“Seldom has Hollywood built someone up and then thrown him aside more quickly than Klinton Spilsbury. This is a tough town, but he got a kind of instant dose of just how cruel it can be. Must’ve been incredibly difficult. If I’d been in his shoes, I might’ve stopped acting, too.”

There is really nobody to compare Spilsbury to. George Lazenby, like Spilsbury, got only one shot at an iconic lead role in a big-budget film. But Lazenby merely screwed up his chance at international superstardom. He was a successful actor before and after his turn as 007. Spilsbury, in contrast, was completely unknown when he was cast – and never worked again. To make matters worse, his voice never appeared in the film at all. The filmmakers were so disappointed with his line readings that they hired James Keach to dub the entire role.

The only kinda-sorta comparable person I can think of is Kurt Thomas, the gymnast who tried to become an actor. He got the lead in Gymkata, then faded back into the athletic world. But two significant things make him different from Spilsbury:

(1) he was an athlete trying to act and failing. Spilsbury was an actor trying to act and failing.

(2) Gymkata was not a high-profile film, and Thomas’s role was not one that was coveted by all of Hollywood.

Spider-Man: No Way Home scores the second-best domestic opening in cinematic history with a $260 million domestic haul.

(Endgame, in the #1 spot, is perched unassailably high on the chart.)

Other key facts:

  • It is the best December opening in history.
  • Ol’ Spidey nearly tripled the previous pandemic-era record for an opening weekend, which was held by Venom: Let There Be Carnage with a mere $90M.

NYC is in the midst of a massive wave of COVID, reportedly including some cast members. The show went on, but with a skeleton crew, no audience, and no musical guest. It was basically just Paul Rudd, Tom Hanks, Michael Che, Tina Fey and Kenan Thompson for the entire show. (Hanks and Fey welcomed Rudd to the Five-Timers Club.) Che referenced the fact that the actual cast members in attendance were 100% black.

Weekend Update consisted of the Che and Fey show, with the two anchors sitting on folding chairs, sans desk. The other three people mentioned above acted as a makeshift audience.

It was fortunate that they had quite a few taped segments to pad out some time, and they filled out the rest of the show with vintage clips.

The New York Post reported

A set insider has revealed that “four actors” have tested positive for coronavirus — and “three others” have called out because they are now “fearful” about coming to NBC Studios at 30 Rockefeller Center, where the weekly sketch show is filmed in Midtown.

You probably know him as a Monkee, but he was a pretty fair songwriter. His “Different Drum” helped rocket Linda Ronstadt to fame.

Mickey Dolenz, the last living Monkee, Tweeted for all of us:

“The holiday season is a time when people all around the world pause from their hectic daily lives to participate in cherished holiday traditions that have been handed down from generation to generation, no matter how stupid they are. But for sheer stupidity, no holiday tradition can compare with our annual Holiday Gift Guide. This is a curated collection of unique gift ideas that we painstakingly select via a ‘vetting’ process that can take us as long as 10 minutes, including a five-minute snack break. Every item in this guide is a real product that you can, for whatever depraved reason, actually buy. We know this because we personally purchased all of these items with the Miami Herald’s money, such as it is.”

This is very entertaining:

SNL has had many cast members with more talent, but Pete is the first one to attain major rock-star-level cred since Eddie Murphy. He gets to have sex with highly famous, highly beautiful women, and the audience goes crazy when they see him. He’s a phenom. Somehow Pete managed to get John Belushi’s popularity with Jim Belushi’s talent. (Which is fine, because he really seems like a good guy.)

Continuing from an earlier thread:

Mrs Munchkin, presumably a member of the Lullaby League, also known as Louise Linton, has been naked on film before and after her marriage to the former Secretary of the Treasury.

Before Mnuchin, she got naked in a grade-Z horror film (3.3 at IMDb) called Intruder (2016)


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Since marrying the mayor of Mnuchin Land, she has expanded from merely acting in bad movies to the triple threat of directing, writing and acting in them. She’s the Orson Welles of crap. Her Citizen Kane, a comedic thriller entitled Me You Madness, is rated 3.7 at IMDb and has attained a remarkable Metacritic score of 7/100.


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That film may well be awful, but I have to give Mrs. Munchkin props for being the only director daring enough to cast Kiki The Kukulcania Hibernalis (as, appropriately enough, “Spider”).

The esteemed Lady Munchkin is actually a quadruple threat, having also failed as a book author in addition to her triple failure in the film world. In fact, her book was so widely disparaged and ridiculed that it was pulled from sale. Most people know of it only from an excerpt published in The Telegraph. Okay Africa called her work “the dumbest, most egregious piece of writing on Africa of the 21st century.” (Well, at least she earned superlative adjectives!) Another described her account as “riddled with many inaccuracies, geographical mistakes and self promoting.” A Zambian author said, “She mixes Zambia, Congo and Rwanda so many times, leading to the generalization of Africa as ‘one big country’”

When Joe Cocker first heard John Belushi impersonate him at a party, he insisted that Belushi must be lip-synching. When the person being impersonated thinks it is his own voice, THAT is a good impression.

Are there any other impressions so accurate that they would fool the person being impersonated?

From the comment section:

“This Tuli quote

Nobody who lived through the 50s thought the 60s could’ve existed. So there’s always hope.

is from me. He was an old friend and I interviewed him for a Fugs profile for MOJO magazine. When he died I wrote his obit for MOJO and ended with that quote.

Whether wholly accurate or not, it gives me a boost during bad times, which has been always as of late. I’ve lost count of the folks who’ve referenced it.”

Michael Simmons