Blame Samuel L. Jackson

His predilection for picking up every movie script placed on his desk and saying "book it, Dano"--as well as my penchant for watching the finished products on HBO throughout the years--is culpable for the The Effrontery's random return.

[Just wait 'til I show her my Windu]

I'll get to my point in a moment, but here's the deal: Last January, The Effrontery rode into town and started throwing up daily posts about all manner of things--mostly sports-related. This was fun for its not-so-humble author, but time-consuming and taxing as well. Pretty much, what was intended to be a creative outlet featuring a mélange of things I deem noteworthy quickly became a bit of a nuisance. By February 2008, things were put on hold and not a peep since... Jump to January 2009, Tracy Morgan has welcomed us to Post-Racial America, and I plan to start posting again. It will be very sporadic... perhaps once a week, perhaps once a month. Perhaps all ova yo face when you're sleeping at night. Who knows??? [ed. note: not you; that's the point]

["Deal with it, Cate Blanchett."]

Anyway, back to Jules Winnfield. I wanted to watch a quick movie the other night and the 90-minute "Jumper" was taking up space in my DVR. "Hey, this is a Samuel L. joint," I thought. So I decided to give it a whirl. Not two minutes in and it's clear that the movie was filmed in Ann Arbor! You know when people tell you they "laughed out loud" about something and it doesn't resonate because that's just another way of emphasizing a point? Well, when I tell you that I started laughing hysterically for a good minute or two, please pause for a second and understand the gravity of the moment.

So many questions. They filmed a blockbuster action movie in Ann Arbor? When? Why film in Michigan? How the hell did I now know about this? I knew of "Jumper" when it was released--it was one of those movies with the pre-holiday-weekend-you-will-see-this-big-budget-action-movie-or-die advertising campaigns--but somehow the most important detail never made it on to my radar. Well, then. You know what happened next... It took 2 hours and 5 minutes to watch a 90-minute movie because I spent a crazy amount of time pausing and rewinding various scenes to judge the verity of the set design and locate the chosen backdrops. Holy balls, man! I'd estimate about 1/3 of the movie was shot in Ann Arbor, maybe even more, with some extra scenes filmed throughout the state of Michigan and parts of Ontario [ed. note: I think the Mackinac Bridge made an appearance towards the end]. Beyond simply being shot there, Ann Arbor was actively featured throughout the movie.

[This water tower in Peterborough, Ontario was depicted in "Jumper" with 'Ann Arbor' superimposed on the facade]
(Photo Credit: flickr user Richmann)

There were several bar scenes in which Maize & Blue-clad patrons swilled their drinks while taking in a Michigan vs. Penn State football game [ed. note: it was very subdued for a gameday bar crowd. Just saying]. The movie wasn't very good, even for so-called mind candy, but it proved very fascinating and pleasing to me--a known chronicler of anything even tenuously related to The University of Michigan. One of my initial questions when discovering Ann Arbor's presence in the movie--namely, "Why film in Michigan?"--led me to do a little sleuthing. I figured one of the producers was an alum and decided to use The Deuce in his flick. Turns out, I was pretty damn close. Writer David S. Goyer was born and raised in Ann Arbor:

Graduated from USC School of Cinema-Television (1988).

Graduated from Huron High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Was Teaching Assistant to screenwriter Nelson Gidding at USC.

Sold his comic book collection en masse to the drummer from System of a Down, John Dolmayan.

Emphasis mine. That explains a whole lot. Especially the USC part, which accounts for the way he mailed in the ending (zing!). I do, however, respect the fact that the sale of his comic book collection to an Armenian rocker was prominent among his career trivia. Anyway, Goyer's roots were likely instrumental in his decision to write Ann Arbor into the movie, but I discovered another interesting thing along the way. This was written one year ago, almost to the date:

...Michigan offers a tax rebate of up to 20 percent to production companies that shoot movies, TV shows, and commercials in the state. But that no longer has the bling it once did, film industry insiders say.

"Twenty percent isn't going to do it. You really need to have a headline, says Mike Binder, a Detroit native who wrote and directed "The Upside of Anger," a 2005 film starring Joan Allen and Kevin Costner. Although the plot was set in a Detroit suburb, the movie was filmed in London.

Binder visited Lansing recently to lobby lawmakers for a 40 percent rebate, which would be the country's highest.

In continuing the Sisyphean task of righting Michigan's economy, state lawmakers passed the legislation by the Ides of March 2008, and your current Michigan Film Production Incentives now boil down to this:

...

