Robert Pattinson's Porn Connection!!!
First of all, I may have oversold this thing just a tad in the headline.
But not by much! So keep reading, my movie-lovin' peep-a-deeps. Bobby loves ya, don'tcha know. Wants to eat ya. For you guys put the food on the Bob Hollywoodtable. The spring in the Bob Hollywood step. The vermouth in the Bob Hollywood martini! So keep on a-clickin' and a-commentin', my dear, dear readers. (Look, I gave ya the boldface treatment, same as I do with the celebs who populate this blog-o-column thingy.)
Now! To the matter at hand! Pattinson, Robert, and the possible porno connection.
O.K. So! Listen. Does the name Harry Reems ring a bell? (Hmmm?)
Guy with floppy tennis hat says: "Uhhh, I don't know, Bob, should it?"
Well, tennis-hat guy, I dunno. It all depends on yer taste in the area of cinema, I s'pose.
And I, Robert J. Hollywood Jr., I have detected a definite connection between this Reems fellow and the young and rising Monsieur Pattinson. And I shall now proceed to tell you about it, if I can manage to bend these sentences to my not inconsiderable will!
O.K. Now. For those of you who don't know what the hell I'm flappin' my trap about, Mr. Reems is the well-endowed thespian who played one "Dr. Young" in a certain motion picture, a classic, of sorts, from 1972, called Deep Throat.
A sometime pal o' mine, good old Harry is no longer "in the business," as they say, having gone straight, with a religious wife, the little home somewhere in flyover territory with the white picket fence, the tree house in the backyard, the wacky neighbor, and the rest of that particular ball o' American wax.
Teenage girl with tear-stained face: "What about Robbie Pattinson? OMG! Get to the point already you fat old turdball gaywad!"
Sorry, lassie. I'm doin' my best here. But us analogue guys… well, we tend to make a wending way to our various destinations rather like a fella out taking a Sunday drive through the hills of Malibu on his trusty Vespa.
Don'tcha know.
O.K. So by now you have met Mr. Reems. In 1976 Reems starred in an X-rated picture, directed by the semi-great George DuRoy, called Bel-Ami, which was a horny-'n'-porny take on a slim novel written by Guy de Maupassant, whose life came to a sad end when he went mad with the syphilis. With any other of the great writers from the 19th century, a porno version of one of their books might be seen as a sort of sacrilege. A Kentucky-fried joke made at the expense of fusty material. But Monsieur de Maupassant practically screams out for just such a fleshing-out! He was one of the earthiest writers of all time! And this brings us to Mr. Pattinson, who, in the next year,will begin shooting a new version of Bel-Ami under the direction of Declan Donnellan, who made the kinda-good Big Fish a few years back.
Bel-Ami concerns an unscrupulous journalist who uses his small position to advance himself— thanks to his charm, good looks, and sexual wiles—into the upper echelons of Parisian society. It's a great freakin' read. Even today. Just flies by. Others in my profession tend to say that Evelyn Waugh's Scoop is the greatest journalism novel of all time, but I will go with Bel-Ami every damned time.
I think Mr. Pattinson will really do something in this role. Get some of the respeck not afforded him by his tendency to brood vampirically in the modern manner (no black cape for him, don'tcha know).
But Reems and Pattinson have more in common than just Bel-Ami. For one, Pattinsonis a major heart-throb these days; and the great Reems once starred in a picture, from 1985, called Heart Throbs. And while Pattinson has made his name in the Twilightseries, Reems once played in a film, directed by Victor Nye, called Love Bites. O.K., so Love Bites wasn't about vampires; it actually focused on mosquitoes whose bites make people horny. But what are mosquitoes, if not little vampires of the air? Other Reems titles (they are priceless) include Sherlick Holmes, Wet Rainbow, Fast Ball, andToo Naughy to Say No.
Anyhoots, Bel-Ami is what's known in the biz as a very solid property. It was made as a silent feature in 1919 (!) and has been remade about ten times since then. (I tried, without success, to mount it for Tri Arts in 1981, to no avail. What else is new?) So you know you got a real durable tale here that's going to do right by Mr. Pattinson, so long as he does right by it. And I'm bettin' he will.
xoxo
Carrie
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