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HOLLYWOOD SPIN by Richard Horgan

:: Richard's Latest Blog Entries

No Room for a Drama Queen
	The makers of the low-budget thriller The Red Queen held a bake sale to pay for the salaries of the three union actors in the cast (Valente Rodriquez, Estephenia LeBaron, Harley Jane Kozak). They also chose to pass out Rice Krispie treats to folks like Kozak before she was asked to smile for photographers at a recent red carpet premiere in Texas. But such cinematic-slash-culinary artistry pales in comparison to the day on set when Kozak’s stunt double showed up to enact a climactic martial arts fight involving her character, gun-toting French speaking Church Lady. “Now, in a perfect world, a stunt double bears a passing resemblance to the actor he-she is doubling,” the veteran TV actress (pictured below) blogged good naturedly. “This being Low-Budgetville, mine was thirty years younger, six inches shorter, Latino and male. But gifted!”
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From the Boardroom to a Burger Palace
	Long before Davis Guggenheim zeroed in on global warming with An Inconvenient Truth, he tried to warm the cockles of 1996 TV viewers with the ER episode “Homeless for the Holidays.” It was one of a half-dozen installments in which Kirsten Dunst appeared as Charlie Chiemingo, a drug-abusing teenage runaway, in this case being tended to during Christmas week by George Clooney’s character. Now comes a feature film of the same name currently shoting in Indiana, and this Homeless for the Holidays is the kind of tale that appealed to Frank Capra during this country’s previous Great Depression. Written and directed by George A. Johnson (pictured below), it tells the story of Jack Baker (Matthew Moore), a corporate executive who must work at a fast food joint after he loses his high-paying job and grapple with the possibility that he and his family may be out on the street by Christmas.
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Defending the Almighty Dollar
	Perhaps the only way the made-in-Winnipeg feature *Among Thieves* could have a stranger local pedigree is if it had been made by celebrated native son Guy Maddin. As it stands, it is the work of author and civil engineer Paul Boge and world premiered late last month at the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s Muriel Richardson Auditorium. Budgeted at a paltry $15,000 Canadian, *Among Thieves* transformed the location of Winnipeg into Chicago for the story of three adult friends (Carey Smith, David Dick, Meghan Duffy) who, reunited after ten years, discover a secret document that exposes a very different reason for the Iraq War. Along with the New Testament derived title, debuting writer-director Boge throws in various Christian references and avoids such things as onscreen curse words in keeping with the tenets of the church where he worships (North Kildonan Mennonite Brethren). In Hollywood parlance, Among Thieves is Syriana meets Fireproof.
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A Drama Teacher Takes Aim
	Back in 1982, Linda Hamilton and Robert Carradine kicked off the miniscule sub-genre of movies about the “Assassins” college campus game via Tag. More recently, the hunt-down-a-designated-opponent pastime (typically played with water or Nerf guns) has figured in the 2002 Tim Allen comedy Big Trouble and the 2007 British documentary The Assassins Guild. While fans of Tag continue to clamor for a DVD release and-or remake, they can, in the interim, look forward to Spot Check. The low-budget indie comedy - filmed last year in and around Modesto, CA - was written, directed, produced and edited by Susan Romero, a drama teacher at Somerset Middle School since 2000.
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A Texas Family Affair
	Aspiring actor-producer Brett Folmar is just getting started in the independent moviemaking business, which means he can work closely with his stepfather under the auspices of resourcefulness rather than nepotism. In the $10,000 recently wrapped period Western Texas and Me, based on a script by his dad Jay Riley, Riley plays a U.S. Marshal while Folmar stars as the Galveston newspaper reporter that he befriends. Also in the narrative mix is the real-life character of celebrated 19th century cattle rancher Charles Goodnight (pictured below), who earned the nickname “Father of the Texas Panhandle.” It is when Riley’s U.S. Marshal joins Goodnight to fight Indians that the real trouble starts; when Riley returns home, he finds that his own ranch has been ransacked by Comanches and his wife and daughter apparently killed.
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:: Hollywood Spin Archives

An Academy Award Winner’s Swan Song
Roman Polanski’s Foot Fetish
Where There's a Will, There's Away
Film Pro on the Fairways
The Waning Days of Segregation
Showing Wicked Promise
More Hillbilly Hijinks
Madoff, Moore and Polanski
Labeling Spurlock a Fat Head
Angling for a Full-Length America
A Soulful Shopping Cart
Squeezing Out a Zombie Flick
A Ten-Round Filmmaking Bout
Serial Killer Schlock
A Zucker-Abrahams Derivative
A Rising River
Admirers of Alexandra Palace
An ROTC Cadet Brings It On
A Role Intended for Ledger
Reeling in Uncle Tony
Marques on the Marquee
From Paris to Prineville
The Grande Dame of Feature Film Casting
The Toast of Amity High
From Judo to Judoka
A Century's Worth of Brush Strokes
A Heck of a Quote, Brownie
Still Headless After All These Years
Trying to Pin Down a Movie Career
The Return of Victor Decimus
Where There’s Smoke…
Treading in John Waters Territory
Bookending the Rotterdam Film Festival
Brutality by the Bay
From a Kinky Prom Queen to Killer Clowns
A Slice of South Texas
The Return of Louise Lasser
A “Retarded” RomCom
Directing Dad
Zigzagging to Zombies
Lampposts in the Limelight
An Easier Time in Baghdad
Away from Him
Pondering 2001 and 2012
A Topsy-Turvy Ticket
Playing the Over-Under
Presenting the Parsnip
A Real-Life Natural
The Smallest Girl in the World
An Inconvenient Holiday
Rolling Out the Columbia Red Carpet
A Mother’s Catch-22
Sailing into Palm Springs
A Reporter Casts His Lot
Brion Gysin’s Dream Machine
Straight Out of Newburgh
Morrison, Michaels and Manson
On the Wings of an Oscar Nominee
It’s a Wonderful Take
The Faint Strains of Local Hero
What's in a Scummy Name?
Kentucky's Actor of the Year
He Was Nothing but a Hound Dog
Building Up Her Own Entourage
A Politically Incorrect Norwegian
From Warren Beatty to Phone Sex
David Lynch, Under the Dome
Sex and the Tarmac?
Sharpening the Blade
Miracle on 51st Street
A Belligerent Sideways
Pining for a Quantum Leap
A Meeting of the Coffee Minds
From Broadway to Bookstores
A Collection of Critics
The Stovepipe Hat Fraternity
A Grievous Story
Seeking Nigerian Restitution
A Health-Conscious Frankenstein
Gearing Up for More Genghis?
Some Very Offensive Chronicles
Finding Joy at Jungle Jim's
Reconnecting with Hollywood East
A Quixotic Quest
A Deranged Dexter Fan
Crushing on the Secretary of State
These Vampires Really Sucked
Rating the Junior Critics
A Hankering for Hef
He Still Sees Dead People
Swapping Out St. Louis for Sarsgaard
Following in Fireproof’s Footsteps
Two Flew Over The Cuckold’s Nest
A Preternatural Actress-Model
Hoy Say Can You See...