The Teddy Bear’s Arsehole

Every year we’re given a full report of what’s included in the Oscars goody bag. Every year the public is outraged at the insane price tag. As always, this year’s bag was a six-figure haul of extravagant bullshit, but a closer look at it hints that the cost of living crisis might be starting to make its way to Hollywood.

In 2019, plastic surgeon to the stars, Dr Konstantin Vasyukevich, popped a $30,000 voucher for cosmetic procedures into the goody bag. In 2020, it was $25,000.

This year? A measly $10,000.

Alec Baldwin has been back out and about in downtown New York and is as chatty and convivial as ever with the locals.

However, some of them have commented that his tendency (which, in fairness, he has had for many years) to give the ol’ quick-draw thumbs-up/finger-point gesture when passing friends and acquaintances might not be the best choice of greeting any more – what with all that’s happened recently…

Which commentator-comedian has overestimated the public’s appetite for his wry takes on the news? A seat-filling agency has been tasked with “discreetly” finding people to take up the empty seats for an upcoming show.

Last week, we asked to hear your favourite industry codewords and jargon. One term we learned comes from the writers’ rooms of American soap operas. “Giving A Haircut” is how they describe taking an old storyline and changing a few details to make it look brand new.

Weirdly, Sunday’s Oscars offered up a pretty good example of it. Weirder still, it kind of revolved around a haircut.

In 2002, Will and Jada left the Oscars early citing a “family emergency”, but the story that went round was that Will had got into a brawl in the bogs with Ethan Hawke and landed a juicy one on Ethan’s cheek. One rumour was that Ethan had been trash-talking Will’s chances against fellow Best Actor nominee Denzel Washington. The other (which makes more sense now, given all we’ve learned about the Smiths’ marriage since) was that Ethan and Jada had been getting close: despite Jada being married to Will and Ethan being married to Uma Thurman.

20 years later, in 2022, Will and Jada were nearly tossed out of the Oscars early after Will got into a bout of fisticuffs over his wife’s honour. Only this time, it wasn’t in the bathroom, it was live on stage. Cooler heads prevailed when fellow Best Actor nominee Denzel Washington offered him some calming advice. And Will was finally presented with the Oscar for Best Actor by… Uma Thurman.

Steve from Dubstar writes:
“You were talking about the ‘Strawberry Filter’. How about ‘Fader 13’, known to audio engineers and producers across the globe?

“You spend all day making a mix that you, the band and the management love. Then the record company show up and insist on something to be changed. So you reach for ‘Fader 13’. Fader 13 on the mixing desk isn’t connected to anything, for exactly this moment. Whatever you do won’t change the sound of the mix. But it’s right there in the middle of the desk, so the record company can see you’re cooperating and responding to their request.

“Seconds later they love it, sign off on the mix, everyone gets paid and everyone goes to the pub.”

One researcher remembers the time on their very first location shoot that they found one of the cameramen peering into a gutter, clearly looking for something. When they asked if they could help, the cameraman said that he’d “dropped his teddy bear’s arsehole”.

Thinking the poor man had lost his mind, they offered to help him search. It turned out that “teddy bear’s arsehole” was the name he gave the soft, fawn-coloured eyepiece cover, used to stop the hard edges of a camera’s eyepiece bruising the cameraman’s eye.

If you ever get any work as a grip or a focus puller on a film set in New Zealand, you may find yourself being asked by a resident cinematographer for a “Mickey Rooney”. This is the highly technical term for creeping the camera forward a little – i.e. a little creep.

It comes from those who experienced working with the diminutive Rooney on The Black Stallion series in the 90s. Mickey stayed in a hotel just off the red light district section of Auckland’s K Road and crew members were forever having to return mucky VHS tapes on his behalf to the local rental stores.

They might have done him that favour a little less grudgingly had Mickey been a bit more fun on set, but he was always very keen to be ‘shot-out’ early each day – getting all his shots filmed first, then having his stand-in take care of the rest.

And such was Mickey’s desire to get back as quickly as possible, he once forced his driver to take his car right through the middle of a take.

We might have been a bit premature last week in saying that Ben Affleck’s exceptional handling of the snails on the set of Deep Water meant that Hollywood has turned a corner with its treatment of animals. A few people got in touch afterwards to draw our attention to a bonkers snail-based rumour that’s doing the rounds about the set of Bridgerton.

In the comments section of a BBC article about the show’s second series, someone is trying to convince fellow commenters that they worked on the set of the first series, where they watched cast members challenging each other to send snails sailing over the gorgeous scenery by hitting them as far as they could with tennis racquets – even going so far as to start a leaderboard for who could thwack them the furthest.

It’s been open season on London lawyers in recent weeks, but one firm curiously absent from the spotlight has been Schillings. They’re getting their turn to shine this week though as they’ve just taken a bit of a pasting from a High Court judge. Not for any work with shady Russian oligarchs, but for their work with Harry and Meghan.

Schillings’ team got a strip torn out of them after a judge learned they had breached an embargo by sharing a copy of his draft ruling with a reputation management expert (who is not a qualified lawyer).

Breaching an embargo is bad enough to earn a judge’s scorn, but the thing that really appears to have boiled the judicial piss is that Schillings took a full week to report that breach to the court. The judge who chewed them out for dragging their heels in fessing up… Mr Justice Swift!

A bright spot in an otherwise bleak news cycle comes from New Zealand, where an air traffic controller who was stripped of his licence in 2019 has just had it reinstated after a judge has weighed up the particulars of his case.

The man originally lost it after he was alleged to have been shagging his mistress, handcuffed to his office chair while continuing to give instructions to pilots bringing their planes in to land. However, the judge has since ruled that, while the man was inarguably having sex on duty in the control tower, there wasn’t sufficient evidence to prove he was handcuffed to his chair at the same time.

In the judge’s opinion, the rumpo alone is not enough of an impediment to successfully control air traffic and therefore shouldn’t warrant him losing his licence. So the shagger’s back in business.

Can you guess the film from the screenshot?
[Play Framed]

A fascinating look at the fake artist industry on Spotify
[From Music Business Worldwide]

Headline Of The Week: OJ Simpson Says Will Smith Was Wrong To Attack Chris Rock At Oscars
[Should have done it at his home…]

How fast can you slap Chris Rock?
[A five second browser game]

If you’ve got the stomach for more Smith/Rock chat, an account of how the slap payed out in the theatre
[Read on Slate]

An academic study conducted into teaspoons that go missing in offices
[Read it here]

American Song Contest: Week 2 Recap
[Read on Gawker]

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