Sam Antar has a fascinating post up on his White Collar Fraud website about Danny DeVito, and the recent demise of DeVito's efforts to create a movie on the rise and fall of the Crazy Eddie's electronics retailing chain. Here's a link to Sam Antar's take. Here, while I'm at it, is a link to the news story that instigated it. And here is a link to something I wrote in this blog on that subject almost three years ago. How time flies, eh?
The big question for me: who gets to play Jerry Carroll?
Anyway, it appears that Danny DeVito is trying to envision Eddie Antar as a Icarus-type protagonist, who flies too close to the sun and falls, but who should be the recipient of our sympathy. There are lots of such entrepreneurial rise-and-fall movies on that pattern. Consider The Aviator, where we see Howard Hughes' early years painted in glowing colors but we also see the creeping pathology that ends with Hughes a gloomy recluse in a hotel room. Or consider There Will Be Blood, for a more completely fictional rise-and-fall.
It does not appear that Eddie can be made to fit that mold without so much fictionalization that one is better off using new names. If DeVito wants to make a movie about an electronics retailing mogul who (to use DeVito's words) "started as a guy who loved making deals more than money" but who got carried away, cut some corners, was victimized by a "family dynamic" and suffered an "outrageously spectacular fall," ... well, go to it. Call the main character "Crazy Edwardo Antoine" or something though.
After all, Orson Welles never made a movie about anyone he called "Hearst." His movie was about some fellow named "Kane."
Showing posts with label Sam Antar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sam Antar. Show all posts
30 April 2010
07 August 2009
Friday's child is loving and giving
In the spirit of Friday's child, then, let me give you each a few links.
The task of a link farm is both to amuse and to instruct.
First, under amusement, The Onion explains that there is a way to wipe out the US national debt. Hail, Octavia! William Wolfrum finally settles the "birth certificate" matter exhaustively. And Comedy Zone collects some vintage Woody Allen quotes.
Second, under instruction. Sam Antar, the former CFO of Crazy Eddie and in that capacity a crook, has turned to warning about white-collar crime, on the principle that "it takes one to know one" or something. Here is what he has to say about the internet retailer, Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK). Meanwhile, Rolling Stone tells us that Guitar Hero has a David Lee Roth dominated understanding of Van Halen. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. lost about $3.4 billion in the first half of 2009, and Murdoch takes this as evidence that information wants to be more expensive.
Thirdly, some links both amuse and instruct in equal measure. The CJR explained back in June that reporters should not be content to live and die like gerbils. That was well in advance of the appearance of a movie establishing that gerbils are really spies. Finally, Doonesbury sets us right about politicans and their affairs.
The task of a link farm is both to amuse and to instruct.
First, under amusement, The Onion explains that there is a way to wipe out the US national debt. Hail, Octavia! William Wolfrum finally settles the "birth certificate" matter exhaustively. And Comedy Zone collects some vintage Woody Allen quotes.
Second, under instruction. Sam Antar, the former CFO of Crazy Eddie and in that capacity a crook, has turned to warning about white-collar crime, on the principle that "it takes one to know one" or something. Here is what he has to say about the internet retailer, Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK). Meanwhile, Rolling Stone tells us that Guitar Hero has a David Lee Roth dominated understanding of Van Halen. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. lost about $3.4 billion in the first half of 2009, and Murdoch takes this as evidence that information wants to be more expensive.
Thirdly, some links both amuse and instruct in equal measure. The CJR explained back in June that reporters should not be content to live and die like gerbils. That was well in advance of the appearance of a movie establishing that gerbils are really spies. Finally, Doonesbury sets us right about politicans and their affairs.
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