Imagine "Last of the Mohicans" mixed with "Silicon Valley" mixed with the male ideal of beauty mixed with some deleted James Bond scenes, and it might look like this: the trailer for Michael Mann's latest thriller.
Laura Linney turns 46 today. Actress Jennifer Jason Leigh is turning 48. Retired New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Sr. is 84. Writer/director Christopher Guest is turning 62. Baseball legend Hank Aaron is 76. Movie director Michael Mann is turning 67. Documentarian Errol Morris is 62. Michigan's governor, Jennifer Granholm, turns 51. Videogame pioneer Nolan Bushnell is 67. Former SNL stars Chris Parnell and Tim Meadows are turning 43 and 49, respectively. And Mr. Bobby Brown turns 41 today. A few people celebrating birthdays this weekend are below.
Jennifer Jason Leigh turns 47 today. Sulzberger family patriarch and former Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Sr. is 83. Former Morgan Stanley co-president Bob Scully is 59. Actress Laura Linney is turning 45. Writer/director Christopher Guest is 61. Baseball legend Hank Aaron is turning 75. Film director Michael Mann is 66. Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris is 61. Bobby Brown is turning 40. And two former SNL stars are celebrating today: Chris Parnell is 42 and Tim Meadows is 48.
We're happy to see today that the winged gatekeeper budget-monkeys on the set of Michael Mann's Public Enemies — who so scandalously sought to exclude scores of part-timers from the film's recent wrap party in Chicago — ultimately came around to relaxing their admission standards to the point where even Stephen Dorff was welcome. That would have been a good enough concession for the justice crusaders over here at Defamer HQ — but for Dorff's infamous urinal-queue archnemesis Jeremy Piven to show up as well? Jesus Christ, will they just let anybody into this place?
A Defamer operative sends disturbing word from the Chicago set of Michael Mann's Depp-as-Dillinger drama Public Enemies, where assistant best boy trainees and part-time bagel replenishers are now jockeying for a spot at the film's unusually exclusive wrap-party for "deserving crewmembers." We hear the 40-work-day minimum isn't stopping some serious last-minute politicking with the unit production manager and even with Mann himself, whose loyalty to well-connected extras has nothing on his famous weakness for sheepish, sad-eyed honey wagon drivers.
After yesterday's HamburgerGate drama from the set of Transformers 2, we know how poorly things can go when an extra's big, swinging ego good intentions override his place in a production's creative food chain. As if on cue, Vanity Fair contributor Bryan Burrough — whose book Public Enemies, about John Dillinger and the founding of the FBI, is being adapted by Michael Mann — chimed in at the magazine's Web site with a dispatch from his own cameo in Mann's film. Not quite surprisingly, we suppose, the spoilerrific Burrough fared a little better with his director than one "Hedgehog" did with Michael Bay:
· Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman are frantically finalizing the shooting script of Da Vinci Code sequel Angels & Demons before the Oct. 31st deadline, hoping that the mad rush towards production won't jeopardize the duo's ability to produce the kind of easily digestible, crowd-pleasing entertainment that always results from their lucrative collaborations. Meanwhile, star Tom Hanks has been presented with a hair-growing schedule that will barely provide the actor with enough time to reproduce his character's signature demi-mullet. Truly, no one is immune from the pressures of the looming™ strike. [Variety]
· In what is always a good sign for a floundering series, The Bionic Woman gets another new showrunner, not even two months after "creative differences" ended NBC's short-lived love affair with Glen Morgan. [THR]
· Columbia Pictures and Michael Mann rush to get their own project about fatally poisoned ex-KGB agent Alexander "Sasha" Litvinenko (this one based on the as-yet-unpublished Death of a Dissident book co-authored by Litvinenko's widow) into the development pipeline after losing a precious few days of lead time to rival Warner Bros. and Johnny Depp, who announced their own poisoned-spy project based on the as-yet-unpublished Sasha's Story on Friday. [Variety]
· NBC takes one step closer to its bold plan of having the Today Show stretch from the wee hours of the morning directly into its primetime offerings, adding a fourth hour to the gabfest. [THR]
· Working Title heads Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner happily hand over another seven years of their lives to Universal. [Variety]
· PBS locks up superstar Ken Burns with an exclusive contract running until 2022, preventing their prized documentary nerd from being tempted by the siren call of Discovery or the History Channel. [THR]
· Without an overseas Stomp the Yard release to capture foreign moviegoers' hearts, Night at the Museum dominates the international box office for a third straight weekend, earning $19.1 million. [Variety]
A Defamer operative sends us a party report from the Miami Vice premiere, where Brett Ratner held court in the men's room as a hammered Michelle Rodriguez unsuccessfully tried to talk her way inside, and the secret language of Shaq's handshake rituals was finally revealed.
Over at Slate, NPR's Kim Masters offers a fairly lengthy recounting of the many problems that plagued the set of Michael Mann's Miami Vice, such as a) its crazy, exacting director, b) disastrous weather events that threatened production (who could have seen that coming while filming in Miami during hurricane season?), and c) a shooting while on location in the Dominican Republic. The article's money shot is the revelation that the aforementioned gunplay convinced Jamie Foxx, the film's egomaniac, award-winning star, that his new Oscar-derived superpowers did not include the ability to deflect bullets with his bare abs—a realization that sent him fleeing for the safety of the United States and forced Mann to shoot an ending that could accommodate Foxx's diva-like refusal to be assassinated on foreign soil. Reports Masters:
