove me right and take care of this problem in a timely manner.

You think they’ll help a brother out? Na, I don’t either.

Dream Casting

So, here I am, all set to move forward with the romantic comedy script when life has other plans. An old friend interested me in turning one of my old plays into a very small movie. Budgets were made, schedules were blocked out, vodka companies were contacted about product placement, but then it all changed over night.

An actor I sort of knew from a long time ago, who was a major TV star in his time, got a hold of the script based on my play and liked it. He actually would be great in the lead role and no real changes would need to be made to accommodate him. He did have a few suggestion for tweaks, but these were film maker suggestions (as he had directed a feature before as well) and not those pain the ass actorly suggestion you normally get.

Although I’ll drop a name at the drop of a hat, he will remain nameless for now because no deals have been signed and I don’t want to scotch things up. Let me say this though, he’s got that certain charm that some actors have, to be able to pull off a role that may not be the most likeable character you come across. The anti-Seth Rogan as it were.

Rogan’s new movie OBSERVE AND REPORT is a text book example of why all lead characters must have some sort of redeeming quality, or the actor playing him must leak charisma out of his gills to make the part work. Rogan’s character had nothing in him to like and Rogan himself is pretty much a zero if you’re not stone, so OBSERVE AND REPORT became a painfully long experience.

So anyway, now old budgets are throw out the window, schedules scrapped and owner of vodka company suddenly knows an actress who would love a chance to audition. Now that we’re talking about kicking the budget up a few notches, but still not serious money; I feel it is time for me to step away from producing end of things and bring in a guy I’ve been trying to find a project to do with for four or five years.

Again, we’ve signed no deals, so no names will be mentioned at this point.
I was of the opinion that I could still make this pig for under $200,000 so we’d still qualify for a SAG Low Budget contract, but my producer friend thinks not only does the film need a bigger budget than that, but that he can raise the funds. I’ve already stepped away from the producer’s table, so who am I to argue.

Of course it would be nice if we could pencil into the budget some way for me to walk away from the film when it is done with a brand new Red Camera, but hey, that’s just a $17,000 suggestion.
What happens to project when a ‘name’ actor shows interest is interesting in itself. Now all the sudden you start ‘dream casting’ the other part. A Fantasy Film League, as it were. Steve Carrell would be perfect for the second lead, and he just lives down the street from me, so I send him a note.

Academy Award winner Chris Cooper would be perfect as the heavy. I performed at a couple of fund raisers for his Jessie Cooper Foundation and his wife Maryanne is really nice person, so I sent him a note.

My new producer suggested Evan Rachel Wood for the female lead. I really liked her in THE UP SIDE OF ANGER, LIFE BEFORE HER EYES and the 35 minutes of ACROSS THE UNIVERSE that I could stand to sit through, so; although she doesn’t live near me and I don’t recall ever having spoken to her before, I’ll have to try to get in touch with her too. Why not?

There is another part that would be perfect for my old friend Patty Ross. I’ve got her phone number around here somewhere, so once when have a shooting schedule, calls will be made.
See, it’s easy to cast a motion picture. Of course, I haven’t heard back from Carrell or Cooper yet, and still haven’t talked to Wood, but I found Patty’s number. That’s a start.

I did email and old friend that runs a casting agency to find out what it cost to run auditions in Boston for 10 characters. She gave me the ballpark and after I pulled my jaw back off the floor, I told her I’d pass the numbers along to my producer.

But she also told me something that depressed the hell out of me. She said it has been her experience that I’d still have to do some of the casting out of New York if I wanted the best cast I could get. I refuse to believe there isn’t enough home grown, natural talent in the Boston area to cast this movie, even if Carrell and Cooper let me down.

In fact, I vow right now to only cast ‘Boston Actors’ in this film, just to prove it can be done… With the exception of Evan Rachel Wood. She gets grandfathered in because her name was brought up before I got on my high horse… And I want my friend Jack, who lives in New York to be in it because he taught most everything I know about acting, for good or bad…. But that’s it.
Now I’m running through my mind all the actors I know from around here. This could be hard, but not impossible. In fact, I’ll put a call into Mike O’Malley right now. He’s Hollywood these days, but still a local boy at heart. He’s be great in one of the parts… Damn, voice mail. I’ll try again later.

