No
Series For You! -- This is a film column, but Larry David
has a movie coming out soon, so I'm taking the liberty. Larry David
co-created "Seinfeld" with Jerry. Larry is George. Kramer is Larry's
neighbor. (And Elaine is not -- not -- Carol Leifer, despite
her publicist's efforts to say she is.) The voice of the show is Larry's,
not Jerry's. Unlike most sitcoms, "Seinfeld" wasn't rewritten by committee.
It was rewritten every week by Larry David. Without his steadying
voice, it wandered. If Larry David had been there this season,
I'll bet that Jerry would have kept going. Anyway, we will have our
first taste of post-"Seinfeld" Larry David when his movie debut,
Sour Grapes, hits theaters this spring.
Black Like Spike -- While RC Daily
slept, Spike Lee was out making a celebrity of himself, complaining
about Jackie Brown and Amistad. Spike bitched that Tarantino's
Jackie Brown used the N word too often. Spike even accused QT
of wanting to be "an honorary black man." But Samuel L. Jackson,
whose Ordell Robbie character is the main linguistic offender in the
film, puts another slant on the epithet. "There's something about saying
"nigger," as opposed to "niggeh" that's like fingernails on a blackboard,"
Jackson told me. "It becomes an epithet when you put the "e-r" on it
and with "e-h" it can be a term of endearment, a descriptive, it can
be all kinds of things." As for Amistad, Spike trotted out the
traditional "movie about black characters with white guys as heroes"
beef and argues the point on "Nightline" with Amistad producer
Debbie Allen. That issue is actually one of my pet peeves (don't
get me started on Glory) and I thought Spielberg did a decent
job of keeping probable Academy Award winner Djimon Hunsou center
stage.
When In Rome, Do Like Roman Does
-- Well, not Rome. Venice. Woody marries Soon-Yi. Yuck! At least Julia
Roberts and Elizabeth Shue got paid to neck with the guy.
It's not clear whether Woody's getting more grief for marrying the 27-year-old
or from critics pretending to be Freud analyzing his new flick, Deconstructing
Harry. Either way, the Wood Man is one genius I want to keep far,
far away from my nieces.
Tomorrow look for The Ten Biggest Show Biz News Stories of '97. Thursday
will be my personal Top Ten Movies of 1997. Friday, the Ten Hot Movies
That I Just Didn't Get. And the weekend edition will offer up my Bottom
Ten for 1997. E-mail me your
thoughts on any of the lists to come.
