The last roundup for the week:
  • Randy Quaid has been terribly mistreated by the folks behind Brokeback Mountain. He appeared for about $14 out of the goodness of his heart, because the film's makers told him that the movie was gonna be tiny, and they had no money to spend. Quaid's response, basically, is "LIARS!" He feels the movie was willfully misrepresented, and is suing for the $10 million his brilliance deserves.
  • Street Fight, Marshall Curry's Oscar-nominated documentary about 2002's nasty race for governor in Newark, NJ, has been picked up for distribution by Ironweed Films. As we've discussed here earlier, Ironweed is a socially-minded online DVD club that "aims to be an outlet for indie pics that never make it beyond the festival circuit"; members are sent a new DVD each month "with a theme such as globalization, human rights and civil liberties." The bummer, of course, it that those of us who are NOT Ironweed members are now going to have a hard time seeing the movie.
  • Because he clearly needed a black guy with chops, Bob Saget has hired Samuel L. Jackson to provide the voice-over for Farce of the Penguins, the target of which I trust you'll be able to guess. The film, which Saget wrote and is directing, details the adventures of one male penguin "on a 70-mile trek with hedonistic buddies obsessed with getting laid." In addition to Jackson and Saget himself, the film's vocal talents will include John Stamos and Dave Coulier (Ah, Full House humor), Jason Alexander, Harvey Fierstein, Whoopi Goldberg, Gilbert Gottfried, Norm Macdonald, and Jon Lovitz. I admit it: I'm giggling a little bit already.