I never watched the TV show. But that’s not why.
I can go to the movie for free. But I won’t.
I think that as hard as it is to drop the ball on a project with such low expectations, ball has hit floor.
Jessica Simpson. Seriously, what the fuck?
This woman is not attractive to me. And I’m desperate and a hooters man, so how hard does that have to be? But her stupidity and ugly hairdos are not endearing.
Dumb can be endearing. That one chick on WWE Raw who plays like she’s really fuckin’ dumb is attractive as hell, and I’d hit that, even if she really were that moronic (though it looks like an act).
The line Jessica says in the trailer about getting something caught in her undercarriage is horribly delivered. Jessica has a natural Southern accent, so why is she faking a broader one? When you can’t convincingly play a dumb Southern blonde even though you are one, it’s time to go.
I like redneck humor. Jim Varney is a genius, and some of the Ernest movies rank among the greatest movies ever in my book. Jeff Foxworthy makes me laugh (Bill Engvall, however, does not). Billy Bob Thornton’s direct-to-DVD “Daddy and Them” made me laugh myself into great pain (Justin Stone was present and can testify to that).
But did they give the Dukes movie to Billy Bob, or Varney pal John Cherry to direct? No. They gave it to the Broken Lizard troupe, of Super Troopers and Club Dread “fame.” I will not see another Broken Lizard movie unless I am well paid to do so.
Not rednecks. Not funny. Word is a couple of the Super Troopers cops actually appear in the Dukes movie.
This may sound racist, but so be it: A movie about rednecks should not be directed by someone named “Jay Chandrasekhar.” Billy Bob Thornton, yes.
It takes someone who’s from the South to do a Southern comedy right. Southerners have no problem getting the piss ripped out of them provided they can tell that someone involved is doing it knowingly and not coming off as a superior outsider. The Ernest movies were always a hit in Sylva, NC.
I’d love to see a movie in which Willie Nelson’s two nephews raise hell in the Bible belt by driving fast cars and drinking beer. Just not this one.
Well Luke, Simpson is the ultimate air-head, but that’s not why I won’t see this film. I never liked the TV series and have no interest in a movie version.
Think I’ll stick with Smokey and the Bandit for this kind of fun.
I agree about Simpson.. Hate her.. She’s unatractive, retarded, useless, retarded, blonde, retarded, air-headed and retarted.
Growing up in Nashville, you best your ass we watched Dukes’ and it was awesome… My sister can do a good impression of Roscoe… Ahh.. good times.
MacGyver and Knight Rider also kicked ass, no movie yet for those.. What the hell?!!
I was a BIG FAN of the CBS TV show…(I still have my vinyl record album and the die-cast metal cars) but, the only reason I will see this stupid film is just to see the General Lee fly again…and hopefully, without the use of CGI…
i’ll say this again: it really should’ve been me directing this movie. had i played the cards right some years back… [wistful sigh; brow-beating]… i’m holding out for smokey & the banddit five though at this point. being from the midwestern woods, my problem with people from the outside who attempt to portray people in the midwest (this is a correlative to the south, not the same exact people, but the idea is the same; and i have come to know the south as well thanks to later travel & work & honest curiosity) is that characterization becomes the easy route. characterization as opposed to character. hollywood doesn’t get the working class. (granted of course, something like Dukes or the aforementioned Smokey is pretty much goofball entertainment, but that can be dealt with better too. it can be raucous without being stupid.) i’m looking forward to establishing a new genre of movies that do this in the way great american literature has done. my movie “motel, glimpse” is a solid first step in that direction.
i have to admit i will see Dukes out of morbid curiosity. i loved the tv show. it’s the single thing i remember most playing on the playground in elementary school. the cool kids would hand out roles though and i was never bo or luke. once i got home though, and started developing my own rules, you better believe i was the slickest damn character you might imagine.
shameless plug, as it’s appeared on no link pages anywhere in the world…
motelglimpse.com
Yeah… Jessica Simpson is kinda…. there. She has weird eyes and her hair is meh and she kinda looks confused all the time. I feel safe bashing her, which is not my usual habit, because of her cult-like following. I mean, she is pretty. Maybe even hot, in the right pictures.
