"I like writing the songs because sometimes I want to be more than just a timekeeper."

—Hog Beatty

At dinner a few weeks ago with a few bloggers I mentioned that a certain Eminent Blogmistress was married to a bassist, and another web denizen at the table took this to be some sort of shot at her. Which of course it wasn't; in point of fact, the gentleman in question is a charming hottie. But, of course, someone then had to make the obligatory joke: "what do you call someone who knows lots of musicians?"

"Right, right; a drummer," I responded, rolling my eyes.

"A bassist," another blogger else replied.

"Like Paul McCartney?" I should have responded, but did not, because I'm socially inept and slow on the uptake.

As far as I'm concerned, however, it is those two elements—bass and drums—that make rock and roll what it is. And timekeeping is underrated; it undergirds Western Civilization, after all.

What songs rely most heavily on interesting drumwork or bass playing? I mean, beyond "In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida"? When do those two instruments transcend "timekeeping" and deepen the complexity of a musical composition? (Many anthropologists may have to sit this one out: both Count Linguist and Professor Musicology appear utterly indifferent to rock and roll, which strikes me as odd in the same way that I strike others as odd for not "getting" football.)

I listened to War Child on my way home from work last night. As usual, when I have an album in the CD player I let it run a couple of times in succession. (Food usually bores me after a few bites, but music retains its appeal for hours.)

"Queen and Country" was terrific, but "Bungle in the Jungle" still stands out. I mean, I understand that liking the song marks me as a second-rate Tull fan, but I cannot help it: there is certain perfection in the thing. As usual, the flute-playing thrills me, and the violin is exciting. But the bass guitar provides structure and spice.

(If my husband is reading this, I'd just like to request that we put off our argument about Ian Anderson's hatred of organized religion, manifested in the early Tull albums, until the weekend. Is Saturday afternoon good for you? I have to dust and do laundry in the morning, but I have time to squabble in the early afternoon.

P.S. Anderson's concerns, as I read them, had more to do with what he felt were the failures of organized religion to help "the least among us." He was not angry at God, per se, but rather bitterly disappointed at the unfairness of life, and unable to reconcile what he saw around him with orthodox conceptions of the Deity.)

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After we danced, I told him that it was an honour to meet him, and then stopped myself, "oh, wait."

"What's the problem?" he asked.

"Well, I think you died in 1991. Therefore, even if this dream is taking place as early as 1992—and that's a stretch—you're already dead."

"Don't take it to heart," he remarked. "Anyway, does it really matter?"

"It matters to me."

"My dear," he told me. "You aren't making any sense. It wouldn't make any concrete difference if you'd dreamed about me while I was still alive, because it would still only be a dream."

"I did dream about you while you were alive," I insisted. "You were a big part of my life; I even knew you were from Zanzibar, and was properly shocked when I learned about Mary Austin."

"Doesn't that only prove how little you knew me?" he replied. "I mean, what about all those songs I wrote about her? Didn't that give you some kind of a clue?

"Now you're the one who's being silly," I spat out. "That 'clue' colloquialism won't be gaining currency for at least another decade. Right now, it's 'wake up and smell the coffee.'"

"You're the only person I've ever met who nitpicks in your dreams."

"I'm sorry," I told him. "It's just that I'm rather in awe of you. Except that, well . . . you know."

"Yes, I know: you feel bad about not loving 'Bohemian Rhapsody' as much as you love the rest of the Queen canon. But it doesn't really hurt my feelings; after all, it's your prerogative, and it got to a point where I was sick to death of 'Rhapsody' myself. Besides, you never read Catcher in the Rye, and you're one of J.D. Salinger's biggest fans, just based on his writing about the Glass family."

"It's because he captured so well the life of the intellectual misfit," I remarked. "Anyway, you seem to know a lot about me."

"Don't flatter yourself. Remember: this is your own dream. So what you really mean is that you know a lot about you."

"Fine," I told him, irritated again. "But you shouldn't underestimate self-knowledge."

He laughed. "Oh, I don't. Say, did I tell you I've moved to the country and started farming sheep?"

"Oh, right. Like you're living this Ian Andersen agrarian-type existence, with the salmon and all that."

"No, really. I'm a terribly down-to-earth person. I even cut my hair in 1980."

"Yeah," I told him. "I didn't like that. I preferred it long. And I hated the moustache."

"Well, I don't have it on now," he remarked. "And my hair's long again. But that was your decision. Wasn't it?"

"I am trying for some verisimilitude," I pointed out. "You do have a streak of grey in your hair, and you're getting thin."

"Oh, thanks," he told me. "I love it when people notice that. You're as bad as the bloody press."

"Am I, really?"

"No, not really."

"So maybe this is normal?" I asked him. "Like people seeing Elvis?"

"Elvis is a special case," he reminded me. "People see Elvis when they are awake."

"Does that make him some sort of musical saint?" I enquired.

"Well," he replied, "it certainly means he's transcended some kind of barrier. But I've got to go."

