A “Whatever Happened To…?” update
So, a few years back, I wondered what happened to Mia Sara, the beautiful actress from Legend and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Well, it turns out, now she’s a flash fiction writer, like me!
We’re, like, practically twins or something!
Did somebody put out a burn notice on Jeffrey Donovan?
Ha, but seriously, folks: Now hiring Headline Writer.
Include your headshot with application.
Moving right along, Jeffrey Donovan, the former star of Burn Notice, seems to have disappeared right off the face of the earth. Why? Did he anger some dangerous people? Become disfigured in an explosion? Get typecast by people who have trouble telling the actor apart from the spy character he played (like who would do that, right)?
He always dresses like this, right?
The answer is: I don’t know! But let me tell you some things I do know about Jeffrey Donovan, other than Michael Westen is my perfect boy.
For, you know, obvious reasons.
Jeffrey T. Donovan was born in 1968 in Amesbury, Massachusetts, which is a town neither I nor Spellchecker have ever heard of before. He grew up to be an even 6 feet tall, which is pretty good, and married a beautiful model (yes, I know “beautiful model” is redundant), and has a daughter. Also, he was poor as a kid, and knows, like, 500 different kinds of martial arts. Or three. Probably just three. That’s still a lot.
Ahem. THOSE ARMS.
Donovan did some acting in high school, earning an acting award at Amesbury High, a place I am having trouble believing exists, and moved on to the big time with a role in Throwing Down, an independent film from 1995. That led to, awesomely, a role on an episode of Homicide, wherein he played twins with Southern accents, and one was a vicious killer and the police arrested the wrong one because nobody knew they were twins! It was not the best episode of Homicide (I think that honor probably goes to Three Men and Adena), but it was all right.
Also, Kyle Secor and Andre Braugher are wonderful.
Then he did a bunch more acting, like in Sleepers, which I think was a movie I actually saw one time; and Millennium, that TV show that was too scary for me to watch; and Catherine’s Grove, which I’m including for the first sentence of its description: “Undercover cop Doyle is working on a serial killer case that’s left a trail of dead transvestites.”
Jeffrey Donovan does NOT look good as a blonde.
After that, he was in a few episodes of The Pretender, which I really should remember by now existed; Spin City; The Blair Witch sequel, after which he hopefully got a new agent; Witchblade, which did anyone know that was made into a TV series in 2002?; and then it was on to a starring role in Touching Evil.
“What didn’t kill him made him stranger” is like my life, if you switch out a couple of pronouns.
Here’s a description of Touching Evil, which sounds almost as good as Catherine’s Grove: “In spite of his inability to abide by common sense and the laws he’s sworn to uphold, he, with the help of his partner, work together to hunt down the most wicked and vicious criminals on the streets.” Then he was in Hitch with Will Smith, which is too bad; then CSI: Miami and original flavor Law & Order; and then an episode of Monk, which, if I recall correctly, is the one where he played an evil astronaut.
Ooh, look at the good memory on me!
In 2007, he was in Crossing Jordan for a while, which I don’t remember at all, despite it being the show I would end up watching when I was too tired and depressed to leave the couch, and too poor for basic cable.
Those were dark days, you guys. Dark days.
After that, it was some other stuff, but I’m tired of listing those things, so Burn Notice! He totally got to hang out with Bruce Campbell, like, all the time, so I’m sure it was his best gig ever and now he wakes up every day and is unhappy because he and Bruce don’t hang anymore.
“Don’t be sad. We can be, like, Twitter buddies or something.”
(Oh, and in 2011, he played Robert Kennedy in a movie called J. Edgar.) After Burn Notice wrapped up in 2013 — and might I say: 2013??? What? I thought it ended in 2011 or so — there’s a great big gaping hole in his resume filled with, I would assume, husbanding and fathering. OR TRYING TO RESTORE HIS GOOD NAME AFTER BEING BURNED BY THE GOVERNMENT.
OK, so maybe I have a little trouble telling fiction from reality.
Anyway, it looks like he shows up in an episode of Fargo this spring, and then he’s in Extinction, for which I shall copy-paste yet another description: “Nine years after an infection turns most of the humanity into rabid creatures, Patrick, Jack and Lu, a nine-year-old girl, survive in seeming peace and calm in the forgotten snow-covered town of Harmony”; and lastly, Sicario, which stars Emily Blunt and Josh Broling, so I don’t know what that’s all about.