Because I’m still trying to keep this as skin and bones on the budget as I can, it was written to be shot at two major locations. Tomorrow I’ll head out to Plymouth, MA to scout those locations.
Allegedly they are going to build some huge film studio in Plymouth in a couple of years. I’ve seen THE MUSIC MAN once too often to actually buy into that, but it has got the area thinking that they are going to become Hollywood East, and so right now they are very friendly to film makers. This will all change once they’ve been burnt once or twice by scum bag production managers, but right now it clean slate.

I’ll let you know how that turns out.

DOES OSCAR MAKE YOU STUPID?

Let us consider the facts for one moment:

Way back in 1929 Janet Gaynor won the first Oscar for Best Actress, she ended her career playing Violet Hooper on THE LOVE BOAT. Sure, she managed to sneak in A STAR IS BORN and STATE FAIR, but let’s face it; she ended her career playing Violet Hooper on THE LOVE BOAT.

Of course, no one really gives a rat’s ass about old movie stars anymore, so let’s look at just the past ten years, shant we?

Last year Javier Bardem won Best Actor honors for NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, he followed that up with LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, a romantic ‘drama’ that was so boring it had you rooting for Cholera to win half way through, and then the vapid Woody Allen travelogue VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA. However, English is not Javier’s first language, so maybe whomever read him the scripts tricked him into thinking they were good.

Tilda Swinton gets the Best Actress award last year and then goes on to make THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON or FORREST GRAMPS as I like to call it. Of course, she also made BURN AFTER READING, so that one is a wash.

But let’s look at 2007: Forest Whitaker got jobbed out of an Oscar for 1988’s BIRD, so he gets his make good Oscar for THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND and then disappears up his own ass with THE AIR I BREATHE, RIPPLE EFFECT and THE GREAT DEBATERS in 2007, VANTAGE POINT, STREET KINGS and WINGED CREATURES in 2008 and by 2009 he’s reduced to doing a voice on AMERICAN DAD.

2007 was also the year Helen Merrin won the Best Actress award for THE QUEEN and makes NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS as her Oscar turn follow up.

In 2006 Philip Seymour Hoffman follows his Oscar win for CAPOTE with MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III. Sure, it’s the best of the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies, but it’s still a MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movie!

2006 sees Reese Witherspoon ‘Minnie Pearl’ her way into an Oscar with WALK THE LINE and follow that up in short order with JUST LIKE HEAVEN, PENELOPE and RENDITION. Of course Witherspoon has had a lot of practice making bad choices after showing so much promise in ELECTION, so it came as no shock; but how do you explain Jamie Foxx?

2005 Foxx shocks the world by actually being pretty good in RAY and picking up an Academy Award for his own bad self. Then, as quick as you can say ‘Tookie Williams’, Foxx goes out and makes STEALTH, MIAMI VICE, THE KINGDOM and who can’t say THE SOLOIST doesn’t look like a huge pile of self-congratulatory crap?

Hillary Swank, 2005’s Best Actress for MILLION DOLLAR BABY, almost escaped unharmed, but THE BLACK DAHLIA should have been a lot better and did anyone actually see P.S. I LOVE YOU?

2004 Sean Penn climbs on my shoulders for an Oscar win MYSTIC RIVER. 2009 he’s playing Larry Fine in THE THREE STOOGES movie. It’s also the year Charlize Theron is honored for looking like the before picture in a ProActive commercial in MONSTER and then pounded out THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PETER SELLERS, HEAD IN THE CLOUDS, AEON FLUX, IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH, BATTLE IN SEATTLE and HANCOCK.

Had the lessons of Adrien Brody and Nicole Kidman been lost on all of them? 2003: Brody wins for THE PIANIST and Kidman wins for THE HOURS. Brody follows up with THE SINGING DETECTIVE, THE VILLAGE, THE JACKET and KING KONG. Not to be out done, Kidman answers with DOGVILLE, COLD MOUNTAIN, THE STEPFORD WIVES, BEWITCHED and AUSTRALIA (there’s more, but I feel sorry for Nicole because her marriage is sham, so I won’t rub them in).

