Prepare your incredulous Leo squint: Friday Night Lights author Buzz Bissinger, who this week detailed his half-a-million dollar shopping addiction in an unbelievable GQ essay, has entered rehab.
Denial: Buzz Bissinger, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Friday Night Lights, wrote a giant GQ feature confessing a shopping addiction totaling over a half a million dollars? Buzz Bissinger, foaming blog-hater turned Twitter troll, believes the clothes at the flagship NYC Gucci store "hang like fantastic sex toys"? Buzz Bissinger, perfect curmudgeon archetype, owns "eighty-one leather jackets, seventy-five pairs of boots, forty-one pairs of leather pants, thirty-two pairs of haute couture jeans, ten evening jackets, and 115 pairs of leather gloves"?!! This must be some twisted, brilliant early April Fools' Day joke. Sorry, no, it's not: Unless this denial from GQ that this is in any way a ruse is part of the ruse, we're going to have to accept this as fact.
Here is actor Jesse Plemons, talking to Zap2It in 2007 about the first time he suited up to shoot a football scene on Friday Night Lights: "There's this play where Taylor is supposed to knock the crap out of me. So he does, and I get up and I'm jumping around — and everyone's like, "Holy crap!" My chin had split open [laughs], I had to get like 11 stitches."
If you're reading this website, these people probably need no introduction, but just in case: On Friday Night Lights, Plemons played Landry Clarke, whose non-gridiron activities included wearing women down with persistence, fronting the best-ever Christian death-metal band in Dillon, Texas, and the occasional act of justifiable manslaughter. In the first season, Landry was an appealing comic foil to Zach Gilford's long-suffering Matt Saracen; when he joined Saracen on Dillon High's football team in Season 2, it was implausible but forgivable, provided you liked Landry and wanted him in the mix as much as possible, which people generally did.
Editor's note: Every once in a while, we here at the Hollywood Prospectus blog take a break from our back issues of Cahiers du Cinéma and Teen People to check in with the world of sport, and it has recently come to our attention that football season is indeed upon us. Now, if there's one thing better than watching actual football, it's watching actors pretend to play football in movies, complete with all the improbable passes, heartwarming speeches, and goofy hijinks usually missing from the real thing. Without further ado: The Grantland staff's favorite football moments in film.
The big news from this weekend's box office breakdown is that, as expected, The Amazing Spider-Man crushed it. Opening on July 4, Eduardo Saverin's Spidey rolled into $65 million in its first weekend and $140 million in its first six days. As EW explains, those numbers are actually lower than the pace set by all three of Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man movies, none of which had the benefit of boosted 3-D and IMAX ticket prices. But considering both the possibility of the quickie reboot flopping altogether, and the fact that this is just the first installment of a whole new franchise, the numbers (and an A- Cinemascore) are wholly promising.
Taylor Swift is so fucking smart. Even if her whole country affect is kind of a put-on, it’s a brilliant put-on. She’s hardly the first artist to make a video that specifically panders to military families (see no. 8), but she’s almost certainly the first to cast Friday Night Lights’ Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) as her army beau.
Grade: B+
Best YouTube Comment: “<3 I met this boy in grade primary and I like him sooo much but my bff (girl) is dating him since grade 3 (now in grade 5) the school year is almost over I go over his house sometimes but we are pretty good friends and his gf is never over his house & he is into sports she isn’t only soccer I am mainly into all the sports lol I am girly girl too he is the love of my life Only if I could tell him :( and I deff hate valentines day (my uncle died that day) And I Love My Crush!” —Morgan6457
The Hollywood Prospectus podcast is now weekly and free to cover any topics in the pop culture universe. To celebrate, Chris Ryan and I talked ... mostly about TV! Our conversation ranged from The Simpsons’ 500th episode to whether a Friday Night Lights movie is a good idea (we even supplied some better ones; you’re welcome, Peter Berg!). We also touched on the glories of Eastbound & Down, the sorrows of Life’s Too Short, the finale of Downton Abbey, and the continued zombie stagger of The Walking Dead. There’s even some talk about the Oscars and why, just maybe, we don’t care so much about them anymore. Listen now, and if you happen to know Josh Lucas (or his agent), tell him to listen, too! We’ve got the perfect part for him!
