Los Angeles Times crime reporter Andrew Blankstein has a distressing report about a hero allegedly gone bad in Hollywood, and photographer Mel Melcon has some accompanying photos that he could sell to the Daily Bugle for a pretty penny. Here's an excerpt with links added by me (as well as a vintage Spidey cover by Frank Miller)... -- Geoff Boucher
A man portraying Spider-Man was arrested on outstanding criminal warrants Wednesday after an incident in which he allegedly slugged a man near the Hollywood & Highland complex, police said.
It was not immediately clear what led to the altercation, which was reported about 12:30 p.m. in the 6800 block of Hollywood Boulevard. But it's the latest in a string of incidents involving movie characters and celebrity look-alikes who vie for space -- and attention -- along the tourist-filled corridor that includes Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
Christopher Loomis, 39, was being held on outstanding misdemeanor warrants in lieu of $5,500 bail, police said.
The incident began when Los Angeles Police Department patrol officers received a radio call reporting battery by a man in a Spider-Man costume. When they arrived, they encountered four people dressed as the web-slinging crusader.
"They stopped one, it wasn't him," said LAPD Lt. Beverly Lewis. "They stopped the second, and it was the suspect."
The victim, who said he had been hit on the face and arms, refused to press charges against the costumed performer. But Lewis said that when they discovered the warrants, Loomis was booked. She said it appeared that the suspect and victim knew each other.
Costumed performers portraying the likes of Elvis, Superman, SpongeBob SquarePants and others have worked on Hollywood Boulevard for years. They collect tips from tourists by posing for pictures or performing in front of the theater. But sometimes the fun has turned violent ...
Linda Whitmore is our specialist here at Hero Complex when it comes to classic “Star Trek,” and today she checks in with a report about “Star Wreck,” a parody that required her to boldly seek out life forms in a Nordic sector of the universe. -- Geoff Boucher
What would happen if the Starship Enterprise and "Airplane" crashed into the Babylon 5 space station somewhere in the skies above Finland?
The loopy result would be “Star Wreck (The Imperial Edition),” the Starfleet parody from a Finnish writer-actor-producer named Samuli Torssonen and his crew of amateur moviemakers. Seven years in the making, the farce opens on the bridge of the USS Kickstart with the not-so-cosmic sound of a toilet flushing – the men’s room, it seems, is conveniently located right next to the vessel’s command center.
The film introduces us to the intrepid Capt. James B. Pirk (Torssonen), his android science officer Mr. Info (a silver-faced Antti Satama) and a Klingon-like tactical officer named Dwarf (Timo Vuorensola, who also directed). There are gags about Federation jargon (“amigo-class” starships), cosmology (it’s “maggot holes” instead of “wormholes”) and the old familiar “Trek” aliens (the Vulgars, the Korg). What do the bumbling heroes find after flying through that maggot hole? The space station Babylon 13. Yes, “Wreck” is a concept cage match between Gene Roddenberry and J. Michael Straczynski. It doesn’t matter who wins; by the time one character screams, “Zucker, you shall be avenged!” you’re either on board or long gone at warp speed.
The film is being released on DVD in the U.S. on Tuesday. "Star Wreck" is also available on the Internet. Here’s my Q&A with Torssonen, the scrappy, warp-driving force behind “Wreck." The 31-year-old native of Tampere, Finland, is fluent in English, and good thing because when it comes to Finnish I never got started.
LW: So is it right that this “Star Wreck” is just the latest in a series of "Trek" spoofs you’ve worked on?
ST: Yes, it was actually called “Star Wreck VI: In the Pirkinning” in the beginning because there were five "Star Wreck" animated shorts or short films produced between 1992 and 1997. They are all available on our YouTube channel. ... It all began in 1992, when I did the first "Star Wreck" film. It was a very crude, two-dimensional animation. The series progressed quickly to a live-action fan film called "Star Wreck V: Lost Contact," which was a parody of “Star Trek: First Contact." My mother helped in sewing the costumes and loaned the camcorder from my father. It was finished in 1997, took about one year to complete.
LW: Why “Star Trek”? Were you a fan while growing up?
ST: I was a huge “Star Trek” fan, so I guess “Star Wreck” was my way of expressing my fandom -- to do my version of “Star Trek” with my own voice in Finnish. I had every episode on VHS tape and I mean every. I wasn't interested in the other ways of expressing the fandom -- costumes, toys, collecting cards etc.
