By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Larry, Spike and Woody
No Series For You! — This is a film column, but Larry David has a movie coming out soon, so I’m taking the liberty. Larry David co-created “Seinfeld” with Jerry. Larry is George. Kramer is Larry’s neighbor. (And Elaine is not — not — Carol Leifer, despite her publicist’s efforts to say she is.) The voice of the show is Larry’s, not Jerry’s. Unlike most sitcoms, “Seinfeld” wasn’t rewritten by committee. It was rewritten every week by Larry David. Without his steadying voice, it wandered. If Larry David had been there this season, I’ll bet that Jerry would have kept going. Anyway, we will have our first taste of post-“Seinfeld” Larry David when his movie debut, Sour Grapes, hits theaters this spring.
Black Like Spike — While RC Daily slept, Spike Lee was out making a celebrity of himself, complaining about Jackie Brown and Amistad. Spike bitched that Tarantino’s Jackie Brown used the N word too often. Spike even accused QT of wanting to be “an honorary black man.” But Samuel L. Jackson, whose Ordell Robbie character is the main linguistic offender in the film, puts another slant on the epithet. “There’s something about saying “nigger,” as opposed to “niggeh” that’s like fingernails on a blackboard,” Jackson told me. “It becomes an epithet when you put the “e-r” on it and with “e-h” it can be a term of endearment, a descriptive, it can be all kinds of things.” As for Amistad, Spike trotted out the traditional “movie about black characters with white guys as heroes” beef and argues the point on “Nightline” with Amistad producer Debbie Allen. That issue is actually one of my pet peeves (don’t get me started on Glory) and I thought Spielberg did a decent job of keeping probable Academy Award winner Djimon Hunsou center stage.
When In Rome, Do Like Roman Does — Well, not Rome. Venice. Woody marries Soon-Yi. Yuck! At least Julia Roberts and Elizabeth Shue got paid to neck with the guy. It’s not clear whether Woody’s getting more grief for marrying the 27-year-old or from critics pretending to be Freud analyzing his new flick, Deconstructing Harry. Either way, the Wood Man is one genius I want to keep far, far away from my nieces.