2002: Denzel Washington makes an Oscar with TRAINING DAY. Perhaps they should have had an extra couple hours of training where they taught him how to read a script before say ‘yes‘, then we might have spared JOHN Q, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, INSIDE MAN I & II, DÉJÀ VU and AMERICAN GANGSTER.

It was also the year Halle Berry got the pity Oscar for having to have sex with Billy Bob Thornton in MONSTER’S BALL. What did she follow up with? GOTHIKA and CATWOMAN. Shocking that she didn’t repeat the win.

It goes on and on. Kevin “K-PAX” Spacey, Susan “THE BANGER SISTERS” Sarandon, Helen “PAY IT FORWARD” Hunt, CUBA “EVERYTHING ELSE HE’S EVER MADE” Gooding Jr. (to be fair, Gooding was only a Supporting Actor winner, but he has made so many bad movies since the win I just had to bring him up here).

We are really left with just two possible conclusions: the people who vote on the Academy Awards really have no idea what they are doing, or winning an Oscar makes you stupid. I prefer to think the later. We’ve all got phony baloney jobs to protect after all.

Still More Precitions Come True

Still more of my chillingly accurate predictions for this year have already come true:

I predicted that Michael Phelps would get his nipple caught in the wringer of fame, and look; he gets busted taking bong hits in South Carolina. Now that shouldn’t be a big deal. We’ve got a president that freely admits that he used to do coke back in the day, but Kellogg’s is talking about dropping Phelps as a spokes model, just be cause he smokes a little pot. Kellogg’s!
Stop me if I’m wrong, but 60 to 70% of the cereal in this country is eaten by stoners. Kellogg’s shouldn’t be dumping him. They should move him off the Corn Flakes box and stick him on something good like Coco Crispies.

In fact, it’s high time Kellogg’s got a little edgier with their ads. Stick Phelps in his little fey Speedo with a huge Rastafarian wigs on, sucking off a huge pipe made out of the skull of Amy Winehouse on the front of a box of Apple Jacks.

Aim right for their P1 demographic. How about a nice picture of Robert Downey, Jr., his pants caked in vomit, the phone number of pre-op tranny craved into his arm, mistakenly passed out in the bed of his neighbor’s 10 year-old daughter on the front of box of Mini Wheat’s.

Take that lame ass frog off the front of the Honey Smacks box and throw a shot of Lou Diamond Phillips, hiding in the bushes, waiting to OJ jump his ex-wife and Melisa Etherege as they come out of their Lamaze class… Alright, maybe I’ve gone overboard here, but you get the idea.

Now another one of my predictions was that our esteemed Governor, Duval Patrick, much like the Ground Hog, would stick his furry little head out this February and do something asinine, and look; just the other day Gov. Patrick announces he wants a tax on Candy, Booze and Juice Boxes… Candy, Booze and Juice Boxes? You know, it’s a good thing Michael Jackson doesn’t live in Massachusetts, because he’s already have fanatical problems and if he lived here the price of his typical Saturday afternoons in the park just went through the roof!

Hey, every other gaggle of worthless crap in America has an advocacy group; who’s looking out for the pedophiles?… I mean besides the Pope. You know? When FBI digs up your back yard with earth movers to look for bodies, they don’t put the dirt. You have to do that yourself… I’m told.

Another of my predictions came to fruition this week as well. Last year I predicted that not only would Obama win, but he would lead the charge for the international douch-a-fication of America, and what happens this week? Iran announces that they are sending a weapons satellite into space, so the Obama Administration responds by announcing they are sending the US Badminton Team to Iran. That’s true. The US Badminton Team is going to Iran. That’ll fix their little red wagon.

Actually, I can see what he’s doing here. Rather than take some the macho George Bush approach, and start bomb them back to the Stone Age (not a long trip, I might add), Obama figures if he shows our enemies what a huge bunch of douche bags Americans really are, they’ll figure we’re not worth the bother and just leave us alone.

Iran put in place the technology to rain death down from above and we respond with freshly scrubbed co-eds that serve a mean shuttlecock. And if North Korea wants to jump ugly with us, let’s just unleash our Mathletes on their shores to show them what for.

