A day after neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman fatally shot unarmed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, there was a video recorded of him describing what happened…
Also in Wednesday afternoon’s round up of news briefs, Rob Reiner may join Martin Scorsese’s latest project and Zooey Deschanel has a round about kind thing to say about the internet. And what does Piranhaconda director have to say to a critic who panned his latest? It isn’t pretty… Lee Daniels The Paperboy Hits in October Oscar-nominated director Lee Daniels’ latest The Paperboy will open theatrically October 5th distributor Millennium Entertainment said. The film stars Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron, David Oyelowo, Macy Gray, John Cusack and Nicole Kidman. The Cannes debut erotic thriller is set in 1969 revolving around a young man who returns to his small Florida hometown to help his reporter brother uncover the truth about a man on death row, who might have been wrongly convicted. In the process, he falls for the convict’s lover. Around the ‘net… Rob Reiner in Consideration for Wolf of Wall Street Reiner is in negotiations to join Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street . He’s play Max, the father of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Jordan Belfort. he film is based on the memoir by Belfort with the script being written by Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter, Deadline reports . Zooey Deschanel on the Internet: It Will Get More Positive The actress told THR that “There’s way too much negativity online. But it will eventually change.” But Veep ‘s Julia Louis-Dreyfus countered, “It will get worse.” Ryan Phillippe to Make Directorial Debut with Shreveport The actor will make his debut behind the camera with the indie thriller which he’ll also star in, playing a fading star who is suddenly kidnapped and tortured while making a low budget film, Variety reports . Piranhaconda ‘s Director Has Words for a Critic Jim Wynorski’s latest Piranhaconda – yep, a cross between an anaconda and a piranha – had debuted on the SyFy Channel already, but one negative review on Dread Central set off a vicious retort from the filmmaker. It involved an ‘F’ and a You’ and then some more choice words, Indiewire reports .
For upcoming basketball movie, Wahlberg tells MTV News he’ll push Bieber to get a ‘strong performance out of him.’ By Kara Warner Mark Walhberg Photo: Clearly, Justin Bieber has a lot going on with the release of his new album Believe, Tuesday’s live MTV News special and planning a world tour, but that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten about fostering his movie career. Both Mark Wahlberg and Bieber have spoken positively about their planned buddy basketball movie. Wahlberg has said it will be in the vein of the Martin Scorsese-directed “The Color of Money,” starring Tom Cruise and Paul Newman, except with Wahlberg playing the older reluctant mentor and Bieber playing a “wisecracking kid who’s very talented.” “It’s set in [the world of] street hustling basketball,” Wahlberg told MTV News recently while he promoted his upcoming comedy “Ted.” “Obviously, [Bieber] is a very good athlete. People have seen him on MTV ; he can play. But I also really think he can act.” Wahlberg said he’s willing to put in the work in order to get a great performance from the young pop star/ aspiring actor. “There’s not going to be any shortage of pushing him in getting that kind of strong performance out of him, if we get to make the movie,” Wahlberg said. “We’re just going to have to make him realize that he’s playing a character so he can’t have the same hairdo,” he joked. And is there a chance there will be any singing in the film,
Against Me! speak for the first time since Laura’s Rolling Stone interview, remembering the ‘simple’ way she told them she’s transgender. By James Montgomery Laura Jane Grace Photo: When Against Me! ‘s Laura Jane Grace announced in Rolling Stone that she was transgender, the majority of the story focused on her life … with only a few paragraphs dedicated to how she broke the news to her bandmates. This was understandable, of course, and though the details included in that RS story are scarce, they’re also incredibly endearing: On the drive from Gabel’s St. Augustine, Florida, studio back to their homes in Gainesville, the AM! guys debated whether or not they needed to hit the gym “so that if anyone messed with Gabel, they’d be able to throw down.” But, when Against Me! sat down with MTV News for their first interview since the Rolling Stone piece shone a spotlight on their band, they revealed that there was another reason the story skimped on particulars about Laura’s big revelation: Namely, to them, it wasn’t really all that big of a revelation to begin with. “We went to the studio just to hang out, we weren’t even practicing, we were just having a meeting, and talking, and she just told us,” longtime bassist Andrew Seward said. “It was kind of simple in a way … [and then] on the drive back, because it’s 80 miles from the studio back to Gainesville, I was just going through past lyrics and stuff going ‘God, how did I not think of that?’ ” “I didn’t want to be melodramatic about it when approaching friends … for me, it is a non-issue. It’s something that’s always been there for me, I’ve just never verbalized it before,” Laura added. “I didn’t really plan on it, I forget what exactly we were talking about, but I got to this point where I felt really frustrated that I wasn’t making the point I wanted to make, and I realized I wasn’t making it because I wasn’t fully explaining myself, and the part I was leaving out was this big integral piece of myself. So it just came out of my mouth, you know, and we were just sitting there and it was like, ‘So this is the way it is.’ ” Still, Laura admitted she had no idea how her bandmates would take the news, or even if they’d still be her bandmates after she told them. All she knew was that, both personally and professionally, she was tired of keeping secrets … she wanted everyone to know she was transgender, repercussions be damned. “I reached a point for myself where writing, I couldn’t focus on anything else but writing from a trans perspective or writing about trans issues, and as the album we’re working on came together, it became more and more apparent to me that, at some point, I was going to have to say something to the rest of the band,” she said. “Otherwise, if you’re taking the lyrics to these songs out of context [they’re] going to be misinterpreted … so we kind of reached that point where once we started getting in to doing vocals and you’re hearing the lyrics I was like, ‘OK, this is the deal. … There are going to be things that are going to be happening for me that, if I don’t tell you this right now will probably look more like I’m insane as opposed to this is what I’m doing.’ ” And yet, no one did. And, after being assured by her bandmates that Against Me! wasn’t going anywhere — “It was just kind of like, ‘Let’s still do the band; let’s still do everything we normally do.’ That’s pretty much the extent of it,” drummer Jay Weinberg said — they’re hard at work on their new album; a conceptual record they’re calling Transgender Dysphoria Blues. It represents Laura’s most personal work to date, an exploration of her battles with shame and depression, and the freedom of her new life. And, with her band backing her, she can’t wait to bring the music to the masses. “For me, the fear was, if I don’t do this and I don’t come out with this now, that the band can’t go on. It was just feeling like this is what I need in order to continue to be doing this,” she said. “Feeling like you’re stereotyped into this role of an angry young male, especially in the punk rock scene, was just suffocating to me … And feeling like so many of the things I was trying to express in my lyrics were being lost on people because it wasn’t being framed in the right context, I didn’t even want to do it anymore. … But now, I do.” Related Videos Laura Jane Grace: A Life Unburdened Related Artists Against Me!
A week after celebrating her 20th birthday, Kate Upton makes us proud to be Americans in a red, white, and blue bikini on the cover of GQ‘s July issue . The Sports Illustrated cover model, who’s taken the world by storm and sparked surprising amounts of controversy this year, is glowing as always. It’s no Cat Daddy video , but it’s close. Here’s Kate showing her patriotic side: Just in case you thought that hot, blonde models have it so easy in life, Kate recalled a wardrobe malfunction she suffered on the set of this shoot: “We were on a ride where the seat spins while the actual ride is spinning, and I’m wearing a one-piece,” she said. “All of a sudden the whole entire top falls off!” “I’m holding myself, laughing, turning bright red, but a lot of people are watching, so they kicked us out of the Santa Monica Pier – it was so embarrassing.” That’s one word for it. On having mostly male Twitter followers, she says: “I grew up in Florida riding horses, so for the majority of my life I was either in boots and jeans or a bathing suit. I understand why male followers like me.” Gotta love her self-awareness, among other attributes. Click to enlarge more of GQ’s Kate Upton photos below, then go take the coldest of showers …
In first interview since announcing she’s transgender, Against Me! singer talks with MTV News about painful past, new life and future of her band. By James Montgomery Laura Jane Grace Photo: This is the story of a woman named Laura Jane Grace, who was born in the body of a boy named Tommy Gabel, and spent the next 31 years of her life trying to get out. It starts a long time ago, back when Gabel was 4 or 5 years old and had just watched a televised performance by Madonna. It was the moment Laura first let herself be known, when the boy who spent skinned-kneed summers dressed as a cowboy or Superman realized she was not actually a boy at all. And not surprisingly, given her strict upbringing on military bases across the South (Gabel’s father is a retired Army major), she didn’t understand how to process this rather pertinent bit of new information. All she knew was that, for the first time in her life, she felt somehow different. “When you’re younger, you don’t necessarily get it, [but] I just completely identified with Madonna,” Laura admits. “Watching ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ and seeing Mia Farrow with a boy’s haircut, was another moment I remember thinking, ‘That’s me, that’s what I’m going to grow up to be, that’s the kind of woman that I’ll be.’ ” Of course, over the next 20-something years, a life like that seemed impossible. Gabel’s parents got divorced, and she moved to Florida with her mom. As a teen, she lived with a secret shame, experimenting first with cross-dressing — then eventually graduating to drugs and alcohol — as a way of coping with what is clinically known as gender dysphoria, one’s discontent with the sex they were assigned at birth and the gender roles associated with that sex. But back then, without the Internet and only films like “The Silence of the Lambs” to serve as reference points, Gabel felt like she was some kind of pervert or a freak. And the kids she went to school with didn’t do much to dissuade those feelings, picking on her and calling her a “f—-t.” She hated the way she looked, hated the way she felt and, above all else, hated herself. It was, needless to say, the low point of her story. About this time, Gabel also discovered punk rock, mostly as a way of fighting back. She’d begin writing songs in her bedroom, using the name Against Me!, which she now admits was a nod to her gender issues, and at 18, she moved to Gainesville, Florida, to form a band. Over the next decade, she’d get married (and divorced), live a life of anarcho-punk austerity, tour the world with Against Me! and even get signed to a major label. She’d begin to pepper AM! songs with references to her secret, and at points, she’d even swear off cross-dressing and do her best to bury her transgender feelings. But no matter how much she tried, she just couldn’t do it. “You don’t understand what’s happening to you … though, as you grow older, you realize this isn’t something that goes away,” she says. “When you’re younger, you have these moments where you’re like, ‘OK, I’m going to choose to be male. I will be male. This is it. I’m going to take all my women’s clothes that I have secretly hidden away under my bed, and I’m going to put ’em in a garbage bag and I’m going to throw them in a dumpster, and that’s it. I swear off this behavior for the rest of my life.’ “And then you get to that point where you’re like, ‘This isn’t something that’s going away,’ ” she continues. “And you start hearing so many other people’s stories, and you realize, ‘That’s me. This is what I’m going through.’ And it becomes so apparent that you’d be a fool to continue to deny it.” For Laura, the end of the denial began in 2009, when, newly married and with a daughter on the way, she began to realize that she could no longer continue living two lives. “I couldn’t exist as a woman in hotel rooms by myself and then come home and pretend to be someone else,” she now admits. “I’d end up killing myself.” She decided to finally reveal her secret. Over the next year, she first came out as transgender to her wife, Heather, then her Against Me! bandmates, and finally, the world, via a much-publicized feature in Rolling Stone magazine. And in doing so, she not only became the most prominent artist to live openly as transgender , but for the first time in her life, she felt unburdened. And free. “I was really, honestly excited. When I first told my wife, immediately it was just like this huge weight being lifted off my shoulders, and subsequently every other person that I’ve told, that feeling was more and more there,” Laura says. “I’ve been completely blown away by the majority of people’s reactions. … They’ve been more than respectful and more than supportive, and it’s been, for me, completely humbling.” In the month since the Rolling Stone story broke, Laura Jane Grace has begun hormone treatments and returned to the stage with Against Me! And before their show at New York’s Terminal 5 — where they’d be joined by Joan Jett for a cover of the Replacements’ “Androgynous” — Laura and the band sat down with MTV News for their first on-camera interview. For an hour, they spoke openly and honestly about the state of the group and the fallout from Laura’s revelation. There were jokes about personal pronouns and applying makeup in the back of the tour bus, touching moments of brotherly (and sisterly) love — “She can take care of herself,” beefy guitarist James Bowman laughed, when asked whether the band felt the need to protect Laura — and a general camaraderie that, for an act with as tumultuous a history as AM!’s, was positively revelatory. In every conceivable way, they seem like a new band, one as free as Laura herself. “We didn’t want to make it melodramatic. … It was kind of simple in a way,” bassist Andrew Seward says. “It sounds cheesy, but it’s not: You just want your friend to be happy. When this came out, I think the bottom line for all of us was just ‘be happy.’ ” “I’ve been a jerk over the past few years. I’ve been an absolute ass in so many ways, just from, you have this thing you’re dealing with that you don’t know how to process it, and it bears on you,” Laura adds. “And it comes out in so many different ways. … You express your anger at what is going on, and you take it out on your closest friends. And now, I’ve obviously apologized.” And it’s about the only time she’s apologized for anything. Laura admits that her new life hasn’t been accepted by everyone — “It’s completely ended my relationship with my father,” she says — but after 31 years spent wrestling with the supposed shame and stigma of gender dysphoria, she’s finally found happiness in honesty and the supreme freedom of living life on her terms. And she’s never going back now. In a lot of ways, Laura Jane Grace’s story is only just beginning — and we’re honored to be able to tell the next chapter. Of course, Laura isn’t too concerned with any of that. She doesn’t want to be mythologized and isn’t interested in being seen as a transgender icon. Instead, she just wants to enjoy living a life unburdened. And really, she’s earned that. “I never thought any of this would be possible. It was just something that, conceptually, I could never realize. But … my life improves every single day. I try to make a step every single day, no matter how big or how small,” Laura says. “It feels like I’m in control of my life, and I’m in control of my person, and that’s empowering. Saying to someone ‘I’m a transsexual’ is the most empowering thing I’ve ever felt in my whole life.” Related Videos Laura Jane Grace: Her Life, Her Words Related Artists Against Me!
