Rushfield Babylon: Archive

Jul 30, 20129 notes

Play

Jul 29, 20123 notes

#film #skyfall

Jul 26, 20125 notes

Jul 26, 201223 notes

#film #tom hanks #cloud atlas

Jul 25, 20123 notes

Jul 25, 20128 notes

#film #dark knight rises #Christopher Nolan

Jul 23, 20122 notes

#podcast #nikkileaks #Christopher Nolan

PBS Crosses Over to the Land Beyond

Even 10 years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine any piece of these sentences:

PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger addressed the public broadcaster’s decision to quickly fire Fred Willard from the network’s competition reality show Market Warriors after the 72-year-actor was caught allegedly engaging in a “lewd act” at a Los Angeles triple-X movie house.

“At the end of the week when [Willard’s arrest] became known, we realized that we had to move fast,” she said. “Our concern was his circumstances would actually become a distraction from the series.”

Just to break that down into mentally digestible bites:

• PBS

• Competition reality show

• Fired Fred Willard

• 72 year old for engaging in lewd act
• Because he would be a “distraction”

A 72 year old’s being caught masturbating would be a distraction, from the PBS reality competition series Market Warriors. Which barring that distraction, America will be laser focussed on.

That is all.

Jul 21, 201229 notes

#television #pbs #fred willard

“It may seem callous to post about North American and worldwide box office this weekend after the Colorado movie theater tragedy. And of course our hearts go out to those killed and wounded. (I stayed up all Friday post-midnight/pre-dawn reporting on the shooting as the horrendous event unfolded.) But this is an entertainment business website that tracks movie grosses.”—

The Nikki Finke quote that says it all better than we ever could.

A teacher of mine used to say that “but” is the most powerful word in the english language because it erases everything that comes before it.

This quote comes just below their own headline, Warner Bros Won’t Report Box Office For ‘Dark Knight Rises’ All Weekend “Out Of Respect For The Victims And Their Families”

Of course, we can all understand, the sacred duties of reporting box office must stand before mere human empathy or decency.

Jul 21, 201220 notes

#nikkileaks

Jul 20, 201218 notes

#nikkileaks

My Season Premiere of Smash, The Thrilling Conclusion

Keep reading

Jul 19, 20127 notes

#tv #smash

Jul 19, 201211 notes

#nikkileaks

Jul 19, 201237 notes

Jul 19, 201212 notes

#the backlash era

My Season Premiere of Smash, Part 2

(catch up with part 1, plus explanation here.)

SEASON 2: EPISODE 1.

OOOO LA LA!

A TREATMENT

by

Stacey Grenrock Woods and Richard Rushfield

When we last saw the Gang from Smash…..

As they prepare the house of the theater, a stagehand climbs the stairs and suddenly stops and screams!

THE RAILINGS ARE ALL STICKY!!!!

The cast stops rehearsing and races out. They touch the railings and see its true. What are they going to do?

Linda rushes in and tells Eileen: It’s all of them! Every railing in the building is covered with sticky stuff!

People murmur and several break into tears. Eileen attempts to keep it together. “Back to work everyone. The show WILL go on.”

But no one believes it. Everyone knows that if one debutante or society matron gets their gloves messed up on the railings, that is curtains for the show and everyone involved in it. Literally. No theater in their right mind would ever open its doors with sticky railings.

Linda frantically works the phones but comes back and announces, “Perfect! The bannister cleaners are on strike!”

Keep reading

Jul 18, 20127 notes

#tv #smash

Jul 17, 201267 notes

Jul 17, 201214 notes

“With the table thus set, the divorce became the perfect fairy-tale ending to the the narrative: a deluded Princess falls in with dark forces, is held hostage in her gilded cage, and then, after carefully planning her escape, makes a break for freedom — if not to save herself, then for the sake of her daughter. Whatever truth or falsity there is to this version (and that is hard to sort out amid the tabloid reports), the Grimm tale is how the divorce is being portrayed, and the press has gone all out to paint the group she fled in the most villainous terms.”—Over at Vulture I ask whether Tom Cruise, Scientology’s Golden Boy and game changer, has ironically become its downfall.

Jul 17, 20123 notes

SMASH! SEASON TWO: EPISODE ONE. A TREATMENT

Keep reading

Jul 17, 20128 notes

#tv #smash

How Does Breaking Bad Fit Into the Backlash Era?

Short answer is it is grandfathered in from the previous era. Too many people are on the record with too many opinions for the Hype/Greater Backlash cycle to really kick in. But there are some traces out there. Stay tuned.

Jul 15, 20123 notes

Jul 15, 201219 notes

#tv #breaking bad

Dateline Westwood, 4pm. I just saw a young woman on the sidewalk in front of a big hotel there, drink in hand, take off her dress, run up and down the block stark naked, in front of several families with their kids, and then put her dress back on and bawl out her friend, screaming at her that she is a f-ing idiot for not remembering to put them on the list for some club they were planning to go to. While the hotel staff cheered her on.

There are times I feel like I’m getting carried away and being hyperbolic with my fall of civilization shtick. But whenever I start to think that, it never takes more than ten minutes for the world to send me a sign that I don’t take it nearly far enough.

Jul 14, 201215 notes

#film #the imposter

Jul 14, 201210 notes

#nikkileaks #Bret Easton Ellis

Jul 14, 201244 notes

#film #jaws #cgi

Jul 12, 20125 notes

#PODCAST #queen of versailles #lauren greenfield

Jul 10, 201210 notes

#film

Jul 8, 20125 notes

Jul 8, 201224 notes

#the backlash era #film #batman rises

Jul 6, 20123 notes

#the backlash era

Jul 4, 201230 notes

I. Am that Yankee Doodle Boy.

Jul 4, 20122 notes

Jul 4, 201218 notes

#film #the amazing spiderman #emma stone #kirsten dunst #brett ratner

Jul 4, 201219 notes

#amazing spiderman #film

Jul 4, 201231 notes

#kirsten dunst

Jul 3, 20122 notes

“That’s because unlike black widows, who like to crawl into cracks and under debris for shelter, brown widows like to hide out in people’s things. They gravitate toward the crannies underneath chairs and into those downward-facing recessed handles on garbage cans.”—The LA Times just ruined ever touching anything again for the rest of my life for me.

Jul 2, 2012244 notes

“There is no subgenre more venerable than the romantic comedy. “Meeting cute” only to overcome ridiculous obstacles to find love throughout the years has proven the most relatable and sympathetic of formulas. Looking, however, at this decade’s roster of rom-coms, one would get the impression that Hollywood actively hates the idea of people falling in love: What to Expect When You’re Expecting, Something Borrowed, Valentine’s Day, The Back-up Plan, What’s Your Number, When in Rome, She’s Out of My League, Leap Year, You Again, Going the Distance, New Year’s Eve. One would be hard-pressed to find a more gruesome, less funny roster of films from any genre in any decade. It’s hard to see how the bottom could so completely drop out of a type of film that has withstood everything from the Great Depression to disco, but one hypothesis is that in the age of the miseries of online dating and trying to find something lasting in an era that treasures preadolescence, romance is no longer looked on as a fun romp en route to destiny, but a grueling slog toward an uncertain and likely miserable end.”—Who killed comedy? I point some fingers and name names over at The Daily Beast.

Jul 2, 201211 notes

Rushfield Babylon

July 2012

38 posts