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I Am a Golden Hawaiian God

Oh, Cameron. What Have You Done? / Dustin Rowles

Trade News | October 16, 2008 | Comments (42)

I’ve made little secret of my unyielding fondness for Cameron Crowe, even though he’s been much maligned since Vanilla Sky, an underappreciated flick, and Elizabethtown, a bad film with an awesome soundtrack. But the man is, if not my favorite, then one of my favorite directors of all time and any news I hear about him is worth reporting. A few months ago, in fact, we reported about the Untitled Cameron Crowe Project, which had no details but for the fact that Ben Stiller and Reese Witherspoon were starring (you’re killing me, Crowe. Killing me!).

Well, Gone Elsewhere (via Slashfilm) has gotten their hands on the super-duper top secret script, and they’ve got details. And those details are depressing as hell. I hope to hell the movie is better than the description they offer, but if it’s not, I may just weep Lloyd Dobler tears. Here’s how they described the film, a “tropical romantic adventure comedy with light sci-fi and heavy supernatural aspects”:

Brian Gilcrest [Ben Stiller], 37, is a military contractor for the US Army. He hasn’t done many things right in life. He’s married the wrong women, broke up with the only good one and most people don’t like him. His only friend is a military techie named Jeremy who lives in the caves of the Cheyenne Mountains who he’s only spoken with on the phone. Brian is an angry man, but he learns that this doesn’t bother him. He’s just relieved that he doesn’t have to pretend to be anything else. Unfortunately, this has also killed his career. However, Gilcrest soon gets a shot at redemption thanks to escalating tensions between the United States and China. The military needs him to set up the launch of a private satellite at his old stomping grounds in Hawaii. There, Gilcrest gets a chance to meet up with “the one who got away,” Tracy [Witherspoon], her kids and her new husband. He also meets the designated liaison officer for the mission, Major Lisa Ng. Together these two must secure the blessings of the native Hawaiian council and see that the launch happens on schedule. If only they weren’t haunted by visions of Hawaiian ghosts in green mists, mistaken for incarnations of the Hawaiian gods Lono and Pele, and prophesied to bring about the Arrival.

The good news is that the guys who read the script actually liked it. But, man: haunted by visions of Hawaiian ghosts in green mists, mistaken for incarnations of the Hawaiian gods Lono and Pele, and prophesied to bring about the Arrival?! That description made my stomach lurch, made my heart fall into my knees and spew. Really? I’m gonna keep a brave face, Cameron. I have faith in you, brother. Please God, pleasegod don’t disappoint.

In the meantime, I’ll just watch this clip, and remember how fucking phenomenal Cameron Crowe can be:









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Comments

erghh i'd actually think it had potential if not for two of the most ANNOYING leads out there. Dammit.

Posted by: SAS at October 16, 2008 9:07 AM

Damn, that is a great scene........

Posted by: Coco Bravo at October 16, 2008 9:36 AM

Urggh...I hate Ben Still-around??! and Reese Witherspoon is to entertainment what Stalin was to world peace. But after blocking out the terrible "A-list" leads I must admit the summary is intriguing. I doubt they can pull this off, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Maybe they'll both get kidnapped and held for the length of production (laughs menacingly).

Posted by: ThunderSacTriumph at October 16, 2008 9:43 AM

The plot sounds like something conconted by my three year-old. "And then there was a unicorn and then he wanted cookies and then we went to the pool and then everybody was jumping..."

Posted by: courtney at October 16, 2008 9:49 AM

Sorry, "Concocted".

Posted by: courtney at October 16, 2008 9:50 AM

I hated "Almost Famous." I hated the plot. I hated the characters. I hated the actors in it. I hated the direction. I don't get the love for Cameron Crowe.

Posted by: BWeaves at October 16, 2008 9:57 AM

I'm with Courtney. Does this sound even remotely plausible? And even if it did, I'd want to see this why?

Posted by: bucdaddy at October 16, 2008 10:02 AM

So... basically he's doing Scooby Doo 4: The One That Blows only without Scooby and the gang.

See what I did there with Hawaii and volcanoes and...

Yeah, nothing's going to save this drek. Not even bad jokes.

Posted by: Ava at October 16, 2008 10:03 AM

Sounds to me like he's trying reeeally hard to make an off-beat, anything-goes movie a la Charlie Kaufman. Might still be good, but I doubt it. I've got nothing against Witherspoon, who has been good in a number of solid films, but Stiller is one of the most useless leading men out there.

