I have another post up at EW.com, this time about being photographed for the New York Times, and the parental decisions therein. You can check it out [here](http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2007/08/guest-blogger-j.html#more).
Look out! He is a Spider-Pig
I saw and quite enjoyed The Simpsons movie this weekend. But having just gotten the [MPAA rating](http://www.mpaa.org) for The Nines (“Rated R for language, some drug content and sexuality”), I was a little surprised-slash-envious to see the official rating for The Simpsons:
Rated PG-13 for irreverent humor throughout.
I’m fine with PG-13. There is yellow nudity, after all. But “irreverent humor throughout” feels like a marketing quote, not a rating. You could blow that up in 200-pt type on the newspaper ad: “The MPAA says… IRREVERENT HUMOR THROUGHOUT!”
Location scouting vs. reality
Looking through my [YouTube account](http://www.youtube.com/user/johnaugust), I realized that I’d actually posted (and [blogged about](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/location-scouting)) our location scouting footage more than a year ago, shortly after we’d wrapped shooting.
I thought I’d go back and grab screencaps from the movie to show you what some of these places looked like as shot. (The following are in the order of the clip, not the order in which they play in the movie.)
No, it’s not a plate shot. The trees really are that Burton-esque.
Half an hour outside of Los Angeles. If those mountains look familiar, that’s because they were featured every week on M.A.S.H. Yup, it’s “Korea.”
Securing a “forest road” was surprisingly difficult. Bonus note for the DVD: Everything green on the ground was poison oak. We had to destroy some padded blankets afterwards, because it was impossible to get the itch out of them.
Probably our single most difficult location. A blind curve, and a 360-degree shot, on a hot day without shade.
Yards away from the previous location was this great trail. The biggest challenge was keeping the wireless mikes in range during a two-minute walk-and-talk.
The Hearst Building downtown stood in for several places. A sheriff’s department booking area…
…an adjoining hallway…
..and a very seedy Hollywood motel room.
I scouted New York locations while meeting up with Hope Davis to pre-record a song she sings in the film. That’s when we picked the Millennium Broadway Hotel as our base:
Keep in mind, the location scouting clip only includes the places we ended up shooting. It took us weeks to find (and secure) the places we wanted to film. This was my first time scouting with a videocamera, but I can’t imagine doing it without one. Photos alone don’t give you a sense of what the lens will see, particularly when it’s in motion.
It’s also worth noting what a huge difference proper cinematography (and color timing) makes. Some of these locations look vastly different based on how they were shot, and how they were timed in post. I never signed off on a location unless my d.p. had seen it and approved it. She was the only one who could really anticipate how it would look when shot.
On Parade
For a short time, I was running a bit where I would re-answer questions sent to Walter Scott’s Personality Parade™, one of the most odiously irrelevant and self-congratulatory bits of cultural fluff in the lint screen we call popular culture. While I was inspired to write it out of true anger at its existence, the column and my parody were mostly harmless wastes of time.
Then, one week, I decided to do an entire Q & A defending and exalting Britney Spears. Just because. Keep in mind, this was when Britney was a young mother of two, married to a sleazeball wannabe. (It’s hard to remember that once upon a time, a few months ago, we thought she was the stable one.) The piece was fairly toothless, but moderately funny, as I hoped most of those columns were.
But before I could post it, Britney went absolutely bonkers. And what I’d written suddenly felt like kicking a (recently-shaved-bald) puppy. So I junked it, along with the feature.
I’m reminded about this because of a story in today’s Variety: [“Parade of confusion after Lohan arrest”](http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117969283.html?categoryid=18&cs=1). As you’re no doubt sick of hearing, Lindsay Lohan was arrested early Tuesday on suspicion of drunken driving, but this coming Sunday’s issue of Parade tells a different story…
After extending her stay at luxury rehab facility Promises, Lindsay Lohan “seems committed to finally getting clean.”
So reports Parade magazine in this week’s edition of Walter Scott’s Personality Parade, the purveyor of feel-good celebrity news that, regrettably in this case, has a four-week lead time from when an item is written until it is published.
Excuse me if I mis-read — it takes __four weeks__ to come up with the bullshit you call Personality Parade? If Walter Scott were a real person, he’d be the laziest hack on the planet. Says a Parade spokesman:
“We’ll address this on the Parade.com website so we’ll have something that’s much more current,” the spokesman said. “This is an example of how difficult substance abuse can be, and we wish her the very best on her road to recovery.”
I wish nothing but plague and pestilence upon you, anonymous spokesman.
Lohan’s problems are her own. She’s seriously fucked up her career. But don’t blame her for messing up your faux-news column.
You work for a sham newspaper inserted inside actual newspapers. I can already predict your editorial memo going out on Monday: “From now on, we need to make sure anything the publicists feed us will still feel somewhat true four weeks from now. Concentrate on Disney stars and country singers.”
I’m urging the Los Angeles Times to drop Parade this week. You can, too. [Here’s the link.](http://www.latimes.com/services/site/la-comment-other-cf2,0,897028.customform?coll=la-navigation&sId=Other%20Questions)
Better yet, if your local paper includes Parade, let them know.
Is it too late to pull it out of the Sunday issue? They’ll say so. But it’s not too late to respond editorially, answering the question of why a newspaper would run a story they already know is inaccurate, and continue to support the inane ramblings of a publicist mouthpiece. I gave up on Parade. So should they.
And if you’re feeling so inclined, feel free to [Digg this](http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjohnaugust.com%2Farchives%2F2007%2Fon-parade&title=On+Parade).