Hey folks, Harry here and we've got the amazing Carmina Burana on the set of Ben Stiller's latest twitchy comedy... ZOOLANDER... which apparently has MATRIX-y fight scenes.... sigh...... Wachowskis... please dear lord adapt and change..... Please.... Anyway, here's that report... sounds... ummmm interesting...
Dear Harry,
Carmina Burana here...Long time listener, first time caller...and I have a report on Ben Stiller's new flick "Zoolander" which should be coming out this time next year. I have gleaned from what I saw this past week that the reason it will take so long to release is that there will be many, MANY beat-to-death "Matrix shots" all of which begin production in LA next week. ANYWAY, on to what I was involved in.
This past week, Ben Stiller (who is directing, starring, and POSSIBLY, (I'm not sure) writing this flick, was shooting a fashion show sequence which will come at the end of the movie. This was all done in NYC, with NYC actors coming in as audience members. Little did they know that one of the black-clad fashionistas would be the crafy Carmina, trying to remember everything to tell AICN. SO. On with the dirt.
I call it DIRT because of the location. An abandoned CHEMICAL PLANT. The city of New York informed the production that the air quality was so poor in there, what with the asbestos and lead percentages, that NO ONE should be there. Especially not for 6 days of filming. Apparently Benny didn't care. He wanted to get the shots. So when 150 NYC actors, plus the cast of "Zoolander" all die of any number of types of cancer in the near future, you know why. During breaks from filming, we were given surgical masks to keep out the fumes, and every day, people quit and new extras were brought in. (Look for gross continuity errors in that scene) Glamorous, to say the least.
The plot? From what I could tell, the film is about a male model named Derrick Zoolander, (Stiller) who rises to the top of the fashion world despite the fact that he's terrible. I think Stiller did a short of this for an awards show a couple years ago on MTV or VH1. He saves the big fashion show at the end by defeating the evil fashion designer and former 80's new wave star, played by Will Farrell of SNL. Stiller's girlfriend is (surprise!!!) played by Stiller's new wife, Christine Taylor, who most people remember as Marcia from the Brady Bunch movie. Farrell's evil female compatriot is played by Milla Jovovich, who not only is gorgeous, but was the only even slightly nice person on the set. I know Owen Wilson is in the film as well, but he was not there when I was. (his stunt double is very nice, though.) There will be many cameos by supermodels. That's pretty much it. It didn't seem to be funny in the least, although they were trying to be. Oy.
There were a lot of body doubles and stand-ins on hand, and I believe this goes back to the Matrix shots. They walked through the fights and will CGI them in LA. With "Charlie's Angels" already making these fights funny, I feel by the time "Zoolander" comes out, they'll be seriously beating a dead horse. But then again, that could just be the asbestos poisoning.
Till next time, I remain,
Carmina Burana (cough, cough, wheeze)
