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By Other Voices voices@moviecitynews.com

A BRIEF FLASH OF TUSH

Finally we have Hope…and Crosby.

Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson are the perfect match.Starsky & Hutch is a laugh riot. Since the first time they teamed up, that I can recall, in Meet The Parents the two have a great chemistry. Stiller the guy who is just trying to get things right and Wilson as the outgoing ultra-cool dude. They did it again in Zoolander. Here was Stiller as the super model being
challenged by newcomer Wilson. Again, Stiller’s guy had “The Look” but Wilson was just “Too Cool.”

Now comes Starsky & Hutch and their act is working again. Stiller as Starsky won’t deviate from the law. Wilson as Hutch is just having a good ride. The ride mostly is in Starsky’s precious vintage Ford Torino.

In keeping with the original 70’s hit series Starsky & Hutchleave no stone unturned in their goal to catch the bad guy, played by Vince Vaughn, who has found a sure fire undetectable brand of cocaine. Drug sniffing dogs are useless and so is Starsky after he mistakes it for a coffee sweetener.
Here comes the take off of Saturday Night Fever. Actually, Stiller must be into dance lessons. He did a big Dirty Dancing number in Along Came Polly.

Wilson doesn’t dance but does a mean version of the original Hutch (David Soul) hit, Don’t Give Up On Me Baby.

Then there is Snoop Dogg as Huggy Bear. Congratulations to Dogg, who becomes an entirely different animal in this picture… the informant with a pimp daddy reputation to uphold.

Parodies are not easy. Mostly they go too far, or not far enough. Starsky & Hutch found the balance. Hell, Stiller & Wilson might have found themselves a series.

Added note. Will the target audience get it? I’m talking teens with money. You bet. This 70s spoof is going to just feed their need to know why Mom and dad just thought it was such a great time. Personally I never get enough disco music. I can’t dance, but boy was that a fun time.

In case you really need a fix the entire first season of the original series is now available on DVD. This was the year nobody complained about violence on television. It wasn’t until the third season people got on Producer Aaron Spelling’s case that the two Bay City cops should stop beating everybody
they arrested to a pulp. After the bloodshed was dropped so did the ratings.

Hey, you want violence go see The Passion of the Christ.

Goodnight, Good-luck and Good News Tomorrow.

March 10 , 2004
Bill Tush

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon