You, Me, Dupree & Steely Dan's Wrath
Something "kind of uncool" has come to Steely Dan's attention.
Band members Walter Becker and Donald Fagen are requesting an in-person apology from Owen Wilson for playing the annoying titular character in You, Me and Dupree, which, the musicians point out, happens to share the name found in the Steely Dan song "Cousin Dupree." The duo won a Grammy with that tune in 2001 for Best Pop Performance.
In a profanity-laced mock-angry letter posted on the band's Website, Becker and Fagen suggest that the film character of Dupree rips off their song, which tells the tale of a slacker--named Dupree, of course--who is staying on his aunt's couch and starts lusting after his cousin.
"When it came time to change the character's name or whatever so people wouldn't know what a rip the whole thing was, THEY DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO THINK UP A NEW F---ING NAME FOR THE GUY!" the rockers wrote.
The pair offered Wilson a chance to redeem himself--show up at their July 19 concert in Irvine, California, and "apologize to our fans for this travesty." (Apparently no such thing went down Wednesday night.)
The letter, dated July 17, was typed on hotel stationery from the Residential Suites at Longworth in Corpus Christi, Texas--where they were obviously extremely bored on their day off between shows--and addressed to Wilson's brother, Luke, whose new film My Super Ex-Girlfriend opened Friday.
Becker and Fagen at first gave kudos to Luke for his work with his older brother in Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket, but then proceeded to get down to business, which for the most part consisted of bashing You, Me and Dupree and warning Owen Wilson that he's thisclose to losing his coolness factor for appearing in such tripe.
The film, starring Wilson as a slacker who shacks up with his best buddy, played by Matt Dillon, and his buddy's new bride (Kate Hudson, looking pretty disgusted), made a respectable $21.5 million at the box office last weekend to come in at number three (behind the juggernaut that is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and the Wayans brothers comedy Little Man).
But we'll see how the film that the Washington Post called a "formulaic, shockingly sloppy and virtually laugh-free star vehicle for Wilson" does in its second week out.
Anyway, the Steely ones went on to say that while they meant Wilson no harm, "there are some pretty heavy people who are upset about this whole thing and we can't guarantee what kind of heat little Owen may be bringing down on himself."
Despite their purported rage, the Two Against Nature rockers seemed to lose themselves here and there when it came to separating fact from fiction.
"We realize what a drag it is for you [Luke] to have people coming to you about [Owen's] lameness all the time and we're really sorry to be doing the same thing," they lamented, but "you don't owe him anything, after the way he and Gwynnie Paltrow double-timed you in The Royal Tenenbaums."
Yes, we certainly hope Luke isn't still nursing that grudge.
While we don't see Wilson up in arms over Steely Dan's comments, the Wedding Crashers star has been known to not take criticism sitting down.
In February 2005 Wilson took New Yorker critic David Denby to task for his unfavorable synopsis of pal Ben Stiller's career.
"I've acted in two hundred and thirty-seven buddy movies and, with that experience, I've developed an almost preternatural feel for the beats that any good buddy movie must have," Wilson wrote in a letter to the venerable publication. "And maybe the most crucial audience-rewarding beat is where one buddy comes to the aid of other guy to help defeat a villain. Or bully. Or jerk."
But Steely Dan isn't playing the part of the bully. No, the guys just want to help, and in doing so offered this advice:
"Let's just help Owen do what's right, let's play past this particular screwup, and then he can get back to his life and his family and his beautiful moviestar-style pad or whatever, none the worse for wear and with some groovy new tee's and hoodies and maybe a keyring or a coffee mug in the process. Alright? Well, alright!"
"Superman II" 2.0
Superman Returns sequel or no, Man of Steel fans are getting a new movie. Make that, a new old movie.
A reconstructed version of 1980's Superman II, largely featuring footage shot and ditched nearly 30 years ago, including 15 minutes worth of Marlon Brando espousing fatherly advice from "Kryp-tin," will be released on DVD on Nov. 28, Warner Home Video announced Friday.
Not a "special" or "expanded" edition, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, named after the film's original director, is billed as an unprecedented do-over.
"With this DVD release, Richard Donner has become the first director in history to be able to complete a film he left during production," Warners said in a statement.
Donner was shooting Superman II along with 1978's Superman: The Movie when, as Warners delicately put it, "creative differences...became irreconcilable." Translation: Donner was fired--after he finished Superman, but before he finished Superman II.
The Superman II that subsequently opened in theaters, played on TV, got issued on video, and reissued on DVD is credited to A Hard Day's Night's Richard Lester, who reshot, reworked and finished the movie.
Not to be pushed aside, Lester's version (which contains more than a few feet of the Donner footage, but none of the Donner-directed Brando scenes) is also getting a new DVD release.
In fact, in Lucasfilm fashion, Warners will be issuing--or, rather reissuing--all four Christopher Reeve-led Superman movies, from the original 1978 opus to 1987's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. The films were issued separately and as a four-disc set just five years ago.
This time out, the movies will all feature commentary tracks; last time out, only Superman: The Movie did. And, this time out, there will be two Superman IIs to choose from.
"This looks like the holy grail. It does," Barry Freiman of SupermanHomepage.com said of the Donner Superman II. "From what I've seen so far, it looks like it's going to be what anybody wants."
In a recent interview with iFMagazine.com, Superman Returns director Bryan Singer said he'd seen the first 20 minutes of the Donner cut, "and it was awesome."
Singer told the site one sequence he saw was recreated using Reeve's and Margot Kidder's old screen tests for Clark Kent and Lois Lane, respectively.
"It was such an impressive thing to watch," Singer said.
According to Warners, the Donner Superman II features a different opening and ending than the Lester Superman II. The reinstated Brando appears in "three pivotal scenes," according to Superman Cinema (www.supermancinema.co.uk). And the "Lester Humour," as the fan site put it, has been "reduced or completely cut out."
Among those presumably pleased is Kidder, who last year raved about Donner's "really, really fabulous" lost film to a Canadian comic convention audience.
"So, there is somewhere, in a vault, wonderful Dick Donner Superman II scenes with Christopher and I, and I'd love you to write Warner Bros. and ask where it is," Kidder said, according to ComicsContinuum.com.
While the Donner vision is now realized, the future of the big-screen Superman franchise is unclear.
TMZ.com reported this month that Warners will pass on a Superman Returns sequel unless the movie, reported to have cost as "little" as $204 million or as much as $260 million, cracks $200 million at the domestic box office. (Like Warners, TMZ.com is part of Time Warner.) As of Thursday, per BoxOfficeMojo.com, the film stood at $171 million.
Emmy-winning actor Jack Warden dead at 85
LOS ANGELES - Jack Warden, an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated actor who played gruff cops, coaches and soldiers in a career that spanned five decades, has died. He was 85.
Warden, who lived in Manhattan, died Wednesday at a hospital in New York, Sidney Pazoff, his longtime business manager, said here Friday.
"Everything gave out. Old age," Pazoff said. "He really had turned downhill in the past month; heart and then kidney and then all kinds of stuff."
Warden was nominated twice for best supporting actor Oscars — for the 1975 movie "Shampoo" and in 1978's "Heaven Can Wait."
He won a supporting actor Emmy for his role as a coach in the 1971 TV movie "Brian's Song" and was twice nominated in the 1980s for best leading actor in a comedy for his show "Crazy Like a Fox."