Larry Birkhead appeared on Good Morning America today to answer a couple of burning questions: How has he explained the death of Anna Nicole Smith to the former couple’s five-year old daughter, Dannielynn? Is he truly the most despicable parent on the planet? Based on yet another instance of Birkhead milking Smith’s death for attention and money, it would be hard to answer inquiry number-two in anything but the affirmative (despite the best efforts of Taylor Armstrong ), as Birkhead told viewers how he responded when Dannielynn asks about her mother. “I said, ‘You know, they, doctors couldn’t fix her. But if you’re good … you’ll get to see her someday.’” Smith, a very troubled actress/model, was found dead in a Florida hotel room on February 8, 2007. Birkhead has spent every few months since parading his cute daughter in front of reporters and giving the world updates on a child we all just wish could live a regular life, out of the spotlight. But Larry insists on making Dannielynn a public figure… and then acting shocked when she’s in the news. Such as when he dragged her last month to the Kentucky Derby. “You know, it’s weird when your child is five years old and trending,” the moron told Robin Roberts this morning. “There’s all these big stars that came and the next thing you know Dannielynn’s picture is all over the place.” Overall, Birkhead says “it’s hard to move on.” Why? “Because you have this little 47-pound reminder of her mother walking around. And you have all these images that are still so much very alive that you have to deal with every day. “I want to keep Anna’s image alive in a positive way. She could light up a room. And now her daughter’s taken her place and she’s lighting up every room that she goes into, trust me. I feel it every day.”
Writer-director David Fenster’s PINCUS is earning raves at the LA Film Fest , where it debuted this weekend in narrative competition. Drawing acclaim for its naturalistic documentary-style storytelling, Pincus follows one man’s spiritual search — part autobiographical film, part fiction, part slacker comedy — using footage of filmmaker Fenster’s conversations with his real life father, who lives with Parkinson’s disease. Pincus premiered to kudos last weekend at the LA Film Fest, and screens again on Thursday. Find more info on the film here . Previously, Fenster made his directorial debut with 2004’s Trona , which also starred actor David Nordstrom. Bonus endorsement: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs / 21 Jump Street co-director Phil Lord serves as executive producer and has been enthusiastically supporting the film on Twitter . Synopsis: Pincus Finster is in way over his head: trying to find a way to stall his father’s Parkinson’s, halfheartedly taking up yoga to meet girls, and letting his only friend Dietmar, an aging German illegal alien, get drunk and sleep in the homes they’re supposed to be remodeling. Pincus spends his time stoned and fumbling for some sort of spiritual truth. Drawing from his own life, director and writer David Fenster has cast his family and friends (including his father, Paul Fenster, who has been living with Parkinson’s for 13 years) and woven documentary footage shot in and around his hometown of Miami, Florida into the story. Seamlessly combining naturalistic storytelling with documentary elements and hints of metaphysic mystery, PINCUS is a soulfully handcrafted film that explores the gulf between cynicism and wonder with quiet revelation. Read more of Movieline’s coverage of the LA Film Fest here . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
We’ve lost another young talented sister too young. Via The Root.com : Erica Kennedy, an author and blogger best known for popular novels Feminista and Bling, has died. She resided in Miami Beach, Florida and was 42 years old at the time of her death, according to a family member. Additional details on the circumstances are not available yet. A former fashion publicist, Kennedy started her writing career as a special correspondent for the New York Daily News. She went on to write about fashion and entertainment for magazines such as Vibe, In Style, Paper and Elle UK, according to her website. In 2004 she published a satire on the high stakes world of hip-hop with her debut novel Bling, which went on to become a New York Times best-seller. Five years later she released her second novel, Feminista, a story about smart, modern women. Fellow author Rebecca Walker interviewed Kennedy for The Root in 2009. We remember reading Ms. Kennedy’s book “Bling” and thoroughly enjoying it. So sad. May she rest in peace. Our thoughts and prayers go out to her friends and family. Photo Via TheFrisky.com
While most Dads will be celebrated by their appreciative sons, daughters, and wives this Sunday, this Father’s Day, Tracy Martin, the father of murdered Florida…
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