Shelf-Promotion

Just when we thought Awards Season was over, we get another trophy. We've won an Angel Award for the Philadelphia episode of our AMC series Movies That Shook the World. So we'll be displaying that right next to the AVN award we received this year for Best Mainstream Adult Release for Inside Deep Throat.. Btw, the Angel award weighs as much as an Oscar and means just as much to us.

Must-See TV

Of course, we won't get a GLAAD nomination for featuring Pink Flamingos as one of the films in our AMC series Movies That Shook the World but, hey, who's complaining. Look what Michael Musto has to say about it in his Village Voice column:

Well, I think kids should watch Waters's Pink Flamingos on their computers; it's an official American classic now that AMC's Movies That Shook the World series honored it with a very rich half-hour of the gayest TV since The Paul Lynde Halloween Special.

Speaking of Musty, does anyone know if GLAAD ever gave him his much-deserved LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD – or does that just go to the gay-friendly straights?

– Randy Barbato

Bareback Mountain (Not What You Think)

"An unflinching look at the love shared between a man and his horse," says the blurb. Previously thought by most people to be the inevitable name for the porno version of the Heath-Gyllenhaal gay-cowboy film, Bareback Mountain instead has been applied to a more, um, bestial story. (Watch the trailer)

Stalking Stuffer

Dear Karina,

I wanted to take a moment out of my day to send you a big THANK YOU for letting me win your bet.

I know that yesterday, you mentioned on your Cinematical blog about our Movies That Shook the World episode on The Blair Witch Project, which airs tonight at 10:00PM on AMC. Although we interviewed you extensively for your thoughts on what was one of the top grossing films of all times that also revolutionized the power of independent filmmaking, you put $50 of your own hard-earned cash on the table, saying that we probably ignored everything you said except for that funny bit you mentioned about that episode in Dawson's Creek where Dawson and Joey go down to investigate a ghost in the woods with his camera (OMG, best show ever!!! I'm so glad Joey ended up with Pacey).

Never one to lose the chance for some extra cash, I just had to check the final cut and, don't worry, you appear not once – or twice – but three times throughout the episode (with no mention of James Van Der Beek). So congratulations!

I accept PayPal, personal checks, or carefully concealed cash via regular mail.

BFN,
Moye Ishimoto

PS. We should totally get dinner sometime!

Brotherly Love

OK. Before we post anything, we should begin the day by saying that we were well aware that yesterday was World AIDS Day all day, but we had something special planned that fell through at the 11th hour, more's the pity. However, it really should be World AIDS Day every day, don't you think? And it must still be yesterday somewhere in the world, what with all those wacky time zones.

That said, we have this gorgeous, poignant clip today from tonight's Movies That Shook the World, the WOW series airing on AMC. The episode concerns Philadelphia, Jonathan Demme's groundbreaking AIDS drama, and was beautifully produced by Jim Eckels and narrated by Jeff Goldblum. Supervising producer of the entire series was Gabriel Rotello, author of the acclaimed book, Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men. We just looked at the clip again and, short as it is, we got goosebumps. Again. (Watch here)

World-Shaking Premiere

The WOW series produced by Gabriel Rotello, Movies That Shook the World, premieres tonight at 10 on AMC with a probing look at the bunny-boiling, stalking-psycho gestalt of Fatal Attraction, featuring interviews with stars Glenn Close, Anne Archer, and Michael Douglas; producer Sherry Lansing; and director Adrian Lyne. "It's a series everyone should see," said the Hollywood Reporter calling it "compelling" and "hugely satisfying."

The opening installment tracks 1987's blockbuster hit "Fatal Attraction." Every stone is turned; every possible aspect of the movie's huge cultural impact shows up here. Sherry Lansing, who produced the megahit with Stanley Jaffe, talks on-camera about how they saw a rather mild English movie about a woman who gets revenge on her married weekend lover by calling his wife in the end. How did this fairly ordinary story get turned into a cautionary tale galore/horror flick with a crazed Glenn Close going after (heroic) Michael Douglas?

