fourfour

Everything good in Anna Nicole

That Willa Ford-led Anna Nicole biopic that seemed like a moderately big deal a few months after her death (Variety article, you know?) leaked on the Internet last week to no absolutely no fanfare (it doesn't have so much as a Rotten Tomatoes page). Why am I surprised that nobody cares? A zero-budget anything that attempts to distill Anna Nicole Smith's nonsense is a breeding ground for campy crapiness.

The torrent I, uh, saw wasn't labeled DVDRip or DVDSCR, which leads me to believe that no official release by way of DVD is even in the pipeline. I'm guessing that this thing really was just dumped online for free because no one would take it. Fair enough! If Anna Nicole were to come back from the dead (which, actually, the film suggests! Oops, spoiler!), she couldn't produce the hilarious incoherence that goes down in Anna Nicole better herself. Imagine the people who brought you Goddess (Showgirls' fictional extravaganza) applying their talents to a Lifetime-movie version of Anna Nicole's life (while cluelessly retaining about three percent of the boobage), and you're more than halfway there. The thing has the look of a softcore porno, without any of the sex. It's softcore softcore and cheesy as a puff. Willa Ford plays Anna Nicole Smith with the gusto of a hyperactive kid at a light switch - she's on, she's off, she's on, she's off. Onoffonoffonoff. At this point, it's probably needless for me to say that I kind of love it.

Most of the good parts are in the video below. They are organized by theme. Please at least forward to the last two or so minutes, to watch Anna Nicole rise from the dead and get all kinds of meta. When the script has Anna Messiah impossibly revealing her reaction to the media frenzy over her death ("You'd think with everything else going on in the world, they'd have something better to do") all of your suspicions are realized: this is a fucking farce.

OK, so now I am bragging

Lightning strikes twice, when it rains it pours OH MY FUCKING GOD, AMANDA LORBER WROTE ME AN EMAIL!!!!!!

Mr. Juzwiak, I just want to sincerely thank you for the wonderful blog on fourfour. My newspaper adviser sent it to me with a message attached: "I think you're going to like this one." She was right.
Subsequent to the premiere of the show, I began to receive some very mixed responses from journalists/bloggers, undergrad students, and teenagers. My biggest fan base? Middle-aged mothers and some small town in New Jersey where they hold an "Amanda Lorber Night" at the local coffeehouse. I'm craving some coffee right about now. Anyway, I tend to ramble sometimes, but I'm getting to my point, I promise.
Some of the pieces I encountered were very painful to read, mostly because it seemed these people had received an inaccurate impression of me, and partly because their work seemed like vicious personal attacks. I felt vulnerable, and almost began rethinking my own career choice because of what appeared to be an unsympathetic, unrelenting field. The experience of being filmed while I endured academic and social adversity was rather tough on me and these articles were the icing on the cake...
Then, I read your blog. It helped me realize that in this line of work, I'll encounter all sorts of people. Some will appreciate a strong work ethic, devotion, optimism, and a bit of a musical attitude. Others won't. Seeing your well-written account/character analysis (I say character because I'm definitely portrayed as more of a caricature of myself due to editing) brightened my day and my outlook on life.
Thank you so much,
Amanda Lorber
postscript: I may not have been invited to that party, but I certainly party with my musical theater buddies!

I can't even know what to say. I can die now.

(This, by the way, is posted with her permission.)

ANTM addendum

So, I messed up, as a few have pointed out. Readers Amy Z., and Will A., both emailed me screen shots of instances of crying from the last ANTM episode that I missed -- silly of me to ever think an episode of ANTM could have aired without a single tear spilled. My DVD drive is actually down right now (a new one's coming tomorrow), so I can't take these myself right now. I'll just post the ones they sent me to update the Crying Count (sans commentary).

49. Whitney

50. Fatima

51. Dominique

I guess it's safe to say that Edna's Edibles is burning.

And seriously, did my sight just go out for a minute? I understand missing the first two, but Dom is CLEARLY crying. Here I thought that the show was changing, when really it's just that my eyes going senile.

There's a special bonus after the jump: for the first time in the history. Of. My. Recapping. Of. America's. Next. Top. Model., a contestant has contacted me!

Katarzynana, na na na na, hey hey hey...

Riddle me this:

Was Katarzyna so boring that the shot above serves as a visual metaphor for her ability to fade into whatever background she's given (even big, ugly, pink bed linen), OR, was she so boring that I kind of had to just take whatever half-assed concept I could dig out of my butt to serve as the intro to this recap?

Hmmmmm.

Is this Swan Brooner?

Being that my obsession with Swan Brooner (the loose-toothed center of my favorite documentary, Living Dolls) is unrelenting, I think it's only appropriate to post updates whenever they occur. Today, a reader named Jayne sent me a link to a newspaper based in Alaska (where Swan supposedly moved to live with her father after her mom died of cancer) that last year named Swan as a runner up in some essay contest. I blew the picture up above, but here's a slightly cropped version of the original:

In the caption in the link above, you can see that Swan is named the second in from the right in the back row (despite the fact that the girl all the way to the right has the sharp, gaunt face Swan's mother was rocking in the documentary). If that's really Swan, I have to get corny and admit that it warms my heart to see her smiling. It's nice to know that she's out there, even if it's via a cameo. (And hopefully this isn't another one of those bogus updates.)

(Swan, for the record, is still No. 1 on my interview wishlist. If you're out there, girl, call me! You can make like Thomas Pynchon and show up blurry in group shots and do the mystique thing and make 'em say uhh or whatever, but understand that it doesn't have to be that way!)

My new favorite show

Confession:

I'm in love with a Lorber.

And I don't care who knows it!

Easy to swallow

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it must be a duck. If it sings like a duck and exudes pretense, it must be Madonna.

(Or so I thought. This is kind of personal, so um...)

Frankenstein unbound

"I'm not a CoverGirl! I mean, that's not me," said Lauren on the eve of her dismissal.

I think the above shot is both case and point.