"Why?"

"Because you are about to wake up, and since you're using your cell phone as an alarm clock right now don't want to have to listen to those tinny notes coming out of it."

"Why, Freddie," I told him. "I do believe you're a bit of a snob."

"When did you first figure that one out?"

So he grinned, and then he vanished. And then, sure enough: the cell phone rang.

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1 If you feel like it, you can pay your respects to Freddie here: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=2164 BTW, until recently I had no idea that ol' Faroukh was an Indian Parsi, or Zoroastrian. Apparently he's the most famous one of all time, and is seen as a big hero in that somewhat obscure ethnic/religious enclave.

Posted by: Mike at November 09, 2008 09:03 AM (3dXbO)

2 Except that the local Muslims prevented the rest of 'em from the mass celebration they had planned for what would have been his 60th birthday. Of course, the British claim him as well. But they always do that. I mean, how can they say that both T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden are English? I think they should have to choose one. Probably Auden. After all, Eliot was American--and I want more recognition for my own obscure enclave . . . what? I left daffodils; he once remarked that he was "as gay as a daffodil."

Posted by: Attila Girl at November 09, 2008 09:20 AM (TpmQk)

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It's still playing at 1600 theaters nationwide, though as Eric observes, they are not necessarily going to be the most convenient theaters in your particular town.

The Wikis put it this way:

An American Carol made $3.8 million in its opening weekend, placing it ninth among movies that week. Since it was shown in 1,639 theaters, it had a per-screen average of $2,325 ($3.8 million divided by 1,639). By comparison, the film's diametrically opposite competitor released around the same time, Religulous,[10] was the tenth-ranked movie, grossing $3.5 million in just 502 theaters, an average of $6,972 per screen.[11] However, the Religulous receipts were collected over a five-day period (the first two days in New York City and Los Angeles only), while those for An American Carol were collected over a three-day period.[12][13]

For its second weekend, An American Carol had a 58.8% drop in box office receipts and dropped to #15, grossing $1,505,000 at 1,621 theaters or $928 per screen. Religious only had a 35.5% drop in box office receipts and dropped to #13, grossing $2,200,000 at 568 theaters or $3,873 per screen.[14]

No word on how many days were covered under "weekend #2" for that second set of numbers.

But the competing ideas go a bit beyond whether Zucker's slapstick is funnier than Maher's . . . whatever it is that he's doing. Neither film is a big-budget flick; neither was meant to be a blockbuster.

If you want a blockbuster these days, you generally give it an anti-American theme rather than an anti-religious one. And you spend a lot of money, and bill it as a serious narrative.

More on An American Carol:

Interview with Greta
A David Zucker Interview
Newsbusters take it up
Suppression?
Enemy Action?
Carol vs. Religulous
Go to Rotten Tomatoes!

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I just got off the radio with Greta of Kiss My Gumbo, the New Orleans radio show/blog that discusses politics and culture in Louisiana (or, as I call it, "the other L.A."). Greta's show on 790 WIST in New Orleans goes live on-air on Saturday mornings, and as a consummate egomaniac I assume she scheduled it for 9:30 Central just to make her West Coast correspondents get up early.

("Greta! Do you realize what 9:30 a.m. your time means, translated into Pacific Time?"

"I think it's two hours earlier, Joy. That's only 7:30 a.m."

"But you know how I am about mornings!")

We talked about An American Carol, and what a creative challenge that movie must have been for David Zucker, whose usual style is pure slapstick (most famously [infamousy?] in Airplane! and The Naked Gun). Making a film in which anti-Americanism is the target is not the same kind of creative project as those comically scattershot productions, but Zucker found a premise for tying the current story up into a delicious cream puff of pro-military patriotism: what if filmmaker Michael Moore, like Ebeneezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," were nudged by supernatural spirits into seeing the error of his ways?

What, indeed?

The film's star is Kevin Farley, who had to gain so much weight to play "Michael Malone" that his family got worried and threatened him with Medical Attention until he confessed what he was up to—just getting ready to spoof an anti-American "documentary" filmmaker who likes to play it fast and loose with the facts.

A lot of the lefty blogs and reviewers have been thrilled to see that An American Carol "only" opened at #9 last weekend. (Because it was "beaten by Beverly Hills Chihuahua," which made more money, but somehow oddly at the same time it was "beaten by Bill Mahar's Religulous," which made less money on opening weekend [and opened at #10] but appeared on more fewer screens. So the methodologies for measuring success depend upon whether one is comparing Zucker's film to a bit of fluff by a smarmy pseudo-libertarian, or a talking dog that opened on many, many more screens than either of the other two movies. Confused? Me too.)

Because we all know that the film industry does not have any sort of leftward tilt; it's all about making money. That's why Mel Gibson had to work so hard and get such creative financing for The Film That Dare Not Speak Its Name—you know: the one that made a fortune, and launched several careers, and yet uniquely, in the history of the film business, kicked ass at the box office while inspiring no imitators whatsoever. Nothing about the lives of the apostles. Nothing about the Old Testament. Nothing about the other characters in the gospels. Instead, a feature version was made of Go, Speed Racer, because one can never go wrong by making a movie based on a television show from the 1960s.

I'm still definitely recommending An American Carol, although one does have to show up a few minutes early, double-check that the theater gave the correct showtime for the movie, and verify the title on the ticket stub, since teenage pranks by cineplex employees seem to have kept a few people away from this movie.

Like the Steve Martin/John Candy classic Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (directed and written by John Hughes, and just as chockablock-full of cameos as Zucker's Carol itself), this movie is that rare beast: a comedy with a real—and important—point to make. So don't be bothered if you can't buy your tickets online, and the movie's name doesn't appear on the marquee outside—just politely confirm with one of the staffers at the cineplex that American Carol is playing there, at such-and-such a time, and get your ticket. (And double-check that the ticket indeed says "An American Carol" on it.)

But please do not be discouraged by having to take a few precautions or spend a few extra minutes to see this film. After all, An American Carol achieved a major release, which never happened to a lot of other well-done films with a center-right take on the issues of the day, such as Indoctrinate U (Evan Coyne Maloney's takedown of bias within academic institutions); Ben Stein's Expelled (a meditation on why we are not allowed to discuss Intelligent Design as part of scientific inquiry—and a peek into the dark side of Darwinist extremism); Mine Your Own Business (a documentary about how those in the developing world are being kept in poverty by environmental True Believers); In the Face of Evil (the story of Ronald Reagan squaring off against totalitarianism), and Is It True What They Say, Ann? (a sympathetic yet irreverent look at Ann Coulter).

There's no conspiracy to keep us out of theaters that are showing An American Carol. There is, however, a grand opportunity for us to go to the movies this weekend without having our love of country insulted, or the military put down in some backhanded fashion.

And we don't have to order it on DVD and wait for it to get to our homes. And we don't have to make our own popcorn when we see it.

If I were you, I'd take advantage. I've done so, and I might just do it again.

UPDATE: The podcast is up!

(X-posted at Right Wing News.)

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So, watch it.

It'll be on at 6:00 p.m. in God's Country, and 9:00 p.m. on the East Coast. You flyover people . . . just do the arithmetic.

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Yeah, yeah: any pattern is a conspiracy. I've heard it all before.

Once again, we see the long knives sharpened against the right by employing innuendo and outright lies. This time it is against the movie An American Carol. On Tuesday, I reported that there was some concern that ticket sales for the movie were being diverted to other movies at certain theaters across the country. But I never said there was a "conspiracy" to do so.

The filmmakers also attempted to do some detective work to find out the veracity of the claims. But they didn't call it a conspiracy either. Apparently simply asking the question, though, is too much for Wonkette and Huffington Post to handle. They had to gin it up as some wild-eyed claim of a "conspiracy" on our part.

. . . . . . . . . .

In the blog's typical unprofessional style, Wonkette claimed the filmmakers are saying some great, leftist conspiracy is destroying the movie. The next day, an entry at the Huffington Post asserted the same thing. From there the lefty blogs took over to add to the din. Unfortunately for their hyperbole, the movie folks never asserted any such thing (for that matter, neither did I).

In fact, the folks that produced An American Carol went so far as to take down their page offering movie-goers a place to report incorrect ticket sales. I have been told by a spokesman from Mpower pictures that they had no intention of claiming there was some nationwide conspiracy being mounted against their film and that they will not be making any further public comments for the time being.

But there have been reports from many theaters that, among other things, fans have been handed tickets stubs from other movies instead of from the one they came to see. It was the responsible thing to do, in my opinion, to give fans a place to report the matter if they felt they had been one of those defrauded.

The concern here is if individual theaters or their employees were purposefully crediting ticket sales to films other than what should be credited.

. . . . . . . . .

This isn't the first time, though, such a thing has happened to politically charged products. Spike Lee has for decades complained about these sort of things, yet no one is attacking him for saying the same thing. And, we all have heard time and again the reports that books published by conservative radio and TV personalities have been hidden in books stores so that sales are hindered. Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, they have all seen reports of this sort of thing.

Even so, no one is claiming that the booksellers are secretly conspiring to hinder book sales. What we are saying is that there are many millions of people out there that are not above taking it upon themselves to defraud or hinder the sales of politically charged products like books and movies. This is the case with An American Carol. If lone employees or individual theater owners are pulling a fast one on the film, it should be exposed. But, no one is saying there is some vast left-wing conspiracy going on.

The differences being that if I can't find the book I want at a bookstore, I can simply buy it online, and consuming it will be the same experience. It's very rare for centrist/libertarian films to make it into theaters in the first place; we usually have to buy the DVDs online (as with Mine Your Own Business, about the problem of poverty in Eastern Europe, and how it is exacerbated by misguided Western pseudo-environmentalism), or go to the one venue where something like Indoctrinate U or Expelled will be playing, for one night, in an obscure auditorium right off of Diagon Ally. Wearing hats and dark glasses, lest someone take a picture of us watching one of Those Movies.

I wonder if the limitations on film distribution are related to the fact that revival houses are largely dead: killed by cable TV, VHS tapes, and then DVDs. One used to at least be able to see something that wasn't 100% mainstream at the Fox Theatre, or at the Nuart. Or at one of the Laemmle Theatres. (Okay. Those are still around.)

But doesn't it seem like we're less motivated as a population to go see movies as part of a shared experience in a public square, and more inclined to stay at home, watching films in our little cocoons? I acknowledge that the wine is better, here—and the snacks are cheaper. Also, when one's spouse is in a good mood the movie gets paused whenever I get up to pee—a rare occurrence in a cineplex. Nonetheless, I feel as if something has been lost culturally with the more homogenized fare we're getting in theaters, and the fact that we tend to only see quirky stuff from our overstuffed couches.

Maybe it's just me.

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I really thought that An American Carol delivered the goods, if one were relaxed enough to go with the slapstick flow.

But it's true that an artist is rarely as successful delivering a message versus simply making art for art's sake.

Except for Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. And 1000 Clowns. And Harvey, which did indeed have a point. Of course, that point was, "don't be didactic," which might be more zen than the average person can handle.

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Enough individual reports are coming in via e-mail that I'm really starting to think that the managers of these cineplexes are either complicit in the actions of their mostly teenaged employees, or that these kids are taking matters into their own hands on a really grand scale:

• People are unable to buy tickets online for this movie, and have to get them at the cineplex itself;

• When one goes to the theater, the name of the movie frequently isn't on the marquee, giving one a sort of "am I at the right place?" moment;

• There are no posters up for the movie at the theater, reinforcing that "wait; was this supposed to be that place across town?" feeling;

• on the sign inside the ticket booth, the movie isn't even listed. This actually happened to me, and I was about to suggest to my husband that we leave, when I saw another couple ask for tickets to the movie--they seemed to be getting them, so I thought, "well, I guess it has to be playing here . . ."

• The second theater in town where the movie was supposedly was playing didn't allow one to pre-purchase tickets, so I called to check on the time. This particular movie house was a four-plex, and I listened to the long outgoing message twice. It gave me all kinds of information I didn't need to know, like how to get to the theater. And it gave me showtimes for three movies--but not An American Carol.

• I'm getting email and comments about people who are being sold the wrong movie tickets. They ask to see An American Carol, and are handed a ticket that they don't look at very closely (how many of us actually read these things when we're trying to figure out whether there's time to get popcorn before we get our seats?). Later on, though, they look at the ticket and see the title of a completely different film.

It's my understanding that this is often done by theater management "by accident" because they get less money for current releases than they do for films that have been in the theater for a few weeks.

But I'm starting to wonder about this: was there some underground communication among the kids who work at these places? It's starting to look like the phenomenon is a lot more widespread than a few days ago, when I just started hearing people ask questions.

Let's try it this way, folks: how many of you went to see An American Carol, and your ticket stub actually had the name of that movie on it?

I know the kinds of kids who work at movie theaters. I worked at two movie theaters when I was in college. I know what the cultural zeitgeist is—hell; I was part of it.

I didn't really believe at first that this was more than isolated incidents, but the appearance here is that there is an active effort underway to suppress box office numbers for An American Carol.

Previous Entries on the American Carol controversy:

Is this Enemy Action? Please Tell Me 'No.'

An American Carol Made More Money Than Religulous.

Mainstream Critics Didn't Like An American Carol; What a Sur-Prize!

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If you saw it and liked it, create a profile on Rotten Tomatoes and write a quick review with an honest ranking and your reaction to the film. Please!

That site is being overrun with leftists, unfortunately.

* * *

IF YOU DON'T, the proverbial terrorists will have won . . . (Not the real terrorists&mdah;just the ones who are fond of quoting Proverbs. The terrorists that really scare me, though, are the ones who carry the Psalms with 'em wherever they go . . . what's up with that?)

The most important thing, though, is to see An American Carol, and make your mind up for yourself.

UPDATE: Hey, whaddya know?—a lot of the mainstream critics hated it. Here's an article on that phenomenon in PJ Media, and the comments thread is a scream.

UPDATE 2: Following up on the ticket irregulariries post—
Despite my new readers' assurances that no one would actually manipulate ticket sales to make a political point, we certainly know that it's possible. In fact, we know that this is done, though the more-common motivation is plain old greed. This from a person who monitors this type of hijinks:

I do mystery shopping and merchandising, and sometimes I perform movie theater checks. I act as a typical moviegoer, and buy my ticket at the box office. Then I sit in the back of the theater and count the patrons at the moment the movie starts. I scan and email my ticket stubs, so they can verify that the ticket shows the proper movie.

