January 31, 2009
Cult Movies of the Eighties: The Skateboarder (1987)
Bobby Brewster (played by Val Hodges, who would die from a crack overdose in 1989) was just another 24-year-old teenage nerd who loved skateboarding, until a chance encounter with a green, jive-talking Martian (played by Rickie Roy, who would survive a crack overdose in 1990, only to die from an allergic reaction to a bee sting a year later) turned him into…the Skateboarder, a spiky-haired, red-pleather-jacketed hero dedicated to upholding justice while riding his supercharged talking skateboard (voice of Will Drake, chopped up into 475 pieces by an unknown assailant two years later)! See Bobby, in his alter-ego, woo the girl of his dreams, Stacy Andrews (played by single-named pop star Ashley, who will die after getting run over by a drunk driver in 1991)! See Bobby have a skateboarding fight with his arch-enemy, the Horrid Hippie (played by George Fasslebeck, who would die from a massive heart attack a month after filming his role)! The Skateboarder was the only movie directed by music-video director Steve Yance (who, after the critical and financial failure of this movie, would abandon directing for the financial field, eventually landing a prestigious accounts supervisor job at ProfitPoint Ltd. on the one-hundred-and-tenth floor of the World Trade Center’s South Tower and–you can see where this is going, mainly through an open window, a hundred-and-ten stories down on September 11, 1998).
February 2, 2009
Lane and Shawn, Two 18-Year-Olds, Watching the Dirtiest Download of All Time in Shawn’s Bedroom
Title card on Shawn’s computer screen: Thai Hot Lesbian Night.
Opening shot: an Asian city skyline. Dissolve to exterior of what looks like an apartment building. Dissolve to exterior of apartment door. Door slowly opens and…
“Never gonna give you up…” Rick Astley sings in the video for his 1980s hit song “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
Lane: “Oh, fuck! We’ve been Rickrolled!”
Shawn: “No shit!”
After a minute of the video, the download ends.
Lane: “I paid thirty-nine ninety-five for this shit!”
Shawn: “Sucker.”
Lane: “You owe me that money. You said we should see this.”
Shawn: “Don’t blame it on me, dumb-ass. You picked the wrong download.”
Lane: “Fuck you. I want that fucking money.”
Shawn: “Suck my dick, dickhead.”
Lane and Shawn get into a fistfight on the floor.
Shawn: “Cut it out, you fucker!”
Lane: “Fuck you! Fuck you! Shit!”
Six months later, Lane is an Army private serving in Afghanistan, and Shawn is taking information technology courses on-line from learnit-university.edu. Should I have our heroes fail spectacularly and kill them off at young ages, or should I have our heroes lead long and successful lives? Or need I even ask, considering how the smart set loves sarcasm and irony?
February 10, 2009
“Electric Boogaloo” Makes Everything Funny
- Macbeth 2: Electric Boogaloo
- The Zapruder Film 2: Electric Boogaloo
- The Shawshank Redemption 2: Electric Boogaloo
- Any Saturday Night Live sketch...well, maybe not
- “I’m sorry, Mr. Rowlandson, but you have terminal electric boogaloo. You have only a few boogaloos left. I would suggest electric boogaloo and boogalooing the boogs and loos. Oh, and I almost forgot: boogaloo.”
February 12, 2009 (revised May 13, 2016)
Upcoming Movies: DFW
19-year-old pop idol Jonah Ezra, from the hit TV series 4Star, will make his big-screen debut this fall as the late author David Foster Wallace, in the ProfitPoint Studios biopic DFW, which has just finished principal photography in Toronto. Ezra was happy to play the somewhat daunting role of Wallace, a literary heavyweight who had used a lot of footnotes in his writing. “I hadn’t even heard of him before getting this part,” Ezra says. “But once I read his Wikipedia entry, I knew David Foster Wallace was someone who made a difference in the lives of so many people.”
Ezra says he’s proud the film “pretty much sticks to the facts” of Wallace’s life. “We had to make a few changes for narrative purposes, of course, but otherwise you get the whole story.” Including the lifelong struggle with depression that caused Wallace to hang himself at age 46 in 2008? “Yeah, including that. You won’t believe how, like, emotional that stuff is. I almost cried like a baby when I saw the footage, and that was before they put in the CGI.”
“Jonah’s an amazing actor,” says the film’s director, Ferris Westfield (Zombie High 2). “The second he put on that bandanna and that long wig, I was like, damn!”
“That’s right,” agrees 18-year-old supermodel Maia Hendrickson. “I heard this Wallace guy was real smart, but Jonah captures his beautiful mind real well.”
In the film, she plays Wallace’s love interest, a fictional character named Carli Blue. “She’s an exotic dancer who fights bad guys and kicks a lot of butt,” Hendrickson says. “She’s real strong and independent, a great role model for girls everywhere.”
“She’s the type of girl David Foster Wallace might have known in real life, ’cause he was so awesome,” Ezra adds.
In addition to acting in the film, Ezra has recorded several new songs for the soundtrack. “Bring da Bling (Theme from the ProfitPoint Studios Motion Picture DFW)” has already reached number one on the eFresh/Xtreem Cola Top 30 Ringtones chart. “I love music,” Ezra says, “but I want to branch out into acting. Playing David Foster Wallace will help me spread the Jonah Ezra brand worldwide and, just as important, hopefully educate people about someone who was very special.”
DAVID V. MATTHEWS 