Paper Machete - 4/28/12 - Commit to the Bit

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Dateline: Brazil. From The Daily Telegrach UK

Which I will quote in its entirety. It appears under the following headline:

“Actor dies after accidentally hanging himself as Judas during The Passion of Christ”

“Tiago Klimeck, 27, had been in a coma since the accident on Good Friday earlier this month in Itarare. Klimeck was enacting the suicide of Judas during the performance. He was hanging for four minutes before fellow actors realised something was wrong, believing he was playing his role. When he was taken down, Klimeck was unconscious. Scans found that the incident had caused cerebral anoxia due to the complete lack of oxygen to the brain. His life support machine was switched off on Sunday. An autopsy was due to take place yesterday.

Police are examining the security apparatus that was meant to support Klimeck during the scene.

It is unclear if any charges will be filed.

The Passion of Christ is performed every year in Brazil across the country. The biggest show is in Pernambuco, where thousands of visitors watch more than 500 actors on nine separate stages.”

I will set aside the fact that the copy editors wished to leave you with a bit of cultural context regarding the show. Because I realize that, like me, you read an item like this, you cock your head and go “Not to discount the fella that hung himself onstage, but I sure would like to know a scosh more about significance of the Passion of Christ in the local culture.”

Here’s your real takeaway from this story, and here is the legacy of the late Mr. Klimeck:

Commit to the Bit.

Because, come on – on the Stanislavsky Scale, Mr. Klimeck makes Nicholas Cage seem pretty bush league, am I right? I mean that Taylor Lautner? David Arquette? Billy Zane? Our various Afflecks, and lesser Baldwins? Our best and brightest? Tiago Klimeck SMOKED ‘em all, man.

But if he was just some lone genius – in that riveting way of like a Chris Klein or a Justin Long – then, OK, THEN I would not feel like the U.S. supremacy in the realm of ultra-dazzling mastery of craft was threatened.

But it isn’t just him, though. Think about it: the guy is hanging himself in full view of his cast mates, and they are all STAYING IN THE SCENE. A whole STAGE filled with Brazilians, you guys – BRAZILIANS! – and they see a colleague twisting and kicking, seconds away from death, and they just keep delivering their lines.

Because the show must go on. Or, as the locals would say:

Porque o espectáculo tem de continuar

Brazil, you guys. Brazil - famous for nothing but nuts and waxes. Brazil nuts: the ones that everyone despises and leaves in the can. And, sure, everybody admires the Brazilian wax from afar, until they get a closer view of the scalded bologna surrounding that Hitler’s mustache of pubes.

Are we gonna let BRAZIL beat us at Committing to the Bit?!? I know that Brazil has an emerging economy that’s one of the globe’s great success stories, but that’s petroleum and bananas and coffee, you guys, not SHOW BUSINESS. They should be DECADES away from challenging U.S. dominance of show business – DECADES. The Brazilian Dane Cook or Ryan Reynolds shouldn’t even be BORN yet, so how is it that these Amazonian yokels are making a play for the U.S. of A. here?

I tell ya what we gotta do – we gotta shut ‘em down. We gotta take decisive action now, and we gotta take the fight to them. What I propose is bold, ladies and gentlemen, what I propose will demand sacrifice. What I propose is this:

We airlift a crack thespian squad of our most battle-tested hunks and starlets and drop them into Rio for this Passion of the Christ festival to do their own goddamn production that’ll be so brutal, those Brazilians are all gonna scuttle back to the coffee plantation. I say we stage a Passion of the Christ where EVERY member of the cast winds up dead. We get the Army Corps of Engineers to design a stage that’ll unfold in midair so our stars can parachute down onto it and show these savages how it’s done.