Studios pay me (the company that hires me) to do this because theater owners/managers can and do fudge the ticket sales numbers. If you buy a ticket for a movie that opens this week, the theater sends most of the money to the studio. But if you buy a ticket for a movie in its fourth week, the theater gets to keep much more of the money. Thus, they train ticket sellers to monitor the number sold for the new movie. If it's not sold out, they may print you a ticket for the older movie, figuring that you won't notice. I've watched this being done.

Would they do this to tank a movie that they didn't like? Perhaps. It would likely be on instructions from the manager, and the ticket seller wouldn't know or care why. Ticket sellers are less politically aware than the average bookstore employee, and bookstore employees are known to hide or deny the presence of titles they don't like. But ticket sellers are often teens who are more concerned about the party they're attending after their shift, rather than the political party of the producer.

It could be happening. There's nothing wrong with checking your tickets and reporting any discrepancy to the AC folks.

UPDATE: Since you've been asking—Joy's coverage of potential sabotage to depress the box-office numbers of An American Carol:

http://littlemissattila.mu.nu/archives/275006.php

http://littlemissattila.mu.nu/archives/275114.php

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So I will: David Zucker's An American Carol made more moneyon opening weekend than Bill Maher's Religulous did.

And it did it without resorting to the all Maher's prevarication about religion—the type of falsehoods that made Moore such a fitting subject for satire in the first place. (No, I don't believe Moore actually eats pizza once the mice have gotten into the pizza box. Nor do I believe that he agreed to make a terrorist training video. Nor do I believe that Charlton Heston once made a pro- gun-rights speech in which his tie kept changing color mid-sentence, or that there are banks that will let you take a longarm out the door as a premium on the same day you open a bank account with them—unless you're a famous filmmaker who has somehow convinced them that this sort or "creative re-enactment" will make them look good.)

I'll tell you one more secret: one of the reasons a lot of the reviewers didn't get the humor in An American Carol is that it required a smattering of knowledge about not just American history, but . . . . gulp . . . military culture.

And here's something else: (1) Sarah Palin had a rally in the Golden State on Saturday [tallish place on the West Coast—known for liking movies], which drew thousands of people away from the theaters; before and afterward most of the right-leaning political junkies in the nation have been biting their nails for about ten days wondering if John McCain was going to defend himself on the subject of the economy, or simply let the opposition tie G.W. around his neck like a rather good-natured albatross.

Well, he did and he didn't, and there's tremendous relief out there. There is still nail-biting, because this campaign will be close—and we have another month to go . But now that McCain's exaggerated sense of honor seems to allow for self-defense against the attacks coming from the other side, I think a lot of people may be willing to take a few hours off from the campaign—or take a little time to make a pivotal decision that's now on the horizon.

The one thing every single centrist/center-right person I've talked to about An American Carol has told me is this: it's nice not to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's lovely to laugh without wondering when the country's going to be insulted, or the military. You laugh at some jokes, and you don't laugh at others (slapstick being a bit of a scattershot endeavor). But you aren't mentally crossing your arms, wondering when "it" is going to come: the suggestion that we couldn't ever have won Vietnam and shouldn't have tried, the implication that Ronald Reagan was a crazy man who brought us to the brink of nuclear war (while liberating millions of people), the imputation that the Civil War was only about economics, and not slavery. The idea that most military men and women are war criminals, or ready to be.

The obscene absurdity that it is never right to fight back, whatever the provocation.

I hope Religulous stays in the movie houses for a long time, as An American Carol reaches more and more people via word-of-mouth. Because beyond the glamour of opening weekend (and opening at a high-risk time, during a Presidential election), there is the fact that some people in Hollywood have decided that they would actually like to make money. And maybe even make it doing something other than features based on TV series from the 1960s.

Yeah, yeah: I hear you, Guys: "Maher's movie opened on fewer screens, so it made more money per screen." Well, that presupposes An American Carol was credited with every ticket sale it was entitled to, and that it was as easy to find a showtime or tickets for AAC as it was for the other movies that opened last weekend. And it was not.

No, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. But I'm skeptical enough that I'm not going to take the Maher people's numbers (or their reasoning) at face value.

Because there's one more little comparison to be made: Zucker is funny. And Maher, the psuedo-libertarian, really, really isn't. He's just smarmy and smug.

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Now this sounds like enemy action.

Help me out here, folks: are these honest mistakes, or is there intent behind them? And how widespread is the problem?

I'm starting to hear complaints about unorthodox treatment of An American Carol by employees of theaters that are carrying the movie. So far, rumors suggest above-average irregularities regarding the handling of this movie in cineplexes and other theaters—particularly as regards ticket sales.

Is the problem systemic, or confined simply to a few (statistically insignificant) theaters in a nationwide release? I'm hearing tremendous curiosity/concern from other centrist/libertarian/center-right movie fans about whether any of these incidents seem to have had some sort of intent behind them.

People are being sold tickets that are supposedly for An American Carol, but have the names of other movies printed on them.

