Yesterday, Monika asked if we were tired of George Clooney, who has undeniably been everywhere since making his escape from ER in the mid-1990s. I wanted to weigh in, because my answer is a curious one, and it sadly wasn't an option in Monika's poll: I used to be tired of him, but I'm not anymore.

I think the peak of my tiredness came with the dreadful Perfect Storm in 2000. I remember being so sick of seeing Clooney pop up as these boring, poker-faced, tediously noble action heroes. I hadn't seen his earlier B-movie efforts at the time, and the triple-threat of Batman & Robin, The Peacemaker and The Perfect Storm made me wish he'd never been born. (I had seen Three Kings, and honestly don't remember why that didn't change matters for me -- I think I wrote it off as a fluke, and was more impressed with Ice Cube anyhow.) What an anodyne heartthrob, I thought, with no personality or real talent. Get him out of my sight.

I don't know why I think of Ving Rhames as a tough guy dramatic actor first and a comedic actor second. Even his most iconic role, as Marcellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction, was simply a straight-played comic part. Throughout his career he's been in a lot of comedies, from the truly awful (Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot) to the near-perfect (Out of Sight). But I guess lately, aside from the recent I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, he's been pigeon-holed as best-suited for crime thrillers, prison dramas and well-produced horror films, with an occasional fun action pic like the Mission:Impossible movies. Personally, I'd love him to do another movie that mixes all those genres with a touch of comedy, a la the guilty pleasure Con-Air, but I'll settle for just a comedy. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Rhames has signed on to Paramount Vantage's The Goods: The Don Ready Story, which Monika told us recently will star Jeremy Piven as a used car salesman. Also joining the cast is Anchorman's David Koechner.

It wasn't mentioned what kind of characters Rhames and Koechner will be playing, but hopefully they're fellow used car salesmen working alongside Piven, who, more specifically, is a guy who must save the struggling dealership over a Fourth of July weekend. The most logical idea, though, is that whatever Rhames' role, he will be some combination of humor and muscle; the combination is one of the reasons that Rhames can do comedy and still retain his reputation as a bad ass, unlike some other people (please don't ever put Rhames in a babysitting comedy!). The comedy will be produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay via their new company Gary Sanchez Productions, along with Chris Henchy (Entourage) and Kevin Messick (A Lot Like Love). The script was written by Rick Stempson and Andy Stock, who also wrote the upcoming Seann William Scott movie Gary the Tennis Coach. It will be directed by Chappelle's Show actor/writer/director Neal Brennan.

Writer Tom Lazarus has written two of the best screenplay how-to books you can find on bookshelves (Secrets of Film Writing and Rewriting Secrets of Film Writing), and Scott Frank (Out of Sight, Get Shorty, Minority Report, Little Man Tate, Dead Again) is one of the best screenwriters working today. So when the two get together you know it's going to be something quite interesting. Lazarus has an interview with Frank at his web site (Frank did the forew0ard for "Rewriting").

But it's not just a simple Q and A; not only is the interview itself wide-ranging and a must-read for film buffs, but it's also a good lesson in screenwriting --  Lazarus has structured it as a screenplay itself, complete with fade-in's and camera directions. Frank talks about the writing process, the dos and don'ts of screenwriting, and offers tips to young screenwriters.

Every studio in Hollywood has apparently refused to finance Ray director Taylor Hackford's latest pet project, a feature based on Georges Bizet's classic opera Carmen, starring Jennifer Lopez. Bizet's opera is a dark, tragic tale of a gypsy whose daliances with a soldier and a bullfighter bring down both men, and bring their respective political struggles to a head. Hackford says the suits are afraid of putting Lopez, whose fan base is largely comprised of teenage girls, into a serious, potentially R-rated project in which the heroine is eventually killed. "There is a great deal of fear in Hollywood," Hackford tells the NY Daily News, based on the fact that "many of the films are not working," with moviegoers. "We want to do a tough, hard version, but Hollywood thinks [Lopez'] audience is 13-year-old girls."

The suits couldn't really be trying to get Hackford to make his project adolescent-friendly – and if they are, it's only because they've never seen that MTV version of Carmen, starring Beyonce and subtitled, "A Hip-Hopera". The 12-21 year old audience has, I think, been served an adequete helping of Bizet. It makes perfect sense that no one would back a serious, expensive, drama (and it's not even clear whether or not Hackford plans to make it a musical) starring Jennifer Lopez, who has proven bankable only in romantic comedies and as an actress, has by most accounts never lived up to promise she showed in Out of Sight. The real question is: why doesn't Hackford just go get himself another ingenue? Last I heard, there were one or two other Latina actresses in the world...

Scott Frank is one of the best screenwriters in the business. Besides the recent Nicole Kidman/Sean Penn thriller The Interpreter, he also wrote Out of Sight, Dead Again, Little Man Tate, Minority Report, and Get Shorty, and polished the Saving Private Ryan script. In this interview with Screenwriter's Utopia, he talks about his writing process, his rewrite work on Dawn of the Dead, and his script for the movie version of Lawrence Block's novel A Walk Among The Tombstones.