Listen to the podcast here:
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Subscribe to the Grantland Network on iTunes, and check out our podcasts page.
Andy Greenwald: Friday Night Lights wasn’t merely one of the finest television dramas of the last decade. It was also the serialized version of chopping onions, an unparalleled tear-inducement mechanism. And so, because it’s the day after Valentine’s Day and maybe those roses are looking a little wilted and those lukewarm “aphrodisiac” oysters you were served at 5:30 p.m. at the only restaurant with an unclaimed reservation as of yesterday morning aren’t sitting so well, I offer you this: It’s a video of all your favorite residents of Dillon, Texas, weeping. While an Oasis song plays. Because, of course it does.
For a while there, every time a movie adaptation of a beloved TV show was discussed, it was our cue to roll our eyes and scoff and flick the back of one hand dismissively, or maybe even wipe a bunch of crap off someone’s table (whose? anyone’s) in protest of impossible expectations. Now, though, the momentum of expectations has totally shifted, thanks to the unlikely IRL existence of both the Arrested Development movie and the Party Down movie. In other words: This Friday Night Lights movie might actually happen?
Among other things, Justified is about how one man, a lawman, comes to love and cherish the place he protects and serves. In Season 1, Raylan Givens was a reluctantly returning prodigal son, romancing women he should stay away from, gunning down anyone who gave him the least bit of lip, and taking out his alienation on those around him.
Obscured in the cavalcade of doo-wop harmonies and uncomfortable show-runner sex gags was a larger story unfolding at last night’s Emmys. Namely: why can’t Jon Hamm win?
You know an awards show is in trouble when Rob Lowe appears and you find yourself wishing he brought Snow White with him. Last night’s 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards were, by turns, mawkish, desperate, cringe-inducing, and dull — and that was before the gang from Entourage heroically reunited after an absence of only one week. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment things tipped into catastrophe during Fox’s broadcast. Was it the decision to emulate the worst of the Oscars via cheesy, context-free montages reminding us just what, exactly, comedy is? (Note to producers: It’s not Nurse Jackie.) Or was it the subdivision of the show by category, thus guaranteeing a final third devoted to America’s enduring love affair with miniseries about British class discomfort? Perhaps it was the audibly flop-sweating voice-over announcer whose job it was to drop joke bombs like “his favorite Marx brother is Richard” while winners approached the podium, thus treating the show’s only unscripted moments like the allies treated Dresden? Or maybe it was an “In Memorium” segment so classless and tone-deaf it managed to forever ruin both “In Memorium” segments and death? Or was it the sad, craven sight of random television B+-listers shackled together in sock-hop burlesque and forced to perform a cappella intros as the Emmytones? You know what? Yep. It was that.
Perhaps the most revealing (and damning?) aspect of the Emmy nominations announcement ceremony — held, as always, just before dawn on the West Coast in order to allow Nikki Finke to watch them live before retreating to her coffin — was the manner in which they were broadcast to the majority of the world: via Ustream, an upstart web-video service that is (a) one of the many threats to traditional broadcast television, and (b) mostly known as the go-to place to watch NFL players distractedly answer fan questions while flying cross country. (Maybe TV was secretly trying to prove a point: The feed conked out midway through the announcements. Luckily, it was when they were talking about miniseries.)
Anyway, much respect to announcers Joshua Jackson and Melissa McCarthy (whose surprise nomination for her work in Mike & Molly wasn’t so much of a surprise when you consider that she’s now a movie celebrity and TV people are nothing if not hung up on movie celebrity — it’s a little like how Chicago is obsessed with New York but the feeling is rarely mutual) who, perhaps in deference to the hour, raced through the categories like Usain Bolt after a visit to Walter White’s Winnebago. Leading this year's nominations are Mad Men with 19, Boardwalk Empire with 18, and Modern Family with 17. Below, our instant, coffee-deprived thoughts.
