The long-rumored sequel to Dumb and Dumber has had its share of fortunes, good and bad. But now it's as locked-in as it's ever been. After Warner Bros. dropped its option on the project, Universal picked it up, and the Farrelly brothers are moving full steam ahead. In a Nerdist podcast posted Tuesday night, Peter Farrelly broke down some details.
Charlie Sheen rode a tank onto the Warner Brothers lot. ("I used to be able to cruise on in. Not anymore.")
In November, THR reported that Rosemarie DeWitt — who, over her varied career, has managed to sleep with Don Draper, get tussled over by Jason Bourne and Jim Halpert, and, somehow, not lose her mind over having Anne Hathaway as a sister — would be joining The Newsroom as a recurring character. Along with Patton Oswalt, who'd be playing Jonas Pfeiffer, the new VP of human resources at Atlantic Cable News, DeWitt will play "Rebecca Halliday, a litigator brought in to defend the network in a wrongful-termination lawsuit." Alas, it's not to be. According to Deadline, "she filmed some scenes but her storyline subsequently underwent changes which required reshoots," and she wasn't available to do the reshoots. In a statement, HBO added, "As the production schedule for season two of The Newsroom has shifted, Rosemarie DeWitt has encountered scheduling conflicts and will no longer be able to continue in her role."
I have a confession to make: I'm a Munnhead. That's an Olivia Munn fan, for you non-Munnheads (and future Munnheads). Therefore I was very excited to hear about the casting of Olivia Munn as a new love interest for Jake Johnson's character Nick for an arc on the sophomore season of New Girl. How did Munn turn her reputation around from a "women in comedy" lightning rod to an actual bona fide woman in comedy? By proving she can take a joke.
The sun may have set on the first season of The Newsroom, but that just means we've got a full nine months for all manner of mash-ups, supercuts, and general subversive reappropriation to make their way onto the Internet before Season 2 premieres in June 2013. Vulture already has a state car on this train, and has mashed up the generally frazzled, horrified, and shocked state of the NewsNight staff with classic film scenes, to pretty seamless effect. Sam Waterston flying into a rage, Jack Torrance flying into a rage, potayto, potahto.
Shut. It. Down. I seriously gotta hand it to Sorkin and his "writing staff" — this 'ship has been built up so sneakily and subtly that the the whole "I'm single because you haven't asked me out, Don" (really, aren't we all?) moment felt like the best kind of going-away present. Seriously, it's like we've been refreshing our Google Alert for Bigfoot news only to have the Loch Ness monster swim right up to our cubicle. I'd also like to point out that Don was inexplicably swinging a knife around during a large portion of their conversation, which was like the Loch Ness Monster showing up with cupcakes. Don and Sloan are supposedly the most people-stupid in a show full of people-morons, but they're also the most self-aware, so they might just beat Jim & Maggie to the consummation finish line. (That's the added bonus of having months go by between episodes: It's a lot like NBC cutting to commercial during racewalking — you can't be mad because it's the one sport in which we can be reasonably certain not much happened while we were away, save for a bunch of people walking around quickly and occasionally falling down. Phew, glad I could get in such a timely joke before the end of the season.)
Hottest speechifying
"I don't know who told you you're a bad guy, but somebody did. Somebody along the way. Somebody or something convinced you of it, because you think you're a bad guy, and you're just not. I'm socially inept but even I know that. So because you think you're a bad guy, you try to do things that you think a good guy would do. Like committing to someone you like, but maybe don't love. A sweet, smart, wholesome Midwestern girl. I could be wrong, though; I usually am."
Sloan has conveniently neglected to mention that she has a third Ph.D. in Emotional Science.
Editor's note: As evidenced by last week's slew of Jim/Maggie fanvids, the Newsroom fan community has been more and more prolific as the season has worn on, which is why, in lieu of hot speechification, this week's 'shipping report will feature the hot fanworkification that has been the fruits of their labor. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just search Don Keefer on Tumblr and see if it doesn't make you feel a little less alone in the universe.
There's only one week of The Newsroom left, and it's as if Sorkin & Co. realized they were given a quantity of smoldering glares that will expire if they don't use them up by the end of the season. This makes for eminently 'shippable, GIF-able television, but so far the good folks at fuckyeahwillmac.tumblr.com have been dragging their feet. (Otherwise I would totally have embedded Will's face post-crazy-Mac-speech, which in five steamy seconds conveyed all the passion and drama locked away in Habib Sr.'s volumes — VOLUMES! — on Willkenzie.) These are the most fascinating people on television, and their feelings have never been more important.
Like nearly anything of consequence in this crazy world of ours, this podcast is a result of Twitter. A few months ago, between setups for her role as Donna, the self-treating, Mercedes-owning man-eater of Parks and Recreation, actress and comedienne extraordinaire Retta took to the world’s most awesome/aggravating social media platform to tweet about TV. And not just any TV: all of the TV. To follow @unfoRETTAble is to gain the best couch potato buddy you’ve never had, one who reacts hilariously in real time to shows as varied as Mad Men, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries.
Earlier in the summer, when Retta launched into a profane and brilliant jag about the season finale of Game of Thrones — featuring filthy disquisitions on King Joffrey’s littlefinger — Chris Ryan and I knew we had to have her on the podcast. A few tweets later, she agreed and we were thrilled to welcome her into the Grantland studio. As delightful offscreen as she is on, Retta was an incredibly good sport, indulging our wildest theories on Breaking Bad and Chris’s undying affection for Don from The Newsroom.
