cowperthwait | lies, evasion, spin, circumspection and cleverly veiled hype

According to Wikipedia, the population of Mexico City falls just shy of 9 million people. This is approximately similar to that of my new neighborhood in The Mission, I am pretty sure. Seeing an opportunity for education and acclimation, Kirsten thus thought it would be funny to summon me to meet real Mexicans, in Mexico.

Armed with a multi-million-dollar insurance policy and a month's supply of Cipro, I'm giving this a shot.

Slocombe will be there, too; so will Ballou. Also, special mystery guests. As the aforelisted comprise just about everyone who reads this — except you, Alex Sweet — I'm not sure why I'm writing it.

Happy weekend.

will our product turn you orange? it will not


For a long-ago high school science project, the people's own Marc DeMoss cut some truly fantastic TV spots for PermaSmile, a snakeoil toothpaste.

So far, so good — but then, even when he left for college, DeMoss kept the project alive. PermaSmile grew up, diversified, hired top-shelf management talent, and issued a drumbeat of regulatory filings and press releases.

No money changed hands; no investors were duped. Marc just enjoyed seeding the Internet with convincing fake stuff. It was all very amusing, if subtly creepy.

Today's news of fake-real McCain advisors triggered an enjoyable jolt of nostalgia. DeMoss, we now see, was just a little ahead of his time....

When Mr. Giuliani dropped out of the presidential race, the character morphed into [Martin] Eisenstadt, a parody of a blowhard cable news commentator.

Mr. Gorlin said they chose the name because “all the neocons in the Bush administration had Jewish last names and Christian first names.”

Eisenstadt became an adviser to Senator John McCain and got a blog, updated occasionally with comments claiming insider knowledge, and other bloggers began quoting and linking to it. It mixed weird-but-true items with false ones that were plausible, if just barely.

The inventors fabricated the Harding Institute, named for one of the most scorned presidents, and made Eisenstadt a senior fellow....

—A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence, NYT

Today is launch day for Open Produce, a local-source produce startup in my erstwhile hometown, Chicago's Hyde Park.

I can't imagine offhand when commentators last would've declared it a particularly auspicious time to start a small retail business. 1965? Clearly, undertaking it all — the tight credit, the rising food prices, the potential lead poisoning — takes cojones grande. Fortunately, these, joined with above-average intellect and a noble commitment to sustainability, are amply extant.

It couldn't have happened to neater guys, either: Steven Lucy was a fixture chez 5237 and notably once saved Crime Fiction's ass in the Doc projection booth; I met Andrew Cone on the set of a (fake) porn, in which he played the pool repairman opposite David Bashwiner's greased-up lifeguard.

Opinionated as I am about Hyde Park grocery options, and having had my own brushes with launching a company, I have all the pride and respect in the world for these guys.

Knockemdead.

don't do this

If he's coming, I have regulatory veto over his wardrobe. Socks with loafers and shorts says "kidnap me."

—Kirsten, on foreign travel with Jesse Friedman

Crime Fiction's Jack Classick stars in a combination sports thriller and passion play.


Previously:
Meawhile, in Stockwater...

10:13:16 AM Kirsten Boyd Johnson (GTalk): Put the xxxxxxxxx festival on your resume.
10:13:33 AM JEC (GTalk): Grumble. It was a stupid festival.
10:13:39 AM Kirsten Boyd Johnson (GTalk): But a great party.
10:13:49 AM JEC (GTalk): Um, what? We spent the whole time seething.
10:13:59 AM Kirsten Boyd Johnson (GTalk): I had a great time. We seethe for fun.
10:14:03 AM JEC (GTalk): That's true, we do.

In the same spirit of tribute as S. Tice's f—ing awesome Crime Fiction artwork, here's some kid who Saul Bassified the opening sequence to Star Wars. I'm a big fan.

Crime Fiction's Dan Bakkedahl — in some less-popular cable show on the teevee, I hear, but still primarily famous for his roles in Crime Fiction, obviously — expounds on multiracial cuisine and shills a bitchin' recipe for hobo stew.

A Practical Guide to Racism hits bookstores January 15.

I'm always the last person to hear about these things...



Back in November, Courtney Reed, aka Candy #1 Candy #2 one of the Candies, got her picture in the newspaper after getting her nails did. Bonus points to the Timer Outer for leaking her age — which would seem to mean that during Crime Fiction production she was, like, fourteen.



Time Out New York: Courtney Reed, 23

Q: Chicago is home to nearly three-dozen film festivals each year, including the Chicago International Film Festival held every October, and GenArt's new Chicago event held midsummer. Can you interpret anything about the vitality of Chicago's filmmaking scene from events like these?