LW: I watched the new DVD and I thought it was inspired. The men's room off the bridge, the “X-Files” coffee mug -- how long did it take you to write? Was it a collaborative effort?
ST: You could say that the script was never finished. We began to shoot a 20-minute space battle action film and kept adding new scenes that actually tried to explain why all the fighting was happening! So, the script was constantly evolving. We shot some pickups until the last moment in 2005. We had seven years to tweak the script and could see some of the problems later on and were able to correct those. The previous “Star Wreck” films were written by Rudi Airisto and me. We quickly understood that we needed help in writing this two-hour script. We had already formed a small fan base in 1998 because of the earlier “Star Wreck” shorts. “Star Wreck 5” was ahead of its time -- it was one of the very first fan films on the Internet in 1998. It was way before YouTube and the “Star Wars” fan films.
We posted a message stating that we need help with the script on Usenet, a kind of discussion board of its time, and received lots of feedback and ideas to the story. One of the guys, Jarmo Puskala, was really keen so he became a member of the actual screenwriting team and, later on, part of our production company. He also gave the idea about the moon Nazis [for "Iron Sky"]. During the production, we set up our own “Star Wreck” message board and used that for communicating with our fans. They helped us in many ways, giving great ideas to the story, did some 3-D modeling and, of course, spread the word.
LW: When did "Bablyon 5" air in Finland? What led you to introduce the "Babylon 5" angle? I’m a "B5" freak also -- so I got all the “in jokes.”
ST: “Babylon 5” aired in 1998 when we began to write the story. There was a huge battle between the fans of “Star Trek” and “Babylon 5” on the Internet, and we considered that pretty funny -- it was only TV series! So we came up with this idea, what if you actually put the two shows in a deadly space combat. Who will win? Of course, when “Star Wreck” was finally ready, nobody remembered “Babylon 5” anymore.
LW: Talk a little bit about filming “Star Wreck.”
ST: We began to shoot “Star Wreck” as a casual fan film with no money and no ambition at all. So we of course used actors who were committed to the project and didn't cost anything. …We knew very little about filmmaking. None of our team went to any film schools. I knew something about blue-screen technique after “Star Wreck 5.” The team of five people formed by accident. The director, Timo Vuorensola, was not a “Star Trek” fan at all -- which ultimately was a very good thing. Usually, fan-film directors know too much about the subject, and the film doesn't make any sense to non-fans.
We learned everything by doing mistakes. There were a couple of scenes that were shot three times -- at first we overexposed the material -- the second time we didn't have a decent microphone. We of course watched quite a lot of reference films and broke down the interesting scenes shot by shot. So, we were banging our heads on the wall until the very end. The shooting lasted seven years, so it became part of our lives to meet on Saturdays and Sundays at my mother's house where the blue screen was located. My mother or my grandmother cooked usually [for] the whole team.
LW: Have you gotten any feedback from anyone in the real "Star Trek" camp?
ST: No, but J. Michael Straczynski e-mailed me and asked for a couple of copies of the film on DVD.
LW: I was impressed by the production values -- especially the special effects. How did you produce those on a budget?
ST: We didn't have a budget! You can compensate money with time. I had been learning 3-D animation since I was 14. So I did 99% of the special-effects work by myself during the seven years. I had about five computers in my render farm in my kitchen. Everything was self-learned. It's a good thing that Finland has a good social support. Officially, I was either a student or a unemployed for the seven years, and “Star Wreck” was a full-time job for me without any salary.
LW: I think a lot of Trekkies would like to own the DVD or see a screening at a convention -- it has “cult following” written all over it. Why hasn't it been available wider?
ST: Well, of course the free Internet version was downloaded all around the world, but for a DVD distributor, it is very hard to convince that a Finnish “Star Trek” parody is worth their time and effort. I guess if “Star Wreck” had been in English language, it would have helped quite a lot. “Star Wreck” was never distributed in theaters. You could say that Internet was its “theatrical release.”
LW: Why encourage the free download on the Internet?
ST: To put it simply: I, as a filmmaker, want my film to be seen by as many people as possible. For a Finnish “Star Trek” parody, the traditional distribution routes would have been quite impossible. We needed to pique the attention by some other way. So, the free Internet distribution worked as a free PR campaign for us and got the attention of the traditional industry as well, and now we are launching the film in the U.S. as well. The world has really changed! The free distribution didn't exclude the traditional DVD markets -- not everybody is able to find and download the film from the Internet.
LW: Are you coming to the U.S. to promote the DVD?
