With Warner Bros. set to introduce a new cinematic Batman in James Gunn burgeoning DC Universe, The Dark Knight Trilogy writer David Goyer has opened up about his experience working with Christopher Nolan on the now-iconic films.
In a sprawling interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Goyer revealed that not even the Nolan films were safe from studio meddling. However, unlike the DC movies that followed, Nolan was able to hold off Warner Bros. executives who constantly tried to put their fingerprints on the Christian Bale films with wild casting ideas like having Leonardo DiCaprio play The Riddler.
“After The Dark Knight, the head of Warner Bros at the premiere said, ‘You got to do the Riddler. Leo as the Riddler. You got to tell Chris, Leo as the Riddler,’” Goyer recalled. “And that’s not the way we work.”
According to Goyer, their approach was always to figure out Batman’s story before anything else. Via Variety:
Goyer said that Nolan and him never picked villains first. Instead they would crack the story of Batman for each film and pick the corresponding villain to match that story. Bane (Tom Hardy) was selected for “The Dark Knight Rises” as the film wrestled with Batman’s age and physicality after the more intellectual warfare of Joker (Heath Ledger) in “The Dark Knight.”
Goyer did reveal one casting decision that he was against, but obviously, worked out for the best. The writer confirmed reports that he pushed for Jake Gyllenhaal over Christian Bale going into Batman Begins. Goyer has no hard feelings though because “Bale is amazing.”
You can watch Goyer talk about The Dark Knight Trilogy at the 13:47 mark below:
You might think that a movie called Dumb Moneyfeaturing Pete Davidson and Seth Rogen would be a fun buddy comedy (it might be, the jury is still out) but it’s actually based on a very real story from not too long ago. Who could forget those few weeks in 2021 when everyone was randomly talking about GameStop, the preferred store of teenage boys?
Dumb Money is loosely based on Ben Mezrich’s 2021 book The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees. Paul Dano stars as investor Keith Gill, a YouTuber and avid Reddit user who spearheaded the GameStop stock squeeze of 2021 which caused chaos on Wall Street. A group of working-class investors short-squeezed a bunch of billionaire investors, played in the film by Rogen and Nick Offerman, and showed how the system can easily fail.
The movie highlights the power imbalance between Wall Street investors and your average working parent who managed to use the system to their advantage before the higher-ups stepped in, proving that the system is actually rigged. Even the Mormons got in on the action!
Dumb Money, also starring Shailene Woodley, Vincent D’Onofrio, America Ferrera, Anthony Ramos, and Sebastian Stan, hits theaters September 22nd.
Kelly Clarkson’s new album Chemistry arrived in June. The singer and television host is back today (September 22) with the deluxe version, which features an unreleased song called “You Don’t Make Me Cry,” which features a special guest.
“You Don’t Make Me Cry” is a brazen pop song that opens with Auto-Tuned vocals from Clarkson’s daughter River Rose. The track takes unexpected turns as a trap beat comes in as Clarkson sings about not letting someone have the power to make her upset anymore. “You don’t make me cry / And I cry at everything / You don’t make me feel / and I feel more than most now that says something doesn’t it,” she proclaims. It’s an interesting sound for the “Since U Been Gone” performer.
“Having chemistry with someone is an incredible, and overwhelming, feeling. It’s like you have no choice in the matter,” Clarkson said about the album in a statement. “You are just drawn to each other. This can be good and bad. This album takes you down every path that chemistry could lead you down.”
Listen to “You Don’t Make Me Cry” above.
Kelly Clarkson is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.
ITEM NUMBER ONE – Like this, not like that
Celebrity endorsements are tricky business. There’s a fine line one has to tippy-toe across. When done right, when the combination of celebrity and product and delivery works, it can be a hoot. Everyone’s having fun and also helping the economy. Good. Great, even. Danny DeVito seems like he’s having a blast telling everyone about Jersey Mike’s subs. But when it doesn’t click… yeesh. It feels a little sad and sometimes gross and most of the time it’s just a bummer. For everyone, too. The viewer, the celebrity, and the people trying to sell a product. No thank you.
