The Screengrab : mike white

"Keep It Together, Dad": Mel and Mike White Come to the End of Their "Amazing Race"

Phil Nugent — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:30:00 GMT

Stunt casting on TV falls between two poles: on the one hand we have Lee Iacocca or Frank Zappa on Miami Vice, staring nervously at the camera before managing to grunt, "Okay, Sonny" and being mustered back into civilian life; on the other, we have David Lee Roth pulling up a chair at a Sopranos-sponsored all-night poker game, making small talk by wistfully recalling the good old days when his accountant let him deduct condoms. The decision to include screenwriter-director-actor Mike White (Year of the Dog, Chuck & Buck) and his 68-year-old pop, Mel, author of Stranger at the Gate: To be Gay and Christian in America, in the current season of CBS's The Amazing Race, the jewel in the crown of network reality-competition shows, definitely fell a lot closer to the Diamond Dave end of the chart. A pair of smart, genial wisecrackers who threw themselves into physical challenges and gave every sign of enjoying each other's company far too much to spoil the fun and the scenery with the kind of stress attacks and hissy fits that are an Amazing Race constant, Mel and Mike bestowed humor and class on the show, right up until their graceful exit last night, in the seventh episode of the season. They were the sixth of the eleven teams to depart, and while everyone was disappointed to see them go, at least they can boast of having made it squarely past the mid-point.

Their swan song came in Phuket, Thailand, a locale that the contestants were pretty good about not exploiting for any puns, at least not any that made it past the Standards and Practices Department. It was an unusually tight race throughout, with virtually all the contestants remaining neck and neck in their shared quest to be photographed with a handsome-looking and presumably well-sedated tiger--who was being looked after by, in a touch that might have been suggested by Charles Addams, a one-armed animal trainer--and receive a massage from an elephant. The big exceptions to this log jam were, sadly, our boys the Whites, who in a move whose logic never seemed entirely clear from my vantage point on the couch, chose instead to pile into a cab and have the driver give them a slow-speed tour of half of Thailand in search of a gorilla whose photograph Mike seemed to want to have autographed. By the time they conceded that they had chosen a flawed strategy and followed the well-beaten path to the zoo, they had fallen far behind their rivals.

Meanwhile, Mark and Michael, the short stuntmen brothers whose continuing presence on the course has been the cause of consternation and despair across our great land, rocketed ahead to the final challenge, requiring one brother to chauffeur the other to the final pit stop in a rickshaw. However, what would have been the brothers' first-ever first-place finish was tainted, when they arrived at the finish line only to be informed by the host with the most, Phil Keoghan, that they had incurred two time penalties for such offenses as having tampered with one of the challenges in a fit of douchebaggery. Phil restrained himself from inflicting an additional time penalty on them as punishment for the hilarious funny-Asian-person voice Michael chose to employ while pulling the rickshaw, but no one would have faulted him for it if he'd ordered a couple of the biggest grips on the crew to pound the brothers into a jelly-like substance and throw them off the closest pier. When all was said and done, the brothers were checked in as third-place finishers, and Mel and Mike were last to arrive. Phil was clearly overcome with emotion at seeing them go, but bravely managed to get enough of a grip on himself to give them and the world the terrible news. It was probably the closest Phil has come to bursting into tears on-camera since the show landed in New Zealand and his own father showed up to stand by his side and volunteered his services as a dispenser of hugs to any especially comely women contestants who felt in need of one. Mike White sang them out with the tender valedictory, “We’ve been father and son my whole life, but I don’t think we’ve ever really been teammates and being a teammate brings a whole different kind of camaraderie than you get in normal life. That was a great gift that the race gave us.”

Related: Mike White's Amazing Race

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Feb. 14-20, 2009

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. You look marvelous. I must confess I was touched, as am I every year, when the good people at AMPAS called once again to ask me to host the Oscars. Although they begged and pleaded and cajoled and nearly stooped to bribery, as they always do, I simply could not work the telecast into my very busy schedule. I’m currently touring with my very touching one-man show about going to Yankee Stadium with my dad, watching Mickey Mantle gracefully prancing through the lush green outfield of the House That Ruth Built, sharing the laughs and the tears that only a father and son can truly know. So I don’t have time to do all the research, such as reading Up the Academy: The Screengrab Salutes the All-Time Best & Worst Best Picture Winners (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven). Truly I wish I could squeeze Phil Nugent’s Oscar Predictions, In Other Blogs: Oscar Overload, Harvey Weinstein Predicts Another Great Oscar Year for Harvey Weinstein, Oscar Prospectus and Academy Awards Show Cuts Best Song Nominee "Down to Earth" Down to 65 Seconds; Peter Gabriel Vows Silent Protest into my busy schedule. But I cannot.

