Gawker: defamer, sicko

When Michael Met Sacha

Seth — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 20:17:05 EDT

What, you may or may not find yourselves wondering, could agitprop documentary director Michael Moore possibly have in common with guerrilla-comedy king Sacha Baron Cohen? Quite a bit, it just so happens, as a chance encounter at last year's Toronto International Film Festival led to a mutual gush-a-thon between the two mischief-making filmmakers:

Cohen told Moore he had drawn inspiration from the filmmaker's documentaries, in which Moore doggedly pursues corporate and political bosses and puts himself into uncomfortable situations.

"I said to him, `But yeah, I've never done anything like wrestle naked with another guy on the floor of an insurance-brokers or mortgage-brokers convention," Moore told The Associated Press. "So after I saw `Borat,' if he says I was an inspiration for those things, I now have to up the ante for him. So we sailed into the mined waters of Guantanamo Bay with sick 9/11 workers and a bullhorn."

Not only did Cohen inspire Moore to attempt larger-scale and ballsier stunts than ever before, but his faux-Kazakh counterpart's misadventures also provided some highly effective field tactics, ultimately resulting in securing Moore's ill 9/11 workers the medical attention they so desperately needed after the Sicko director won a nude wrestling match with a wiry guard by suffocating him with his anus.

Moore: Borat steeled him for Guantanamo [Yahoo News]

On Broadway, Aaron Sorkin Rekindles Tumultuous Love Affair With Television

Mark — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 14:32:12 EDT

· Aaron Sorkin returns to Broadway with The Farnsworth Invention, a play about the birth of television, the deliciously flawed storytelling medium he recently sought to redeem with a little-seen primetime serial about the life-or-death stakes involved in producing a weekly sketch comedy show. [Variety]
· Thomas Haden Church is in negotiations to join Sandra Bullock in All About Steve, a romantic comedy that should reinvigorate the moribund genre by focusing on the previously unseen pairing (we think?) of a lady who writes crosswords and a CNN cameraman. [THR]
· Michael Moore's Sicko sells out the single NY screen on which it debuted, bringing in $70,000 over the weekend. [Variety]
· The Agent Dance, Abbreviated Mid-Level Actresses We Can't Get Excited About Edition: Heroes' Hayden Panettiere signs with WMA, while Julia Stiles hooks up with ICM. [Variety, THR]
· Cartoon Network and Hasbro are co-producing a new Transformers animated series, which will reimagine the property as a "superheroes story" with robots featuring "a lot more human qualities, allowing kids to identify with the characters" they will soon mindlessly consume in an all-new toy line. [THR]

Owen Wilson To Meet His Ghost Of Hollywood Future

Mark — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 15:45:47 EDT

· Watch out, Hollywood, because here comes Mitch Albom: Adam Sandler has acquired the rights to feature-writing debut (an untitled baseball comedy, if you must know) of the Five People You Meet On One More Tuesday With Morrie author, whose treacly bestsellers have been previously adapted into housewife-narcotizing TV movies. [Variety]
· In today's strangest casting pairing, Jude Law and Forest Whitaker will star in Universal's "futuristic adventure thriller" Repossession Mambo. [Variety]
· In other buddy-casting news, Owen "The Butterscotch Stallion" Wilson and Nick "The Unkillable Aging Thoroughbred" Nolte have signed on to star in the Ben Stiller-directed comedy Tropic Thunder, which should create an amusing "before and after" Hollywood tableau the first time the actors share a two-shot. [Variety]
· Pirated copies of Michael Moore's Sicko proliferated on the YouTubes over the weekend, two weeks before the docimentary's opening. [THR]
· Today in writers' strike saber-rattling: The WGA West has warned its members to ignore the same old bullshit that studios are likely to spew as negotiations for a new labor agreement begin next month, such as claims that they are losing money in this terribly unprofitable entertainment business." Charges of counterbullshit by the studios include the accusation that the union is "out of touch with fast-changing showbiz realities." [Variety]