And I pity poor Iraq. Our troops are going to be withdrawn, but Obama is giving serious consideration to replacing them with a wicked good Dungeons and Dragons squad and if that does prove to the world what a bunch of douche bags we are, he’ll unleash his Ace in the Hole: a legion of self-important, smug face book bloggers with nothing better to do with their time and run their greasy, type 2 diabetes swollen fingers over their keyboards, humping prose no one will bother to read. That’ll show ‘em.

Christian Bale was right, stay the fuck out of my sight line, would ya?

I Dream of Jeannie: THE MOVIE

I DREAM OF JEANNIE ran on TV from 1965 to 1970. That’s 139 episodes of putting up with Larry Hagman’s Prima Donna bullshit and trying to find ways to give us pre-pube fans little tiny peeks at Barbara Eden’s post-pubes.

For what seems like ever since 1970, Sid Ganis and his Out Of The Blue Entertainment company have been trying to get a movie version of JEANNIE made. Ganis is the genius producer behind BIG DADDY, DEUCE BIGALOW: MALE GIGOLO, MR. DEEDS (the remake) and THE MASTER OF DISQUISE, so yes, I DREAM OF JEANNIE will more than likely suck.

Sid is also the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the ass-clowns that give out the Oscars. That should tell you more than enough about that awards show.

Over the years names like Gurinder Chadha (BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM) was going to direct the JEANNIE remake and stars like Jennifer Garner (DUDE, WHERE‘S MY CAR?), Kate Hudson (PARTY OF FIVE) and even Lindsay Lohan (PUNK’D) were kicked around to star as America’s favorite indentured servant.

Keira Knightly (THUNDERPANTS) and a pre- ‘Tony’s Cheating On Me, Where’s the Ben & Jerry’s and My Mom’s Jeans’ Jessica Simpson (THE LOVE GURU) were going to tackle the role too, but it didn’t happen.

Recently Rita Hsiao, a former assistant on THE WONDER YEARS who punched up the scripts for 13 GOING ON 30 and ENCHANTED as well as writing the script for MULAN, was asked to give the JEANNIE script another over-haul. Rita plans to ‘contemporize’ the story. I shutter to think what that even means.

While you can just bet that the producers are hoping to get Will Ferrell (NIGHT AT THE ROXBURY) or Adam Sandler (MIXED NUTS) to take over the Larry Hagman role (because casting one of them is a hell of a lot easier than making a funny movie), if they had any sack at all they would cast a relative unknown as Jeannie.

I say ‘relative unknown’ because I know just who they should get: Sue-Anne Webster.

She is an Australian actress (don’t hold the fact that an Australian actress help goon up the BEWITCHED movie against her) and magician who look more like Barbara Eden than Barbara Eden does these days. Sue-Anne is also the official 'Jeannie' look-alike for http://www.idreamofjeannie.com/.

So, how do you help, because I know you are just chomping at the bit to see justice done in the casting of I DREAM OF JEANNIE? Well, you could go to IMDB and start demanding she be given the role on the discussion boards, and maybe someone reads those, but I prefer a more proactive approach.

Lou D’Esposite is the real money man behind the film. Lou has produced a lot of movies in his day. Most of them crappy movie versions of TV shows like SWAT. Lou was also the 1st AD of the second unit in a little film I was in called GLORY. The only problem is, Lou was also the 2nd AD on a ISTAR, a fact I never let him forget while we were making GLORY, so I don’t think he wants to hear from me again after all these years.

How-some-ever, Lou’s assistant is Rachel Kielborn. Rachel’s email is rachel880@gmail.com. I’ll bet if you were really nice and told Rachel how great Sue-Anne would be in role, she’s pass it on to her boss, because that’s what good assistants who don’t want to go back to bearding for Ty Pennington do.

Once we get this problem licked we can turn our awesome power towards getting Ridley Scott (G.I. JANE) not to mess up THE A-TEAM MOVIE too badly. He’s already signed Joe Carnahan to direct, and while the first 15 minutes of Carnahan’s NARC were great, the rest of the movie was as thin a Jeremy Piven’s (LUCAS) hairline.

One war at a time. One war at a time…

Mutants On Parade

Sometimes they come in a dream. Sometimes a flash of inspiration. At times, after quiet reflection over a cup of coffee:

After early curiosity wains, an emaciated Patrick Swayze will just be a bit too hard for viewers to believe as an action hero and THE BEAST will tank in the ratings. This is especially bad news for TNT as they are rushing to get a second season in the can before he kicks. On the up side, ratings will spike the week he kicks, so they go that going for them.