40% refundable tax credit against Michigan Business Tax (MBT) liability for qualified film or digital media pre-production, production, and postproduction costs incurred in Michigan. Alternatively could be claimed against Michigan Income tax withholding tax liability.

Refundable and assignable (transferable). This is a "refund" or "tax rebate" equal to 40% of qualified production expenditures, not a credit against taxes owed. Additional 2% credit in core communities.

...

So where the hell am I going with all this? Right to this man:

[You'll shoot your eye out]

The Independent Voice of Central Michigan University, otherwise known as Central Michigan Life, reported Monday that Michigan's film industry is beginning to thrive. We're all familiar with that news source's "Independent Voice" and tendency to suck back on some of Grandpa's old cough syrup before publishing things, but now The Freep is starting to talk about a $100 million film studio that may land in Allen Park. And of course, Clint Eastwood's "Gran Torino" just became the first feature under Michigan's new incentives to open in theaters. The film took the No. 1 spot at the box office this past weekend to the tune of $29.5 million. Michigan's economy needs all the help it can get and I, for one, welcome more cinematic sightings of Ann Arbor in the future. Incidentally, I also welcome our new insect overlords. WOTS is that Drew Barrymore just finished up a rollerderby movie that was filmed in The Deuce and that means it's only a matter of time before Samuel L. comes back for more. My DVR is ready.

Mixed signals from the Sports Guy

I've always loved reading Bill Simmons. Other than checking The Effrontery [ed. note: shameless plug], there is no better way to entertain yourself during moments of extreme boredom (read: work) than reading through the Sports Guy's latest offering of banter. Because things have been busy around here lately, I'm still getting caught up on his more recent columns and rants. Well, this morning I was ripping through his NFL Divisional Playoff Preview column from two weeks ago and discovered one of the best calls he--nay, anyone--has ever made. Here's the sequence:

During breaks in the Skins-Hawks game, I was flicking over to "Beverly Hills Cop" on one of the HD channels, and maybe it was seeing Jenny Summers' come-hither smirk in high definition for the first time, but how did I never notice the smoldering sexual tension in the scene when Axel brings his old friend Jenny back to his Beverly Hills hotel room and she lays down on his bed and bats her eyelashes at him for a couple of minutes? For God's sake, she did everything but take her clothes off and assume the missionary position, and yet Axel was more interested in ordering room service for Taggart and Rosewood. I don't get it.

Which leads me to my $64,000 question: Was Axel Foley secretly gay?

In the first two "Cop" movies (I refuse to admit that "Cop 3" happened), Axel didn't have a girlfriend, and we never saw him hook up with a single girl. In "Cop 1," he convincingly pretended to be Victor Maitlin's lover in a public restaurant. In "Cop 2," he ruined what could have been a fantastic time for his buddies at the Playboy Mansion by starting a fight for no real reason with a suspected bank robber. In "Cop 1," he made Taggart and Rosewood follow him to a strip joint, almost like he was overcompensating, then spent more time looking around the club than looking at the girls. In both "Cop" movies, he ably served as a platonic friend for Jenny and Lt. Bogomil's daughter (without ever making a move on either of them); he clicked with two obviously gay characters (the ones played by Damon Wayans and Bronson Pinchot); and he loved playing a perverse cat-and-mouse game with Taggart and Rosewood (two guys). And he was willing to risk his job and his life to avenge the murder of his old "buddy" Mikey, who just happened to be coming back to "crash" at Axel's apartment on the night he was murdered. We're sure Axel Foley was straight? We're sure?

(Here's how we'll get an official answer once and for all: If Logo starts running either "Cop" movie. That's how we settled the "Was Bull Durham a chick flick?" argument years ago, when it started running on Lifetime. As far as I'm concerned, the ball is in Logo's hands. They would know better than me.)

As a person who has also viewed the "Cop" movies in excess of 300 times, I must applaud Simmons for bringing all that up. I mean, it's got to be in the "Movie Minutiae Great Call Pantheon," right? First ballot, if you ask me. Sort of like the way I felt when someone (I forget who) once mentioned to me that Martin Scorsese's mother, Catherine, played the role of Joe Pesci's mother in GoodFellas: "Yeah, I knew that already, dumbass" was my reaction [ed. note: remember, this was 1992 and I was nine years old]. He responded with, "but did you know that Scorsese's dad, Charles, played 'Vinnie' in the movie?" That totally floored me. Especially because I was so obsessed with the film that telling people I was Sicilian ("Sis-eeeel-yan," was how I'd intentionally pronounce it) and rhetorically asking "If you think I'm actually Jewish, then why the hell would mama and papa name me 'Anthony?'" was commonplace. Imagine my nine-year-old reaction to learning something new about a subject I felt I had mastered. "What a great call...I can't believe I didn't think of/know that!" pretty much sums up the feeling I had.