Although I should probably watch Fargo, since Watson’s in it and I enjoyed the movie and all.
Also, he apparently really likes the outdoors and doesn’t watch much television, so I guess we wouldn’t be friends or anything. Unless he’s willing to give it all up for a more sedentary lifestyle, but I would bet probably not.
But if he’s up for that, maybe he wouldn’t mind me tousling his hair some?
I miss Captain Awesome now
I’ve been re-watching old episodes of Chuck, which only has four seasons, no matter what anyone else might tell you. And as much as I love Chuck Bartowski and the Nerd Herders and John Casey and Sarah Walker, the character I’m missing the most is Devon “Captain Awesome” Woodcomb. And also the lovely Ryan McPartlin, who portrayed him. Awesomely.
Then they got married and had little Baby Awesomes.
So what is Ryan McPartlin up to nowadays? And is it awesome? I hope it’s awesome!
“Me too!”
Anyway, Mssr. McPartlin was born in Chicago, and became an actor. According to IMDb, his Trade Mark (seriously, IMDb, this drives me nuts; trademark is ONE WORD) is his Towering Height. He is 6’4″, which explains why I love him.
And he started out as a model, because of course you would start out as a model if you look like this.
Anyhoo, he broke onto the acting scene in 1999 with a role in The Nanny as Performer #3. The thing I remember about The Nanny is that Fran Drescher had an irritating voice, and then I changed the channel. After that, he had more one-and-dones in TV shows I didn’t even know existed, like Odd Man Out, Three Sisters and S Club 7 in L.A., which IMDb swears really exists, but I think had to be part of someone’s fever dream, because who names a TV show S Club 7 in L.A.? Also in something called North Shore and something called Model Family (which has to be about a family of models, right? Right?) and, most intriguingly, in an episode of Pepper Dennis entitled “Charlie Babcock’s Homosexual Encounter: Film at Eleven.”
Oh, and it looks like Rebecca Romijn is still getting paychecks too! That’s nice.
Then it was on to bigger and better things, or at least bigger, with a recurring (or possibly starring) role in Living with Fran, which I’m just going to go ahead and assume also starred Fran Drescher because 1) it’s funnier that way; and 2) I’m actually too lazy to check.
Here’s another picture of Ryan McPartlin, because he sure is purdy.
From 2007 to 2012 (I’m not sure what 2012 is doing in there, because Chuck ONLY HAD FOUR SEASONS), he starred as Captain Awesome on Chuck, and he was awesome, and we loved him.
Also, he had a role on an episode of Mad Men in 2008, wherein he played Gentleman, which means that Mad Men has been on TV far, far longer than I realized. In 2010, he voiced Clutch Powers for Lego: The Adventures of Clutch Powers, which isn’t as awesome a name as Max Power.
See? Homer agrees with me.
He had a busy 2012, with roles in Hot in Cleveland, CSI: Miami, Necessary Roughness, Rizolli and Isles, and Daybreak, which I only just now remembered existed.
He just kept reliving the same day over and over, which, no wonder it got canceled, then.
2013 was another busy year, with roles in stuff I don’t feel like mentioning, except Hart of Dixie, which I watched one time when I had a cold, and he wasn’t even in that episode, and also his character’s name was Carter Covington, which is, of course, the phoniest name ever that Dickens didn’t make up.
Yeah, I’m looking at you, Serjeant Buzfuz.
It looks like 2014 was another busy year for McPartlin, which means, I guess, that I’m not watching enough television, or he’s not guest-starring on The Americans or Brooklyn 99 enough, but he was on Bad Judge (with whatsisname from Veronica Mars!) and Mystery Girls, which I’m going to refuse to watch on principle, because IT STARS TORI SPELLING. Gah.
Someone once told me I look like Tori Spelling. Which I do not. At all.
So, it looks like Ryan McPartlin is absolutely staying busy (he’s got several projects in the works). When he’s not acting, he’s a personal trainer and enjoys outdoor activities, and hangs out with his wife and their two kids. So that’s awesome, I guess, but … well, whatever, it’s not like they’re going to bring Chuck back for a fifth season or something.
God bless it, Chuck, you were SO GOOD for three seasons.
There were, like, five Spice Girls, right?
So, because my family is obsessed with America’s Got Talent, I know that Scary Spice AKA Mel B is currently alive and doing well, working as a judge on that show. Also I know that one of the Spices married that handsome soccer player. But what about the others? And how many Spice Girls were there? And why does my 10-year-old daughter enjoy Wannabe when it’s such a terrible song?