But…
Just not doin’ a lot for me. And too bad about Broken Lizard, who I not a fan of. Oh, and..
i remember when i wanted to watch the dukes of hazzard, but i couldn’t because my fundamentalist parents wouldnt let me because it defied authority. that was nothing, though, because he-man was the devil himself, distilled down into plastic with his horns carefully filed away to fool my friends and cousins.
sometimes i wished that i could be cool, that i could participate in the zeitgeist, and not be off in a bubble of restrictions, to no longer be the social ghost haunting the elementary school classroom. so i would try humming or singing to get attention but no one listened and i was losing weight and shrinking away into nothingness until i gave up on the world and learned to enojoy my little bubble, to celebrate the space the world and my parent’s religion had given me.
i hate the dukes of hazzard, but i love them too.
Eh, not quite right. Hopefully close enough for a smile, hm?
what strain of fundamentalism was your family, if you don’t mind my asking? if you don’t wish to be specific, that’s fine of course. i’m just curious.
tangent: the cultural zeitgiest ain’t too progressive. as has always been the case, i think, the true artistic and/or cultural movement forward happens outside of all readily-established notions. i think if you ain’t hip–in any medium of expression particularly–than it’s to your advantage. it doesn’t mean one is necessarily on to anything, but it may. the downside being nobody recognizes the work. but that’s what i keep telling myself as i remain unable to sell anything i create.
Well, it is a bit hard to say; I suppose that they could be pegged as the sort of Generic United States Rightward Leaning Protestants. Which is to say the fundamentalism of James Dobson, in particular. This was not helped by the fact that my parents became believers when I was a few years on, and thus had to take a dramatic 180… it was made worse by the fact that my mother’s ADD (what she pretty much has now) had flared up into something nigh-bipolar. If you think I post nonsense or do not think about what I say, which I do, you should meet my mother, though she is a generally very kind woman that Julie and I get along with well enough for us all to have bought a house together.
Also, if she had not had a conversion experience, she could very well be dead, due to the fact that it empowered her to quit some very bad habits. And, she is a great deal more mellow and thoughtful about her faith now. So, I will not complain too much.
On a tangent, one of the greatest disappointments of my life thus far was when I learned in college that the GUSRLP not only used pet interpretations of verses to insure their own prejudices (i.e. a lack of woman priests), but that the whole thing was formed around the need of middle to high class white individuals instead of the oft-invoked ‘Real Church’. But, that is a bit of an aside.
I hope you’re right about the zeitgeist. I intend on starting to shop my life’s work around for publication late next year, and I certainly haven’t seen any other books that are similar. But anyway, I find it hard to endorse my own works, so I’ll ask Julie to comment.
Oh, and I really liked that motelglimpse site, though it seemed to give my computer a bit of a migraine. Still, the images were great.
It’s so interesting to read the comments of other believers and hear what their experience was like. My parents were ultra-conservative politically, and I grew up going to church with the expectation that I would be a ‘good girl’ sexually.
But my parents were totally open to whatever music, books, movies or art I was interested in. They told dirty jokes and swore like sailors, they both smoked, my mom danced and my dad drank. So I have a very weird background–not the stereotypical ‘churchy’ home life.
I don’t really want to see this movie–I tolerated the series as a kid. The only thing redeeming it is Willie Nelson, but I’m not sure that’s enough of a draw.
Oh, almost forgot.
Free Soupy!
#1 – I’m glad someone agrees with me about the Jessica Simpson thing. I was especially annoyed because Daisy was a brunette. Above and beyond that, from a girl’s prospective, the Duke boys in the show were hot, in a 70s kind of way, whereas now – Johnny Knoxville?? Was someone on crack when they cast this movie?
#2 – Both I and a friend of ours (Joe, for those who know him) find Dave’s last 2 books positively addicting…but now we have to convince a publisher of that. (i.e. We gave Joe – who is usually dave’s harshest critic – the last rough draft and he read the whole thing in one shot, except for a break to sleep) Next year we will try to have a cool website up, will keep you posted.
#3 – Motel, Glimpse looks cool, but the page crashed my laptop.