Anyway, back to Simmons. That deduction he made about Axel Foley's latent homosexuality is great. I rarely gush about a member of the MSM, let alone one who works for The Worldwide Leader, but it was a fantastic call--and one I never put the pieces together on. As with the Charles Scorsese revelation, shame on me.

Now, the above-referenced column was written about a week ago, on January 11 to be exact. So picture my surprise when just yesterday my friend 'Joncheeeler' [ed. note: this is someone who knows his Simmons cold] suggested, apropos of my Ted McGinley "jumping the shark" reference, that Bill Simmons might have done the same with his sports columns--as evidenced by this article about some contrived NBA theory he calls "Chemacterility." Read through the whole column if you wish, but here are a few high-, er, low-lights:

These guys eat dinner, hang out, work out and play video games together. They don't care about stats, acclaim, shots or minutes. It's a team in every sense. Even better, Boston's future is protected for years to come: Allen's contract expires in 2010, Pierce's in 2011, KG's in 2012. The Celtics are good, and they will continue to be good. What more can you ask for? When you can mix talent with chemacterility, you have something substantial.

That passage came midway through the piece, yet I was still asking how it explained 1) what "chemacterility" is, and 2) why, specifically, it is the end-all-be-all of NBA success strategies? Or, perhaps it is just a convoluted, off-base theory the Sports Guy talked himself into believing? I'm leaning towards that conclusion. Otherwise, get me and my friends on an NBA roster immediately. We eat dinner, hang out, work out and play video games too.

He then goes on to say this:

Now, if you're a Blazers fan, you're thinking, Wait, that sounds familiar! After enduring the debilitating Jail Blazers era, the locals despised the team so much that Portland's suits targeted chemistry guys...

Chemistry guys, eh? This is such an amorphous term. A player could be a 'chemistry' guy on one team, and a cancer on another. Take Stephen Jackson's sudden uptick in 'character' and 'team chemistry' upon joining the Golden State Warriors as a prime example. Before departing the Indiana Pacers midway through the 2006-2007 NBA season, he was the antithesis of a 'character guy,' known almost exclusively for his role in the infamous "Malice at The Palace" mele of 2004. He was branded a pariah and subsequently sent packing. Then he landed in Oakland and everyone expected chaos [ed. note: it is Oakland, ya know], not the perfect storm of character and intensity that propelled the 8th-seeded Warriors to an inexplicable first-round triumph over the Dallas Mavericks in the 2007 NBA Playoffs. In fact, the series-clincher against the Mavs saw him establish the franchise record for most three-pointers made in a playoff game (going 7-of-8 from long range), including makes in his first seven attempts. So where's the beef? Is he a 'chemistry' guy or not? Well, if you can't answer that question (like me), then perhaps the Sports Guy's "chemacterility" logic should be printed on toilet paper for people (like me) to wipe their ass with.

["Aaaay!"]

Yikes. I love reading his work. I really do. But I'm sure a ton of people still loved the Fonz during, and even after, his infamous cartilaginous-fish-jumping scene. Just because you admire someone or his work does not rule out the possibility of him having made the leap, as it were. It just means you are probably too deep in the forest to see the trees. That being said, I'm going to reserve judgment for a bit. But it's something I'm definitely keeping an eye on.


UPDATE (12:19 PM): After reading this post, my buddy Joncheeeler (as mentioned earlier) and I had a quick exchange on Gmail Chat:

Joncheeeler: I still think the primary reason that column is a piece of shit is that he tries to say that there's this new trend where u get character guys to build a winner, while completely ignoring the fact that u need to have a total stud bigman on your roster [ed. note: like Tim Duncan or KG] before u can operate on the "chemacterility" premise

Me: good point

Joncheeeler: and the only way to get one of those guys is to luck out and have the #1 pick when one happens to be in the draft, or make an unfair trade with your butt buddy

Me: like Ainge and McHale

Joncheeeler: exactly

Good stuff there.