One of my favorite movies about movies is Get Shorty. It's the story of Chili Palmer (John Travolta) who gets tired of the loanshark game in Miami and while in Los Angeles looking for a "client" gone astray, decides to become a movie producer. Gene Hackman plays Harry Zimm a B-movie producer, Rene Russo his ex-girlfriend and star, and Danny DeVito the larger-than-life Martin Weir, actor extraordinare. It's a great mix of mob, movies and mayhem, based on the book by Elmore Leonard. It's soon to be followed by Be Cool, which Leonard wrote a few years back as a sequel of sorts, with Chili moving over into the music biz.
They finally released a Special Edition DVD of Get Shorty, and one of the cool things about it is you get a free ticket to Be Cool, which opens on March 4 (next Friday). I was lucky enough to find the DVD for only $14.99 at Fry's, a west coast electronics store chain, but today was the last day for it at that price, sad to say. I'm looking forward to the sequel, which also reunites Travolta with Uma Thurman and features Vince Vaughn, just about the funniest man on earth (next to Dietrich Bader).
The 2nd disc in this 2-disc set is all extras. I'm watching the first one right now, an extended making of titled "Look At Me." The biggest bombshell is that Danny DeVito was the original choice of director Barry Sonnenfeld to play Chili Palmer. What a colossal mistake that would have been...but then again, Sonnenfeld directed the big-screen version of The Wild, Wild West, so that shouldn't be TOO surprising.
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