It's been more than a year since Mac originally held up her hand-drawn signs and inspired Will to be the integrity, and since then she has perched, pixie-like, on his shoulder, nodding along as he ultimately made all the Right Decisions, and forgiving him his superficial flaws, like the smoking habit, and the tendency to use his show as a bully pulpit. But this week not even Will McAvoy could resist the power of the Anthonys Twain (Casey and Weiner). I was originally thinking that if Mac were an actual pixie, she'd be Crysta in Fern Gully, who turned a human man into a boy pixie so they could save the rain forest news country universe together, but this week she's more like the Pan's Labyrinth pixies who try in vain to stop their master from eating the big delicious Casey Anthony grape, and wind up getting their heads chewed off by Jane Fonda.
The critics can't lay off the poor guy, but Aaron Sorkin has someone slightly more prominent in his corner. Monday night, at a Hollywood-dominated $35,800-a-pop fund-raising event at Harvey Weinstein's Connecticut home, President Obama singled out Sorkin, saying he "writes the way every Democrat in Washington wished they spoke."
After a bit of Will/Mac overload last week, the youngs are taking over the 'Shipping Newsroom leaderboard in a big way. Don continues his journey of redemption this week by flying (ugh, I'm sorry) in the face of federal regulations and a very uptight Julie Delpy doppelganger to report the news, even if his only audience is the cabin of their mysteriously business-class-free aircraft (United Airlines: not elitists, it turns out!). But if Bin Laden's death was the top story, the lead-in was Elliot and Don's gratuitously in-depth investigative report on the state of the latter's relationship with Maggie, and now those strangers on a plane are fully briefed on the two most generation-defining stories of 2011. And while they seemed pleased overall with the efforts of Seal Team Six that evening, they are so totally over Don & Maggie's on-again-off-again drama. SO ARE WE.
Hot speechifying:
Julie Delppelganger(?): "Maggie's a lucky girl."
I am sitting in the International Ballroom in the Beverly Hilton Hotel during the twilight of the 2012 Summer TCA Press Tour, as HBO, like every other network and cable channel has done this week, previews its upcoming movies with a series of panels and Q&As. In a matter of minutes, Aaron Sorkin, Oscar-winning screenwriter and creator of critical whipping-boy The Newsroom, will take the stage to face a room full of the writers and tweeters who have led the witch hunt against his show. Sorkin has only granted a handful of interviews as the first half of the season has rolled out to an increasing chorus of boos from Internet Girls and Boys from around his beloathed Twittersphere. But today he's sitting down, cracking open a tiny bottle of Evian, and bringing on the firing squad. It's the can't-miss event of this year's TCAs, and I'm about to die of anticipation.
With the summer TV pickings so terribly slim this year, Hollywood Prospectus editor Emily Yoshida has had to get creative in the search for some scripted romantic intrigue until her CW shows come back. Here's your week in ’ships on HBO's The Newsroom.
"I'm going to single-handedly fix the Internet!" Will proclaims after a couple of on-air comments plucked from the ACN BBS were not the kind of reasoned, intelligent arguments he had expected from an anonymous online commenting system. The Information Superhighway has reared its ineffable head a few times before now, but it's really starting to emerge as the MPDG of The Newsroom — the quirky, impossible-to-tie-down nymph who will confound and delight our fictional staffers (LOLs, asterisks) and our IRL showrunner alike (at least have your erstwhile writing room brainstorm like 50 commenter screen names for you to choose from before settling on "LollipopLollipop.") So many bullets could have been dodged this week if they had just switched to Facebook commenting; at least then users would have to set up a fake account and populate it with pictures of other people's cats before firing off their death threats.
With the summer TV pickings so terribly slim this year, Hollywood Prospectus editor Emily Yoshida has had to get creative in the search for some scripted romantic intrigue until her CW shows come back. Here's your week in ’ships on HBO's The Newsroom.
Willkenzie ’shippers, your patience has been rewarded! With congressional creepster Wade out of the picture, Will and Mac might finally have a chance to sort out their feelings for each other. Baby steps, though — it wouldn't be The Newsroom without a little ACN floor show interlude with some light public displays of personal history thrown in for good measure (tap-dancing lessons! Blatant lack of understanding of the basic premise of This Old House! Get a room, you guys!), and Mac, with the help of the entire ACN staff, hit a home run this week with her elaborate Rudy role-play scenario. Some guys want you to dress up in a Princess Leia slave outfit and play Call of Duty with them, and some want you to massage their egos by reenacting their favorite Sean Astin film in their honor. Mac knows which kind of guy she's dealing with.
Hottest speechifying: "It took six months to build the city of Dubai, you really think they were renovating the same mid-century colonial for 15 years?" What is a mid-century colonial? And This Old House has been on since 1979 and is still airing episodes. Just trying to keep you honest, Will.
The gimmick at the bleeding heart of The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin’s divisive paean to broadcast journalism, is that the show is set in the very near past, allowing Will McAvoy and the rest of the tireless, occasionally tiresome News Night crew to tackle recent issues with a level of hindsight and perspective only possible in the present. Yesterday, though, reports broke that Sorkin had suddenly started behaving in the most 2012 way possible by firing nearly his entire writing staff.
