"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Archive for the ‘Vern Tells It Like It Is’ Category

Burn the Witch (Blair Witch Part II)

Monday, October 23rd, 2000

Well here it is Halloween already and fuck if I’ve got into the spirit of the thing. I tried buying a compact disc of John Carpenter’s score to the movie Halloween and I put it on driving around in the pouring rain. And I try to picture that white masked bastard jumping out of nowhere onto my car right when the keyboards do their little electric BYYYOOOOOOO sound and okay, I’m halfway there. But other than that, I mean I got no pumpkins, I got no costume, I got shit.

So what do you do. You follow the halloween traditions our nation and culture have set forth for us. You go to the theater to see the one half assed horror movie that they decided to release right before Halloween. In this case, Book of Shadows: Revenge of the Blair Witch Project Part 2, Return to the Dark Woods of the Burkitsville Horror. (can’t remember the exact title actually so I made that one up, hope the boys at artisan like it.) (read the rest of this shit…)

Divided (Dancer in the Dark and Bamboozled)

Monday, October 16th, 2000

INTRODUCTION

Well this week it’s nothing but controversy in the world of arthouse type Cinema. Discussion and debate riddles the lobbies of select theaters nationwide. Limited releases bring unlimited disagreement in a platform type pattern across the great land of america.

Audiences are divided over which movie is more divisive, Dancer in the Dark or Bamboozled? Many love Dancer in the Dark, many hate it. Bamboozled has been called both a career destroying debacle and the year’s best film. However some feel that Bamboozled is really more provocative than divisive. Maybe Dancer in the Dark is dividing audiences, but is it provoking them? No matter how divisive it is, can it be as outrageous as Bamboozled? As explosive?

Well shit I don’t know. Personally I’m divided on both of these. I love ’em and I hate ’em. I think I love Dancer in the Dark a little more than I hate it and hate Bamboozled a little more than I love it. But I mean who knows I am so divided and provoked and outraged at their explosiveness that I don’t even know up from down anyway. (read the rest of this shit…)

Meet the Parents

Monday, October 9th, 2000

Well chances are by now you motherfuckers’ve heard about the new hit comedy Meet the Parents. This movie is sweeping the nation. All the sudden everybody loves to laugh. It is the new big thing. People are telling their friends about it. “This is a picture where you laugh.” There is already talk of a sequel even though, I mean how in fuck do you do a sequel to this picture. You can’t.

So let me give you my take on it. The Vern take. In case you’ve been in the can or something and haven’t fallen into Parentmania, what this is is the type of picture where Ben Stiller has to meet his girlfriend’s parents for the first time. In fact he wants to propose to the gal but first he has to ask the father’s permission. Only problem is the father is the King of Comedy himself, Robert DeNiro. Robert’s character is a crazy ex-CIA maniac obsessed with surveillance. So Ben tries his damndest to make a good impression, but every fucking thing possible goes wrong.

Okay so you’ve probaly seen the ads and think, yeah okay we know everything that happens. Truth is out of context that stuff may not seem funny but I would argue that in the movie, yes, it is funny. Because this Ben Stiller is a very special individual. He is the world’s only Human Humiliation Sponge. He will soak up any indignity known to man. And make it funny. (read the rest of this shit…)

Hammer’s Karnstein trilogy

Monday, October 2nd, 2000

Well the votes are in. We got like 11 or so experts on the films of Badass Cinema rating over 300 quality Badass pictures. We got these points all added up and averaged and what not to determine their true Badass quality levels. The mathematicals are all calculated and tabulated something fierce. And what better way to celebrate the 50th VERN TELL’S IT LIKE IT IS column than with the long awaited list of the 100 Most Badass Movies of All Fucking Time?

Only thing is boys I gotta mold them all into a presentable type format. Only then will they be available to the public, or anyone else not including me. Doesn’t matter if this is a round number or not. (read the rest of this shit…)

Almost Famous (revenge of the Ain’t It Cool Newsies)

Wednesday, September 27th, 2000

So the big movie right now is Almost Famous. A nicely crafted ’70s epic about a 15 year old kid named William who writes music reviews, and ends up having Rolling Stone magazine foot the bill for him to go on tour with a major rock band, to write an article. Written and directed by Cameron Crowe, for whom most of this shit REALLY went down, it is obviously a movie that is very close to his heart.

In a way it’s kind of a pisser that THIS would be the cherished personal project for a director. This guy is saying hey everybody, when I was fifteen I fell in love with one of the many beautiful groupies I had sex with on the national tour I went on with a famous rock band. But then we didn’t get together. Bummer, eh?

It’s kind of like on that radio talk show Loveline, when they get what they call a “my dick is too big to ride my bicycle” call. Where it is really more bragging than questioning. (read the rest of this shit…)

Man stuff

Monday, September 25th, 2000

I remember there used to be women who read my column. I won’t say their names but there was a nice gal from the newsgroups who was an early supporter of my works. Nother one from the web sight for the director of Running Time, that Bruce Campbell movie all done up in one shot like Rope. She used to write me all the time, very encouraging, very supportive.