“Ugh, Mom, why do you gotta be such a LAME-O,” I’m pretty sure is something 10-year-old girls don’t say nowadays.
Answers to these questions and possibly a couple of others lie just ahead! Huzzah!
According to their Wikipedia entry, which probably hasn’t been edited to the point of falsehood, there were five Spice Girls (for a while, I thought maybe there was only four, because it was Scary Spice, Baby Spice, Married-The-Soccer-Player Spice, Other Spice and was there anyone else?). They are, and I was pretty close on my guesses above, Scary Spice (Melanie Brown), Sporty Spice (Melanie Chisholm), Baby Spice (Emma Bunton), Ginger Spice (Geri Haliwell) and Posh Spice (Victoria Beckham). And that’s already more than I knew about the Spice Girls in the ’90s!
I … have no idea which one is which.
The group formed in 1994, and their first single was Wannabe, which 10-year-old girls enjoy because it’s catchy and 10-year-old girls like terrible things. They’re credited for being the pioneers paving the way for the teen pop movement of the ’90s, which is just sad, really.
Ha. Like any of them were even teenagers then.
They were really famous for a while, then people stopped wanting to listen to their particular brand of terrible pop music and decided to support other, terrible pop musicians, so the band went on hiatus in 2000.
Between 2007 and 2008, they had a reunion tour and released a Greatest Hits album, which must have just been a bunch of remixes of Wannabe, and in 2012, they reunited again to promote the launch of the Spice Girls Musical, Viva Forever: The Musical, which of course is a thing that exists.
Viva Forever!: Show here, existing.
Here’s a quick rundown of what became of each individual Spice Girl, of whom there are five:
Sporty Spice is a solo artist who also acts. Wikipedia says she has 12 tattoos, but doesn’t say what they are, so I’m going to assume they’re all unicorns.
Awww!
Baby Spice is a solo artist who also acts. Also, she’s going to be a judge on a British talent show.
Ginger Spice is a solo artist who also acts. I’m beginning to sense a trend here. She’s also written two autobiographies, presumably because some stuff happened after she wrote the first one.
Posh Spice is a solo artist who does documentaries and fashion stuff. She doesn’t appear to act, which is a nice change. Wikipedia says she’s really, really rich. Also, she has her own fashion label.
Scary Spice, as previously mentioned, is a judge on America’s Got Talent. She says “off the chain” a lot, which makes little to no sense. She is also a solo artist, and judges a lot of other talent shows. She, too, has written an autobiography, but probably it’s not about how her ex-husband claims her breast implants wrecked their marriage. (Well, and her adultery, too, but that’s not as funny.)
So there you have it. None of the Spice Girls have disappeared into oblivion, unlike so many pop stars before them.
“Why are you looking at me?”
Teddy Dunn is maybe in Witness Protection?
Now that the Veronica Mars movie has come out (and I can’t see it!), I’ve been pretty excited about all things Veronica Mars. I’ve been forcing my daughter to watch Season 1 (“But, Mom, I want to go outside and play, and be active, not sit here watching television and maybe we’ll play video games later,” she doesn’t say), and wondering why Kristen Bell isn’t more famous (I mean, she’s pretty famous, but I think she could stand to be more famous, because she is beautiful and talented and awesome), and also wondering: Hey, what happened to that guy that played her ex-boyfriend/potential half-brother, Duncan Kane? I mean, sure, he’s no Jason Dohring, but he did have pretty eyes.
Also his face and body were very pleasant, yes.
So what happened to Teddy Dunn? Why isn’t he even making a cameo appearance in the Veronica Mars movie? Did he piss off Kristen Bell? Did he witness a mob slaying?
Hey, guys? Not to tell you how to do your job, but it seems like putting a mask on the witness only makes it easier for hired assassins to know who to aim for.
Let’s see what we can find out.
First off, you must know (by which I mean you deserve to know, not that you know already) that his full name is actually Edward Wilkes Dunn, which is way more dignified than Teddy. He was born in Australia, but raised in North Carolina. He became interested in acting in high school, and first showed up on television/movie screens in 2004, when he was but a wee lad of 24, with a guest role on Gilmore Girls and a role in The Manchurian Candidate, which was a remake of The Manchurian Candidate. I haven’t seen either. (I add that because I know you care.)