We saw both ends of that spectrum on display this week. The good was, well, really good, and if you haven’t seen Samuel L. Jackson trading on years of playing movie badasses to sell bread for a British bakery then, buddy, please click play on this sucker and treat yourself. The next paragraph can wait. Watch it again even if you saw it earlier in the week. Just promise to scroll all the way to the bottom of this column when you’re done so I can tell you about the bears that hijacked a Krispy Kreme truck. That’s the deal.
See? Delightful. Wonderful, even. And then if you, like me, started Googling when you finished it, you discovered that the company behind it all, Warburton’s, has a history of doing it. They kind of love it. The CEO gets it. Look at this guy talk about Samuel L. Jackson.
‘Not many people can be that commanding and so charming at the same time, and I love his hilarious take on why our Toastie loaf is the real deal.’
He wasn’t done, either.
He continued: ‘Inviting the big-screen hero of Samuel L. Jackson into the business was a uniquely memorable experience, and we hope to bring some light-hearted humour to viewers at home – while reminding the nation that our Toastie truly offers our customers the best of the best.’
Nailed it, straight through. I kind of want to try this stuff now even though I live a whole ocean away and baked goods are not famous for their extended shelf life. Which, I suppose, is the whole point. Mission accomplished.
Robert De Niro will reportedly reprise his iconic “Taxi Driver” role as Travis Bickle in an upcoming Uber ad campaign.
I do not love this. Especially when you get to this part of the article.
The Oscar-winner has recently taken on several other ad campaigns — a possible consequence of the star’s costly divorces and separations from the mothers of his seven children.
“A lot of people feel like some of these classic films are his best work, and signing up to commercials is selling out a bit, but obviously he’s had a very expensive personal life,” the source said.
This is what I mean about it all being tricky. Both guys are using an image created by their acting career to sell a product. Both guys are, one assumes, getting a decent paycheck to do it. Maybe the biggest thing is the product, actually. It’s easy to root for a British company that makes silly ads about bread. It’s less easy to root for a huge Silicon Valley unicorn (who many believe to be shady at best and evil at worst) convincing an aging actor to reprise an iconic role from like 40-50 years ago. I promise I thought that before I saw this quote from Samuel L. Jackson about the bread commercial.
About working on his latest ad, the Hollywood legend said: ‘It was a pleasure to meet the man at the helm of Britain’s biggest family bakery. And what an honour to follow in the footsteps of ‘Bolton alumni’, George Clooney and Robert DeNiro.
Yup, Robert De Niro did an ad from that bakery, too. And yup, it’s lovely, too. Look.
Hmm. I guess it’s all actually not that tricky. Maybe you just need to do commercials for charming bread companies for it all to work. I’m glad we figured this out.
ITEM NUMBER TWO – HAMM
Miramax
Okay, here’s what happened. Earlier this week, I wrote a thing about how cool it is that Jon Hamm has used the juice he squeezed out of his iconic work as Don Draper on Mad Men to run around doing whatever fun and silly project his heart desired. I pegged it to his appearance in The Morning Show as a goofball techbro and his upcoming role in season five of Fargo, just because that’s what was on my mind at the time. This is how the sausage gets made around here.
But then a cool thing happened. People read the article and started reaching out to tell me their own favorite Hamm appearances. I got tweets reminding me that he voiced a talking toaster on Bob’s Burgers at the height of his Mad Men fame. I had about a dozen people tell me to watch him in Good Omens, where he plays a version of the archangel Gabriel who gets amnesia and starts bumbling around Earth, which is a very Jon Hamm thing. I even got an email from someone who has known him personally for a decade that confirmed he’s just an extremely good dude, which was nice, especially since, as you may know, people on the internet love to tell you when you’re wrong.
My favorite ones, though, were about goofy little commercials he’s been doing in Canada, in part because I was already planning on writing about celebrity endorsements this week and in part because… well.
Hamm did do a series of ads for a Canadian food delivery app called SkipTheDishes where he played a man pretending to be Canadian. “That’s kind of taken off and become its own thing,” Hamm said. “I get recognized in Canada as an honorary Canadian.”
LOOK AT HAMM.
Just a really great experience all around. For me, I mean. Because nobody yelled at me. And everyone said I was right. And I got to watch a lot of fun clips of Jon Hamm. That’s what’s important here.
