New Blog, New Posts, etc.

January 28, 2007 -- ONE of the biggest disappointments in director Steven Spielberg's life was Alfred Hitchcock's repeated refusal to meet him - but it turns out the Master of Suspense had a bizarre excuse. In his memoir, "Things I've Said, But Probably Shouldn't Have," due in May from Wiley, actor Bruce Dern writes that he tried and tried to convince the director of "Psycho" and "The Birds" to say hello to Spielberg, who had just triumphed with "Jaws." "I said, 'You're his idol. He just to sit at your feet for five minutes and chat with you' . . . He said, 'Isn't that the boy who made the fish movie? . . . I could never sit down and talk to him . . . because I look at him and feel like such a whore,' " Dern relates. Completely puzzled, Dern, who appeared in two Hitchcock flicks, finally pinned the director down: "I said, 'Why do you feel Spielberg makes you a whore?' Hitch said, 'Because I'm the voice of the 'Jaws' ride [at Universal Studios]. They paid me a mil lion dollars. And I took it and I did it. I'm such a whore. I can't sit down and talk to the boy who did the fish movie . . . I couldn't even touch his hand."

Why Hitch Shunned Speilberg

Lord knows this isn't real news (I mean, it's Page Six for crying out loud), but I think it's pretty funny. Little did Hitch know that the guy who made the fish movie would become one of the biggest Hollywood whores of all time! Well, at least Hitch had the ability to conceed he was a whore - Speilberg keeps trying to pass the same political thriller he unloads every other year or so off as 'art'. Munich my ass. Expect an academic post crossing the politics behind two generations of Speilberg movies, War of the Worlds and the one about the fish, pretty soon. Also, some more reviews and revisits, as well as a couple of interviews/Q&A's I've done with some filmmakers - all coming soon!

For now, I'm going to take this opportunity to plug my new blog Cartoonering. Think of it as a companion piece to Cinematikal, a sister blog focusing on that other passion of mine, cartoons! It's still under construction, of course, but check it out - there should be some good posts up there within the next twenty-four hours. Expect plenty of videos (including a couple by the Quay Brothers that are up there now), animation news, and academic commentary. I'm gonna try to show some of my own comics, as well as chronicle the progress of the cartoon I'm making on there as well. So check it out - tou'll be glad you did! (If you like cartoons, at least)