Obviously, this type of "error"/error theoretically requires collusion between employees--a way of marking the ticket so that you are sent to the correct theater, even though you've been sold the wrong ticket. (E.g., if the box office is outside the cineplex, and the person who tells you where your particular mini- theater is happens to be is stationed inside the doors, out of sight of the box office.)

As the customer, you'll want to actually read your ticket to check and make sure you weren't an unwitting instrument of an "error" (or even an error) that inflated another movie's box office numbers and deflated that of the one you had intended to support.

If you suspect that this might have happened when you went to see the movie, please go double-check your tickets. If they have the wrong title on 'em, send me a picture of your "American Carol" ticket.

Here are some subtler things to be on the alert for, in terms of possible attempts to suppress viewership / the appearance of viewership / box office receipts for this film.

Examples:

• The theater suggested that the movie was rated R (its true rating is PG-13);

• Posters for the film are not visible inside or outside the theater;

• An American Carol is not on the marquee, even though the movie is playing there;

• The film title not listed behind the clerk in the box office, so you have to ask if that movie is playing at that theater, never mind that you checked on the internet and called in advance (this actually happened to me);

• Showtimes are given on the theater's outgoing message machine for every movie playing except for An American Carol (this is also out of my personal experience: somehow the local four-plex only had showtimes listed on the phoneline for three movies . . . . hm);

• technical oddities: image or focus issues, problems with sound, and the like.

Please check those tickets, check those movie houses where the movie is supposedly playing (but you have to ask about it if you want to see it), and document everything you can. Put those cell-phone cameras to use whenever possible.

UPDATE: The Freepers have it now. So far, I've been skimming through the lefty sites that are linking my allegations about potential fraud and irregularities regarding An American Carol. It appears that their arguments are as follows:

a) If ticket sales are recorded for the wrong movie, it's not significant enough to affect box-office receipts for this particular film, because it isn't happening enough. But it doesn't happen anyway, and I am probably a paranoid schizophrenic for believing that it did.

b) In my original post, I clearly stated that An American Carol would have opened this past weekend in the #1 slot had there not been incorrect recording of box office receipts, and other irregularities at some theaters/cineplexes where the movie is playing. So I'm delusional as well.

c) "We, the left, absolutely hide any books that appear to take a centrist or center-right view whenever we're working at bookstores. Clearly, this indicates that we would never take equivalent action if we got jobs at theaters.

Q.E.D."

(d) "Little Miss Attila has never gone to a movie in her life. Nor has she ever worked at a movie theater. Because, see—the system is different at my local cineplexes than it is at hers. Since we've determined that she's delusional, we cannot trust anything to do with ticket-selling or ticket-taking procedures at her local theaters."

(e) "Little Miss Attila is ugly, so any assertion of fact that she makes is obviously wrong, because ugly people are always incorrect."

(f) "Little Miss Attila is fat. This further underscores the point that no irregularities could possibly be taking place with respect to sales / promotional tactics for An American Carol, because that is also the sort of thing that fat people get wrong. Fat, and old."

(g) "Little Miss Attila owns a gun. Gun owners are always wrong about everything (see 'Palin, Sarah')."

Aw . . . . it's a fair cop!

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:13 PM | Comments (81) | Add Comment
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h/t: Hot Air.

So make up for the so-so opening weekend by watching it this week; it'll be less crowded anyway!

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If you didn't see An American Carol Friday or Saturday night, you may redeem yourself by seeing it tonight.

If that isn't possible, you must see it within this coming week, because we are not, to say the least kicking ass. (Well, okay: we're officially at #7, but that's hardly what we accomplished with Passion of the Christ.)

Or you will have forfeited any right to complain that "Hollywood" never takes your point of view into account, and never makes movies that don't either overtly or covertly bash the troop.

Perhaps you feel good that Beverly Hills Chihuahua took top honors this weekend? Or that Bill Maher's Religulous made more money on fewer screens?

The movie is not 100% comedy, by the way: there are serious moments. When Jon Voight (who, by the way, spoke at the Palin rally in Carson yesterday) plays George Washington, he plays him 100% straight, and there isn't a laugh in that scene at all: just Michael Malone complaining that the church is dusty, and Washinton opening the doors so one can see the wreckage of the World Trade Center outside.

Because Malone, as the film's "Scrooge," has to have a moment of epiphany. That's when it starts, and the slapstick continues as the truth begins to sink in.

But as with "A Christmas Carol," An American Carol is about redemption.

So redeem yourself. Go see the movie within the week. If you do not, I'll know about it. I've never told any of you this, but I have eyes in the back of my head . . . it looks kind of funny, actually, and I have to be careful about how I comb my hair.

Go. Now. Thxbai.

UPDATE: Let me know if I need to reduce or crop the image; the entry's displaying fine on my browser, but one never knows.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 04:56 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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Kevin Farley drops by to see the gals on The View. Elizabeth is wearing a short skirt, and it looks great—so you may watch the clip without fear.

