In Variety's "International Film Finance Forum 2012" issue, I talk to producers looking for new ways to bankroll their films and explore  how pirates are wreaking havoc on film finance with Ted Shapiro, deputy managing director, veep and general counsel for the Motion Picture Assn. (MPA), the international arm of the MPAA.

(As always, if you aren't a Variety subscriber, hold down the ESC key immediately after the page loads.)

Check out my (brief) interview in Variety with Mitch Singer, chief digital strategy officer of Sony Pictures and president of Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), the consortium behind UltraViolet, a cloud-based, buy-once-and-play-anywhere plan that enables consumers to stream video content to any multiple platforms. Shortly after it was published, it was announced that UltraViolet is partnering with Wal-Mart in a plan that will enable people convert their DVD collections into digital copies.

In the same issue (Film Finance Forum West 2012), I also speak with a collection of experts on the current state of the film & TV production incentive race.

Jennifer Aniston has done a lot since "Friends," but for some reason I had a weird '90s flashback when I talked to her for this article in Variety in which she and various collaborators (including "Wanderlust" c0-star Paul Rudd) discuss her affinity for ensemble work.

_Production designer Jeannine Oppewall remembers the trouble her elderly aunt had understanding what in the world she did on the film "Tender Mercies" (1983)."She thought all you did was find the place and put the actors and the camera into it," laughs Oppewall, whose credits include "L.A. Confidential" and "Seabiscuit."

Nearly three decades later...  the public's understanding of [the craft of art direction] is still on par with Oppewall's aunt.

Click here to read the full story from Variety and find out what this has to do with "Gone With the Wind."

As part of its Sundance coverage, Filmmaker Magazine is running my Q&A with French Canadian writer/director Philippe Falardeau in which he talks about his Oscar-nominated film "Monsieur Lazhar" and explains how a stint as a contestant on a Canuck reality show turned him into a filmmaker.

Always wanted to see a film about an emasculated Limburg cattle farmer mixed up with with West Flemish beef traders in the Belgian growth hormone underground? Then you'll be eager to read my profile of Michael R. Roskam, writer/director of the Oscar-nominated film "Bullhead," in Variety's "10 Directors to Watch" issue.

(As always, if you aren't a subscriber, hold down the ESC key immediately after the page loads.) 

In Variety's
Eye on the Oscars: Art Direction, Costumes & Makeup special issue, I take a look at how hair, makeup and costume work together to depict a forced gender transition in writer/director Pedro Almodovar's "The Skin I Live In"

What happens when foreign language filmmakers try to go Hollywood? Find out in my article for Variety.

I close out 2011 with a short screenwriter profile for Variety.

When the studio asked Jason Keller to sign up for kidnapping and dismemberment insurance before traveling to Sudan to research his script for "Machine Gun Preacher," they weren't kidding around.

"You couldn't go anywhere without seeing whole villages that had been razed to the ground and the burned out hulks of tanks and trucks on the side of the road, the remnants of an ambush," says Keller, who went there to get a firsthand look at the Children's Village orphanage run by biker-turned-minister Sam Childers (played by Gerard Butler in the film).

Click here to read the entire article.

When Oliver Stone made "The Doors" (1990), he painstakingly restored large portions of the Sunset Strip between Larrabee St. and Hilldale Ave. to their mid '60s glory. I know because I was able to observe it from my office overlooking what is now the Viper Room.

I'm embarrassed to say that I was also around for hair metal's heyday in the late '80s, when on Saturday nights the Strip was so crowded with wannabe rock gods and Spandex-ed vixens it looked like someone had turned the Midwest upside down and shook loose every Aqua Netted idiot  on to the streets of West Hollywood. So maybe I should be relieved that director Adam Shankman has gone to the other end of the country to Miami, Florida, recreate that milieu for his Warner Bros. big screen adaptation of the musical "Rock of Ages," starring Tom Cruise.

If you want to know why "Rock of Ages" and so many other productions are now choosing to shoot in the Sunshine State, read my article in Variety.

Here are some photos of the "Rock of Ages" set in Miami, along with a few covert video tours (below).

After viewing the trailer (below), it's safe to say they weren't able to cut a deal to use the name of the Whisky Au Go Go. Its onscreen fascimile is called the Bourbon Room.

"This place is about to become a sea of sex, ear-shattering music and puke," Dennis Dupree (Alex Baldwin).

With just 12 weeks to go before Paramount's "Hugo" was scheduled to lock picture on Nov. 7, vfx supervisor Rob Legato went to director Martin Scorsese and told him the film's elaborate opening sequence wasn't working. The 3D images of commuters moving mechanically through Paris' Montparnasse train station circa 1931, like interlocked gears in a giant machine, were "like a meal that's too rich," Legato says.

Click here to read my entire article from Variety's Eye on the Oscars: Art Direction, Costume Design & Makeup special issue.

Critics and auds alike have seen it time and time again: achingly serious foreign-language film Oscar submissions that seem to have been chosen for the nobility of their intentions rather than their entertainment value.