#4 – No religious parents here. I got to be a wild child! So I try to fill David in on everything he missed, but still working on it.
holy smokes! i love to hear about unpublished novels. i’m very curious here. i am and have always been a very avid reader, which is something of a throwback for my age group. i love words. i love them. i love them all. i can’t wait wait to see this stuff, dave. i can understand very well the under-self-promotion. it is a dire problem (financially & emotionally) of mine. lately however i seem to crowing like a rooster! moving back to l.a. early this year, while taking some getting used to, has been good, and i’m getting better in the way of having faith in myself.
i have several collections of prose & poetry that i think are of some merit. long. probably too long. kinda cinematic, kinda metaphysical, but grounded & earthy. some of it’s good, some not as good. but indicative of what i yet want to do.
thanks for the feedback on the motel, glimpse site. the site, much like the movie, is still a work in progress, and not as smooth as it will be yet. but, just as we are moments from a solid picture lock, we are moments away from this website being a cool, highly functionaly site with lots of neat-o stuff soon. the movie itself (i guess i have to say) isn’t for everybody (though i don’t know what that means), but i think it’s unlike anything that’s come before it. it’s funny & ridiculous & sad, but rather verite, i hope. we showed people a 3-hour cut late last year that i think turned some friends off. we’re not into genre work. it’s much shorter now, much tighter, and much more cohesive. but i’m prejudiced, of course! the write-ups on the site don’t do the film justice, as they are kinda forced & wordy & meant to be film festival fodder, when the movie defies easy summation, really defies words altogether, but that part of the site is a work in progress too. my partner in this crime, the uber-talented zach passero, who lives very far away from me, is the author of that site, and the tech-genius of our twosome. he’s very busy, but is getting this stuff along while i enter data & weep. just kidding. kind of.
while my sister & i were raised decidely non-religious (but spiritually), i was close to the world of southern baptism the entire time i was growing up, and it turned me off immensely. this is a subject i could go on and on about, but won’t here. i have come to have much respect for many the fine religions of this world, and the many different types of religious.
humans are cool.
PC-I had the churchiest home life imaginable until my dad’s business went bad and we had to move to the 909. Then, we kinda stopped going to church and, honestly by then I was so burned out by all the rules that I was happy to sleep in and watch Fantastic Four and Spiderman Sundays.
How I wandered back is a longer story, and probably deserves better than a blog comment, but it was interesting. I think too many parents these days burn out their kids on anything religious by trying to make them into perfect little clone-babies from elementary school. Kinda makes faith a bad thing.
JS-
Hey, I know what you mean about summations. Julie’s been bugging me to write a one paragraph summary for the books for years… when people ask me, I usually just say “It’s, uh, sci-fi. Sorta.”
I really, really do need to try though. Hey, I’ll give it a go here. Why not? I mean, after lunch.
Fuck Soupy.
As for Motel Glimpse, I’ve seen the first 2/3 of a long early cut and eagerly await the new version.
Justin’s performance in the lead role is a thing of beauty.
Oops. Hit send. Huh, that sounds like quite the labor of love, then… how long have you been working on it? How much have you spent? I think the site will be way cool when it gets going. Julie I always liked uncategorizable movies…
Argh. My post split, now. Last post was to JS.
What’s wrong with Soupy? I feel like I should advocate for the obnoxious. Plus, he was weird enough that I thought he was funny.
Well, my paranoia is getting the best of me. If anyone wants my new proto-pitch paragraphs for the novels, then drop me an e-mail and I’ll send it to you tonight.
I’m not sure how to find an e-mail address for you. I was even looking around your guys’ blog, which I definitely need to check out!! Somehow I’m missing the simple e-mail link or something. Or should I be able to do it from here?
I want a proto-pitch.
And thanks for that compliment, Luke! I’m going back to the desert for a full-blown screening at the “historic” Fountain Theatre in Old Mesilla, near the cool town of Las Cruces, NM, at the end of August, and we’ll have a version pretty good at that point, I think. I do have a couple DVD cuts since the one you saw, but I do feel the thing is evolving. Zach is a great editor, and he has his hands full.
I am dying to show this thing to people, finally.
I love how the Dukes of Hazzard kinda carried us through the day at LYTRules. Work be damned.
Oh, I put it in my profile, so I thought it was there. I suck. dnjscott@gmail.com
Oh, and we’d like to see the movie, too! I didn’t know you acted–figured you’d write it, cos you have a good posting style.
Everyone, I apologize for my retardedness in triple posting everything, really I do. A bit twitchy and short of sleep and craving the satisfaction and completion of hitting post I guess. Sorry again.
Justin’s imdb page:
http://imdb.com/name/nm1642735/
Also see Justin play an evil robot AND a damsel in distress in Zach’s student film Forking — linked on the LYTrules film page.
More crap on the Dukes movie…Uncle Jesse has a raging libido!!! I mean, this totally destroys the “family values” aspect of the TV show.
And, just to let you all know, the original creators of the show, when pitching the show to all three networks, that Daisy Duke was a blonde…it’s just that Catherine Bach nailed her audition…True Hollywood Story, reference, btw…