Tag: Hollywood

Les Do Lunch

SoSFDavidO here for the next two weeks, takin’ the reins! It looks like we’re back in Hollywood for more insights into the makings of a TV movie about cancer in Today’s strip.

“Grab a bite to eat”?! People in California “Do lunch”. Trust me, I know, I live there and it annoys the heck out of my Midwestern family to the point of me consciously trying not to say it but it’s impossible.

I can’t imagine what Mason could possibly have to talk to Les about other than: “I just thought I should spend time with a world-class putz as yourself before I attempted to play one.”

Reneger Please

A HREF
June 30, 2014 at 11:47 am
“If you take their money, it’s their turn to tell the story”. Michael Connelly on asking whether it bothered him about the changes that occurred when his novel Blood Work was adapted to a movie.

I think it was a polite way of saying “I cried all the way to the bank”.

If this is not Les at his most pathetic and unlikable, then I don’t want to be around when he finally sinks to that nadir. When he insisted on writing his screenplay, his agent clearly informed him that the studio would likely rewrite it. “Hollywood” sent him a huge check and then patiently waited a year while Les struggled to turn in a screenplay. They flew him (and his imaginary cat) to Hollywood, booked him a fancy hotel room, and fed him tandoori chicken. Feeling thus “betrayed” and alone, Les calls Cayla back in Ohio. But rather than depict honest human conversation between husband and wife (during which maybe Cayla tells Les to get over himself), Batiuk treats us to another obscure comic “tribute’ which equates Les’ Hollywood experience with being dropped into a pit of vipers. My favorite part is how Cowboy Les, even in this dire predicament, still has this “why me?” look on his face.

The original (more colorful) Rawhide Kid cover

Rawhide Kid on Wikipedia

I’m Just Mad about Saffron

I would’ve bet anything that my Google skills would uncover a real-world “Saffron Indian Restaurant” in Hollywood (or even better, somewhere in Ohio’s Western Reserve) that served as a model for the restaurant in today’s strip, but I came up empty handed. Meanwhile, Les has yet another of his Hollywood illusions shattered when he discovers that the “script doctor” in whose hands his masterpiece wound up moonlights as a waiter.

Testing Credibility

★ ★ ★ ★ ★  Happy Independence Day from SoSF! ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

 

Charles
July 2, 2014 at 11:06 pm
…You don’t run a script or treatment past a test audience. That would be absurd…Never mind that no one making a crappy little movie to fill the Tuesday night slot on a basic cable channel would bother running it past test audiences.

This Hollywood arc has veered so far from reality to the point where even Les begins to suspect that it’s all bullshit. And he’s right: the “testing” seems to have been conducted by a succession of random people, each person having even less connection to the industry than the last. And hotshot “script doctor” Ken Casey is totally on board with that.

beckoningchasm
July 2, 2014 at 10:52 pm
…I find it interesting that Tom Batiuk gets worked up into high dudgeon when someone dares alter Lisa’s Story or question the value of comic books, but he simply can’t be bothered to respect the details in any other sphere (making films, as one example in a long list).

Yes, filmmaking ranks on par with or below the ability to make “a wicked tandoori chicken.”

Apparently.