Nor can I read any of the following:

If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Time for Another Post About "The Godfather"

Screengrab Review: "Must Read After My Death" and "Eleven Minutes"

Mike White’s Amazing Race

Counting Down to “Watchmen”

Reviews By Request: How Green Was My Valley (1941, John Ford)

Unwatchable #51: “Simon Sez”

Steve Spielberg's Recession-Era "Lincoln" Biopic: Brother, Can You Spare $50 Million?

Mike White's Amazing Race

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:00:00 GMT

I’ve been a fan of Mike White since his peculiar and memorable performance as a possibly sweet but potentially scary BFF stalker in the peculiar and memorable indie Chuck & Buck. In fact, I remember encountering him in an elevator at the Sunset 5/Virgin Megastore complex in West Hollywood around the time of the film’s release. I didn’t say anything about his awkwardly funny, fidgety performance at the time because I didn’t want to bother him...but Mike, if you’re reading this now, nice job! And good luck on The Amazing Race!

Yes, that’s right...for those of you outside the reality show loop, Mike White, whose acting and/or writing credits include Freaks & Geeks, Year of the Dog and School of Rock (in which he played Sarah Silverman’s pussy-whipped boyfriend, Ned Schneebly), kicked off the first leg of the fourteenth season of the globe-trotting, Emmy-hogging CBS game show last night, partnered with his father Mel.

Mel White is a pretty interesting cat in his own right, as it turns out. Like many Christians (especially of the evangelical variety), he spent years denying his homosexuality, attempting to “cure” it with everything from prayer and psychotherapy to exorcism and electroshock therapy. Unlike the Larry Craigs of the world, however, Mel eventually just admitted, “Yep, I’m gay,” and switched from ghostwriting books for Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson to authoring his own autobiography, Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay And Christian In America. Anyway, Mel and Mike have now joined eleven other teams in a race around the world, competing against familiar Race archetypes like the ditzy blondes determined to prove they’re not ditzy, the dating couple with rage issues and the muscular dwarf stuntman brothers (although, to be honest, the dwarves they’ve had on the show in the past weren’t technically stuntmen...they just fell down a lot).

Like the other racers, Mel & Mike set off from a military base in Los Alamedos, California and proceeded by plane, train and automobile to Switzerland, where they faced challenges like bungee-jumping off a dam and hauling gigantic wheels of Swiss cheese down slippery slopes whilst being relentlessly mocked by mustachioed men in leiderhosen before eventually arriving at the pit stop in the top half of the pack with a respectable fourth place finish.

The Screengrab will continue to provide periodic updates on Mel & Mike’s progress for the rest of the season...but our money’s on the dwarves.

Morning Deal Report: “School of Rock” Rolls Again

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Hellboy II: The Golden Army raised hell at the box office over the weekend, taking in an estimated $35.9 million. The public’s appetite for digitally rendered Brendan Fraser proved larger than I would have guessed as Journey to the Center of the Earth garnered $20.6 million, good for third place behind Hancock in its second weekend. Eddie Murphy made Mike Myers feel better about things as Meet Dave crashed and burned with only $5.3 million, one of the worst opening weekends in the history of the Murphyverse.

Richard Linklater should really have better things to do than a sequel to School of Rock, shouldn’t he? (I won’t even suggest that screenwriter Mike White does.) Nevertheless, the director is attached to School of Rock 2: America Rocks, as is original star Jack Black as rockin’ substitute teacher Dewey Finn. Variety reports that White’s screenplay “picks up with Finn leading a group of summer school students on a cross-country field trip that delves into the history of rock 'n' roll and explores the roots of blues, rap, country and other genres.” Could be worse, I guess. Linklater could be remaking The Bad News Bears Go to Japan.

In even less surprising news, Jon Heder will play “a Napoleon Dynamite-like oddball who becomes contaminated with a substance that gives him what might arguably be considered superpowers” in Loudermilk, per the Hollywood Reporter. The comedy was pitched to Universal by Heder and his brother Doug, and will be rewritten and directed by Craig Zobel (Great World of Sound). In the funniest sentence I’ve read this morning, Doug Heder proclaims, “Loudermilk is definitely intended to set the tone for Greasy Entertainment.”

Related:
Hellboy: The Letting Go
Eddie Murphy Exhumes "Beverly Hills Cop"