What can I say? I’ve never been a big Sinatra fan.
Also in 2004, Edward Wilkes “Teddy” Dunn debuted in Veronica Mars as Veronica’s dead-eyed ex-boyfriend, in what was either a brilliant performance of a kid on way too many anti-depressants or some seriously uninspired acting. It’s really kind of hard to tell, but the only thing you really need to know is that you should be on Team Logan/Veronica, or Team Wallace/Veronica, Although Wallace Probably Deserves Better. Team Duncan/Veronica is, like, so meh.
BFF forever! That’s, like, two eternities!
Teddy Dunn split from Veronica Mars before the mediocre third season, fleeing halfway through the second season, after being relegated to a terrible coma baby plot that made me cry because Veronica Mars used to be awesome. After that, he laid low for a couple of years before appearing in 2008’s Jumper, which is about teens with telepathic abilities, and not someone on the window ledge of a skyscraper. That same year, he had a guest role on CSI:NY, a show that needs more initials, and then in 2009, he appeared in Kill Theory, a horror movie you’ve never heard of, and A Good Funeral, which I kind of feel like I shouldn’t have bothered mentioning, except IT WAS THE LAST THING HE EVER APPEARED IN.
It’s just so hard to believe this could be a career killer.
Of course, it’s probably hard to make time for acting when you’re a lawyer. Because he is. Like, totally, a lawyer now. Which seems like it would make his fictional father very happy. Also, I kind of exaggerated. He’s a law clerk. That’s still cool, though.
“I, ah, don’t really need your approval, random Internet chick.”
Anyway, Law Clerk Dunn apparently didn’t have the time or inclination to be in the Veronica Mars movie, which is fine and good, because we couldn’t have seen it anyway.
Stupid limited release.
The Flukeman liveth!
After seeing Breaking Bad kick some Emmy butt again, I was very happy for my second-favorite X-Files writer, Vince Gilligan, who has gone on to create a critically-acclaimed, fan-beloved TV show that I have never seen.
It is in the A-#1 position on my list of things to watch that my parents would never approve of.
And then I thought: But what of my favorite X-Files writer, Darin Morgan?
Well, here’s what of him.
According to Wikipedia, Knower of All Things Editable by the Public, Darin Morgan was born in Syracuse, New York, and then immediately went to college. Actually, probably some stuff happened in between birth and college, but Wikipedia doesn’t want to bore you with that crap, so I guess I won’t either. Anyhow, at college (specifically, the film program at Loyola Marymount University), Morgan co-wrote a six-minute short film that led to a three-picture deal with TriStar. I basically copied and pasted that out of Wikipedia, if you were wondering. Also, oddly enough, there’s no mention of any TriStar films on his IMdb page or on Wikipedia, so I don’t know what happened there.
Don’t look so smug, you flying horse. It’s your loss.
After writing a few screenplays that didn’t see the light of the big screen, a stroke of luck finally came to Darin Morgan, in the form of an invitation from his brother Glen (one-half of my third-favorite X-Files writing team of Morgan & Wong) to play a hideous mutated fluke monster on an episode of the X-Files that I only watched once because ewwww, hideous mutated fluke monster. Darin Morgan’s account of the experience leads me to believe that playing a hideous mutated fluke monster is worse than watching one onscreen, because he was stuck in that costume 20 hours a day during filming. Gross.
After his acting experience, Darin Morgan went on to write one of the best episodes of the X-Files ever: Humbug. He then wrote another of the best episodes of the X-Files ever, and also of TV ever, The Final Repose of Clyde Bruckman. All you young kids who have never watched the X-Files need to watch that episode right now, right away, because it is amazing.
“Why do you keep looking at me when you talk about people dying of auto-erotic asphyxiation, psychic guy?”
“Oh, no reason.”
He also wrote the very excellent War of the Coprophages, because “Cockroaches” is just too easy to spell, I guess, and then the hilarious and awesome and superb Jose Chung’s From Outer Space, which you also need to watch right now, right away, because Mulder shrieks like a girl.
I should totally read that book.
He also wrote part of Quagmire, but wasn’t credited, except everybody knew the one part with the great dialogue was totally him, and then he disappeared from the X-Files forever. (Oh, except for playing a character in Small Potatoes, which I always forget, because Darin Morgan in person is less godlike than I imagine him to be.) Vince Gilligan showed up around that time to carry on the torch of awesomeness, but it wasn’t quite the same.
