Comments on This Seems Like a Bad Idea
This movie sounds like gold. Pure gold, baby.
Paul, you need Flashblock (an extension for Firefox) that keeps Flash annoyances from playing until you explicitly click on them.
I'm still waiting for Sylvester Stallone's Edgar Allan Poe movie.
Maybe I'm just missing my daily dose of curmudgeon, but I don't think it sounds like a terrible idea. There's at least one whole generation (and maybe three) of Americans who don't know much about Twain. He's one of our more interesting historical figures, and he's funny as fuck. As long as Eastwood retains the funny, I might throw down $9 to watch that.
Or I might just watch it for free online. The important thing to remember is that I might watch it.
I wonder if there is a Tom and Huck gay porn (all growed up, of course).
Where's my Wii?
I'm still waiting on my free Mac.
Jesus, Hollywood - why not make it a fucking buddy adventure, with he and Frederick Douglass. The cultural divide between them will lend itself to hilarity and hijinx.
It makes me a little sad that this could be real while the Wonder Woman movie is fake.
Paradoxically, the thing that makes Twain so wonderful is the lifelong agony running through his heart: the dysfunctional early family, the death of his younger brother after a riverboat boiler explosion (for which Twain blamed himself), his financial haplessness, the tension with his wife, the deaths of his wife and all his children except one daughter (not his favorite) before him, treachery by retainers, etc., etc. The more I read about him the more fascinated I become. Hal Holbrook captures him pretty well.
All I have to say is, if anybody makes another movie about him, THEY BETTER NOT FUCK IT UP.
@9: You said it, Rob. Twain was such a complex person, made of equal parts childish mischief and deeply entrenched heartache. His personality is worth exploring, and lots of people would benefit from some mainstream interest in him. (Remember that Ken Burns docu-thing from a few years ago? It wasn't all that bad, really.)
But an Eastwood biopic? My hopes are not high.
@9: He managed to teach his angel-in-the-house Victorian wife to drink beer. Though maybe that kept her off the laudanum.
Is "Sixteen-0-One" really from Twain? How about that after-dinner speech about masturbation?
It may just be a rumor, but I'm already making plans for groups to go see this movie on opening night. If possible, we'll all be dressed as Mark Twain. I'm thinking I'll walk up to the ticket window, wiggle my white, glued-on moustache and act like I haven't decided which movie I want to see.
@12: I saw a guy who said he was trying to be Col. Sanders on Halloween, but he wasn't carrying a bucket of chicken so he just looked like Mark Twain. I had never considered that there's such a fine line - just make sure you don't stop for chicken on the way to the movie.