I haven’t heard from any women in a while, and I wonder if I’m scaring them away with all this man talk. All this Badass Cinema, all this Bruce and Clint and breaking people’s legs and bending punks over and smoking motherfuckers. Balls and dicks. Man stuff.

Well I hope some day my sensitive side will return, I’ll lay off of the macho for a little while and I’ll get a little more genderifical diversity in my readership. I mean who the fuck knows, even Clint Eastwood directed The Bridges of Madison County one time. (read the rest of this shit…)

Badass Movie Ballot

Monday, September 11th, 2000

Well here it is, friends. If there are ANY regular readers out there you might be happy to know that the time has finally arrived for finalizing the World Badass Committee’s Top 100 Badass Pictures of All Time list. This is a project that I started way back in Vern Tell’s It lIke It Is #38, when I asked:

So please my friends, ladies and fellas, send me your top Badass movies of all time. The definition is up to you. You can send me as many as you want, except not over 100. Please try to have them in approximate ranking order (your favorite first) and put the name of the Badass performer in parentheses afterwards.

I got many responses, and believe me people I am very grateful. And most of you came up with some great ones. I was happy to get a lot of votes for individuals like Clint, Steve McQueen, the Bruces, etc. However you can’t say my readers aren’t worldly. There were many contenders of many nationalities, and from all eras including many movies I never even heard of. I believe Toshiro Mifune got more of his movies on there than Schwarzenegger or Van Damme. That motherfucker really is popular with you guys. (read the rest of this shit…)

Labor Day – interview with the porn man

Monday, September 4th, 2000

Hey guys how’s it goin sorry about last week’s column. SOMEBODY woke up on the wrong side of the bed, huh? Jesus.

This week I thought I would do something kinda special in honor of the Labor Day holiday. In honor of the people. You see, there are many individuals in the world, but the ones I feel the strongest for are the working men and women. The people who bust their ass muscles every day, usually for some asshole in a tie or for some soulless corporation. Or even better, there are the people who work hard and don’t get much respect and don’t get paid shit, but in a field they are passionate about. And not working for a chain, or for the man. For some ma an pa type business is what they call it, a small locally owned place. (read the rest of this shit…)

God damn it stop talking about Survivor

Monday, August 28th, 2000

Man, is it just me or is everybody else SICK AND FUCKING TIRED OF HEARING ABOUT FUCKING SURVIVOR!?

I never even SEEN the fucking show I still gotta be treated like it’s the dearest thing to my heart. The one thing that makes me a man. The very center of my religion. I get up in the morning, my clock radio’s telling me about Survivor. I turn on Good Morning America or Today Show or some shit, they got a panel of experts talking about how they kept the ending a secret, what are they gonna do now, interview some naked guy that was on the show, interview some gal’s dad, show clips from last night’s episode of Dave Letterman where they also interviewed the same retards about the same boring bullshit.

And is that unfortunate or what, to have a fine comedian like dave letterman forced to spend half his show talking about some other show the network is trying to promote. I bet the cbs suits had meetings all about it, and they probaly came up with a catchy name for the format, like comedmercial or infolaffs or synerhilarity. It’s too bad entertainment tonight is a syndicated program instead of a cbs program. Wouldn’t it be beautiful to hear, “Coming up later on ET, we have an exclusive preview of tomorrow night’s ET, where we will show a clip from tonight’s episode of David Letterman, where Dave will discuss yesterday’s episode of Survivor. But first, Jim J. Bullock’s tragic allergies that almost brought his Survivor watching to a premature end.” (read the rest of this shit…)

The Iceberg is mine, motherfuckers

Monday, August 21st, 2000

I wonder if any of you boys have ever read the literary works of Iceberg Slim. For those of you who don’t know, Iceberg is an individual who, like me, had some trouble with the law. He got sucked into the belly of the beast and years later, shot out its ass with 100% Writer’s blood flowing through his veins.

As you might be able to guess by his handle, Iceberg was a pimp. And a damn good one, to hear him tell it. Iceberg was born in 1918 so we’re talking back in the 30’s 40’s and 50’s prostitution scene. He worked primarily out of the southside of Chicago, a good place for pimps, apparently. Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for us, he went down about three times and had to retire. He moved out to Los Angeles California and wrote his first book, Pimp: The Story of My Life which was published in 1967. It was and is a huge influence on modern crime fiction and rap music. It has been a noted influence for everybody from Irvine Welsh to Ices Cube and T. It is not only one of the greatest books ever written by a criminal, but also has the distinction of being the second best title ever for an autobiography, after Roger Vadim’s Deneuve, Bardot, Fonda: My Life With the Three Most Beautiful Women in the World. (read the rest of this shit…)