What do you mean Darin Morgan is a mere mortal?
In the meantime, Darin Morgan was busy writing away for Millennium, which was scary and depressing and got cancelled before I could get past my fear of Lance Henriksen.
GAHHHHHH!
I mean, no, I’m fine now.
After the cancellation of Millennium, Morgan helped out on the Kolchak: The Night Stalker remake, which got cancelled almost as soon as it aired, and on Bionic Woman, which fell to the same fate.
But then — and I feel incredibly stupid for forgetting this, because I remember seeing his name in the credits and going “whooo! No wonder this show is awesome!” — Morgan worked as a consulting producer on Fringe.
Yea, Fringe!
But Fringe got cancelled too, because the TV gods hate nerds, so what’s Morgan been up to since then?
Well, he and brother Glen worked together on Tower Prep, a live-action drama for Cartoon Network, “The Network that’s Forgotten What Its Name Means.”
Although not as badly as ol’ “Music Television” here.
Since then … ummm, I don’t know. Modelling clothes for today’s modern hideous mutated fluke monster? Seriously, though, someone hire this guy to write things, right away, all the time, because he is the best.
“I could be more awesome, but then the rest of you would be reduced to cinders in my presence.”
Missing: One Sith Lord. Reward if found
Several years back, a small movie was released. That movie was the first of a trilogy that told us the terrible truth about Anakin Skywalker’s descent to the dark side. That movie starred some kid as the young Darth Vader. Some kid who — has anybody seen that kid since?
I found this on a milk carton.
Anyway, that young actor’s name was Jake Lloyd. Horribly miscast though he was (seriously, people, does anybody ever picture Darth Vader as a scrawny white guy when he’s so clearly a large black man?)…
I mean: OBVIOUSLY.
… he did his best with the material. Or probably it was his best. I don’t know. Maybe he was phoning it in, 9-year-old style.
But where did he come from?
And more importantly, where did he go?
But “but where did he come from” is what we’re tackling first, so here’s a basic history of young Jake Lloyd. Born in 1989, Lloyd, towheaded little moppet that he was, tackled his first acting role on ratings giant ER as Jimmy Sweet because of course they’d call him Jimmy Sweet. Just look at him!
Awwwww!
He later moved onto Unhook the Stars, which is a silly name for a movie, and Jingle All the Way, which is a silly name and a terrible movie (I’m told), and a role on The Pretender, which is a television series from the ’90s that everybody’s heard of but nobody watched.
Maybe people pretended to watch it?
Then. Boom! Fame! Super-fame! “You’re going to be Darth Vader,” they said to the kid. “Cool,” he replied, little knowing the fate in store for him.
That fate? A series of voice roles in Star Wars video games and a starring role in something called Madison, which is too boring to even recount here, suffice it to say it was released in 2005 and it’s 2013 now (unless you’re reading this in the future, I guess), so … yikes.
So, seriously: What happened?
Well, according to Wikipedia, knower of all things great and wide, Lloyd retired from acting, citing bullying by his classmates as a main reason. Because kids are assholes.
“My dad said you raped his childhood, so it’s okay to kick your ass.”
Also, the stress of doing up to 60 interviews a day was getting to him, but that seems like an exaggeration to me, because were there really 60 news/blog sources that wanted to talk to this kid?
Anyway, he moved on to a job at the mall in high school, which isn’t as depressing as fast food or porn, and then went off to college, where he studied film. Probably because the bullying had stopped by then because he totally doesn’t look like the kid from Star Wars anymore, so he was probably able to just convince everybody he had the same name.
“Yeah, it’s a pretty common name, guys.”
Wikipedia, which never makes things up, also says that Lloyd destroyed his Star Wars memorabilia and won’t watch the films because they’re too “creepy,” but I think someone just misspelled “crappy.”
It’s “A-P-P-Y,” not “E-E-P-Y.”
So there you go, folks: The kind of depressing life history of the poor bastard who played Darth Vader as a kid and then his mean classmates were jerks to him till he stopped acting altogether.
Why are kids so CRUEL?
It was only inevitable, I guess: a child actor’s decline
Huzzah! It’s only two weeks till Christmas! Except for my readers who don’t celebrate Christmas, in which case: Huzzah! It’s only two weeks until Dec. 25!
And to celebrate the 25th of December, I have for you a holiday-themed Whatever happened to…?, featuring the grown-up exploits of Young Flick from A Christmas Story.