Getting the actors is gonna be simple – we load ‘em in limos, we hustle ‘em out to Edwards Air Force Base. From the limo, we leave a trail of gift bags up the cargo bay of a waiting C-130. We stuff ‘em in their costumes, we fly ‘em to Brazil, we equip ‘em with period weapons – swords and axes and shit, and they improvise a production of the Passion of the Christ that’ll make the Hunger Games look like a game of Pictionary.

We’re calling this Operation Avenging Apostle.

Here’s our cast:

• James Franco is Judas. One of history’s most reviled figures, portrayed by the actor People Magazine called The Man We’d Most Like to Throttle.
• Pontius Pilate will be that James Pattison from the Twilight franchise – for is not the tyrant with nothing going on behind his eyes all the more terrifying?
• Mary Magdalene, in an audacious and if I may say so inspired bit of casting, will played by Orlando Bloom.
• The apostle Matthew, obviously, has gotta be Matthew McConaughey, who was the top vote-getter in the recent Us Magazine poll “Jesus God, Do I Wanna Beat This Guy With a Pipe Wrench.”
• Salome will be played by Jessica Alba and Megan Fox and Katie Holmes and January Jones and Keira Knightley and Blake Lively and Scarlett Johansen.
• Jesus? Keanu.

You get the idea. It’s gonna be amazing. It’s gonna add a whole new level to this – these Brazilian amateurs went the whole “naturalistic death scene of a single cast member” route. Not so Operation Avenging Apostle: this will be the most stilted and unconvincing bloodbath the world has ever known. Each and every member of our all-star cast will not only be splayed lifeless at the end of the show, but the audience will file out going “ I don’t know. I didn’t really buy it.”

Then later, they will learn that each one of these trite and unnatural-looking deaths was 100% real. When those Brazilians have seen actual nails driven through the hands of Keanu-Jesus, and his reaction remains totally unconvincing, even though he is an international star, they’ll think twice before they come gunnin’ for us, my friends.

Now you may be asking: “Why does this matter?” I’ll tell you. In the waning days of our empire, when we no longer make anything, and where the average U.S. citizen is an obese man-child that finds science “confusing and scary” – all we HAVE is the dream factory churning out the world’s entertainment. It’s our only remaining claim to superpower status. And if the only basis for we have for clinging to the vestiges of world leadership is as Content Provider to the World, then I am by God willing to sacrifice a few pretty boys we can easily replace, and I think you should be, too. Tell Congress: support Operation Avenging Apostle. Now. Before it’s too late.

Two Birds, One Stone, Where One of the Birds is Also the Stone

Like most of us, when confronted by the blandly complacent face of James Franco, I say “Man. I just wanna kick that guy in his neck till he’s fucking dead.” I know. You feel it, too.

Whether it’s Franco on General Hospital, or Franco hosting the Oscars, or Franco’s collection of stories, cause he’s a fucking writer all of sudden, or Franco teaching a class at the NYU called “Editing James Franco with James Franco”, or Franco cutting a record with Danger Mouse, or Franco opening a gallery show of his watercolors, or Franco taking over for Vin Scully up in the broadcast booth for a couple-few innings of the Dodgers-Pirates, or Franco’s feud with wait-what?-are-you-shitting-me? Bruce Vilanch? The “joke writer” who each year makes the Oscar ceremony feel like it’s a grueling test of human endurance.

If I encounter the misapplication of the phrase “renaissance man” slathered on this vacant-eyed shitwad by some slack-jawed copy editor one more time, I won’t ever quit puking. I am not even exaggerating, here – if I leave this stage and you speak the phrase “James Franco, renaissance man” within earshot of me, I will puke out my fucking rectum right on your table. My whole intestinal tract will come rocketing out of me, coiling on your table in a puddle of bile and ropey gut snot.

And then I’ll have to stuff it all back down my throat so I can scream at you.

There are literally thousands of reasons to hate that squinty-eyed shit hammer, but when I learned of Franco’s participation in the Museum of Non-Visible Art, that’s when I clicked my laptop shut and burned my own house to the ground.

