a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  3800 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What are Kurt Vonnegut's best works?

Appreciate it however you want! I like story.

I think most people would probably argue that Slaughterhouse Five is his most "significant" work.





thenewgreen  ·  3800 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I would agree that Slaughterhouse Five seems to be his most well know and heralded work. The first one I read was Breakfast of Champions. A friend of mine bought me it and On the Road as a gift when I departed to college.

Both impacted me in a big way at the time.

kleinbl00  ·  3800 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Fun fact: Bruce Willis sank his entire fortune into turning BOC into a movie only to have it suck so hard that it didn't achieve US distribution. Desperate for cash to save his home, he approached Tom Rothman for a multi-million dollar loan.

Tom Rothman wrote him a check for $2m and said he owned Bruce Willis for two films of Tom's choosing, SAG scale.

Movie 1 was Sixth Sense.

Movie 2 was Unbreakable.

thenewgreen  ·  3800 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That is a fun fact, and given his performances in Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, I might suggest Willis works best in IOU mode. -good films IMO.

kleinbl00  ·  3800 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I read somewhere that Shamalyan had rewritten Sixth Sense twelve times before he figured out Bruce Willis was dead. Unfortunately, that was the last time anyone made Shamalyan rewrite anything twelve times.

Unbreakable was the preamble to an interesting movie. It was not, unfortunately, an interesting movie.

b_b  ·  3799 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Unbreakable was the preamble to an interesting movie. It was not, unfortunately, an interesting movie.

That's exactly how I felt when I saw it. I remember thinking the whole movie was a backstory and creation myth. I was actually really excited to see the next (inevitable, I thought) installment. Sadly, we got The Village and Signs, two of the biggest pieces of shit to ever make it to the big screen (or so I thought, then both got blown out of the water by that weird Will Smith/Shyamalan Scientology collaborative, After Earth--affectionately known to those who saw it as Afterbirth). To me Unbreakable should have been the start of something beautiful, but sadly became the pinnacle of a career that could have been.

kleinbl00  ·  3799 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Buddy of mine worked on AE. He maintains it's not that bad a movie, but he maintains it's not that bad a movie compared to the terrible, terrible movie they were making. So... win?

b_b  ·  3799 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I don't know, dude. That movie must have been an unholy type of terrible! I don't mind bad movies. I rarely complain about a bad movie, because I like the experience of going to the theater and all that goes with it. However, every once in a Blue Moon I'm just miffed that I'll never get those two hours back. AE falls under that heading. It was the least subtle, worst acted, bull-in-a-china-shop type of two hour long Scientology commercial that anyone could ever dream up. A monster alien that smells, and preys upon fear? C'mon, that's just lazy.

kleinbl00  ·  3799 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Haven't seen it. Haven't heard anything positive about it.

I'll just say that the whole thing was supposed to be done in babytalk so it could have been even more legendarily bad than it already is.

Kaius  ·  3799 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Babytalk! I saw it a while ago and hated it but i completely missed the scientology aspect until i read this exchange. It was just an awful waste of time.

thenewgreen  ·  3800 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Unbreakable was the preamble to an interesting movie. It was not, unfortunately, an interesting movie
-I saw it once, in the theaters and I recall thinking Bruce Willis was really good in it.
user-inactivated  ·  3800 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It was pretty meh, I'll have to agree. Nothing too special, though it did have lots of potential, as Klein said.

Then again, nothing can beat the Rifftrax version of The Happening as my favorite Shyamalan film.

Kaius  ·  3800 days ago  ·  link  ·  

SAG?

Also, perhaps I am being discourteous to the man, but from seeing him in interviews a few times I get the distinct impression that Bruce is not the brightest bulb on the set?

kleinbl00  ·  3800 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Never worked with him. I know several people who have that say nothing but nice things about him.

SAG = Screen Actor's Guild. Current rate is $859 a day.

Kaius  ·  3800 days ago  ·  link  ·  

$859 a day... while only a fraction of what he normally earns its still hard to feel sorry for him on that kind of cash.

kleinbl00  ·  3800 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Keep in mind: If you're an actor that gets a movie, a recurring role in a series and a handful of commercials, you're having a great year.

The feature is 3-4 weeks of 5-day weeks. That's $20k.

The series is maybe 2 weeks. That's $10k.

The commercials are a day each. That's $4k.

You're killing it and you're making $34k before taxes in the place where housing is the most expensive in the United States. You're also having a hard time keeping your table-waiting job because that feature blew a big old hole in your other gig.

A DGA director might get $10k for a commercial.. but he might only get two commercials a year.

Welcome to Hollywood.

(BTW - that $859 a day is for movies like Transformers. Movies like Primer? $100 a day.)

Kaius  ·  3800 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Oh sure for the common actor trying to make it I have no doubt the up and down nature of the business means that they have to struggle pretty hard to make ends meet. Its similar to contract work in many other fields, you gotta make it when you can to get you over the dry spells.

My point was just in regards to Bruce agreeing to 2 movies as a deposit on his loan was not THAT bad a deal considering that he was still going to earn a decent wage (relative to people outside of Hollywood) during the filming. It was a sweet deal even if the 2 movies had turned out to be duds.

kleinbl00  ·  3799 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, except it wasn't a loan, it was a "here, Bruce, have $2m" gift.

So really, he was making $600/day and a million dollars a film which, yeah, nice work when you get it.

Kaius  ·  3799 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Hah, even better. I picked the wrong career.