It’s Curtains For You, Michele

BAKER STREET

by Eric J Baker

Have you heard about The Pledge?

I’m not talking about the Jack Nicholson movie from 2001 that ends with him turning into a rambling lunatic. I mean the “marriage” pledge currently making the rounds amongst GOP presidential hopefuls. This one, presented by the Christian conservative group The Family Leader, starts out rambling and lunatic… and then it gets weird. Already signed by Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann (note to Republicans: Your party is being hijacked by bat-shit crazy mental patients), the pledge contains the usual gay bashing and hypocrisy about preserving the Constitution while simultaneously demanding that it be changed. But what I find most curious is a passage calling for women and children to be “protected” from “all forms of pornography.”

Cover of Catherine Breillat's "Pornocracy." We're not there yet, Michele.

Since current laws already protect children from pornography, one assumes this means that women won’t be allowed to participate in adult films anymore and that only gay porn will remain legal (sounds like those ultra-conservative, Christo-fascist men won’t have to change their viewing habits after all).

Here Comes Santa Claus

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

The moment I fell in love with my creative partner Rain Li was in the café of the Tate Britain museum when we were doing a location scout for our film Losing Her.  We were talking about The Business and she said, in that eminently imitable Chinese version of a cockney accent, “I don’t know why everyone take film so seriously, yeah?”

Little cartoon hearts could be seen exploding around my head.

Now that PFC is so cozy with Ohlalamag.com, the images of bare-chested hunks will come fast and furious. Here is my buddy, Israeli actor Michael Lewis, whom I cast to replace Channing Tatum in "Hatter," front and back. No relationship to this article, of course.

In between takes on the set the other day, I was reminded by an actor of one of my great lessons about ego and humility in The Business.  It goes without saying that filmmaking is where the big boys play, the high rollers table at the casino, the ones ready to lose millions on a roll of the dice, and probably will.  I often compare it to thoroughbred horseracing.  The stakes are high, the divas are nutty, the horses are extra skittish, and the mafia is all over the joint.