jack black
Jack Black’s Belligerent Bar Interview
1:32PM Defamer Hollywood | He’s red-cheeked, in a bar, vaguely aggressive and verbally erratic, so maybe Jack Black is a little sauced. More likely, he’s just being Jack Black. Very Jack Black. (Hit jump for clip.) More »
Jessica Alba, Cloris Leachman Join Jack Black as Glitzy ‘Office’ Temps
8:29AM STV | NBC will leave no stunt unplayed in its attempt to own Super Bowl Sunday, with Jessica Alba and Cloris Leachman now confirmed to appear alongside Jack Black in that night’s special hour-long Office episode. More »
NBC’s Wednesday Night Craps With The Door Open
4:55AM Seth | The first day after the election earned low ratings all around for the US networks, but particularly NBC, whose new crime block of Knight Rider, Life, and the 19th season premiere of Law & Order (down 42% from last year) all tanked. [THR] Jack Black is set to star in Fox’s adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels, in which he’ll teach the tiny denizens of Lilliput the building blocks of Rock and Roll. [Variety] 9-and-a-half-fingered Congressman Rahm Emanuel has accepted Barack Obama’s offer of White House chief of staff, and now goes about the task of rounding out the cabinet. Drama for Minister of Viking Affairs! [Variety] After the jump: What Oscar-nominated actress and Oscar-winning actor will co-star in a Lifetime movie? More »
Jack Black, Amnesiac
4:10AM STV | Jack Black will soon reunite with the writers of Kung Fu Panda, teaming up on an untitled comedy about a man who wakes up sans memory on Cuban shores only to deduce he’s a superspy. Yuks, partial nudity and Bourne-franchise comparisons ensue. [THR] If you are the least bit sleepy, we recommend skipping to the jump. Ready? OK: SAG is expected today to approve a measure requesting a strike vote, most likely sometime after the new board is seated later this month. We warned you, didn’t we? Wake up! [THR] More »
Exclusive: ‘Tropic Thunder’ Writer Stops Making Fun Of Mentally Challenged People Just Long Enough To Let Us Interview Him
8:10AM Defamer Hollywood | Take a good look at that Tropic Thunder poster. Go past the glossy, airbrushed photos of the film’s many stars, past the lush jungle setting, past the fiery explosions, and you might notice something. See there? Down at the bottom? It says “Screenplay by Ben Stiller & Justin Theroux, and Etan Cohen.” Sure, other more “legitimate” media outlets may give all the ink to those first two dudes, but here at Defamer we like to dig a little deeper. Just who is this Etan Cohen fellow and how did he get roped in to working on the biggest comedy of the summer? Stick around after the jump to hear one of Hollywood’s newest writing stars dish the dirt about meeting Tom Cruise for the first time, what it feels like to suddenly have people kissing your arse, and why you shouldn’t be offended by all that Simple Jack stuff.
Ben Stiller And Jack Black Draw Clear Line Between Movie Retardation/ Flatulence And The Real Thing
4:00AM Seth | With Tropic Thunder —the product of Ben Stiller’s harrowing journey into the heart of retarded darkness— storming multiplexes today, the film’s stars are going into promotional hyperdrive. And nothing sells your movie more than some old-fashioned controversy—particularly one in which you’re accused of being insensitive to the disabled. (Semitic advocacy groups, meanwhile, surprised everyone by seeing nothing objectionable in Tom Cruise’s minstrelsy, Jewface performance.) On the GMA hotseat today was Stiller and co-star Jack Black, both of whom calmly explained that in matters of insensitivity and bodily function, context is everything; framed by the movie’s central comedic conceit of actorly self-indulgence, then, not a single dropped R-bomb or ass-bomb should be considered anything other than purely satirical. More »
‘Thunder’ Premiere Showdown Pits Megastars Against Disabled Who Obviously Don’t Get The Joke
2:15AM Seth | Despite all traces of Simple Jack—veteran fake-action-star Tugg Speedman’s brazen Oscar-shot playing a stuttering, simpleton farmhand—having been literally whitewashed from the web, activists remain outraged over Tropic Thunder’s depiction-within-a-depiction of the developmentally disabled as bucktoothed “retards” incapable of expressing affection without the use of the phrase, “You mm-mm-m-ake my p-p-pee-peemaker t-t-t-tingle.” (Sheesh—so touchy.) As threatened, dozens of placard-wielding protesters outfitted in ‘Retard’busters T-shirts marched outside last night’s premiere in Westwood, giving the proceedings the strangely familiar air of an RGA West strike line. From the AP report: More »
How to Derail a Junket: Ask Robert Downey Jr. Who He’d Like To ‘Smoke a Blunt With’
2:40AM Defamer Hollywood | Can’t a little movie like Tropic Thunder catch a break? The Ben Stiller comedy has thus far managed to survive racism, ratings, “retards,” and American Idol — and that’s before it’s even come out (Wednesday, August 13!). Still, all that was child’s play compared to the newest Tropic trouble, instigated by an overzealous radio DJ who crashed the film’s junket to ask Robert Downey Jr. some of the most inane questions Iron Man has ever had to face. Listen in horror as the notoriously rehabbed actor is asked which costar he’d like to “drink a brew and smoke a blunt with” (only the first of many, many stupid questions) — we’ve even provided a helpful assortment of what we can only imagine were Jack Black and Ben Stiller’s reaction shots. Enjoy! More »
‘Flunky’ Hero of ‘Kung Fu Panda’ Apparently Bears No Resemblance to Actual Chinese
11:10AM STV | On one hand, we’re sort of ashamed to have doubled our knowledge of Chinese culture today with one glance at the Los Angeles Times. On the other, a spoonful of sugar — or, more specifically, of Kung Fu Panda — made the medicine go down that much easier as we learned the deep angst gripping China in the wake of the film’s success. It’s not frustrating enough, evidently, that DreamWorks usurped Chinese authority over everything from animation to the sacred panda itself; rather, the hero Po’s abject laziness and mild prurience has an angry 1.2 billion souls searching as we speak: More »
