Posts Tagged ‘David E. Kelly’

Robert Downey, Jr. in Rehab

Wednesday, October 22nd, 1997

You’ve been arrested for sleeping in your neighbor’s bed because you were so high you returned home to the wrong house. You’ve been arrested, high and drunk, with a loaded weapon in your glove compartment and cocaine and heroin in your pocket. You got special dispensation to take a week-long holiday from your rehab program to host Saturday Night Live, where you used to work high every week. Despite some difficulties with completion insurance and the fact that you’ve yet to prove that you can draw a dime of box office, your movie career is stronger than ever. What would you do? What would you do? If you were Robert Downey Jr., you’d do some more illegal narcotics. And if you were Judge Lawrence Mira of Malibu, you would revoke Downey’s probation — well, eventually — and let the poor boy finish his movie first. It’s good to be a star.
Mercury Effect is the latest spec script purchase for Warner Bros. The story, in which the FBI investigates some really smart animals who are eventually connected to the monkey sent into space in the Mercury 6 program 35 years ago, was pitched as Jumanji meets Men in Black (sounds more like a Planet of The Apes sequel). Was it coincidental that the executive who agreed to the $450,000 pricetag is exactly 35 years old and has hairy knuckles? You decide!
L.A. Confidential’s resident hunk, Russell Crowe, will follow in the footsteps of mega-superstar Emilio Estevez by playing a hockey-playing sheriff of a small Alaskan town who leads the local hockey team against the NHL’s New York Rangers in an untitled movie written by TV-kingpin and Michelle Pfieffer spouse David E. Kelley. Titles already passed on include The Mighty *ucks!, The Flighty Schmucks and Sports Underdog Movie Number 1273.
Have a better title? Email me.