Posted by: Todd at October 16, 2008 10:28 AM

This is like a really cheesy (and not in a good way)80's movie plot, think "Joe and the Volcano" or the shitieous "Deal of the Century."

Made worse by by Stiller's disturbing need to deploy his "manic-guy" stock persona and Witherspoon's man head.

Posted by: BarbadoSlim at October 16, 2008 10:35 AM

BSlim!!! You're safe! We missed you yesterday in the debate thread.

Posted by: Sofía at October 16, 2008 10:47 AM

The description had me actually excited until "his chance at redemption thanks to mounting tensions between America and China." From there, it was a slippery slope of shit. And as much as I would hope for "Royal Tennenbaums" Ben Stiller, I know we would probably get the same "Meet The Parents" Stiller we've been force-fed for years now.

Posted by: Audiosuede at October 16, 2008 10:50 AM

Yeah, that bitch Omar turned at the last second, seems like Saint Croix and the rest of the Virgin Islands are getting fucked-up though. I'm sorry for those folks.

Still got the day off.

It's Miller time.

Posted by: BarbadoSlim at October 16, 2008 10:50 AM

*Cues up Thunderous Applause*

Posted by: Phil at October 16, 2008 10:55 AM

Nicely done Phil, have a Miller.

Oh, and these are, High Life none of that "genuine draft" pansy ass bullshit.

Posted by: BarbadoSlim at October 16, 2008 11:02 AM

This sounds like a rip off of Fires of Eden by Dan Simmons (Hyperion,Ilium,etc).

That is one of the worst books I've ever read by a good author. That would be a good comment diversion right there actually: "Horrible Books by Excellent Authors".

Posted by: stipe42 at October 16, 2008 11:40 AM

Thanks for that clip!! Made the morning.

Saw 'Mars' and it was pretty bland.

How did they get Harvey in this????

Posted by: Fuel at October 16, 2008 11:41 AM

This sounds like a rip off of Fires of Eden by Dan Simmons (Hyperion,Ilium,etc).

That is one of the worst books I've ever read by a good author. That would be a good comment diversion right there actually: "Horrible Books by Excellent Authors".

Posted by: stipe42 at October 16, 2008 11:40 AM


Blurgh, I picked up that book because I love Dan Simmons, and was horribly disapointed. I was trying to figure out which book this movie summary reminded me of, and couldn't remember the name; apparently I blocked it out because it was so bad. The plot is now slowly leaking back into my consciousness.

Another than isn't quite so bad, but still not as good as it could be is Wyrms by Orson Scott Card. But maybe I was swayed by the horrible original cover art (I was reading a very old copy).

Also, I can't get the movie to work on my crappy laptop, but it looks like a bus scene (is it the one when they sing "Tiny Dancer?);my favorite scene in Almost Famous is the imminent plane crash scene.

"I'm GAY!!!"

Priceless.

Posted by: Alexandra at October 16, 2008 12:21 PM

BWeaves - same here. I absolutely hated "AF" - every part of it.

Posted by: samantha t at October 16, 2008 12:27 PM

Apropos of jack shit, but I've gotta get this out - ThunderSacTriumph, you've got the goddam coolest handle on these here intrabetanets. If I'm ever allowed to own chickens again, I'm totally naming the biggest one after you...

Elizabethtown was a horrible, horrible, no-good, completely shitty, stomach-cramp of a film. Seriously. The part that pissed me off most? When Dunst, in a matter of days, manages to put together an entire road trip journal and album that somehow, somehow manages to synch with the Bloomster's journey. When was this planned? You spent the majority of the film hanging with Bloomer, or in the tub, or being the quirky dippity doo - did you have this thing meticulously planned from years ago? It's not possible, goddamit! I hated this goddam movie . HATE HATE HATE - It was by far, BY FAR, the longest goddam film I have ever sat through - Hell, I'd watch a 24-hour marathon of The Hour-Long Thrashing Of The Christ over Elizabethtown... Blarg!

Posted by: Skitz at October 16, 2008 12:40 PM

At least he's trying something new and different. For all the remakes and sequels we get stuck with every year, at which the masses cry "come up with a new story", this sure doesn't sound like it'll fit in any neat box. Which seems like a good thing to me.

