January 22, 2002

Archived update from Cigarettes & Coffee, run by Greg Mariotti & CJ Wallis from 1999-2005

A few mentions of Project X4 have surfaced in the past week. The Daily Texan lists the film as the #3 most anticipated film for 2002. Here's what they said (Thanks William!):

# 3 - P.T. Anderson Project

Of all the projects kept under wraps, none have done a better job of doing so than Paul Thomas Anderson's follow-up to Magnolia. But even if Anderson kept an online production journal of the shoot, describing every detail, the curiosity surrounding it would remain unfettered. With Anderson's choices for leading man being Adam Sandler (that's not a misprint) and Emily Watson for leading lady, the level of mystery about the film, which is supposedly a romantic comedy, has only heightened. For months, the film has had online film circles guessing about both the titles (everything from Punch Drunk Love to Knuckle Sandwich) and the plot. What is known, however, is that part of the film will take place in Hawaii, where Anderson took his cast and crew last January. Also, Anderson film regulars Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Luis Guzman have both taken supporting roles in the film. Anderson was also quoted recently that the film will be Adam Sandler's "$25 million arthouse movie," which could have easily been said by Quentin Tarantino after the two met on the set of Sandler's Little Nicky and struck up a friendship. 

Tarantino turned around and wrote a part for Sandler in his upcoming war film, Glorious Bastards. Unfortunately for Tarantino, Anderson was quicker to sign Sandler, who has a busy 2002 ahead of him with two other films, including Mr. Deeds, a loosely based remake of the Frank Capra classic, and 8 Crazy Nights, an animated film about the joys of celebrating Hanukkah. Regardless of Sandler's other projects, the untitled P.T. Anderson project should receive the most ink come awards time, when the film is suspected to be released.

UK film magazine Empire also high expectations for Project X4 in their 2002 film preview. They are still showing the name as Punchdrunk Knuckle Love & their plot synopsis isn't right, but oh well.

Rocky Horror Magnolia? Here's an amusing story from site reader (& assistant manager of the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles) Marc Edward Heuck.

We show The Rocky Horror Picture Show Saturday night. We have a great house cast called Sins o' the Flesh that perform the live portion of the experience; they've won awards all over and should be considered the best Rocky cast in America. Anyhow, last Saturday, Jan. 12th, the cast did a "90's night" show, in which instead of dressing like Rocky characters--Brad, Frankie, etc.--they dressed as '90's icons. For example, "Brad" was Adam Sandler, "Frank 'n' Furter" was Ace Ventura, "Janet" was SNL character Mary Catherine Gallagher (Superstar), you get the idea. Also, at strategic points in the movie, we would cut out from the movie audio and drop in some 90's related audio for comic effect. For example, our "Eddie" came dressed as Cartman from South Park, and after the first verse of "Hot Patootie," we went out of that song and into "Kyle's Mom is a Bitch."

Anyhow, for the final scene of the movie before end credits, where the "Super Heroes" song number would be as Brad, Janet, and Dr. Scott crawl in the ruins of Frank 'n' Furter's castle, we dropped in Aimee Mann's "Wise Up," and as the performers lip-synched the song on stage, we proceeded to pelt the audience with tiny rubber frogs. I personally got on top of what would be the roof of the concession stand (the portion recessed into the theatre auditorium) and flung nearly 22 dozen of them into the puzzled crowd. Most people in the movie theatre, of course, had never seen Magnolia, so they were left wondering what the hell this was all about. In fact, most of the cast had never seen the film either, but just liked the bizarre idea of dropping frogs on the audience. The few people in attendance who had seen the film, though, loved it.