ST: Most certainly, if somebody would pay for the tickets!
LW: What's in your future? I visited your website, Iron Sky. Doesn't look very funny....
ST: We put about $15,000 into “Wreck.” “Iron Sky” has a budget of $8 million. It is on its way to becoming the largest film production here in Finland. The humor in “Iron Sky” is less slapstick and somewhat darker than in “Star Wreck,” but that teaser for “Iron Sky” is only meant to show the feeling of the film. It really doesn't show any of the comedic aspects of the film. You have to wait for the final trailer with actors in it! If you liked “Star Wreck,” you will most certainly enjoy “Iron Sky” -- I can promise that. And we also have a new “Star Wreck” being written. This time it will be in English.
I celebrated my 16th wedding anniversary this month and it was such a treat for Tracy and me to reflect back on that autumn afternoon in Florida in 1993. The guest list was amazing -- Millie the Model was there, so was Tony Stark and Captain America -- but it was a pretty bumpy day, too; Doctor Doom used some gizmo to send an attacking army of super-villains with Kang, Electro, the Super Skrull, even some guy called the Melter. Oh wait, that's not right. That wasn't my weddingday, that was the nuptials for Reed Richards and Sue Storm in Fantastic Four annual No. 3 from 1965. Sometimes I get ... confused. But the new pills are helping. The Onion would understand. Here's an excerpt from one of their news stories ... -- Geoff Boucher
LA CROSSE, WI—Returning to his hometown to attend a cousin's wedding Saturday, Josh Sundling, 29, reportedly demonstrated on numerous occasions a vast, far more intricate understanding of the fictional Marvel Comics Universe than of his own family's genealogy.
Sundling, who cannot identify his ancestral homeland or the meaning of his surname, possesses extensive knowledge of the creation of superhero teams, the history of imaginary alien races, and the special powers of countless characters.
"We're from Sweden or Norway or somewhere around there," said Sundling, who when prompted can accurately detail the origins of each cartoon member of the X-Men, the Avengers, the Defenders, and the Squadron Supreme. "I don't know for sure. I never really asked about it."
Though Sundling reportedly reread several issues of Moon Knight recently and found himself enjoying the subplot of the hero's romantic involvement with Tigra, it is believed he did not realize his cousin was dating anyone until he received an invitation to the wedding ...
Playboy has had brunets, blonds and redheads grace the cover of its monthly magazine. Now it's going blue. For the first time, Playboy is using a cartoon character, Springfield's own Marge Simpson, as its cover girl. The November issue will hit the newsstands next Friday, said Jimmy Jellinek, Playboy's editorial director. "It’s a very, very racy pictorial, with implied nudity at the very least," Jellinek said. "Whether or not you see more ... well, you’ll have to hit the stands to find out...."
Check out this story from the U.K.'s The Guardian (with links added by yours truly). What's next, you won't be able to bring battle-axes to the theater to see "The Hobbit"? I'm hoping this guy gets a fancy attorney, you know, one who speaks Klingon and carries eight-sided dice in his briefcase... -- Geoff Boucher
Tesco has been accused of religious discrimination after the company ordered the founder of a Jedi religion to remove his hood or leave a branch of the supermarket in north Wales.
Daniel Jones, founder of the religion inspired by the "Star Wars" films, says he was humiliated and victimised for his beliefs following the incident at a Tesco store in Bangor.
The 23-year-old, who founded the International Church of Jediism, which has 500,000 followers worldwide, was told the hood flouted store rules.
But the grocery empire struck back, claiming that the three best known Jedi Knights in the "Star Wars" movies – Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker – all appeared in public without their hoods. Jones, from Holyhead, who is known by the Jedi name Morda Hehol, said his religion dictated that he should wear the hood in public places and is considering legal action against the chain.
"It states in our Jedi doctrination that I can wear headwear. It just covers the back of my head," he said. "You have a choice of wearing headwear in your home or at work but you have to wear a cover for your head when you are in public..."
President Barack Obama, light sabre in hand, hosted an event on the South Lawn of the White House on Wednesday with the White House Office on Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport, Chicago 2016 and United States Olympic Committee (USOC) to promote Chicago's bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. (Michael Tercha/Chicago Tribune) You can read the related story here.
