Well, as Mason himself said yesterday, “things never seem to be going anywhere”… and no where has that statement ever been more true than in today’s strip.
Mason closed out yesterday’s strip implying that something had happened with the production of the Lisa’s Story movie he has allegedly been pitching around “this town”*, but we gain not a single bit of information on that today. Instead, Mason bemoans being an attractive, successful, and in-demand actor as a fate worse than death. Being an action hero was once his goal, by the way, and now he’s mad that he’s in demand for the kinds of roles he apparently had been pursuing? Perhaps he’d like to go back to starring in whatever Dino Deer was supposed to be or working on second-tier cable TV projects that never get finished…
* While I am sure there are folks in Hollywood who refer to it as “this town” and manage not to sound insufferable and pompous, Mason is not one of those people. I’m reminded of the use of “this town” in SCTV’s Sammy Maudlin Show sketches, written and recited by people who understood folks like Mason (and TB) who play the put-upon auteur for the bags of wind that they typically are.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Is there anything worse than a one-panel vertical strip? So many words to say absolutely nothing at all. Mason…who has already been cast as Les Moore in a different LS adaptation, mind you…is afraid of being “typecast” as a global action hero superstar, which happens ALL THE TIME in “Hollywood”.
“No, I’m not doing “Starbuck Jones 3 – Fall Of The Phlegm Tortoises”, I want to spread my wings and play someone different, like a simpering whiny wordplay-prone geek who everyone hates. Sort of like how Joaquin did, but only lamer, more boring and far more maudlin. I have enough yachts, dammit!”
OK Tom, whatever you say. Look at him, turning Mason into another martyr for the cause, another pure soul to help Les shoulder the burden of Lisa’s ever-burning flame. It’s f*cking nauseating. He gives up way, way too much about himself via this strip if you ask me.
The one panel strip. When your artist kinda hates you…and you kinda hate him.
So he’s going to break the mold and play Lisa? Good for him, umm, “It’s a real real fine thing you’re doing Anthony. Mighty fine.”
They are retconning Lisa as a transgendered person.
That might actually make this drivel interesting.
Especially if the reassignment surgery is part of the story… and the director is a devotee of “the Method.”
Whatevs, Jarre, but playing a whiny, insecure, self-absorbed putz isn’t a stretch for you.
Poor Mason! He reaches for Richard Burton but winds up with a handful of Pee Wee Herman.
Calling it now. “More Than A Superhero” will be the title of the self-published collection of Mason Jarre strips Batiuk releases.
You haven’t been typecast, Mason. You’ve only appeared in one movie in the last seven years. You’ve hardly been “cast” at all.
Technically he’s “typecast” as Les Moore, which is just too horrible to even contemplate.
After all, he was cast to play Creepy Les in “Lust for Lisa.” When the casting director was asked to find a pompous, self-absorbed bore, Mason Jarr was his only choice.
I don’t get why JarrHead is pleading with Less, what the frick kind of control does the writer have over casting? Or how can Jarrhead demand he take the lead when the rights to the book haven’t even been bought yet? It’s unbelievable just how little Batty understands anything.
Seriously, he flew them all the way to California for this?
It’s STORYTELLING!!!
Did TB take that Mark Twain quote to heart when he repeated Dinkle gags every year for 3 decades?
If Act I was Tom Batiuk standing on his head, Act III is him slightly raising one toe.
He’d be a good fit to play Les. He thinks that he matters more than he does and he thinks that people are waiting to see the oh-so-ordinary story of a married couple not dealing at all well with the wife’s lingering death.
This raises the second point I have with the failed awards bait we’re talking about: it’s so bloody generic, it hurts. Loads of people can’t handle someone else’s death and get warped into worse people.
“I’m tired of being typecast as a handsome guy; that’s why I got a nose enlargement.”
Notice that absolutely zero consideration is being given to the role of Lisa.
What does she have to do with all of this?
That’s better than considering Marianne Winters.
Give it time…
Hey Batiuk? Those readers who came here when you lied to the New York Times? They’re all gone. You can stop pushing the Lisa crap, it’s not going to give you an award.
Why does Masone Jarre have a Scapegoat horn on the sideboard?
“What I’m trying to say is, the studio believes that having me play a whiny loser like you, Less, would damage their investment in my ‘Starsux Jones’ character. So they’ve invoked a clause in my contract and forbidden me to appear in ‘Lust for Lisa–the Reboot’ until after the next three ‘Starsux’ films are done. That should be, oh, around April of 2022.” (consults calendar) “Which for some reason is marked as ‘one week after the world ends’.”
“Let me level with you, Masone. I don’t think you have the acting chops to play me.”
What do chops have to do with this? Masone Jarre is pure ham, right down to the bone.
“Let me level with you, Masone. I don’t think you have the acting chops to play me.”
Is he supposed to be, like, Chris Evans, who’s been pretty vocal about being done starving himself in superhero movies and who’s been doing pretty okay getting non-genre work although his Marvel movies made him a household name? Mason has an agent, yes? Maybe he needs to call Chris Evans’s.
“ah thank you Mr. ah…Jarre yes? No you don’t get the part thank you for coming. Next!”
Lord what a wanker – listen Marson if you want to do ‘serious’ drama you could always try life theater there is a bit in LA or go somewhere else. But no you sit in your beachfront house bitching about your success and waiting for yet something else to be handed to you (the sickening thing is that in FW as he is one of the golden children it will)
and for the quote – well hasn’t the Author ever since the noticed him after he killed off Lisa he’s been spending a lot of time standing on gis head ‘saying look! look! I’m standing on my head!’ and the rest of the world is like “yes yes we see it , very nice” while not really paying any attention. It would be sad but he’s done this himself a LOT.
Wanker.
Mason couldn’t sell Lisa’s Story as a movie for theaters, since there’s no money to back him in a serious movie. So he’s getting Netflix to buy it as a tv miniseries. “Netflix Les!” Les: “Netflix? never heard of it, we only even have basic cable in Westview”
Say…where’s Cindy in all this? Shouldn’t she be here? If not, why is Cayla here?
She was seated on the deck, an insignificant presence in Mason Jarr’s insignificant life. Cayla could handle her lines for her, if Batiuk remembered to give her any.