After years of being out of the top ten, Chlamydia will make a big comeback this year among the American teens.

Human rights advocates will have kittens as soon as we learn in the next month that Ex-Gitmo detainees were implanted with micro chips to track their movements after release. The upside is this catch and release program will lead to the ferreting out of many terror cells.

Bernie Madoff will never spend any real time in prison as he will be killed by the Russian mob before he even gets to trial.

Jon Stewart’s 4 year-old son Nathan will be crushed by the Knick’s Quentin Richardson as the basketball player dives into the courtside seats for a loose ball. The normally agile Richardson will be off his game and a tad despondent over his former ‘Roommate’, Eddie Curry’s, legal troubles and public outing.

Newly married Fergie will start packing on the pounds, a la Delta ‘Airlines’ Burke.

Kate Hudson will make Denise Richards look demure by comparison as she desperately tries to prove very public ally to anyone who will look that she is still sexy. It will get so bad a social service agency will look into removing her son from the home.

One of Jennifer Aninston’s household staff, more than likely her full-time message therapist, will sell a very shocking tell-all story to a tabloid in the next couple of months.

And as the year catches up with her, the world will discover that not only can’t she act, but Scarlett Johansson really isn’t that much to look at either.

Predictions Made On 1/09/09

Much like reading tea leaves, I was reading tea bags this morning (no, a perfectly innocent flat tire did not make necessary a stop at a rest area off Rt. 3, leading to a wacky comedy of errors of Eddie Murphy proportions) and some very alarming new prediction/visions:

Because he didn’t get enough crazy from his time with Madonna, Sean Penn will start dating Lindsey Lohan.

Scott Weiland will OD before summer.

Trendy jackass Jann Wenner will suffer a near fatal accident on the slopes of Sun Valley. One of the many soon to be jobless staffers at Men’s Journal will be to blame.

First and foremost on Obama’s transition team’s plate: delaying the mandatory switch to digital-TV single change because three morons in Crib Death, Iowa still haven’t gotten their Government Coupons to pay for the conversion boxes. I guess they want to start with tackling the big problems first.

If the revival of HAIR makes it to Broadway, it will stink up the joint worst than Criss Angel’s BELIEVE is fouling Vegas.

DOUBT, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD and THE READER, despite massive campaigning by their studios, will all get stiffed by the Oscars, at least for Best Picture and Director Honors.

Brian Westbrook gets hurt and the dog-ass Giants beat the Eagles this weekend.

John Smoltz will spend less time in the Red Sox’s starting rotation than Jeremy Previn did on Broadway.

Convicted felon Tom Finneran will not get a pardon from outgoing President George Bush, mostly because he has former Governor Jane Swift vouching for his integrity, which is kind of like asking Bernie Madoff to watch your change on the bar while you go take a leak.

The Christian Science Monitor will stop printing their little tabloid and go completely on-line within two months to save money. It will be revealed that the hobby paper would have folded last year if it weren’t for all the money they save on health care… See, ‘cause as Christian Scientist they just let their sick and infirmed die rather than take care of them.

A drunken Bob Lobel (redundant, I know) will get fired from his new TV gig on DIRTY WATER TV for repeatedly trying to get his current mistress into the background of their live shots.

Howie Mandel’s HOWIE DO IT Candid Camera rip-off will get busted for using more bogus stooges, plants and actors pretending to be ‘folks on the street’ than a Criss Angel Special.

SHERLOCK HOLMES will be the latest Guy Ritchie-directed flop. The filming of IRON MAN II will be delayed because, depressed over the rudderless HOLMES flick, Robert Downey, Jr. will go on a bender of Robert Mitchum/Robert Shaw proportions.

Ashley Olsen of Mary Kate and Ashley fame will become deathly ill. Not drugs, anorexia or AIDS, like you’d think, but ecoli.

Michael Jordan’s 24th basketball shoe, the $190 Air Jordan 2009, will tank harder than his career as a baseball player or his dad’s luck at the track.

And sadly, capitalism as we know it will cease to exist in less than two weeks!

At least that’s the way I see it.