In Quentin Tarantino's freewheeling World War II action-drama "Inglourious Basterds," which hits theaters today, Eli Roth gets his biggest film role to date. He portrays a rage-fueled Jewish-American covert operative out to destabilize Nazis in German-occupied France through terrorism. While other "basterds" collect Nazi scalps, Roth's character Donnie Donowitz -- who's dubbed "the Bear Jew" by fear-stricken Nazi troops in the movie -- prefers to bash their brains out with a baseball bat. (There's more about his crucial part in "Basterds" in this story about Roth that ran in The Times last Sunday.)
If you know anything about Roth, though, you are well aware that acting is just a sideline. He's the writer-director-producer of controversial "torture porn" movies "Hostel" and "Hostel Part II." The polarizing horror auteur, who is both loved and loathed by film fans, burst on the scene in 2002 with his debut feature "Cabin Fever," a canny, low-budget horror flick that made a bundle for Lionsgate and put Roth squarely on the Hollywood map.
What you may not know about Roth, however, is that before upsetting horror purists with such cinematic gems as a woman getting her eyeball blow-torched and a cheerleader doing a splits onto a giant hunting knife, he was seriously considering a movie adaptation of "Baywatch."
He told me all about that brush with potential greatness earlier this month while sitting on a synthetic rock outside Hollywood's ArcLight Cinemas.
"After 'Cabin Fever,' I had this meeting at CAA with my agents," Roth said. "They said, 'There's this project and this project, but what do you think about directing "Baywatch"?' And I was like, 'I want to do it! I'll cash in all my credibility!'"
He continued: "They said, 'There's no writer.' So I called up my friend Richard Kelly, the man who did a movie called 'Donnie Darko.' I was like, 'Rich, I have a great idea. It'll be ridiculous. We'll make it like a "Simpsons" episode, totally absurd.' And so we went and met with the producers who owned the rights. We said, 'You can say, "From the creators of 'Cabin Fever' and 'Donnie Darko' -- 'Baywatch 3-Double-D'!"'"
Roth and Kelly enthusiastically pursued the project, envisioning the blow back from their core constituencies.
"The fanboys will riot!" Roth said. "The Internet nerds will go crazy, saying, 'Those dorks just wanted to meet girls in bikinis and they couldn't do it any other way! We supported your weirdo movies and now you sold us out to hang out with a bunch of bimbos!'"
Then, of course, a cold blast of Hollywood reality intervened.
"We went on a bunch of pitch meetings and the next thing that happened was DreamWorks wanted it, but they wanted it to be an action movie. They wanted to hire their own writer and director. So all those jokes went out the window. Then I went off to direct 'Hostel.'"
Like a jilted lover, Roth still pines for the one that got away and, worse, is now seeing other guys. "The producers have got one of the writers of 'The Hangover' to write it now," he said. "Which is exactly what I thought it should be."
CREDITS: Eli Roth portrait by Kirk McKoy/Los Angeles Times. "Baywatch," GTG Entertainment, photo from the Los Angeles Times archives. Roth in "Basterds," Weinstein Co. Tarantino portrait by Spencer Weiner/Los Angeles Times.
The highlight of the MTV Movie Awards this summer (in my opinion) was this great mini-movie with Andy Samberg. It wasn't on You Tube right away and now that it is, I'm posting it today as a theme song for this summer of hero films.
I get a lot of interesting mail, like the "Sleestak in a Santa Claus hat" statue now perched next to my desk or the "Transformers" cupcakes that were delivered last week (and left a far better taste in my mouth than the movie itself). A few days ago, I got a parcel with a CD from a "Star Trek" spoof band called Warp 11; I decided to re-route it to the newsroom desk of Linda Whitmore, a copy editor with an intense passion for Starfleet and all of its ongoing missions. Here's her report. -- Geoff Boucher
Resistance is futile: Go ahead, try not to laugh. If you’re a fan of “Star Trek,” sex, booze and bawdy humor (and who isn’t?), you need to spool up “I Don’t Want to Go to Heaven as Long as They Have Vulcans in Hell,” the fifth studio album from rock band Warp 11. If you’re unfamiliar with the act, think of a Spinal Tap spirit and the best Starfleet music moments since the oh-so-groovy space hippies jammed in “The Way to Eden” episode of the original series.
On their new album, the highly anticipated follow-up to “It’s Dead Jim,” Warp 11 continues to mine the rich vein that is the “Star Trek” canon, with such tunes as “I Make It So” (the latest of a recurring theme; the band already had “Make It So” on their album “Suck My Spock Some More” and the equitable “She Make It So,” the opening track off the delicately titled “Boldly Go Down on Me”).