In June, White also closed a new deal to return as host of ABC’s Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, which, as Deadline reported at the time, involves a significant salary increase. Her contract extension for the flagship syndicated show is believed to involve a pay raise, too. A fan favorite, White has been revealing letters at Wheel’s signature puzzleboard since 1982. Amid uncertainty over her future beyond Season 41, she enjoyed a wave of support during her contract negotiations, which likely helped seal the deal for her to stay on.
BAD: They still hired Ryan Seacrest to replace Sajak instead of giving the job to Vanna. Or me. Or Joe Pera, And he’s saying stuff like this, which is mostly harmless but still annoying.
He also admitted that one of the game show’s most foundational elements is surprisingly something of an Achilles heel for him.
“Actually, I’m a terrible speller,” he admitted (on the other hand, his mother “thinks she’s a great speller,” he quips).
Seacrest qualifies, “But, on the show I’m better than on my cell phone when I type or text.”
Which I would have more to say about if reading his name didn’t immediately remind me of the time in 2010 when Sylvester Stallone spent a whole week tweeting about how he thought Seacrest could beat up Jet Li.
Why would I put JCVD , and I do like him, in EXPENDABLES when I know SEACREST could destroy the one time great . ASK STEVE AUSTIN, he knows.
I don’t actually have a third thing, I just felt like a third bullet point looked better
Moving on.
ITEM NUMBER FIVE – Octopus back
There was a big thing a little while ago about whether Amber Heard’s role in the upcoming Aquaman sequel was cut or trimmed down due to all the weird press that flooded out during her legal fiasco with Johnny Depp, and you are very welcome to look it all up and develop your own opinions about it and shout them at people (not me, please) on your website of choice (not this one, please), but I want to talk about the octopus that played the drums in the first one.
Specifically, I want to talk about this, from another interview with director James Wan.
The teaser also featured the sight of Aquaman and an octopus shooting out of the water atop a giant sea horse. Wan confirms that Arthur’s steed is Storm, who first appeared in the Aquaman comic back in the mid-’60s, while his eight-legged friend is Topo, the same octopus that was briefly seen playing the drums back in the first film. The director explains that Topo will have “a stronger presence in this film. He’s an actual character in this one.”
Okay, three things again:
I love this
I have never seen Aquaman but I have seen this short clip of the drumming octopus maybe 5000 times
More — perhaps all? — movies should feature a drumming octopus
I hope he ends up with an entire spinoff a few years down the line. Jon Hamm will probably be involved somehow. Maybe as the bass player in the band. As himself. In a scuba suit. Uncredited. Don’t think for one second that this isn’t a possibility.
READER MAIL
If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.
From Paul:
Dude, I just wanted to say thank you for being you. Everyone else was out there writing angry articles about defending Martin Short’s legacy and whatnot and you’re publishing extended excuses to post pictures of Henry Winkler holding fish he caught. Please do not change.
I am posting this email for two reasons, neither of which have to do with the compliment Paul gave me, which was very nice. Reason one: A probably not surprising number of emails I get open with the word “dude,” which I really appreciate and feel good about, zero sarcasm. Reason two: The combination of “Martin Short” and “fun pictures I like” as subjects in this email gives me an excuse to show this to you guys.
Singing and dancing animatronic bears are a common sight at the Magic Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World, but a bear that was spotted there on Monday was real and most likely looking for food, prompting officials to close some rides and attractions.
How did the bear get in, you ask?
HE PAID FOR A TICKET LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.
Thanks.
Ms. Thompson said in an email that a black bear had been spotted in a tree at Magic Kingdom, a theme park whose world-famous attractions include Cinderella’s castle and the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
Okay, I’ll admit I read this too fast and either my hurry or sick brain or both read that to mean the bear was spotted at the castle and on the ride. Which, like, good for him. Have a day, buddy. Some people never get to go to Disney, you know?
Bears are more active in the fall because they are looking for food so they can pack on fat before winter, Ms. Thompson said. “This particular bear was likely moving through the area searching for food,” she said.
Well, okay. That makes sense. But at least this was the only time it happened this week. It’s not like there’s an epidemic brewing or anythi-…
Two bears on an Alaska military base raided a Krispy Kreme doughnut van that was stopped outside a convenience store during its delivery route.