Fenton Bailey would like to toot the very sizable horn of the series' supervising producer Gabriel Rotello.

Nathalie Aaron and Jim Eckels and the entire team on Movies That Shook The World have done a fabulous job, but the man behind the magic of the entire series, in addition to several individual episodes, is in fact Gabriel Rotello. Gabriel has famously produced and co-directed Hidden Fuhrer: Debating The Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality, co-produced Monica In Black and White, associate produced The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Party Monster, the Shockumentary. He has also produced several other WOW series such as Super Secret Movie Rules on Vh1, The Reality of Reality on Bravo and Hollywood Fashion Machine, which was his first gig with AMC.

Chickens That Shook the World of Wonder

We are clearly losing our minds stopping at nothing in our continuing efforts to make Movies That Shook the World the most visually arresting documentary series ever produced, in any medium, anywhere on the planet. For our episode on Pink Flamingos, for example, our poultry-loving intrepid producers decided that the best way to get around the obscenity laws illustrate Edith the Egg Lady was to hire a few chickens from the Spotlight around the corner a chicken wrangler in Long Beach and shoot them pooping and making a mess clucking happily away in front of a lovely pink backdrop.

Here, then, are the pathetic horrors Chickles and Chuckles, brought to us by a bizarre hillbilly highly professional animal trainer with no visible teeth an amazingly "country” attitude you don’t usually see outside movies like Deliverance on Hollywood Boulevard.

One little thing Ma Kettle this lovely trainer forgot to tell us, however. Chickles – or perhaps it was Chuckles – was pregnant. And so, before our horrified, disgusted wondrous eyes, Chickles – or perhaps it was Chuckles – squatted down and laid the most appalling…THING the most amazing…EGG!

Assholes Wags were quick to point out that it was not the first egg laid at World of Wonder and it probably won’t be the last.

– Gabriel Rotello

Movies That Shook the World begins airing September 8 on AMC.

James Ransone

Actor in Ken Park, A Dirty Shame, and Spike Lee's upcoming Inside Man. Ransone talks about John Waters's Pink Flamingos for WOW's Movies That Shook the World

1. Describe yourself as if you were writing a personals ad.
Skinny white tattooed male seeks girl with aceribic wit, must have fine taste in footwear and stationery. Will dance with you reluctantly. Actresses need not apply.

2. If you had two tickets to paradise, where would you go and who would you take?
Man, I've been waiting so long. Eddie Money, and we'd go wherever the fuck he wanted. I'm too big of a pussy to say the name of the girl who I want to go to Costa Rica with.

3. Who plays you in the movie?
I'm not sure if that actor has been born yet, so the answer is in hypotheticals, probably Steve Buscemi and Ashton Kutcher's love child.

4. Who do you go to for advice?
My dad. Then when I realize I don't want advice I could give myself, I usually go to Bobby Lurie (musician, producer) or John Waters. They have lives, so when they're not available I talk to my best friend, Jason Dill.

5. What makes you cry?
Everything except the stuff that matters, uh, that shit makes me stronger.

Bonus: Toilet paper roll - over or under?
Here come the tears.

Two Things

Firstly, we learn today from Cinematical – not from WOW itself, where we work – that Jeff Goldblum will be narrating WOW's AMC series Movies That Shook the World. Eavesdropping, we'd heard that the eccentric and velvety-voiced actor was in the running, but we had to find out from strangers that it was a lock. The first 13 episodes begin airing on September 9 at 10PM. (See also Yahoo)

The other bit of news, also from Cinematical, is that Angelina Jolie, who just made it official that she loves and wants to marry Brad Pitt, has been cast in Roger Zemeckis's Beowulf, which is not only torture to read, it will very likely be torture to sit through as a movie, since Zemeckis will be using that performance-capture technique that made his The Polar Express so annoying.

