jeremiah chechik Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Where do you think you're going? Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas! No, no. We're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here! We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap-hap-happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny f**king Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of a**holes this side of the nuthouse!

-- Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase)

After European Vacation, no one had any reason to believe the Vacation series would get back on track. Not to mention, almost without exception, movie series tend to get worse as they go along, right? Well, not this time.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation ranks just slightly behind the original in terms of laughs, and it packs in even more heart without resorting to schmaltz. Again, I'm going to give a lot of the credit to John Hughes, the sole writer this time out. He makes just about every line funny, memorable, and quotable. He gives us a whole lot of characters, each well-defined and amusing. Hughes may have hit his peak here unfortunately, because after the following year's Home Alone, the man never wrote a great script again. (I think Dutch is hilarious, but even with all my Hughes love I can't call it "good.")

It was a "last hurrah" of sorts for Chevy Chase, too. Chase is really terrific here in what is, I'm sad to say, his final funny starring role (although I didn't see The Karate Dog). Oh, Chevy. What happened? Beverly D'Angelo returns, and is typically great ("Clark! Slow down! I don't want to spend the holidays dead!"). And my Lord, does Randy Quaid step it up here as Cousin Eddie. Chase's exchanges with Quaid are some of the film's funniest moments ("Can I refill your eggnog for you? Get you something to eat? Drive you out to the middle of nowhere and leave you for dead?"). If Quaid's delivery of gems like "Merry Christmas! Sh*tter was full!" and "That's the gift that keeps on giving the whole year!" don't make you laugh, well ... lighten up.

The guy behind the loved and quirky Benny and Joon, but also the one behind the much, much less-loved The Avengers, Jeremiah S. Chechik, is getting a stab at another feature to add to his docket, which already includes The Pornographer's Poem and possibly The Light-house. Shoreline has grabbed the rights to the novel Pomona Queen, by Kem Nunn. The premise -- "a vacuum-cleaner salesman becomes entangled in a homicidal biker's quest to avenge his brother's murder." Sounds totally plausible, right? So the aging hipster and salesman, Earl, is considered the best in town, but he wants to claim an inheritance and re-gain some family land. The guy ends up at the house of a crazy, trashy guy who is guarding the corpse of his brother until he founds out who killed him. Earl becomes entangled in the mess, which is connected to a band called Pomona Queen, and has strange ties to his own family history.

Variety doesn't mention who will be adapting the novel, but considering the fact that the author has also written for television (including Deadwood), I wouldn't be surprised if he adapts it himself. A cinematographer is also in place -- Christopher Doyle -- who has a much better track record than the director. Doyle's previous work includes The Quiet American, Hero, 2046 and Lady in the Water. The guy also directed a segment of Paris, je t'aime. It's enough to make me curious. Chechik has done well with wild stories before, and it should be pretty stylish with Doyle attached. And really, it wouldn't be hard for Pomona to be an improvement; The Avengers has an embarrassing 3.3/10 rating on IMDb, from 15,357 votes.

I'm not sure how one stumbles into the world of porn, though I imagine it happens a lot more than you would think. (Strange, how come no one has ever asked me to star in a porn? Wait -- strike that -- I think I know the answer.)

Looking to expand his horizons, Jeremiah Chechik (Benny and Joon) has signed on to direct The Pornographer's Poem, based off Michael Turner's cult novel. Though it appears the project has been set up for awhile now (with Justin Chatwin attached to star), Chechik's involvement has pushed it back into the picture. Set in the 1970s, story revolves around a boy who stumbles into pornography after being inspired by his naughty (and at times, disgusting) white, rich neighbors. I found something about two adults and a dog in the Amazon description, but I think I'll stop there. Karen Walton will pen the dark coming-of-age comedy and, so far, a production schedule has not been set.