Posted by: Dariuss at October 16, 2008 12:43 PM

Alexandra: I couldn't remember the title of the wretched thing either but I have it sitting downstairs. I've read sci-fi for years but had never read Hyperion, and even had a copy of it on the shelf for the last five years without cracking it open until last year. (All those years ago, the first girl I kissed was loathed by all of my friends and rambled continuously about Hyperion, so I must have been scarred for life and refused to read it on a subconscious level until there was nothing else left on the shelf).

So I read it and it's incredible, and I read the next three books, and then Ilium and Olympos, and then The Terror as soon as it came out. Week after that and I find Fires of Eden at the library booksale for 25 cents . . . and whoosh, out goes the enthusiasm. What a bacon wrapped turd sandwich. What made it worse is that it had those little glimpses of greatness on half the pages, but they were so surrounded by cliches and painfully bad plot developments that they just made my freaking eyes bleed.

So a year after I never saw Stipe42's First Kiss again, two of my friends come running up to me on a monday at school. They had rented a porn movie on Saturday night you see (yes, those gray days where internet porn existed but was limited to 300x200 jpegs, and us true gourmands still had to troll the sticky floor section of the cut rate rental place next to the liquor store). "We rented this movie called Two in the Ass and the chick in it is totally Stipe42's First Kiss." For the next two years I got to hear at least once per week, "You know, stipe42, I didn't believe it was possible but she really did get two in the ass . . . at the same time. Did she ever let you do that? Who was the other guy?"

So the lesson is this, all you hopeless romantics. Just as the first girl you kissed probably has a look-a-like heroin addict starring in skeezy third rate porn, so too the best of authors probably have a book like "Fires of Eden" floating around.

Posted by: stipe42 at October 16, 2008 12:51 PM

To me it sounds more like a remake (or reimagining, 2008 version of Day of the Dead style) of Gross Pointe Blank.

Posted by: Ray at October 16, 2008 1:10 PM

I didn't even make it through this whole post. All I saw was this:

even though he's been much maligned since Vanilla Sky, an underappreciated flick

What the fuck Dustin??? Vanilla Sky wasn't underappreciated, it was a crappy remake of a Spanish film called Abre los ojos. I'm assuming that you already knew that but for some reason you thought Crowe did a good job with the remake. He didn't. All it proved to me was that Tom Cruise takes him self so seriously that he didn't even notice the irony in playing a character who was essentially exactly like him.

Posted by: Allingsworth at October 16, 2008 1:30 PM

stipe42: I admit that I read Ilium and Olympos after having read the Hyperion series several times, and didn't think they were quite as good. The message was similar, but the story wasn't quite as compelling to me. The first book that ever made me openly sob (as opposed to quietly weep) was The Rise of Endymion, and the ending of Olympos just didn't compare.

Posted by: Alexandra at October 16, 2008 2:12 PM

I hated every fucking minute of Vanilla Sky. Did anyone else notice that it's practically a frame-by-frame remake of the original? Because it is. And it sucked in Spanish too.

Posted by: lizzieborden at October 16, 2008 3:37 PM

Alexandra: I agree with the Hyperion series being on a plane above Ilium and Olympos, and yes the sheer tragic romance and beauty of the ending of The Rise of Endymion is above reproach.

What I did love about Ilium and Olympos though was the storyline mostly lost in all of the wacky sci-fi for the sake of wacky sci-fi: the story of Daemon, Ava, and the rest of the humans left on Earth. Really those hundreds of pages about Mars and pretend Gods and heroes and robots from Jupiter obsessed with Shakespeare and Marlowe could have just about been summarily cut. They had no emotional resonance.

The story of the evolution of Daemon, et al. from soft and spoiled children of a padded cell society into self sufficient survivors is a beautiful one and is mostly lost in the longer work. That single moment when all is lost and the last few hundred surviving humans don't just keep fighting anyway but charge the murderous horde is one of the most powerful scenes I've ever read. This isn't because it is a last stand or a suicidal charge, you can find those a dime a dozen in bad action and military thrillers. It was powerful because of who these people were at the start of the story.

The difference between good stories and bad stories is the difference between the dynamic and static. Good stories aren't constructed by powerful scenes, those are fundamentally static, and when strung together without insight are just the emotional equivalent of pornography. Good stories are built by characters changing, which is why you can find utterly cliched and banal scenes or events in great stories that are inexplicably not ruined by such elements.

