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Because that's what friends are for
With a cinematic catalog that includes such highbrow fare as the Katherine Heigl think piece "Killers" and "What Happens in Vegas," the Cameron Diaz meditation on the transience of love, Ashton Kutcher recognizes celluloid quality.
"I know exactly what films I’ve done that [bleeping] suck donkey," he tells the March issue of Esquire. "And I know the ones that are good, that people like."
Anyone want to chime in here on what those latter ones might be? Anyone? Mr. Donkey?
Continues Kutcher, "And I know it not because of the box office, because the box office is not going to tell you the truth. I know it because I have friends that don't hold back. They don’t depend on me for money or employment. They're just friends. Friends tell the truth."
His philosophy, which has presumably served him well on the set of 30-minute sitcom "Two and a Half Men": "My big thing is, Fail fast. If you're going to [bleep] up, get it over with."
According to actor-cum-entrepreneur, who is out promoting his starring role in "jOBS," knowing when to move on is a "tricky thing to figure out, which is when you ask yourself, Am I at the precipice of success or walking down the wrong road? Because the greatest obstacle always comes right before the breakthrough. And you're always trying to determine which is which. Is this the greatest obstacle? Is it the breakthrough itself? Or is it time to go the other way? That's when you have to surround yourself with brutally honest people who will be like, 'Dude, you suck at this. Stop.' I have, like, two or three really strong data nodes that I know will tell me: 'I don't get it.'"
When the interviewer calls him out on referring to his pals as "data nodes," he shrugs. "It's input. They're people. People. People that are giving you information you can trust as accurate, generous, careful," Kutcher explains. "They're not just going to flippantly tell you, 'Eh, that doesn't work,' or they're not just going to tell you 'Yes!' just because that's what you want to hear. To me, that's a valuable piece of data. That's a valuable data chip."
Says the star, "I know who these people are in my life. Partners, friends, coworkers. You have a movie and you show it to them, and if it sucks you want them to be like, 'Dude, that kind of blows.'"
Clearly, none of those data nodes-slash-chips sat him down after the release of "Valentine's Day" to urge him not to make the follow-up, "New Year's Eve." Then again, Kutcher gets to make out with Mila Kunis on a daily basis, so the last laugh? It's his.
Only one dynasty can control the Iron Throne of Rockefell ...
We thought Jimmy Fallon's impending departure from "Late Night" for Jay Leno's prestigious "Tonight Show" slot was set in stone. But judging from Fallon's Friday night "Game of Thrones" spoof, "Game of Desks," dynastic power never comes without a fight.
And if Fallon's Khaleesi impression (complete with incubating peacock eggs) and a Night's Watch made up of the Roots crew are any indication, great things shall come to "Rockefell" as the Iron Throne changes hands in February 2014 ...
Woman spends 30 years with the Rolling Stones and lives to tell about it, more linkage
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Thank you for being a friend, indeed ...
Remember last week, when the world wondered who would possibly spend nearly $2 million on a nude painting of Bea Arthur? The mystery may be solved. On Friday afternoon, comedian Jeff Ross tweeted a photo of himself holding John Currin's 1991 masterpiece, along with the message, "Biggest surprise of my life. Thank you @jimmykimmel - the most generous guy in the world!" Responded Kimmel, who apparently ponied up the $1.9 million for the fabricated topless portrait of the late "Golden Girls" star: "Bea is watching over all of us, but especially you."
Ross' connection to Arthur? He credits her with making his career. Seems that a 1999 roast for Jerry Stiller, the funnyman let loose a risqué zinger at Bea's expense. She was in the audience and fixed him with a look that would melt steel. We can't repeat the joke here (suffice to say it involved the actress being endowed with a male anatomical part), but here's what the exchange looked like:
"I felt like she put me on the map because everywhere I went, people were quoting this joke to me," he said in 2009. "I'm hearing it all the time, it's quoted in newspapers at the end of the year, it was part of all these roundups of the greatest lines of the year, and I'm realizing that I'm sort of getting a boost from this ridiculous joke that's not even that funny."
A couple years later, he decided to check out Bea's one-woman show because he was "just so curious about her take" on the joke. Let's have him tell it ...
"She sang beautiful songs that she had sung on Broadway, barefoot with a piano player. It was very elegant, very tasteful and very moving. She was an incredible performer and I got to see a different side of her, which was really fun. And afterwards I waited on line, a long line of fans, hundreds perhaps waiting to get a moment with her. They were getting pictures and autographs. They wanted to meet her.
