There are divergent trajectories. Like former co-stars Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton, for example - in a year where one seemingly scrounges for roles, the other makes (and stars in) his feature directorial debut. The Prize is elusive and slipperier than a 50-cent peep-show floor. Inexplicable and perhaps more than a bit unfair, the Hollywood Machine allows some fortunate faces to climb onto the pedestal, whereas others are not so fortunate.
Video of the Hellboy panel at Comic Con
07/26/02 Odyssey 5
Written by: Tim Foreman
Directed by: Peter Weller
Log: A mysterious BEING jumps off the time stream to investigate the Odyssey crew, probing their minds and manipulating their emotions by forcing them to relive their most personal and emotional past lives encounters in an effort to understand them.
Sarah (LESLIE SILVA) and Corey (AMARI MYLES) are mysteriously drawn to a 'Dr. Travelor '(RICK WORTHY) who boasts a 95% survival rate of cancer victims under the age of 12. When they return home, Paul (PHILLIP JARRETT) tells her he won't sit by and allow her to play mind games with their son and threatens to leave with him if she doesn't stop. She returns to Travelor's to find out if Corey has a chance if treated. He tells her that she must do what she thinks is best. Anything is possible.
Wordplay mushrooms into on-screen laughs
Alexa Vega wants to get one thing straight: She does not utter a four-letter curse word in Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams.
''If I had, it would affect the way kids look at me, and parents, too,'' says Vega, who plays teen spy Carmen Cortez in the PG-rated movie series. ''I also think it would have changed the rating.''
What her character says to former crush and current foe Gary Giggles is: ''You're full of shiitake mushrooms!'' She does take a long pause after the first syllable, however, so it's easy to misinterpret. (The word often is spelled ''shitake,'' too.)
''Honestly, there's a difference there!'' says Vega, who turns 14 later this month. ''I wouldn't want kids to say the actual word or anything like that.''
Carmen used a similar catchphrase in the original Spy Kids and it got a big laugh, so writer/director Robert Rodriguez brought it back for the sequel.
While the real curse word might have sent the Kids to the PG-13 corner, there are no hard-and-fast MPAA rules about salty language.
Vega says she first heard the phrase spoken by actor Sean Patrick Flanery while they were shooting the cable movie Run the Wild Fields. Vega was trying to cut down on on-set profanity at the time.
''Anytime anyone would cuss, they would owe me a dollar,'' Vega says. ''But we were shooting in Canada, so it wasn't as much money as I could have gotten.''
Flanery got out of a fine by adding the extra syllables, which cracked Vega up. She told Rodriguez about it, and he wrote it into the first film. Vega didn't know that shiitake mushrooms are a real food until Rodriguez ordered them in a restaurant.
A similar gag shows up in Austin Powers in Goldmember, in which the word shiitake, which is onscreen in a white subtitle, at first appears to be the ruder word -- until a white teakettle is moved and the entire word is legible.
The Goldmember joke is slightly different, says director Jay Roach, because the line is integrated into the scene better. (''Not that it matters,'' he says.) The scene takes place in Japan, where shiitake mushrooms are especially popular.
''The whole joke is based on the idea that when you're looking at subtitles, if they are in front of something white, you can't read them,'' Roach says.
In any case, the Spy Kids version of the joke works only if you mispronounce the fungus name, says Stephanie Grunenfelder, director of research and information for the Mushroom Council, based in Dublin, Calif.
''It's a Japanese word, it's ancient and it's pronounced shee-TOCK-ay,'' she says. ''Unless you're pronouncing it wrong, it's not as bad as it looks.''
The bathroom humor doesn't bother Grunenfelder, who, by coincidence, just saw Goldmember.
''My first reaction was, 'Wow! They mentioned mushrooms in a mainstream movie. That's great!' ''
Michael Biehn:
Clockstoppers
Release date: August 13, 2002
Rating: PG
Format: VHS Tape
Our Price: $106.99
The Rock
Sean Connery
Release date: August 13, 2002
Rating: R
Format: VHS Tape
Our Price: $9.99
Clockstoppers
Jesse Bradford
Release date: August 13, 2002
Rating: PG
Format: DVD
Our Price: $22.49
The Rock (Widescreen Edition)
Sean Connery
Release date: August 13, 2002
Rating: R
Format: VHS Tape
Our Price: $9.99
Rick Worthy:
The Trigger Effect
Kyle MacLachlan
Release date: August 13, 2002
Rating: R
Format: DVD
Our Price: $11.24
Perlman Goes To Hellboy
Ron Perlman told an audience that he sees Hellboy, the comic-book
character he will portray in director Guillermo del Toro's film
adaptation, as kind of the ultimate slacker. "He's the world's
biggest and most epic underachiever," Perlman told fans at Comic-Con
International in San Diego. "He has this incredible physical presence
and ability. He has a huge heart, which can be molded either for the
use of good or evil. And he also has this mischievous, devilish kind
of circuitry that underlines all of this. Those are always in conflict
with one another. The fun is going to be in finding the balance.
Everything that he does is epic."
In Mike Mignola's comic series, Hellboy was a demon summoned to earth by Nazis in World War II, but ended up being taken in by Allied forces. Perlman looks forward to portraying Hellboy's conflicting desires to be evil and to do good. "He has a pronounced sense of both poles," Perlman said. "He's a little bit bipolar, and the way it manifests itself is in terms of his personality. The way he's come to find a comfort zone on Earth is that he's just an underachiever, basically."
Perlman described one of the film's sets, which does not appear in any of the comic books. "My favorite thing that has been invented for the purpose of the film is Hellboy's bachelor pad," he said. "It's just kind of like what my room would look like if I wasn't married and had kids. It's a lot of empty pizza boxes, magazines, old dirty socks and stuff. That's Hellboy. He's kind of fun to be around, because he's very devilish and very cognizant of his power, but reticent to use it or misuse it." Hellboy is in preproduction for Revolution Studios.