My wife is out of town on business for the week, so I'm sitting here watching Ishtar. Like spending the evening with an old friend.
She likes Ishtar, too, she just doesn't like to watch it as often as I do
I noticed (how could I not) that they are doing some filming in my neighborhood.
I decided to take another dog walk in that part of the neighborhood today, figuring that I might be able to get a job acting in a crowd scene or something, perhaps reprising my role of "Hippie Father (with baby)" in the smash movie sensation, Heart Like A Wheel" starring Bonnie Bedelia as Shirley "Cha Cha" Muldowney, the drag racing sensation. This promising start of a career in film was tragically cut short when the scene I was in didn't make the final cut of the movie.
I had a very nice chat with a very nice young man, who has an entry level position in the director's guild. This means they gave him an orange reflective vest and a sign that says "stop" on one side and "slow" on the other. In the course of our short conversation, he explained that I couldn't walk any further because they were shooting, I said I thought any project they were working on would be enhanced if I walked through the scene with my dogs... he agreed, saying I had fine dogs, but he didn't think the film people would appreciate the hassle of drawing up release documents, arranging to pay me, etc.
While I asked him questions about the production, I managed to get him into trouble twice... once when we were sitting on the curb behind a car, chatting, and they hailed him, trying to find out if he was sleeping in the bushes... and then later when a car sped right past his post as we were deep in discussion about the Canadian film industry... he took a couple of steps towards the retreating car, waving his sign ineffectually over his head... I felt awful, so I apologized and took my leave. But I like to feel like we became pretty close friends (even though my psycho dog lunged at him snarling for no reason at all right after he got the call from his superiors -- "she must have felt my fear" he said), and I learned quite a bit about the show.
The are filming a 13-part TV series called "Fear Itself." They've been shooting in locations all over town. The biggest star to come in for the series is Eric Roberts. I'd like to point out to Klaus that this improves my Julia Roberts Number to 3:
me - the guy with an orange vest - Eric Roberts - Julia Roberts
My previous Julia Roberts Number was 4:
me - Andras Jones - Jennifer Jason Leigh - Kevin Bacon - Julia Roberts
The information on the IMDB is kind of incomplete, they don't mention Eric Roberts part at all - the only one they do is a crack up: 
Overview
Plot:
A television series broken down into 13 separate 60-minute films from premiere horror writers and directors. NewsDesk:
Official Darren Bousman Blog Launched: New 'Repo!' Image, 'Saw V' Talk! (From Bloody-Disgusting.
(7 articles)
TV: A Visit to the Edit Bay For Darren Bousman's 'Fear Itself' (From Bloody-Disgusting.
Cast
(Series Cast [1])
Marie Zydek ... Female Body / ... (2 episodes, 2008) Hey, Klaus, you are pretty active on IMDB, I think you should create a character page for Female Body, surely one of the most important roles in the entire horror genre...
The topics on the message board suggest that early episodes may not have been well received:
Message Boards
Discuss this title with other users on IMDb message board for "Fear Itself" (2008)
Oh my god, it should be easy to realize my dream of forming a band with guys named Matt Love, I can now contact dozens and dozens of them.
But look at this poor sap (highlighting added):
... however tangential, Google news alert brought me this:
Strouse Waltz
Jewish Exponent - Philadelphia,
Sure there is tar -- "Ishtar" is his to shoulder even if the music he wrote soars as the film sinks -- on an otherwise unblemished bio of such musicals as ...
http://www.jewishex
Yes, I agree with Pat. I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more!
I can go through days, weeks, even months at a time and never hear from whitey. When will it be that a white man is allowed to speak?
To become president, or a billionaire software pirate, or governor or mayor, or doctor or lawyer?
I am so tired of never hearing from whitey that I can't see straight.
Finally, a white man that is willing to tell it like it is. This is as good as Hagee saying Jews should thank the Nazis for delivering them into the promised land. Now there's another great white man. so now there are two great white men.
Go Pat! Go Nixon! Go Hagee! Go Hitler! Go Whitey! Go America!
A Brief for Whitey
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America .
Fair enough.But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation.White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.
This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions,grievances and demands heard.And among them are these:
First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks.It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.
Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.
Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacksthan white Americans.Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.
Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks -- with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants.
Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to supp ort soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.
We hear the grievances.Where is the gratitude?
Barack talks about new 'ladders of opportunity' for blacks.
Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown , and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for 'deserving' white kids.
Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America ?Is it really white America 's fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent ?
Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost,a failure of the black community itself?
As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence.Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?
Is Barack aware t hat black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?
We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley,the Duke rape case and Jena .And all turned out to be hoaxes.But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.
Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.
Some people would rather have nothing at all than settle for less. www.themoondancesal
ronkal5355 <ronkal1976@verizon.
I have been a fan of the movie "Ishtar" ever since I saw it an the
theater in 1987. I think it is a great movie that should be released
on DVD along with the soundtrack. If enough people voice their opinion
on the movie maybe, this will happen.
I am in the process of making an "Ishtar" website. I will keep
everyone informed as to its progress. It should be up and running in a
few weeks.
Ron K.
I have been a fan of the movie "Ishtar" ever since I saw it an the
theater in 1987. I think it is a great movie that should be released
on DVD along with the soundtrack. If enough people voice their opinion
on the movie maybe, this will happen.
I am in the process of making an "Ishtar" website. I will keep
everyone informed as to its progress. It should be up and running in a
few weeks.
Ron K.
Anne’s comments on Pootie Tang (one of my favorites, too) reminded me of the unsung black comedy (AMG actually lists it as “Anarchic Comedy”), “Shakes The Clown”. Very dark, but incredibly funny. Bobcat Goldthwait wrote and directed it; Julie Brown stars, and Robin Williams, Adam Sandler and Florence Henderson make wonderful appearances. It contains one of my top 3 lines in any movie ever (which I won’t print here ; ) -- spoken by the brilliant LaWanda Page.
Here’s a great clip: http://www.videodet
dave
This is fun!
My wife and I really enjoyed Sky High, which I don't think did very
well in the box office. Good casting of cult movie fave Bruce
Campbell, Linda Carter is good in it - it's a teen superhero movie
that adults can like (at least adults like my wife and me) It has a
good moral for the kids about being true to yourself and your
principles.
Mystery Men, another superhero movie, was a zeroes to heroes movie
like Ishtar with a remarkable cast, and it also bombed, possibly also
sunk (at least in part) by a hostile relationship between the director
and the studio. I'd love to see a Mystery Men sequel, but that ain't
never gonna happen.
I have wanted to check out the Dewey Cox story for a while, it sound
intriguing, I'll be sure to do that.
I've never heard of Pootie Tang - I'll check that out too.
On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 5:10 PM, Anne Dodge <annedodge@yahoo.
> Hey Dave and everyone,
>
> Since you asked, I have very strong feelings (that resemble my feelings
> about Ishtar) about the movie Pootie Tang. It's a much sillier movie and a
> lot of the humor is grounded in the ridiculousness of the characters, but it
> gives me that same kind of happy feeling and the same sense of regret that
> the movie was basically forgotten. Plus, I think Chris Rock and Wanda Sykes
> are some of the funniest people out there in movies right now. So I don't
> know - maybe this is way out of left field - but it's worth a try if you
> feel like something completely different.
>
> Happy Memorial Day everyone!
>
> - Anne.
>
>
>