I purposely went to the very, very end of the line and I wanted to be last, and I just said as politely as I could I said, 'You know, Miss Arthur, I don’t know if you remember me, but we met at Jerry’s roast.' Before I even got the last word out -- 'roast' -- she just stuck a finger right in my face and said, 'You nailed me, you pr---!'
And we both laughed and she gave me a hug. It was really cool knowing what a fun broad she was."
And it's pretty cool being friends with Jimmy Kimmel, too.'We've all seen the picture ...'
Well, it turns out that while Elisabeth Moss is a mite pluckier than her "Mad Men" character, she's just as good under pressure.
Moss proved her mettle on Thursday night's "Watch What Happens Live" -- one of the her favorite shows -- when, after a few easy call-in questions, Andy Cohen featured her in his "Plead the Fifth" segment.
Though she initially looked flummoxed, once the questioning began, the girl did not sweat for a nanosecond -- not when she was asked why Jeremy Piven really bailed on "Speed the Plough" ("[for being] highly unprofessional ... I saw him like a month later at the Golden Globes when he was supposed to be really sick") and certainly not when she was asked if it's true what everyone says about the "size of Jon Hamm's ham."
"Well, I mean we've all seen the picture ... so I suppose [it's that large]," she reasoned, detached as a nurse in the urology ward -- and graciously acting like it was only that one picture.
Ahem:
The woman is downright unflummoxable. Straight Madison Avenue gold, my friends.The advertising jingle writes itself ...
We firmly believe that suffering can be lessened if the burden is shared, so here goes: Hanson has debuted a beer, and it's named after their 1997 hit "MMMBop," which will now be stuck in your head indefinitely (as it is ours). People reports that MmmHops was created by the three Hanson brothers with the help of a brewery in their home state of Oklahoma. Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson introduced the IPA on Monday night at the "Hangover III" afterparty in Los Angeles ("MMMBop" features prominently in the opening scene of the flick). Ed Helms gamely tried the brew during the bash, and even posed for a picture with Taylor (below). The beer will be available this month.
And come on, we gotta ...
She's not really a morning person ...
When ordinary folks are shoveling down Cheerios and trying to get the kids to school on time, Mariah Carey is just crawling into bed. So it's no wonder the pop queen appeared a little punchy during her Summer Concert Series appearance Friday morning on "Good Morning America."
"I wake up at this hour. I don't mean I wake up, I mean I go to sleep," Mariah explained to host Lara Spencer. "It's kinda the same thing for me."
Moments later, she revealed that the back of her curve-hugging, pink-sequined Versace dress "just popped. I love you, Donatella, but it popped, darling."
As Mariah's minions worked behind her to repair the damage, Carey kept up the banter with Spencer, and her mixture of dreaminess and goofiness was sort of charming.
"I just wanted to change the ensemble, you know," said Mrs. Nick Cannon. "What should we call this, the Central Park Saga? It seems like a YouTube moment, possibly a Spotify moment."
She then cradled her amble cleavage and joked, "I'll just hold them up the whole time."
Meanwhile, as singer Miguel joined her onstage for their hashtag-ariffic song "#Beautiful," Mariah spouted, "Oh, s---!" then told the crowd, "You didn't hear that. I said 'shoot.'"
She also had an issue with her microphone while belting out "Always Be My Baby," but kept up the charm offensive by telling the audience, "Thank you for waking up with me this morning. Sort of."
And not because it puts pressure on her to come up with better sex scenes ...
Are the many, many sex scenes on "Girls" just not graphic and frequent enough for you? Then we have good news. Hustler has made a porno version of the HBO series, a plan that has creator and star Lena Dunham on edge.
"I wish I had a better attitude about the 'Girls' porn parody," she tweeted on Thursday. "I really can never predict what will trouble me and it's simply exhausting."
The creatively titled "This Ain't Girls XXX" is reportedly due out in a few months, and the plot centers, as you'd expect, on an X-rated version of Dunham's small-screen alter ego, Hannah.
We'll let porn industry site Xbiz (via Vulture) explain: "In the XXX parody, Hannah (Alex Chance) decides to forsake men and boyfriend Adam (Richie Calhoun) to experiment with lesbianism. After a few satisfying jaunts she returns to Adam -- and mankind. Adam accepts her back into the fold, but, true to the original show, adds a dominant and quirky dimension to the scene."
Calhoun says he tried to make his Adam portrayal "as weird as possible. I tried to say really weird things and do really weird positions." That must have been a challenge, given how weird non-porn Adam already is.