Posted by: stipe42 at October 16, 2008 4:02 PM

People who say they hate Almost Famous are liars. It's ok, we won't take away your too-cool-for-school card if you admit it.

Posted by: tinmo at October 16, 2008 4:08 PM

I loathe Cameron Crowe. "Almost Famous" is a really good movie, I'll admit, but that's because he's insanely egocentric and movie is basically his life story. The whole thing is a love letter to himself.
"Say Anything" is so frickin' overrated that I don't even care a shitty band took their name from it, and "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" is crass and exploitative without saying a single thing. Fuck a Cameron Crowe.

Posted by: Geetch at October 16, 2008 6:23 PM

People who say they hate Almost Famous are liars. It's ok, we won't take away your too-cool-for-school card if you admit it.

Posted by: tinmo at October 16, 2008 4:08 PM
----------------------------------------------

Oh, I ain't lying.

And the fact it has Kate Hudson in it, makes me hate it with particular gusto.

Posted by: BarbadoSlim at October 16, 2008 6:47 PM

BSlim, you have no soul.

Posted by: tinmo at October 16, 2008 8:57 PM

Oh, and P.S. Fast Times at Ridgemont High doesn't need to "say" a damn thing. Its awesomeness speaks for itself. It's all about not saying anything but what retards we are in high school. You dick!

Posted by: tinmo at October 16, 2008 9:11 PM

Uh, I didn't say anything about Fast Times, in fact, I've no problem with it.

Posted by: BarbadoSlim at October 16, 2008 9:20 PM

Sorry, was talking to Geetch.

Posted by: tinmo at October 16, 2008 10:05 PM

Phenomenal how? A fucking sing along? Seriously? This is the best scene in the movie?
i will never understand the obsession decent writers have with this idiot.

Posted by: Scott at October 16, 2008 10:11 PM

Please, I prefer bitch. And the only reason I hold "Fast Times" to that standard is that Crowe clearly thinks he is saying something interesting and relevant, when at best he's merely re-treading well-beaten ground. Other people have captured the pain and stupidity of high school and have done it without resorting to the banality of teenage nudity.

Posted by: Geetch at October 17, 2008 12:43 AM

"Fast Times At Ridgemont High" is crass and exploitative without saying a single thing.

The point, and I say this as someone who was a high school junior when it was released, was that we had never seen a movie that realistically depicted what was going on. All it needed to say, if anything, was "we see you" without moral sledgehammers or idealized nostalgia.

Posted by: Gib at October 17, 2008 12:49 AM

I was a sophomore when I saw it and my immediate impression was that it was crap. However, I went to high school some 20 years after it was released, so perhaps I've been too inundated with "high school experience" movies/TV shows, ones that managed to be realistic without moral sledgehammers or idealized nostalgia, to appreciate the novelty. To a certain extent, I get why people like the movie, but I detest it and I think it's an example of how Cameron Crow falls down as a filmmaker.

Posted by: Geetch at October 17, 2008 1:48 AM

CC is an overrated C*.


*Cameron Crowe, Cunt

Posted by: ben (thpbt) at October 17, 2008 7:14 AM

Word Allingsworth! Vanilla Sky is a horrible and very long, music video, just a shitty remake made to satisfy Tom Cruise's ego. Almost Famous was just decent. Dustin, I think you should have kept your love for Crowe a secret.

Posted by: Gaby at October 17, 2008 11:45 AM

There is no one else, I repeat, no one, who can set a movie to music the way Cameron Crowe can. If only for that reason alone I will give him a lifetime pass, even for Elizabethtown. Which, incidentally, I concede, is overly long, features Kirsten Dunst at her most annoying, and tries just a little too hard to go for the quirk, but still has some amazing musical moments that bring me to tears every time. To me, that is one of the most powerful things a film can do. Try not to well up when he visits the Civil Rights museum at the Lorraine motel set to "Pride (In the Name of Love)." I dare you! Of course that's the most obvious of moments, but there are so many others. And even though her setting up that perfectly timed, detailed road trip soundtrack is a tad unrealistic, I think it's a wonderful, dreamy idea and that part of the movie was executed very well.

Posted by: tinmo at October 17, 2008 11:41 PM

I have stated on this very blog that I believe "Vanilla Sky" to be the worst movie ever made. His female characters are absolute shit. The only thing that saves "Fast Times" from having entirely one-dimensional female characters was Amy Heckerling's involvement.

Posted by: samantha t at October 21, 2008 12:07 PM