Want to see if anyone can spot the unbelievably cheap move a restaurant pulled tonight. They offered a free chicken sandwich with $15. I ordered for that. They said they had no bread and offered free fries or corn instead. You…know I know starch is way cheaper than protein?

Does anyone else do this? You know you’ve lost the spark to finish a draft but you can’t leave it open. So you write a paragraph to lay out the end so at least it’s sealed up when you reread it

2001 would’ve been mostly a year of discussing how everything was on hold in the arts until October it felt like. I was going to tear into the sexist comedy trends. Note how everyone chased American Pie. How bad big budget movies were that year until the end and AI aside.

I decided today I won’t be blogging on 2001. My heart is out of it. I’ve not even shared my last few 2000 columns. I don’t feel the joy.

I hate that I can’t look you in the eye and say I don’t still want to do a superhero romcom. Like I feel like I’ve proven to myself I can’t write one. I thought I got it out of my system. But I still feel a part of me that wants to try a 1940s screwball superhero take.

Any other writers keep a scratch pad script. Like it’s not meant to be a passion script but when you burn out on another idea you go in and play with it?

I am at a loss as to how the sentient embodiment of fine Jennifer Aniston overshadowed two comic atom bombs.

This is an interesting subtrope of Hollywood Homely. One of the actors gets PR the others don’t. I didn’t know until I watched Bates Motel the show actually focused pretty evenly on the two girls Norman was into because one got way more hype. Not the one still working either.

Autistic people will shop at Walmart

I abide by this rule. I describe personality. Not looks.

Jim Carrey introduced Taylor Momsen at the rock and roll hall of fame tonight. Wow.

THIS is a great point! How often it fails

We want this movie to pay! This is THE answer I'm getting! Good

She has never looked better

At least they lampshaded it a lot but yeah

A further rule: if there are two women cast as competitors and both are blonde, one of them is evil and therefore pitched as less beautiful because goodness is beauty.

A rule: if there are two woman, and one is pitched as hot and the other as nerdy/homely, the former is blonde (maybe strawberry blonde/ginger) and the latter brunette.

Neuteronormative patriarchal Hollywood tried to tell us she wasn't a Baddie and she had to be fixed.

And they do not a goddamn thing to her looks. She’s full on movie star Stone.

Yeah this was an insult to a great book

I will note there are actually tons of male riffs on this. The nerd with a 6 pack. Paul Rudd in Clueless is this trope

Even Billy Wilder could blow this.

I love that the plot hinges on this.

I feel like we forget this. Coppola cast his actual honest to god sister in The Godfather. We forget because she’s Oscar nominated

It was kinda great seeing her be stylish in Barbie

thought of a few more: Babs in WHAT'S UP DOC? Elaine May in A NEW LEAF Jeannie Berlin in THE HEARTBREAK KID *and* Malin Akerman in the (underrated) remake

Dorothy Malone as the unnamed book shop clerk in THE BIG SLEEP. Even in glasses and plain shopgirl clothes is easily just as much a knockout as Lauren Bacall.

Just about every Audrey Hepburn movie where they insisted that she was plain looking or frumpy (My Fair Lady before her reeducation, for example). It’s Audrey freakin’ Hepburn; she always looked amazing

RACHEL LEIGH COOK pre-makeover in SHE'S ALL THAT is the gold standard.

Heard it put like this. “So there’s this hot chick. And she gets hotter”

Here’s why Midge works though. This one time that’s the point. Scottie is explicitly an idiot. He’s blind. But it’s the one time it was okay.

Hahaha no

And you know what’s crazy? She played this THREE OTHER TIMES AT LEAST.

Yeah the former case is John Hughes’ misogyny coming out so bad Some Kind of Wonderful plays as a film length apology. And we will maybe never get a book accurate Carrie White. We sure as hell didn’t with Chloe Grace Moretz!

I mean Janeane in TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS is kinda the gold standard for this

What’s your all time favorite Hollywood Homely fail? When a woman is meant to be unattractive but she’s gorgeous. Thinking of how Safety Not Guaranteed has a key moment where a man’s ex is in the script old and no longer attractive and she’s a knockout who the movie still plays as old.

Big weekend for tie-ins: Steve and S.D. Perry needed a name for the Predator species for the Alien vs Predator novel Prey. They chose Yautja. It was NEVER the official name. Until now. It is officially canon in the movies as of Badlands.

Trap is about a father trying to understand his daughter’s hobbies while trying to indulge his own addictions. It was made by a father trying to support his daughter’s music career while making a movie scratching his own itches. M. Night Shyamalan is a god.

Do I listen to tech bros who tell me it’s magic or the writer of my favorite episodes of my favorite shows? Hmmm

So…most obvious GBBO finale ever? It never was close. Fun fact: I started following the winner for an obsession of a friend’s and I never got to tell them they left.

I genuinely love that I feel like I have said some of the most insane things I’ve ever publicly vocalized today. And then my friends remind me I’m too anodyne for that. I’m not boring but I’m not weird. I just have no filter.

It’s impossible to understate how much Deadpool and Wolverine exploded when he was onscreen as a bureaucrat quietly trying to cause an apocalypse

This song is so nice and chill it’s almost better to NOT know who wrote and performed it because it’s kind of an insane swerve. m.youtube.com/watch?v=EoVQ...

I kinda love that we have two hyped movies and I’m seeing just a wall of love for both.

Basic but there is only one king

So it sounds like Predator: Badlands is awesome and amazing. And it occurs to me Dan Trachtenberg made the only Black Mirror episode I don’t passionately hate now. I think he might be good. Hyped to see it. Love that he’s found a franchise he can run all his own.

Netflix must be shocked to have a Grammy nomination this morning. I thought it was next year they’d campaign for Golden. But yeah it’s going up up up this year.

Writers are so afraid of writing bad art they’ll write nothing which is so much worse.

I like this new idea...but I stopped myself from quitting my current one. Yes, it's way too long. But I need to write a really long script. I'm panicking because I won't ankle and turn in a fast 95 pages. (Page 83 and two giant sequences to go.)

Grew up on Gardner. Love his Bond