wonderland - The Screengrab

The Return of Mark Leyner

Perhaps the biggest surprise in the forthcoming John Cusack movie War, Inc. comes in the opening credits, which reveal that the movie's screenplay is by Cusack, Jeremy (Bulworth) Pikser, and Mark Leyner. Leyner, now 52, was that rarest of things, a genuine literary star in the 1990s, when such books as Et Tu, Babe and My Cousin, My Gastroentesterologist were both critically acclaimed and commercially trendy. Leyner, whose writing danced on the line between experimental meta-fiction and stand-up comedy, was a popular get for magazine profiles and a welcome guest on the David Letterman and Conan O'Brien talk shows. But after his 1998 novel The Tetherballs of Bougainville, he slipped from view. Where's he been all this time? Trying to break into writing for TV and movies, it appears. He developed "a pilot about a kilt-wearing, punk rock surgeon for MTV called Iggy Vile, M.D." and wrote scripts for the acclaimed mental-health-ward network drama Wonderland, which ABC cancelled almost instantly--before, in fact, any of the episodes Leyner worked on had a chance to air.

Little Minx's Exquisite Corpse: Internet Playground for Tomorrow's Classic Commercials Directors, Today

Little Minx, a commercial production company founded in 1998, has set up a website designed to give their directors a chance to strut their stuff via a series of very short films made under the umbrella title of "Exquisite Corpse". As in the Surrealists' parlor game of the same name, the concept is a sort of creative pass-the-baton game: the chief rule is that each filmmaker has to pick up with the last line of the script from the preceding film. (Typical titles: "She Turns Back and Faces Forward, At Peace" and "Without Missing A Beat, She Asks, 'Waffles For Breakfast?'") Handsomely produced (by Little Minx company founder Rhea Scott), the five films currently available for viewing are as easy on the eyes as they are soft in content. They range in style from urban-gangbanger-violence with arty flashback structure to New Age-feminist music video, and if the worst that can be said for most of the best of them is that they don't have anything new to say however snazzily they say it, the best that can be said of the worst of them is that they're over before you've had a chance to mind them much.

Take Five: Smut

The Amateurs opens in limited release this Friday. We have absolutely no intention whatsoever of seeing it, because there is the possibility, however remote, that it will contain a nude scene featuring Joe Pantoliano. But it does give us a chance to talk about pornography. Not actual pornography, mind you — as open-minded as this site is, we're pretty sure the bosses aren't going to let us post stills of our favorite scenes from the oeuvre of the Dark Brothers. No, what we're talking about here is movies about pornography. There's been smut on film since there was film, but while Hollywood has always been officially disdainful of its little brother in the Valley, it's also been a bit fascinated as well. Recently, European filmmakers have actually included real sex in their movies and made it work as part of a respectable narrative, but in the U.S., the NC-17 rating is still the kiss of death and violence will likely always be more palatable to the censors than sex. But even in those arty Euro-flicks, the sex is in service of the story and not the other way around; will a genuine porn movie ever be made with a great script, top-notch direction and production, and big Hollywood stars? Probably not. But there will still be movies about pornography; here are five of the best.