The best Christmas movie ever that hasn’t got any Muppets in it.
Like Whatever happened to…? alum Zack Ward before him … I actually can’t think of a good way to end this sentence because I mostly just wanted an excuse to link back to that post. So read it, and enjoy the nostalgia!
Anyway, Scott “Scottie” Schwartz is the actor who played Flick. So what’s he been up to since his days as the adorable Flick with the goggles and the getting his tongue stuck to metal poles? What’s he been doing since he was such a sweet, innocent, even adorable young boy?
Yes, what CAN it be?
…
Fine, it’s porn.
But before we get into that, let’s learn more about how Scott Schwartz got into acting in the first place.
Born in 1968, Scotty Schwartz leapt to stardom with a role on some television show called Nurse in 1981. OK, he didn’t really leap to stardom at that point, but it did nudge him in that direction, as his next role was in 1982’s The Toy, a biting modern-day criticism of slavery. Or maybe I’m remembering it wrong. Anyway, it’s the one where the kid actually buys Richard Pryor.
True story: As a child, I didn’t realize racism was a thing.
Which led to A Christmas Story!
The rest of the ’80s were padded out by roles as “That Funny Fat Kid” on Young People’s Specials, which sounds just educational and awful, but could be a children’s sketch comedy show; a role on something called Kidco; actual Afterschool Specials; a TV movie called A Time to Live, which, as you might suspect from the title, is about a child suffering from a terrible illness; Raiders of the Living Dead, which tried to trick people by sounding like it might be Raiders of the Lost Ark, but probably didn’t work; and some other stuff, because I’m tired of listing things.
Now, on to the porn!
Bomp-chicka-Wow-WOW!
With roles in such magnificently-titled pieces of work as Scotty’s X-Rated Adventure, Cafe Flesh 2 and The Wrong Snatch (wait, REALLY?) and also Booby Trap, because The Wrong Snatch isn’t silly enough, our 5’2″ friend even worked as an agent for other porn stars. But by the year 2000, the porn industry had lost its luster, and Scotty Schwartz retired to help manage his father’s sports/movie memorabilia store.
What else do you need to know about Scotty Schwartz? Well, since 2006, he’s been trying to get back into mainstream acting, but the only role listed on his IMDb page since then is as “bartender” in a 2009 film, so I’d hazard a guess that it’s not going as well as he hoped. He also works for some sports card magazine, which is all the information you’re getting about that, because *yawn* sports cards. Also, after Corey Haim’s death, he was the one to list the former star’s belongings on ebay at the Haim family’s request, which reminds me that Corey Haim died. Which is really weird, because Corey Feldman is still alive, and I’d’ve bet good money on him being the first Corey to go.
Oh, come on. You were thinking it too.
So there you have it. Merry 11th of December, everybody.
… I can’t think of a good porn/Christmas joke.
Robert Rodriguez: a Retrospective (because alliteration, that’s why)
So this “Whatever happened to …?” is less a “Seriously, where did that guy go” and more a “what happened to lead that guy to making the life decisions he did?”
Like wearing this outfit.
In public, even.
Take, for example, Robert Rodriguez. Robert Rodriguez debuted with the brilliant indie flick El Mariachi, which is a movie about a mariachi player and some stuff happens and so many people get shot (it’s been a while since I’ve seen it). This was the movie that was so good I insisted my friend and I rent the only copy in town from the video rental store, because I am so old that I remember when video rental stores were a thing. Also, I’m so old that I can’t remember which friend this was, but I’m sure Matt or Natalie or Jon loved the movie as much as I did.
How could they not? It was about a mariachi, and so many people got shot!
But enough about El Mariachi. Let’s talk about Robert Rodriguez. The man. The director.
The Institution.
He was born in Texas and became interested in movie-making after his father purchased the family a VCR. Coincidentally, after my father purchased our family a VCR, I became interested in movie-watching. Reading further along in Robert Rodriguez’s wikiography, I see that his VCR came with a camera. I didn’t know they did that.
Anyway, he filmed his high school’s football games, getting canned for being all artsy-fartsy about it. After that, he went on to The University of Texas, where, apparently, his grades weren’t good enough for the school’s film program, so he wrote a cartoon for the student newspaper instead. (My college’s school newspaper sucked, as an aside.)
Then, good things finally happened for Rodriguez. Or one good thing, and then some other stuff happened. His short film, “Bedhead,” won a local film contest, gaining him entry into the university’s film program and paving the way for El Mariachi.