My favorite part? Farley discreetly attempting to gain weight and grow his hair so he could play the "Michael Moore" character, and how his mom was concerned that he must be depressed, and wanted to take him to see the doctor.

I guess they have to ask Farley about his brother—particularly on a show like The View—but there is something awfully offensive to me about the fact that he keeps getting asked about Chris every time he's interviewed.

But them, we've established that I'm way too squeamish to be a real entertainment reporter!

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I think he might be growing up:

Conservatives love to make a piñata out of Hollywood liberal Tim Robbins, but even they may lower their bats after they see him in "The Lucky Ones."

I thought we were the piñatas, but I'll let that one pass.

Robbins, Rachel McAdams and Michael Peña play soldiers who, on a month's leave from Iraq, become accidental companions on an often-comic road trip across America.

The movie, which Roger Ebert has compared to the William Wyler classic "The Best Years of Our Lives," could have turned into a polemic on the war. But Robbins was attracted to the script, written by director Neil Burger and Dirk Wittenborn, because "it's a story about humanity where the politics are irrelevant.

"What I liked about it was the way it threw together individuals who would have no reason to be hanging out, and showed their bond," Robbins told us at a New York screening the other night.

To research the role, Robbins traveled to Fort Dix, N.J. Not everyone there threw their arms around the man who, like his partner Susan Sarandon, has been a relentless critic of the Bush administration. He recalled, "One soldier said, 'I don't agree with your politics, but I want you to know there was a guy I served with. He and I didn't see eye to eye politically on a damn thing, but I liked his character, and if there was anyone next to me in a hostile situation, it would be him.'

"I wanted to make a picture for those troops, something they could enjoy," added Robbins. "Right now, we need healing. We need to understand the experience of what it's like for the troops to come home."

Well, Tim—there are a lot of people who do understand that. But thanks for listening. Welcome aboard.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 05:36 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Let's see. What are our options?

Well, there's (1) Religulous, which is apparently based on Bill Mahar making fun of people who believe in God. I mean, that guy is so funny anyway! I'll bet seeing him make fun of religion will have 'em rolling in the aisles.

That sounds like fun. Or there is W. (the site has sound enabled!), which I've been told makes G.W. Bush the anti-Christ. It certainly makes sport of the guy who's handled some of the most challenging issues of our time. Imperfectly, for sure. But the timing is interesting: I wonder if the far left is trying to draw the same connection between G.W. Bush and John McCain that they drew between Rush Limbaugh and John McCain on the topic of immigration. (Yeah—no daylight between those two there.)

So I guess I'm on the horns of a trilemma. Is there such a thing as a trilemma? There would be if you crossed a rhinoceros with an elephant. Hey! I'm a trilemma!

Anyway, here's the dishy, talented, Kevin Farley, with Myrna Sokoloff, who's been working with David Zucker for years (ever since their guerilla ads for the 2004 campaign):

I wasn't able to see the whole thing (I need to install two more gigs of memory, on this machine), so I didn't see what Farley's response was to the question about his brother. But whether that question was tasteful or not, I'd love to see people treat Kevin as his own man, rather than an echo of Chris. Unless people are going to start grilling Luke Wilson about the crisis that Owen went through, or every interview with Jim Belushi is going to include a question about John.

Of course it isn't all about prurient interest in tragedy; people are also fascinated by "mixed marriages" and "mixed sibling philosophies." Carville and Matalin are asked about this all the time, and every time I've heard Stephen Baldwin interviewed someone has had to ask him what his brother thinks about [name the political issue].

Call my brother; he'll tell you that I'm a good kid, but kind of a nut. And that my "unorthodox" politics are probably some sort of rebellion thingie. With any luck, I'll grow out of it, steady up, and get a real job.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Appeared at CLC, and I missed it.*

So I Twitter-tweeted Eric Odom, to let him know that I think Kevin Farley is much better-looking than Michael Moore, whom he plays in An American Carol. (Oh. He plays an obnoxious filmmaker named "Michael Malone." My mistake.) And that Odom should tell Farley I said so.

I got this back: "I actually showed Kevin Farley your tweet while I was on the stage with him. :-) "

Kewl.

My response: "Excellent; I haven't met him, but he seems like a sweetheart, from what I've read and heard. Much MUCH cuter than the Evil Guy."

• • •

BTW: trailers and clips for David Zucker's An American Carol, which opens October 3rd, are here. That site doesn't always seem to get along with my Mac, so I've also been getting updates at "Old Faithful," the official An American Carol site. And—gee whiz—here the trailer:

See? They try to make Farley homely, like Michael Moore, but he just isn't.

Here's more—the An American Carol "montage," which I think I've posted before:

This is the site for getting updates from Vivendi. (If you're a media person, please let me know: I'm badgering the production company directly to give new media types some access to the people involved in this film, so we can talk it up a bit. I'm reachable at miss, then a dot, then attila. Then an "at" sign. Followed by Gmail.com)

Finally, the "guerilla"/parody site for An American Carol is from a "grass roots" organization called, of all things, MooveAlong.org. Hm.