Acid Queens

World of Wonder's Jim Eckels recently interviewed acclaimed Broadway scribes Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, whose fabulous Tony-winning musical Hairspray is based on John Waters’ movie of the same name. We wanted to ask them about Waters’ other seminal earth-shaker, Pink Flamingos, for our upcoming series Movies That Shook the World. We particularly wondered how they felt as tender young homosexuals encountering the freak-infused, poopy vision of John Waters for the first time.

Tell me about seeing Pink Flamingos for the first time. What did you think?

Scott Wittman: It was the first time I took acid and I went to the Elgin Theatre downtown on 18th Street in Manhattan and I saw the midnight show. Like the third week it came out. So that was 1972.

Marc Shaiman: I was still in elementary school. That was '72?

Wittman: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 'Cause I remember it was the year of Liza with a Z and Pink Flamingos. Those are the two events I remember from that year.

The Devil You Say

I’ve always been creeped out by Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells music that was used for The Exorcist soundtrack. When we interviewed him for our new series Movies That Shook the World, we asked about his inspiration. Could it have been…SATAN?

"I used to get panic attacks, phobias, I couldn't stand closed spaces," he told us. "I couldn't stand heights. I couldn't travel by airplane because I'd get claustrophobia. I was disturbed and I even felt I was possessed. You know, I felt POSSESSED. And that came out in Tubular Bells." But does he actually believe in possession and exorcism? "My mother was a very staunch Catholic. She had some psychological problems which were unfortunately very serious. At one point when I was growing up she was hearing voices and the local priest came from the church and did an exorcism at my house to try and get rid of this spirit that was bothering my mother."

– Gabriel Rotello

Movies That Shook the World begins September 8 at 10PM on AMC.

Little Joe Never Once Gave It Away

It’s not everyday that you meet one of your fondest fantasies from the golden age of vintage photography. So today is not everyday, because today I finally met – after decades of waiting – the legendary Joe Dallesandro. I politely shook his hand and interviewed him for our new series Movies That Shook the World. I was very serious, all business.

But I really just wanted to call him Daddy!

For those too young or straight to remember or care, Joe was the super hung superstar of the Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey underground classics Flesh and Trash and Heat. He also used to pose – with and without posing strap – for those black-and-white beefcake shutterbugs with only first names – Bruce of Los Angeles or Willie of Wherever. Joe’s main attributes were a bonzo butt, a boom-boom pachyderm, and a willingness to bare it all in those pre-frontal, pre-Falcon, pre-Weber days when male celebrities just didn’t do that.

Forgive Us Our Cinema

Now, sadly, Anne Bancroft, the gorgeous actress who played so brilliantly the sexy Mrs Robinson to Dustin Hoffman's Ben Braddock in The Graduate, has died before she could find out who the real Mrs Robinson was. In WOW's documentary series Movies That Shook the World, Charles Webb, the guy who wrote the novel the movie was based on, reveals for the first time the true identity of the older seductress. And, yes, we're using Bancroft, whose body has barely cooled, to promote a series on AMC. Jeez, what kind of people are we? People who believe no death should be in vain, that's who. But we're still ashamed. Series starts in July. Oh, and check out Bancroft in The Pumpkin Eater, Jack Clayton's extraordinary 1964 film.

The German site Mayweather has this nice post.
We can tear up with the best of them.

Movies and Shakers: It's in the Can

As a producer for the new AMC series Movies That Shook the World, I have had the privilege of interviewing a number of celebrities and experts involved with some of Hollywood’s biggest films. Now, I’m no star fucker; in fact, I’ve always prided myself on the “I don’t give a shit who you are” mantra I’ve adopted over the years. For more often than not, the reality of a celebrity’s personality rarely coincides with the expectations of ugly plebeians like myself.

But, I gotta say, sometimes it is hard to suppress that flutter, that tingle of excitement as someone truly famous sits not three feet away and it's only a mere nanosecond separating Mr or Ms Larger-Than-Life from a misguided impulse that could start at my brain and end with bug-eyed questions like, “I heard they’re doing Clash of the Titans 2. Is that true? Did you keep the sword? Do you have Ray Harryhausen’s phone number?”