DONUT RAID
BY BEARS
BEAR DONUT RAID
The driver usually left his doors open when he stopped at the store but this time a sow and one of her cubs that loitered nearby sauntered inside, where they stayed for probably 20 minutes on Tuesday morning, said Shelly Deano, the store manager for Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson JMM Express. The bears chomped on doughnut holes and other pastries, ignoring the banging on the side of the van that was intended to shoo them away, Deano said.
Is it weird that I read this and immediately started wondering how many Krispy Kremes a bear could eat in one sitting? And that I’ve been thinking about it ever since I read it? And that I’ll still be thinking about it this weekend?
Hmm.
Maybe.
“I was beating on the van and they’re not moving. I could hear them breaking open the packages and everything,” she said. “I was like, ‘They don’t even care.’”
Two notes in closing:
This lady is so much braver than I am because if I saw bears housing donuts in a truck I would extremely not start banging on the walls of that truck
So far, my best guess is that a bear could eat 200 Krispy Kremes in one sitting
I might go higher. We’ll see how it all shakes out.
Before Top Gun: Maverick, before his scene-stealing appearances on 30 Rock and Bob’s Burgers, even before Mad Men, Hamm was a drama teacher in St. Louis. One of his students? Future Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt co-star Ellie Kemper. “Here’s the thing. So, he’s 10 years older than I am. He went to my high school. To give people some background, he went to my high school, went to college, came back and taught drama for a year at our high school. And he’s the youngest teacher by far,” she told host Andy Cohen on SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live. “He’s not bad looking, and he’s teaching drama.”
Cohen had to correct Kemper. “Excuse me,” he said. “He’s great looking.” Kemper agreed. “He is, in fact, great looking. Dreamy,” she added. The Office actress only had nice things to say about “good guy” Hamm.
“Jon Hamm is a generous, selfless kind of guy. I reached out to him when I was doing my one-person show. A little comedy show. I had my little suitcase of props. I was doing this one-person show in Los Angeles, and at that time, he was already famous on Mad Men. I emailed him from our high school directory. I said, ‘Hey, I’m doing this show. I know you’re really busy, but it’d be great if you could come.’ And he came, and that’s when I really reconnected with him. I mean, that’s a class act, right? He’s a good guy.”
Jon Hamm is talented, handsome, funny, and a solid dude? I should be angry at him for making the rest of us look bad, until I remember the time he, in character as Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne, sang “The Purple People Eater” on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Can’t be mad at that.
Stephen A. Smith has made a career out of having incredibly strong takes about everything. While he’s increasingly done this in a variety of different worlds — entertainment, politics, etc. — Smith’s bread and butter is sports, where he has the innate ability to immediately explain why something is incredibly good or extremely bad.
But now, Smith is on the other side of this. The ESPN personality went to Yankee Stadium to throw out a first pitch on Thursday night and bounced it a good bit in front of home plate. It was easily one of the 10,000,000 or so most embarrassing things to happen to someone wearing a Yankees jersey in Yankee Stadium this season, and on Friday’s edition of First Take, Smith found the shoe on the other foot, as people kept coming on the show and cooking him like a well done steak.
Things started with Smith trying his best to explain himself while everyone at the desk looked on disapprovingly.
And then, trouble started. Both Snoop Dogg and Shannon Sharpe recorded and sent in messages, with Snoop saying he should be “ashamed of that pitch” and Sharpe saying he’s gonna really cook him on Monday morning when he’s on the show next.
Steve Harvey decided to get in on the fun, as he called into the show and said that he’s been getting calls about the pitch, which left him embarrassed. ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky also decided to chime in by getting his children involved.
And guess what: Shaq called in, and after he got through some takes about the Dallas Cowboys and Deion Sanders, he actually said that he did not see the pitch. (If you do not understand the Tex Johnson thing, please enjoy maybe my favorite clip in Stephen A. Smith history.)
I would like to personally congratulate everyone on what was probably an extremely fun (and long-awaited) day for all of them.
Here’s a wild one, even for Ted Cruz: Democrats are planning on giving Joe Biden the old heave-ho so Michelle Obama can run for president instead.
