Mission: Hollywood - the smoke, the mirrors…and you.

Hearing what we’re about to tell you may just shake your entire belief system to its core, but we feel that you’re mature and responsible enough to handle it, so here it goes:

Some things in Hollywood are not real. They’re, you know, fake.

Okay. Still with us? We apologize for throwing the harsh, bitter water of truth onto your sleepy-eyed world of blissfully childlike naiveté, but every so often we must - must! - contemplate just how much Hollywood is pulling one over on us. So join us, lovers of cinematic fantasy; on this day Mission: Hollywood challenges you to wake up and smell the botox.

Surprisingly, we’ve seen no fallout from the news reported last week by Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere that the late George Cosmatos didn’t direct Tombstone as much as he merely showed up on-set and did whatever star/Wyatt Earper Kurt Russell told him to do. Wells links to an article written by Henry Cabot Beck in which a Poseidon junket-weary Russell, asked an off-handed question about Tombstone’s well-storied production problems, opened up a big old can of worms and revealed that it was actually he, and not Cosmatos, who truly directed the movie. Apparently, after Tombstone’s original director was fired, Russell took up the challenge to secure financing and finish the film himself - even going so far as to create shot lists and other instructions that he compelled Cosmatos to follow, swearing that he’d never reveal the truth while Cosmatos was still alive. If it’s true, it’s a compelling story to read, and certainly makes one contemplate Tombstone - widely thought to be the best film in Cosmatos’ otherwise spotty filmography - in a new light indeed.

After the jump, our probing look at Hollywood artifice continues with the questions

• Why did Spielberg lie to me?
• What does a popular TV actress really think about us normal folk?
• Hey, how do we feel lately about that big actor who did that stupid thing?
• …and more!

Andy Horbal at the fine No More Marriages! blog (note to self: find out what in the wide, wide world of sports that means) brings to light - through a spectacularly supported-through-screenshots post - a mind-bendingly frustrating example of a Hollywood red herring. This example, perpetrated by the ordinarily above-reproach-or-at-least-granted-frequent-passes Steven Spielberg, causes Horbal to rightfully ask (and we’ll paraphrase quite liberally here): Just what in the friggin’ hell was up with the can of shaving cream in Jurassic Park? This has been a scab on our cinematically skinned knee for 13 years now, and we very much appreciate Horbal’s thoughtful efforts to ruthlessly pick at it.

In the midst of his most recent and ever-cleverly scribed pop culture dissertation, The Jay not only walks us through the important life lessons gleaned from the now-defunct WB network, but also pulls back the curtain on how rewarding it can be when one is hired as an extra on a Big Fancy Television Show, especially when the show’s Big Fancy Lead Actress decides to let you know her foul-mouthed opinion on just how well you’re doing your thankless, barely compensated, crappy little job.

So apparently we’re all ready to move on and forgive Mel and forget about that whole silly incident and realize that it was really dumb but not evil and everything’s okay, right? We’re all feeling better…right?

Wrong. And wrong again.

In all of our lazy, leisurely summer activities, this news of a Television Critics Association tour to the set of The Shield somehow slipped our notice in July (a months-old blog reference! the horror!). Still, it’s never too late to put a finer point on JUST HOW DAMN EXCITED we are about our favorite We-Hope-They’re-Fake-Cops show returning in January. The show’s producers screened the new season’s first episode for critics, and among the spoilerish tidbits were:

• Forest Whitaker will return as Vic’s nemesis, for several episodes of the new season
• Run, Lola, Run actress Franka Potente will appear in a three-episode arc
• Frank Darabont is guest-directing an episode that show creator Shawn Ryan classifies as “among the best three or four episodes we’ve ever done.”
• According to one of the critics, the season opener includes “a scene of almost unimaginable gore.”
• By the way, did we mention that we’re excited about this?

And we come full circle back to the question of Hollywood fakery with this look at a very faithful recreation of a Terminator endoskeleton head, rendered entirely with Lego blocks.

Impressive? Absolutely. Yet it begs the question: were people this creative before the Internet offered an outlet with which to showcase their efforts? Because in our youth, we were lucky to construct a rocket car out of Legos that actually looked like it was capable of rolling down the upstairs hallway. We have to wonder, had we the benefit of the self-affirming effects of a blog and complimentary comments from people all over the world, whether things might have turned out quite differently in life.