Mariachi. So many people shot.
Awesome.
After El Mariachi, Rodriguez decided to make El Mariachi again. Because this was in the ’90s and people didn’t like reading subtitles, he made it in English, starring Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek, and called it Desperado. Possibly it was a sequel, though.
Later, and most awesomely of all, Rodriguez went on to direct the second, superior half of From Dusk Till Dawn, because it was the part with vampires and the disco ball and the guy with the crotch gun. I could watch the second half of From Dusk Till Dawn for days, you guys. The first half is any old Tarantino film that you’ve already seen, except George Clooney is pretty hot, so … no, I still recommend skipping right to the second half. They’re criminals on the run in Mexico. That’s all you need to know.
See? Hot.
Moving right along, Rodriguez had his first Hollywood hit in 2001: Spy Kids. This was the beginning of the end, because he has made four Spy Kids movies, and I swear they get progressively stupider. Kids like ’em, though, which is probably what he’s going for. Speaking of terrible children’s movies, he also made Shark Boy and Lava Girl, which sounds cool, but stars a young Tyler (or Taylor?) Lautner, thus making it Rodriguez who shoulders the blame for introducing the future Twilight werewolf to film-going audiences.
Thanks, Rodriguez.
So why the terrible children’s movies, Rodriguez?
Well, apparently, he really likes kids. And kids like terrible things.
Damn kids.
And he did make Machete, so I guess I can forgive him. Especially if Sin City 2 is any good.
Also because this photo is great.
Speaking of Aliens …
… which I can assure you, we were doing, because what else would we be talking about?, what became of Jenette Goldstein, the kickass chick who played Pvt. Vasquez?
But, because her name wasn’t “Ellen Ripley,” she still died.
I remember, as a child, waiting for my mother to get her hair done (she gets regular perms, because her hair just has no body!), and reading an article about Jenette Goldstein and her role in Aliens (apparently, the magazine couldn’t get a hold of Sigourney Weaver), and then I never heard of her again, and, in fact, didn’t remember her name until I googled Aliens and found her in the cast list. I’m not sure that counts as “remembering,” but whatever.
Anyway, what’s Ms. Goldstein been up to? Could she still bench press a Chevy?
Well, to begin with, Wikipedia tells us that Jenette Goldstein is Jewish, which maybe Pvt. Vasquez was supposed to be, I guess, and also that she owns a store that specializes in large-size bras. I assume this is because she has large-size breasts herself, because I can tell you the last kind of store I would bother to open would be one that specializes in products I could never use.
What I’m saying here is they would laugh me right out of that store, and send me to Sigourney Weaver’s lingerie store across the street.
So those are two things that now we know about Jenette Goldstein.
Also, a thing we know now is that Pvt. Vasquez was her first role, the character’s name was also Jenette, probably so James Cameron wouldn’t have to remember two whole names, and that she earned a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress for the role. That seemed odd to me, but it looks like the Saturns like movies that probably shouldn’t be getting any awards at all, so let’s just go with it.
And then, Jenette Goldstein didn’t disappear off the face of the earth like I kind of thought she did (like maybe Aliens was actually a documentary, and she totally died in that explosion), she just grew her hair out.
Since her stint in Aliens, she’s kept busy, appearing in episodes of Max Headroom (really!) and MacGyver in 1991 (really?), as well as Terminator 2 (now that I’ve seen her with long hair, I totally realize that she’s the foster mom! Guh!) and Titanic as Irish Mommy. It seriously credits her as Irish Mommy. Seriously.
But she just looks so different with long hair, you know?
She’s also had roles on Six Feet Under (which, no, I’ve never watched, despite working in obituaries and at a funeral home. For some reason, I just really don’t want to watch a show about funeral services), ER and Alias, and also Strong Medicine as “Unnamed Friend.” Her characters really have the best names. Or non-names. Or whatever.
Oh, and she was on one of the Star Treks, too, but it’s hard to keep track of them all.
In 2010, she was last seen on Medium, and probably sold her costar Jennifer Love-Hewitt a bra.
Possibly this one!
Her most recent project is something called Living the Dream, which is slated for a 2013 release, and which I don’t care enough about to find out what it is.
Also, she’s been doing a lot of theater work, including a one-woman show that she is writing herself and … I’ve got nothing else here. Really.
Ummmm …
She seems nice?
Hollywood Hates Me 