Combine the hip L.A. wannabes from Swingers with Sling Blade‘s Karl “Killer” Childers and what do you get? A blood-soaked lounge act or a job directing a big Hollywood movie. Nicholas Goodman got the former, landing a directing gig for Paramount based on his three minute-long parody Swing Blade. I wonder whether Paramount would have hired him if he’d mocked the studio’s summer misses and missing blockbuster, Titanic, with Addicted To The Event Movie On The Horizon.
Speaking of Swingers, writer/star Jon Favreau is giving up his “Friends” dream of being the Ultimate Fighting Champion to go back to the typewriter to adapt the Po Bronson book about the early days of Silicon Valley, The First 20 Million Is Always the Hardest. Seems like no one can make a career out of sleeping with Courtney Cox. Michael Keaton hasn’t been seen in a while, Favreau’s back behind the typewriter and Tom Selleck‘s playing second banana in the closet comedy In & Out.
Art Brown and Tracy Fraim are also trying to ride the parody train to the director’s chair. In their parody, Eating Las Vegas, the hero goes to Vegas to eat himself to death. In Vegas, the buffets never close. His hooker girlfriend in this one is bulimic, leading to some explosive (and messy) love scenes. The creators of the film already have a foot in the Hollywood door as writers of an upcoming Drew Barrymore movie, but like their parody’s female lead, what they really want to do is project.
Finally, Julia Roberts has agreed to keep smiling in movies, this time opposite Hugh Grant in an untitled project from the team that made Four Weddings and a Funeral. Roberts will spoof herself, playing “the biggest movie star in the world” who walks into Grant’s quiet bookstore-owning life. Hugh’s second-most famous date’s asking price is around $10 million — about 500 thousand times more expensive than his most famous conquest.
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