If Gene Roddenberry ever doubted that fans were listening, dissecting and memorizing dialogue, the man they called the Great Bird of the Galaxy would be thrilled (or aghast?) to hear Warp 11's Capt. Karl Miller (lead vocals, guitar), take Federation techno-babble and turn it into sheer, um, poetry. Turn your tricoder on these lyrics:
This is some deep-space stuff. As a true fan, I have to say my Saurian brandy almost squirted out of my nose when Capt. Miller promises, “A thousand quatloos says I can make you scream.” (OK, for those of you “not of the body,” a quatloo is the monetary unit of Triskelion, where Kirk, Uhura and Chekov were pitted against … oh, never mind. As they say in comedy, if I have to explain it, it ain’t funny.
Literary “Trek” fans will experience true Ferengioo-mox when they hear the song about sex with the empathic Betazoid. The title is unprintable here but here are some lyrics:
“What can I say? I can’t protest
I’m always thinking about her chest
And then I dropped a mental bomb
Because I thought about sex with her mom”
Warp 11 has performed at conventions and radio stations (primarily in California), and their music has been played by VH1, novelty maestro Dr. Demento and more than 65 radio stations. The band is comprised of Miller, Brian Moore (vocals, guitars), Kiki Stockhammer (vocals, keyboards) and John Merlino (drums). The songwriting is straight-ahead rock and the musicianship is better than adequate. And beyond that, well, dammit Jim, I’m a sci-fi fan, not a music critic!
So tap a keg of vintage Romulan ale and put the Mugato out for the night. Dig into this album with the right spirit and I'm betting that by the time you get to “What Would William Shatner Do?” you'll be loving the chorus, every verse and most especially (wait...for...it...) the bridge.
Tom Selleck has certainly enjoyed a lot of success in his long career but I will always feel sorry for the guy. That's because he came this close to getting the role of Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark." According to Hollywood lore, Selleck was Steven Spielberg's early choice to wear the fedora but, due to the star's contractual obligations, the role eventually went to some guy named Harrison Ford.
Why am I bringing this up now? Well, I came across this fun mash-up of the "Magnum P.I." opening sequence and "Star Wars" and for some reason my first thought was Selleck's watching it and rolling his eyes. "Oh, great, this guy again, copping my mojo..."
The makers of the mash-up did some painstaking work here to match up with the original opening sequence, as you can see in the side-by-side below...
Toronto photographer Ian Pool has a bit of fun with the Dark Lord of the Sith, above. It's part of a stylish series of artful spoof shots by Pool, who presents pop culture heroes and villains in revealing private moments -- such as Wonder Woman trading her magic lasso for a dominatrix's leather whip and the Hulk trying to control his temper while waiting for his pet pooch to do his business in the park. You can check out the whole gallery of images right here. (You can also see the talented Pool's work beyond fanboy motifs at his base website, which is right here.)
I'm headed over to the MTV Movie Awards this Sunday and I'm bracing myself for a whole lotta "Twilight."
The open-to-the-online-public voting process for the trophies means that fan passion trumps all and, well, can you name any fans who are more passionate than Stephenie Meyer's vampy young disciples? Here's a fun promo for the awards show that shows what happens when a group of Twihards run into actor Cam Gigandet, who plays the evil bloodsucker James in "Twilight."
(There's some obviously fake violence in this spoof, but if you think you might be disturbed by watching young actresses pretend to be punched, skip this one ....)
The funny thing is that "The Dark Knight," which is merely the second-highest grossing film in the history of the U.S. box office, and "Slumdog Millionaire," which only won the Oscar for best picture, both will be underdogs to "Twilight" in the MTV contest for best picture. Voting for that top category goes right up until the end of the show. The other also-rans -- er, sorry -- the other nominees are "Iron Man" and "High School Musical 3: Senior Year."
It was 26 years ago today that "Return of the Jedi" hit theaters. Sure, there were a few regrettable moments in it, not least among them the ludicrous notion that Ewoks carrying sticks and stones could somehow defeat a deployment of armed Imperial stormtroopers. I was a 13-year-old kid in a theater in South Florida and I remember thinking, Why have the Rebels been so worried about these guys if they can't even handle a tribe of midget teddy bears?
But there were also a lot of great things about the movie. Not least among them Leia's slave-girl outfit. Actress Carrie Fisher remembers wearing it as well; to celebrate the anniversary, here's a snippet of her hysterical roasting of George Lucas from an AFI tribute a few years ago.
