Two stories worth reading:

1.

Judd Apatow talks about the casting of penises in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story:

Jake (Kasdan) had extras casting for someone that was comfortable showing their penis. And then they brought him a big stack of polaroids, and it was all these guys in their underwear, which led to this odd conversation of ‘How do we know what it looks like?’ Because it could be terrifying. You actually do need the right-looking penis, because the wrong penis could sicken people. If the penis is too large, men might get sad and stop laughing in comparison with this enormous penis. But as we went through the stack, only one guy just was naked. He had the funniest little smile on his face and Jake thought, ‘That’s the guy.’ And that’s who he hired.

All this makes the movie’s title seem all too literate. What’s next for Hollywood? A full time on-set penis wrangler?
Apatow says also that the DVD will include a “cockumentary” of the penis casting session and a 30 minute longer… ummm… cut of the movie titled “The Self-Indulgent, Almost Unbearably Long Director’s Cut“. Longer Cox? How tempting.

2.

Sorry to say but Robert Welkos does a terrible job at interviewing ace filmmaker Earn Kolirin for yesterday’s L.A Times. Kolirin’s charming Israeli movie, The Band’s Visit, opens Friday in Los Angeles and New York for an Oscar qualifying run, before rolling out wider February 8.
First, Welkos constantly misspells Kolirin’s name as Kilorin, and misspells Kolirin’s writing debut “Zur Hadassim” (directed by Kolirin’s less prestigious filmmaker father, Gideon Kolirin). One can’t help feel that the online version posted has not been copy edited or fact checked.
Then he trumps up, all over again, the over-hyped story of the movie being disqualified by the Academy’s and the HFPA’s Foreign Language Films committees. All the while forgetting to update the readers that is has just won two awards - for best actor and the Discovery award - at the European Film Awards and been nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, for best Foreign Film (the Spirit Awards categorizes “foreign film” according to the country of production and not the language spoken, that’s why the mostly English speaking The Band’s Visit will go up against the all-English speaking Once). The fact that The Band’s Visit - charming, witty and Tatiesque as it is - will have had trouble qualifying for a Foreign Language Academy Award nomination has been voiced in Israel ever since the film’s debut in Cannes in May (and reported over at my Hebrew language film blog). But Welkos let Kolirin spell out a less than fortunate metaphor:

Kolirin compares the dispute to a songwriter’s lyrics and somebody complaining: “Look, we read your song and it consists of three verbs and one adjective.”
“You would say to them, ‘Yes, you’re right, but you’re not understanding the song,’ ” Kolirin said. “Is this the correct way of evaluating a song? I don’t know. It’s strange.

Well, no. The understanding of the song is irrelevant if you’re sending the song to an “all-adjective-song-writing competition”, which is what the Foreign Language Oscar is about. When sent to an “understanding-the-song” competition The Band’s Visit is doing just fine, and everyone acknowledges its charm and talent. Maybe the Oscar’s rules will change, which could be the result of this film disqualification. And this is what Band’s producers kept forgetting when sending out a mostly English language film to the Oscars, when local voices warned that this jeopardizes the chances of other Israeli films in the contest should they be ousted - which is exactly what has happened (only now Band’s producers drum the disqualifying ticket for PR purposes and for playing the underdog, which - as an Israeli - makes my stomach turn in disgust, and diminishes my love for this movie).
Here’s another metaphor, just as lame: The producers of The Band’s Visit sent a 300 pound boxer - and a very good one - to a feather weight boxing match, hoping that no one will notice their contender is just a bit bigger than the rest. And when, lo and behold, someone actually used a scale to measure the kid, they try to use every excuse in the book, with crocodile tears, from “but he’s a really good boxer, just let him into the ring” to “this is cultural discrimination! Our boxers are heavier, that’s just the way us Israelis are built, you can’t disqualify us because our nutrition - as a young, struggling, enemy surrounded country - is different than yours”.

To the people of The Band’s Visit, some of which I know, some are friends, some have grown to hate me over the last several months for covering this, others (such as Kolirin) I don’t know personally but hold in great admiration: you have a fantastic movie, it’s absolutely adorable, and I hope it finds the biggest audience possible, because it also does Israeli movie a great service - BUT your handling of the film, the Oscars Foreign Language debacle and the spinning of it has been deplorable.