The Museum of Non-Visible Art is a “project” by a husband and wife team who go by the name of Praxis, because, apparently, they feared that their real names Brainard and Delia lacked sufficient capacity to annoy.

At the Museum of Non-Visible Art – which is a website – you can BUY for real currency, nothing so shabby as an object or experience, but the privilege of receiving the DESCRIPTION of an art project that will never get made. This is pretty mind-blowing if you’re eight, or really high, or living a hundred years ago. Hey: Praxis - Google “Marcel Duchamp”, you exasperating secondhand squirrel turds.

Here is an excerpt from the Praxis Manifesto, which goes on for I-shit-you-not three pages:

“The only surface worth painting is the mind of the viewer.”

What a bunch of beat-offs. Now, if this was mouldering in the cyberspace, ignored as it ought to be, I wouldn’t have shit to say about it. But, these douche cannons had the epic temerity to ask for money to support this “project”. And they FUCKING GOT IT. They enlist Franco, and some star-fucker simpleton pays TEN THOUSAND FUCKING DOLLARS to get this dickhead to describe a shitty idea. TEN FUCKING THOUSAND FUCKING DOLLARS.

So, obviously, like any rational person, when I heard this, I felt like executing every shitheel dickface moron who shares genetic material with the fucktard who dropped TEN GRAND on this. It’s like the guy went: “How do I skull-fuck the poor WHILE doing the dumbest fucking thing anybody ever heard of.”

And it’s not just the money – it’s the fact that I could pitch a shot glass into this crowd, and fucking anybody I hit is gonna rattle off a dozen ideas better than anything Franco has ever conceived of. And describe that idea more vividly than that cipher whose inexpressive face and empty head exist solely as transport for that pile of fucking hair of his.

If there was any justice in this life, we’d never have heard of this idiot piece of shit, and James fucking Franco would be wearing a jester hat and juggling devil sticks at fucking Burning Man, instead of being granted a global platform for this derivative wad of self-congratulatory monkey shit.

I fully believed that I could not work myself into a more complete fucking froth of paralyzing rage. I was convinced that it was literally impossible for me coax anything more out my already overtaxed Jesus-Fucking-Christ-O-Meter – I thought I was red-lining to the fullest extent possible.

Then I learned that Gwyneth Paltrow had a fucking website. Where she doles out lifestyle advice. So. Treat yourself. If you are after a more vapid distillation of Oprah-fied self-indulgence, I defy you to find a better candidate than Paltrow’s GOOP-dot-fucking-com. Gwyneth, when not a film and recording star, is dutiful wife to the frontman for Coldplay, which the data shows is the shittiest band of this or any other century, had this to say about the launch of GOOP:

“When you go to Paris and your concierge sends you to some… restaurant because they get a kickback, it’s like, No. Where should I really be? Where is the great bar with organic wine? Where do I get a bikini wax in Paris? People know that I know that…”

Now. I am baffled. An anorexic millionaire can make such a statement publicly, and we somehow fail to be engulfed in class warfare. In another age, this kind of blithe and towering self-regard would have earned Ms. Paltrow the chance to deposit that well-tended head of hers into the basket at the base of a guillotine.

So. The time has come to act. Here is what I propose: we must beat James Franco to death with Gwyneth Paltrow. Now you may be saying: “Can’t be done. Gwyneth Paltrow weighs like forty-six pounds and has hollow bird bones. There’s just not enough mass there to beat anybody to death.”

I hear you. I do. But I THINK if we crush her into a blonde little nugget, and drive railroad spikes through Franco’s shoulders so he’ll stay still, and we really put our backs into it, I think we can do it, you guys. We may have to work in shifts, pummeling around the clock. And even if we can’t – even if the physics of using a bird-boned waif as a weapon preclude us from clubbing every last breath out of this smug and galling heap of chickenshit – even if it proves totally impossible, I think it’s really, really important that we try.