That’s the baseless conspiracy theory the Texas senator pitched on the Verdict with Ted Cruz podcast earlier this week. “So here’s the scenario that I think is perhaps the most likely and most dangerous. In August of 2024, the Democrat kingmakers jettison Joe Biden and parachute in Michelle Obama. I view this as a very serious danger,” Cruz said, according to Mediaite.
“Michelle Obama, number one, you don’t infuriate African-American women, which is a critical part of the constituency that Democrats are relying on to win,” Cruz said. “But number two, you avoid the problem, if you pick from any of the four, the other three are pissed because they’re all to some extent, peers, they’re rivals. They’re all jabbing knives at each other.” The “four” are Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, and Gavin Newsom.
Cruz doesn’t think Obama is interested in the gig, “but to parachute in August of ’24, a couple of months before the presidency and suddenly wake up and be president…” The fake beer-swigging everyman sees this as a worst-case scenario for America. “That ought to scare the hell out of anyone who is unhappy about the direction this country is going and doesn’t want us to go even crazier in an even worse direction,” Cruz added.
It takes very little to start a rumor on social media these days. It probably never took much to begin with, but thanks to platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, one person’s private joke can spread like wildfire. Case in point: All it took to start the rumor that Nigerian Afrobeats star Tems was pregnant was a video of the star gripping the front of her coat.
The video, which appears to have been posted on her Instagram Story, sees the star greeting fans at an event, but observers online attributed the way she held the coat closed in front of her to hiding a baby bump. This quickly spun into some fans speculating that the father was her “Wait For U” collaborator Future.
The answer is very likely “no.” While Tems herself didn’t directly address the wild rumor (which seems mostly to be the result of several blogs reposting the same story quoting a handful of comments on the original video), she did subtly shoot it down on both Twitter and Instagram. “In conclusion, you people are all mad!!!” she wrote on Twitter (not X, which is a dumb name and no one should take it or its owner seriously). The star, who is used to criticism of her sartorial choices, clearly isn’t sweating the speculation.
Meanwhile, on Instagram, she posted a string of side profile photos in the same outfit — ostensibly taken on the same day — that show no bump to be seen. The star also reposted a supporter’s epic clapback at one skeptical commenter’s insistence that she’s lying. To be fair… he kinda asked for it. Just goes to show: Never stick your nose into conversations where it doesn’t belong.
It’s been a week since former Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner gave a disastrous interview to the New York Times to promote his upcoming book of classic rocker interviews, The Masters. Thankfully, it lingered just long enough in the news for Steven and Ian to talk about it on the pod. The guys reflect on Wenner’s legacy, why he chose to say out loud what many assumed were his feelings about women and black musicians, and what this means for the discourse overall. Also, they talk about the surprise re-emergence of Spin‘s Bob Guccione Jr. aka the guy Axl Rose threatened to beat up in “Get In The Ring.”
From there they talk about Laugh Track, the surprise new album by The National that dropped earlier this week. It’s their second LP of 2023 after First Two Pages Of Frankenstein, and it sounds a lot like that record. Steven and Ian are somewhat lukewarm on both records, though Steven believes that a very good single National album could have been made from their best material. What’s going on with this band, and have they lost the ability to self-edit?
In the mailbag, a listener takes the guys to task for talking about sports too much, and another letter writer asks an important CD-related question: jewel case or digipak?
In Recommendation Corner, Ian talks about the Grimes-like singer-songwriter Yeule while Steven recommends the Summerteeth-like rock band Slaughter Beach, Dog.
New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 156 here and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [email protected], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.
Today (September 22), he shared Boys Of Faith, an EP featuring Bon Iver on the title track and Noah Kahan on “Sarah’s Place.” It’s five songs that possess Bryan’s astonishing songwriting that listeners love him for. On “Boys Of Faith,” Bryan and Justin Vernon harmonize somberly, “But you stuck around when I was down / And I’ll owe you all my days / Them boys of faith.”
About being arrested in Oklahoma, he posted a video explaining what happened. “I get too lippy with [the cop], he brings me over to his car, and I just didn’t help my situation at all,” he said. “I felt like a child. It was ridiculous, it was immature, and I just pray everyone knows that I don’t think I’m above the law. I was just being disrespectful and I shouldn’t have been. It was my mistake.”
Stream Boys Of Faith below.
Zach Bryan is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
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