"Anything that tugs at the heartstrings and sets it against a grand historical backdrop tends to have an advantage, whether or not it's actually good," says Box Office Magazine and KPCC "FilmWeek" film critic Wade Major. "If you talk to people on the foreign-language selection committee, some of the younger members, they're very often fatigued by all the well-meaning, earnest movies about World War II, the Holocaust and oppression in foreign lands -- whether it's China or Iran -- or families losing farms."

But 2011 has brought a crop of foreign-language films in which po-faced pedantry has taken a back seat to dynamic storytelling.

Click here to read my entire article from Variety's Eye on the Oscars: Foreign Language special issue.

I corralled Owen Wilson (aka "The Butterscotch Stallion") for Variety's International Star of the Year profile. (If you aren't a subscriber, hold down the ESC key immediately after the page loads.) No, I didn't address him by his equine sobriquet or ask about his brush with death four years back, 'cause I want to keep working in this town. But I did get him to talk about childhood encounters with photographer Richard Avedon, working with Woody Allen on "Midnight in Paris" and whether he'll ever pen a follow-up to his Oscar-nominated script for 2001's "The Royal Tenenbaums."

I contributed six of the profiles (Josh Appelbaum & André Nemec , Jay Baruchel & Jesse Chabot, Justin Britt-Gibson, Kurt Johnstad, Paula Pell and Jon Spaihts) to Variety's "10 Screenwriters to Watch." Unfortunately, two of them (Britt-Gibson and Spaits) are erroneously credited to another writer.

I couldn't include my favorite part: When Britt-Gibson told me of his love for Lee Marvin's work, I remarked that the actor was staring at me from the poster of "Point Blank" on my office wall. It turned out that the 1967 film was the primary inspiration for his (yet-to-be-produced) script "Grown Man Problem," which made the Black List  in 2007.

"This is going to sound crazy, he said, "but I wanted to write a movie about a tough guy walking down hallways."

"Dude!" I yelled, abandoning my professional reserve. "What is it about that shot?! I go on about it to my wife, and she looks at me like I'm crazy."

"I think revenge movies are therapeutic for people because you've decide to take a matter into your own hands," he replied. "I think when you see a guy like that who has been wronged like Walker, you see that character walking down the halls and he's so determined. Look into his eyes. He knows exactly what he's going to do. In that hallway, he knows he's going to bust down his ex-lover's door and figure out what the fuck is going on, and I think that's we love about the scene, especially as men."

To mark the DVD/blu-ray release of writer/director J.J. Abrams' "Super 8," I did a new Q&A for Filmmaker Magazine with Gerard Ravel, the man behind the Super 8 film festival that first brought Abrams to the attention of Steven Spielberg back in 1982.

For a more in-depth look at the fest, which also launched the careers of writer/director Matt Reeves ("Felicity," "Cloverfield") and cinematographer Larry Fong ("300," "Super 8"), check out my blog post "The Real Kids of 'Super 8.'"

I just uncovered this profile I did of MGA Entertainment founder and CEO Isaac Larian to mark the 10th anniversary of the Bratz dolls in 2010. Much of the story deals with his battle with toy giant Mattel (makers of Barbie), which he felt was bent on destroying him.

Larian was vindicated in August 2011 when a judge ordered Mattel to pay MGA $310 million in damages, legal fees, etc. He's a fascinating immigrant success story and seemingly much more honest and open than virtually any Hollywood heavyweight I've interviewed.

In honor of Black History Month (February), I've reposted an article I wrote for the Los Angeles Times about the Black Stuntman's Assn. back in 2002:

Pasted in a corner of Eddie Smith's scrapbook is a small, yellowed newspaper clipping from 1969 telling of a helicopter crash on the set of a war movie in which a pilot and two stuntmen "escaped injury." The movie was "MASH"; Smith was one of the stuntmen; and as he walks across the den of his Culver City home on this spring day more than 30 years later, he still has a limp from that accident. Although he's free to grouse about the pain now, back then he held his tongue.

"I couldn't mess it up for the rest of the group, man," says Smith, 78. "We fought too hard. We had to show ourselves."

Click here to read the entire article.

What better way to ring in the holidays than with a look back at Bob Hope's annual Christmas shows for our troops overseas?

A five-figure bonus check, you say? Downing a bowl of hundred-proof egg nog so large you hallucinate that a young Connie Stevens is wriggling on your lap, dressed in a Santa suit?

Well, all I have is this article I wrote about Old Ski Nose for The Hollywood Reporter back in 2001.

On the plus side, it does feature an anecdote from Connie Stevens. She's still wriggling away at the age of 73, but most of the other people I talked to for the article have since passed away. Hope died in July 2003, fifty-nine days after his 100th birthday. His son Tony Hope died less than a year later at the age of 63. His former head writer Mort Lachman and honorary Hollywood mayor Johnny Grant are gone now, too.