["D", a New York-based photographer]: It means nothing. … It’s the chance for every wannabe filmmaker out there who somehow ended up in cinema criticism or festival administration to rub elbows with the people who actually got it done somehow. The fact that it’s not a premiere or a high-profile screening and that the director and actors didn't even show up for the screening — well, there’s always next year, when the festival will be bigger and more important and more stars will show up. But in the meantime, we’re excited to death that the line producer of Music and Lyrics showed up to answer our questions about Hugh Grant’s favorite on-set foods, and would you please tell him how much we love his work and would love to have him in Chicago?…

I have a bone to pick with people who think Chicago deserves a place on the national film map. It doesn’t.

—an unpublished sociology manuscript about Chicago's filmmaking scene

Okay, this is just getting tacky.


held every single day in your imagination

the better writer


Oh, we're so blasé now, we never bothered even to make a laurel or, you know, show up. (Finals week and a snowstorm also played a part…) But earlier tonight at the Midwest Independent Film Festival Best of the Midwest Awards, Christian Stolte beat out Jeff Garlin and our own Jon Eliot, among others, to take home Best Actor for his role as Don Lee Boone in Crime Fiction. Hell yes.

Event photos forthcoming, once someone else posts 'em for me to steal.

2005: yet more officially, the best summer vacation ever.


From: Kirsten Boyd Johnson <kmbj@xxxxxxxxxx.com>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 23:23
To: jec@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.com
Subject: (no subject)

word on the street is that stolte won best actor at the MIFF for DLB in CF.

From: Jonathan E Cowperthwait <jec@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.com>
Date: Dec 5, 2007 00:19
To: Kirsten Boyd Johnson <kmbj@xxxxxxxxxx.com>
Subject: (no subject)

OMFG LOL.

A word on travel blog posts:

• timely
• lengthy

Pick at least one.

In other words, if you're going to wait a month to share details of a London reunion with Crime Fiction's Yasmin Al-Naib, can you please do better than phoning in a goddamn haiku?


And then, while Johnson at least sent pictures, not one was shirtless.

FAIL.


From: Kirsten Boyd Johnson <kmbj@xxxxxxxxxx.com>
Date: Oct 18, 2007 23:42
To: jec@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com
Subject: For the blog re: visit to London

Yas is summer sun the hottest woman ever with lips full of fire

INT. HYDE PARK APARTMENT - DAY The apartment is slightly too clean. Magazines on the coffee table are stacked neatly, the desk bears only a laptop computer, organizer tray, and two pens. Every lamp is on and precisely dimmed. Nobody could possibly actually live here. COWPERTHWAIT and a POTENTIAL TENANT enter.                       COWPERTHWAIT           ... and there's also more storage space           in the closet here...                 (demonstrating)           board games. Electronic, uh, stuff.           Linens for the sofa bed there...                       POTENTIAL TENANT                 (noticing a framed poster on                  the wall)           "Crime Fiction"?                       COWP           Hmm? Yeah.                       P.T.           I know about that.                 (approaching the wall to look                  more closely)           Yeah. I know the people who made that           movie!                       COWP           You do!                       P.T.           Yeah. How did you get a poster?                       COWP                 (dismissive hand-wave)           Through one of the, uh, producers.                       P.T.           Well, that's cool.

“Aliens” demonstrated that a good idea — and a female action hero in minimal underwear — had legs.

Though few sequels since have fulfilled that promise, even the worst usually manage to break even. In the uncertain world of Hollywood, this is a success; and with marketing budgets often rivaling production costs, it’s easy to see why studios cleave to projects that have established brand awareness....

Harder to fathom is why audiences return. Fans who tolerate the repetitiveness and ideological bankruptcy of the “Rush Hour” franchise, for example, may be testaments to the power of hope and a need for familiarity at a time when the Iraq war continues unabated, pensions and polar ice disappear, and Al Qaeda videos enjoy wider distribution than Sundance winners.

—Sequels: Stay Fresh or Die Hard, NYT


Yes, yes, yes. This is exactly what I've been saying. That's why I propose Crime Fiction 3: Tennis With Cooper.

James Cooper was shot by Don Lee Boone in the climax to Crime Fiction, but he survived. Having hastily arranged a royalty split with Komissarzhevsky, a bloodied Cooper was declared dead then secretly stowed at the exurban farmhouse of a former informant, who led him through a painful recovery by teaching him tennis and leading him in Bible study.

It is eight years later. Dead to the state and warned by Boone to stay the hell out of Chicago, Cooper has been drifting west, scraping by as an occasional tennis instructor, operating under a number of biblical pseudonyms. There are no traces of his former life, except fading scars on his hands and the side of his torso. Everything he owns fits on the back of a yellow mini-bike.

Cooper has finally reached the Pacific Ocean. Stockwater, California: home of an annual doubles tennis tournament, and his chance at resurrection.

... Am I right, people?