An American Carol has to succeed, because it's important to demonstrate to "the industry" that if they want to make money, they need to embrace more diverse points of view than are currently found in entertainment.

David Zucker was a left-liberal who turned classical-liberal when he was "mugged by 9/11" back in 2001. We know him from the Naked Gun movies; the Police Squad! TV series; Scary Movie 4, Airplane!, H.U.D., The Kentucky Fried Movie, Ruthless People, and some wickedly funny political spots for the 2004 election season, here, here, here, and here.

Along with Kevin P. Farley, An American Carol stars Kelsey Grammer (as George S. Patton), Serdar Kalsin (as "Ahmed"), Geoffrey Arend (as "Mohammed"), and Robert Davi (as "Aziz"), along with the wonderful Jon Voight (the ghost of George Washington), Trace Adkins (the Spirit of Christmas Future), James Woods, Chriss Anglin (as John F. Kennedy), Dennis Hopper, and Leslie Nielsen.

It should be loads of fun: go opening night!

* I did not drive out for CLC or or the BlogWorld Expo, though both are in Las Vegas this year—more or less concurrently—and I could have had two for the price of housing + two tanks of gas. Instead, I'm saving that money to go out there in late October as part of a "get out the vote" effort for the Palin-McCain campaign. [Oh. Sorry: McCain-Palin. There we go.]

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According to Uncle Joe Benson of KLOS, it's Freddie Mercury's birthday today. Benson played "Dragon Attack" in his honor (though of course it's not one of the songs Freddie wrote). Nice to hear it; it had been a while.

Sir Elton on Freddie:

He was an extraordinary man; Benson says he would have been 62 today.

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Ann and Nancy, are you sure about this?

Because I buy music. I buy it compulsively. I buy more music than I buy premium gin.

I have several of your albums on vinyl, and one on CD, and several more tracks that I got through iTunes. I've been meaning to get Hope and Glory, and was considering picking up another album from the old days of the 1970s. I know I can listen track by track off my computer, or on the iPod, but . . . there's something about listening to an entire album all the way through that really floats my boat. Something about having a Cruiser with a sunroof, I suppose.

I saw you in concert in 1980. Really: I'm that fucking old.

You must reconsider, O My Heart-throbs. There are a lot of Libertarian rock and roll people out there; didn't Reynolds mention recently that he'd just listened to to Dreamboat Annie again, and thought "Crazy on You" was the best song ever written about oral sex? (Oh, sorry: "the best Cold War-inspired song about oral sex ever." My bad.)

Even Chris Muir has been promoting you.

* * *

Hog Beatty: "Dreamboat Annie? Now that album is great, from beginning to end." The man is a walking encyclopedia of rock and roll, dressed up as a blueprint salesman. I was actually going to ask him to dissect for me the differences between the drumwork in "Barracuda" versus "The Immigrant Song," which of course Ann Wilson covered in Hope and Glory. Both songs depend on drums and superhuman lungpower. When I was in high school I was more of a Queen chick than a Led Zepp girl; something to do with the fact that my friends played chess more than they smoked dope, I suppose. Now that I am putatively a grownup, I can listen to whatever I like.

* * *

And, um, RNC? If we're going to use the song, we should be paying the Wilson sisters something for it; fair is fair.

Can't we find whoever-it-is that negotiated the deal between Rush Limbaugh and Chrissie Hynde, and get this ironed out?

We can work it out. Can't we?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:39 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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I think it's Audrey Rapaport, who has apparently relocated to New York City.

I can kind of see a ballpark similarity between Audrey and Lisa, but I still think this is an Audrey production because of that distinctive curl of the lips that's much more Rapoport-esque than Nova-ish.

But I cannot be sure.

Will the real fake-Sarah, fake-Hillary stand up? (And, with all due respect for both John McCain and Sarah Palin, I do thing the first clip is hilarious. It's essentially the Republican version of that SNL skit from a few months ago in which Obama gets into the White House—but has to call up Hillary every night to ask for advice. So relax!)

I just wish I could be positive. Lisa, or Audrey?

I still think it's Audrey, because I've seen her in a few plays here in Los Angeles—and I got a good look at her up close once when she was doing improv.

Original Sunset Boulevard clip is here, for reference. Audrey (or is it Lisa?) does a wonderful job. I love Lisa (or is it Audrey?).

And, by the way, I hope the Mad TV fans are not mixing up Lisa Nova with Lisa Arch, (aka Lisa Kushell) who is, of course, also a veteran of that show.

h/t: This whole thing started off via Allah's post at Hot Air earlier in the day. I just can't look at that Palin impression and think it's anyone other than Audrey.

UPDATE: Pwned. It was Lisa, which I would have realized if I'd followed the link back to her playground on YouTube in the first place.

But the resemblance, and the knack for caricature, is uncanny.

Hm. She and Rapaport should do something together: Desperately Seeking Sarah, or something like that.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 05:08 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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