News for Youse: Kutcher to play Jobs while Hollywood honours its brightest star

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      We’re having a tough time separating the real news from all the April Fools jokes still floating around the internet like so much flotsam from a Japanese tsunami.

      While it isn’t true that WestJet has introduced a child-free flight service, let’s be honest— that’s a great idea. As for the announcement that Ashton Kutcher will play Steve Jobs in an upcoming biopic—entitled Jobs, or Jobs!, or possibly JOBS!!!—well, that’s both true and not such a great idea at all.

      Nothing against Kutcher. News for Youse is just constitutionally opposed to the ongoing deification of ethically-bankrupt bazillionaires (there are actually two movies in the works about the Apple founder), and we like to point out Hollywood’s role in the caper.

      The timing is interesting, for one thing. Last week we learned that Apple prevailed upon manufacturer Foxconn to improve conditions for its suicide-prone factory drones, all while monologist Mike Daisey was publicly hanged for going on This American Life and presenting portions of his excellent show, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs as "journalism."

      Whatever grey-area Daisey might occupy between theatre and human rights advocacy—journalism doesn’t even come into it—we probably shouldn’t forget that the most successful company in the US has plenty of resources at its disposal to take a storm-in-a-teacup and turn it into an almighty smear against one of its most effective critics. Meanwhile, Foxconn is in hot water again today for its forced internship program.

      So anyway—take your pick moviegoers, it’s either Batman or JOBS!!! One is a brilliant super-wierdo and probable psychopath who seems to exist outside of the law, and the other dresses like a bat.

      In a cosmically related event rich with twilight signifiers, Sumner Redstone was wheeled out of his hyperbaric biodome on Friday to watch as he was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The 200-year-old media magnate might not have the golden era élan of a Humphrey Bogart, but he can have you and your entire family killed with a single phone call.

      And check out the star-studded guest list for the event: chief executive of CBS Les Moonves, Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey, Paramount Pictures Vice Chairman Rob Moore, Viacom Entertainment Group President Doug Herzog, Viacom Chief Operating Officer Thomas Dooley, Nickelodeon President Cyma Zarghami… phew! The autograph hunters must have been going NUTS.

      Comments

      4 Comments

      DavidH

      Apr 2, 2012 at 10:32am

      I hope the Ashton Kucher thing is works out. What could be better than seeing Jobs portrayed as/by a bumbling, womanizing, talentless moron?

      Next up on the biopic scene - Eddie Murphy plays Barack Obama in "The Nutty President" and Jackie Chan does the Dalai Lama in "Kung Fu Guru".

      cranky mom

      Apr 2, 2012 at 10:38am

      Gawd that photo is disturbing. I am going to have nightmares.

      Xtina

      Apr 2, 2012 at 12:19pm

      Whoa ! Dick Cheney sure is looking rough!

      Thomas Bones

      Apr 3, 2012 at 6:09am

      Daisey wasn't attacked for the performance of his show on "This American Life". He was vilified for blatantly lying to Ira Glass and the producers of that show during the fact-checking meeting for the January show. Giving false answers to straightforward questions was not part of Daisey's "performance". You can see the details of Mike Daisey's lies to the TAL staff in the transcript http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/transcript or by listening to the podcast of that episode.

      Apple has ignored Diasey, and that was the right approach. As soon as TAL realized they had been snookered, they went back to China to explore his deceptions in detail.

      The real shame is that many of the issues Daisey complains about in his show are accurate. Why couldn't he have just told the truth in his show -- why did he have to undermine his own story?