Great Moments In Remake History: Building A Better 'Birds'

Mark — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 17:40:22 EDT

Have you ever had those moments where you just love Hollywood so fucking much that you take it in your arms and squeeze it so hard that you don't realize until it's too late that you've crushed all of its adorable little bones in your delirious, smothering embrace? We're kind of having one right now after reading in today's Var about how new Mandalay Pictures president Cathy Schulman plans on improving upon Alfred Hitchock's maddening avian backstory problems in their much-clamored-for remake of The Birds:

"We think we have a very contemporary take," Schulman said. "In the original, the birds just showed up, and it was kind of like, why are the birds here? This time, there's a reason why they're here and (people) have had something to do with it. There's an environmental slant to what could create nature fighting back."

While they've obviously made a trendy commercial concession by so transparently pandering to the An Inconvenient Truth set, Mandalay does deserve some credit for preserving some semblance of the integrity of the seriously flawed original, rejecting a briefly considered suggestion that the killer fowl be portrayed by penguins, by far the hottest of all bird species. Fortunately, a quick-thinking development executive noted that their antagonists' flightlessness would render their attacks, now properly motivated by the melting of their Antarctic home, "Like, a little boring? What are they gonna do, peck someone's shins to death?," averting a creative disaster.

Schulman pumps up Mandalay [Variety]

Hey, Bob And Cathy Are At It Again!

Mark — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 14:22:26 EDT

He's the Crash producer still steaming over a credit dispute that cost him his moment of Oscar glory. She's the Crash producer who places her Best Picture statuette on the mantel, pretends its shiny, bald head is his clean-shaven pate, then loses hours screaming at it for her long overdue payday. Together, they're the entertainment industry's credit-and-payment disputin'est couple, Bob Yari and Cathy Schulman. The latest scene of Bob & Cathy: A Hollywood Love Story, in which the spatting former partners engage in a heated round of mutual invitation-withholding related to the premiere of The Illusionist, a film they worked on together at the time in their backstory before the lawsuits began, unfolds in today's Page Six

"I was not invited to the premiere," Shulman confirmed to Page Six. "I went as Paul Giamatti's date."
"When I saw [Yari], I said hello. He didn't say anything, but let's put it this way - if looks could kill . . . and they didn't give me a wristband to get in the VIP section of the after-party."

Not that Schulman minded. We hear she joined the cast at Norton's pad on East 10th Street for a super-exclusive after-party - to which Yari was not invited.

"It's just an unfortunate and unnecessary situation," she said. "I still haven't been paid for 'Crash' or 'The Illusionist.' "

Oh, those two! The petty antics continued deep into the night, until Schulman stopped answering her cellphone, finally tired of having the private cast after-party interrupted by a series of calls from "Blocked Caller ID" consisting of nothing more than the sound of a toilet flushing and a man giggling uncontrollably.

CRASH OF WILLS AT FLICK DEBUT [Page Six]

Gawker: defamer, cathy schulman

Great Moments In Remake History: Building A Better 'Birds'

Hey, Bob And Cathy Are At It Again!