Of course, I didn't actually talk to Hope. He had stopped giving interviews by this point. (Lachman told me Hope's vital signs were good. If one's health is being discussed in terms of vital signs, it's generally time to start planning the funeral.)  I was given a canned quote undoubtedly manufactured by his longtime publicist, the reedy-voiced Ward Grant, who died in 2007 at the age of 75.

At this point, I'm supposed to write something like, "Thanks for the memories, Bob!" But that would be beyond cheesy, wouldn't it? So I'll just wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

I woke up in the middle of the night and put on a DVD of Joe Frazier's fights with Muhammad Ali that I bought ten years ago when I was writing a 60th birthday tribute to Ali for The Hollywood Reporter. Watching, I remembered how my editors cut the portion about his incessant racist taunting of Frazier because, well, it's not nice to say bad things about someone on their birthday.   The result:  Ali's saintly legend was further burnished, while Frazier's greatness was once again obscured by its growing shadow. So I decided to dig out the deleted paragraphs and post them here.

Ali’s behavior could not always be characterized as noble. There were private infidelities made embarrassingly public (such as when he introduced future third wife Veronica Porsche as his wife to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos on international TV while then-current wife Belinda watched at home in Chicago) and public statements that were racist or sexist. The most debated of the latter were his repeated verbal attacks on Frazier, whom he alternately mocked as the white man’s champion and a big, ugly gorilla. At one point, at a press conference leading up to their 1975 “Thrilla in Manila,” Ali pulled out a rubber gorilla doll (which he referred to as Frazier’s “conscience”) and pummeled it with his fist.

“I think it was playful,” says Plimpton. “There are many ways you can call somebody a son of a bitch. You can be tough and say it hard or you can be lighthearted and make them laugh.”

["Ali" screenwriter Gregory Allen] Howard is not so sure: “If a white man had done that, he’d have been excoriated. All Ali will say about it is, ‘Just selling tickets.’ I’ve asked everyone in the inner circle, and no one can explain to me what was his almost racist obsession with Joe. You know, Joe’s kids used to come from school crying and say, ‘Daddy, kids say you’re a gorilla.’ It was horrible.”

Plimpton feels that Ali’s psych-out tactics ended up backfiring with Frazier.

“I think the reason he had so much trouble with Frazier, was that Frazier fought out of this terrible rage at what he’d been called," he says. "It made Frazier twice the fighter that he was.”

Click here to read the published version of the article, featuring observations from a wide variety of notables, including Gay Talese, Bryant Gumbel, Ed Bradley, Michael J. Fox, Kris Kristofferson, Gregory Hines, Rod Steiger, Budd Schulberg and rapper Chuck D,

When I interviewed T-Bone Burnett in 2002, he was riding high as the producer of the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers film "O Brother, Where Art Thou," which sold 5.9 million copies in the United States, hit the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 album chart and won five Grammys, including 2002 album of the year, beating out U2 and his friend and onetime boss Bob Dylan. Still, The Hollywood Reporter only gave me enough space for two or three quotes in my profile of him. So here, for the first time, I'm posting our our conversation in in its entirety.

Also check out newly posted interviews with Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman, actor Michael York and writer/director James L. Brooks.

Director Sam Peckinpah ("The Wild Bunch," etc.) was obsessed with what he called "the third man through the door" -- the character in the movie who covers the entranceway as the star and the second lead rush past to glory, often taking a bullet for the heroes. His face is frequently blurry in publicity photos, his back story usually left unexplored. But, according to Peckinpah, his wasn't simply a neglected tale that deserved to be told at least once, it was the only Hollywood story worth telling.

The concept came to mind when, studying a photo from Hal Roach's 100th birthday party, I became fixated on Laurel & Hardy imitators lurking in the background, partially obscured by Cesar Romero.

Click here to read the entire blog post.

My sister-in-law couldn't believe Lt. Charles "Chick" Hennesey was screaming in her face -- or, more accurately, Jackie Cooper, the man who played the character on "Hennesey" (1959-62)...

It was sometime in the mid '70s. She had been walking across the USC campus on her way to class when she inadvertently walked into a scene Cooper was directing for a TV series...

Click here to read the entire blog post.

Kirk Douglas was not at all amused.

For the second time, the 91-year-old screen legend had told me he was planning to return to the stage in a one-man show, and for the second time, I told him he should revisit his role as Randle P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (which he had played on Broadway back in 1964) -- this time with an all over-80 cast.

It was the fall of 2008, and I had come to Douglas' Beverly Hills home to interview him for an article I was writing for The Hollywood Reporter about the beginnings of runaway production in the 1950s. I had been there a half hour. I had the quotes I needed. Yet there I sat, repeating the same joke.

Click here to read my entire blog post on the subject.

   

The video for the new Van Halen single "Tattoo" from their upcoming album "A Different Kind of Truth" (due Feb. 7th)?  Why not?

Folks on the net are saying the riff was lifted from "Down in Flames," an unreleased Van Halen song that was slated to be on their second album.

Another track from album, "She's the Woman," is a straight-up rerecording of a tune that appeared on their 1976 demo produced by KISS' Gene Simmons. (Well, the verses were rewritten.)