Jose Canseco, Action Star
Today's LAT profile of small-time manager-producer Bob DeBrino paints a portrait of an interesting enough character doing his best to get off Hollywood's fringes and into the action—he drives around in a flashy Corvette, throws scripts over Nick Nolte's wall (oh, if we had a nickel for every time we tried that trick!), and is trying to help a possibly mobbed-up jailbird cousin get a career in the biz, etc etc. We're far more intrigued by his battle plan for new client Jose Canseco, baseball's blacklisted roid-monster, who's trying to parlay his recent season in Surreal Life semi-fame purgatory into—sigh, what else—a career as an action hero:
He's got Canseco making the rounds of film studios, TV networks and production companies, complete with a demo tape that features the 6-foot-4 former slugger, a black belt in martial arts, deftly twirling a numchuck as a sultry woman in a nightgown lounges nearby. Another scene, shot with Canseco's 8-year-old daughter, Josie, is designed to showcase his more sensitive side.
The idea is to convince casting directors that Canseco, who retired in 2001 with 462 home runs, has the sculpted look, acting chops and martial-arts skills to transform him into the next Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Willis, Seagal or Van Damme.
We can't believe they're ignoring Canseco's most obvious career foil, Dennis Rodman, whose Double Team (featuring an already in decline Van Damme, of course) and Simon Sez are classics of the washed-up-athlete-making-a-pathetic-grab-for-Hollywood-stardom genre. Their best bet would probably be to directly release Canseco's nunchuck-twirling, daughter-cradling audition reel; we can't imagine a universe in which that wouldn't be an instant cult classic, complete with midnight showings where people show up in mullets and nightgowns (or dressed as former Canseco sex-buddy Madonna), quote memorable passages from Juiced, and hurl hypodermic needles at the screen. He could be so huge with the gays if they'd just think outside the box.
