Want to hear the stars of "The Yes Men" discuss post-nasal coke drip and sex with GILFs? Or see Rosario Dawson describe "Seven Pounds" as "superfuckingfabulicious?" Then you want No Good TV, a refreshingly fearless video site that doesn't know from the seven words you can't say on television. Although the site also includes interviews with more traditionally uncensored performers such as porn stars Belladonna and Kimberly Kane (age verification required), mainstream actors appear to appreciate the no-holds-barred schtick as a welcome break from the fatuous press-junket solemnity that dogs so much movie PR, especially when their sparring partner is comely blonde host Carrie Keagan. From an interchange with Will Smith re: "Seven Pounds": 

CARRIE: Fucking awesome movie!
WILL: Hey, you can't say that on TV!
CARRIE: Yes, I can!
WILL: You'll just bleep it?
CARRIE: Nmm... no.

(snip)

CARRIE: Did you bring your "Seven Pounds" of happiness?
WILL: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

I'll take that over Mary Hart any day. Apparently, so would Mark Burnett; he took a stake in the popular online video producer last month with plans to turn it into a TV series. I hope the web version will continue to thrive, since I don't know what channel would allow Dawson's description of preparing for a sex scene with Smith -- and that would be a pity. [NGTV]

Operation Humble Kanye: We have our marching orders.

Prop 8 -- The Musical

A Funny or Die presentation of a musical in one act with music and lyrics by Marc Shaiman. Produced by Adam Shankman, Shaiman, Mike Farah. Directed and choreographed by Shankman. Camera (color), Michael Barrett; editors, Bradly Schulz, Drew Antzis; production designer, Nelson Coates; costume designer, Shanna Knecht; co-choreographer, Anne “Mama” Fletcher; sound, Frank Wolfe, Greg Hayes. Dec. 3, 2008. Running time: 3 MIN, 16 SEC. With: Jordan Ballard, Margaret Cho, Barrett Foa, J.B. Ghuman, John Hill, Andy Richter, Maya Rudolph, Rashad Naylor, Nicole Parker, John C. Reilly, Allison Janney, Kathy Najimy, Jenifer Lewis, Craig Robinson, Rashida Jones, Lake Bell, Sarah Chalke, Katharine “Kooks” Leonard, Seth Morris, Denise “Esi!” Piane, Lucian Piane, Richard Read, Seth Redford, Quinton Strack, Tate Taylor, Jack Black, Neil Patrick Harris, Marc Shaiman.

By DAVID ROONEY

The last time a starry cast like this was assembled for a video goof-off, it was to celebrate the sexual union of Ben Affleck and Jimmy Kimmel. But in “Prop. 8 -- The Musical,” a motley crew of TV, film, comedy and Broadway performers get together and pose as the Sacramento Community College Players to skewer homophobia and the marital union that’s too shocking to contemplate for the voters of California.

So what if by composer Marc Shaiman’s own admission it’s six weeks too late -- the song is funny, the performers have a blast mugging up a storm and the argument of shoring up the ailing economy by accessing the pink dollar is not without merit. Plus, there are other dividends. Outside of a bizarrely cast “Hair” revival, where else could you see an operatically earnest John C. Reilly crooning about sodomy? Or Allison Janney doing a backdoor bump? Or Jack Black trading his crazed rocker persona to play Jesus as a vaudevillian song-and-dance man, imparting the lesson that same-sex coupling is not so far from shellfish on the Biblical damnation scale?

Directed and staged with suitably faux-amateurish verve by piano-man Shaiman’s “Hairspray” buddy Adam Shankman, this three minutes-and-change is more about spotting all the familiar faces than marveling at anyone’s musical chops. But the performers are such a game bunch that even the cheesiest jokes raise a smile (abomination/Obama-nation). And when Neil Patrick Harris pipes up on the side of the gay-team to point out the money to be made from gay marriages, divorces and the subsequent removal of ex-lover tattoos, even the Mormon hysteria-mongers should start seeing dollar signs.

The plummeting ad market has been good for at least one company: San Francisco-based production studio Science & Fiction has signed a deal with MSN as a "preferred production partner" in the creation of branded entertainment for MSN.com. The first project, "In The Motherhood," was designed for Suave and Sprint; now in its second online season, it's spawned a TV pilot with a full-season order from ABC. Another program, "Fearless," was created for Hummer 2. Writes Andrew Hampp:

"Michael Siegenthaler, director of MSN's Branded Entertainment and Experiences, said the key to getting branded video noticed on MSN is to present it seamlessly among editorial content on the MSN home page.... For us, it's really all about where the brands guide us. Everything we do starts with a briefing -- not tossing ideas over the wall as much as going in and taking everything you can do with a communications strategy. It's not just demographics but psychographics -- taking those in-house and really collaborating on ideas that are perfect for the brand and perfect for our audience."

Nothing funny to say here, other than I expect that the phrase "it's really all about where the brands guide us" will now haunt my dreams. Even so -- at this point, who's going to say no to any guidance if it allows you to avoid, you know, unemployment? [AdAge]

I am really, really glad that Elijah Wood starred in a billion-dollar trilogy because it provides me a convenient if threadbare excuse to post this music video in which he has a charming and utterly low-key presence. This is Greg Laswell's "How the Day Sounds" and while it's a very fine song, and the video was shot in the world's best soda shop (Galco's, in my neighborhood! We even shopped there the day they were shooting this!), it's also the best lo-fi music video since OK Go's treadmills. Kind of like emo treadmills. Anyway, hope you enjoy.

They give us way more credit than we deserve. The video was made in conjunction with our Comedy Impact Report, published today.

Good morning. If you'd like a pleasant start to your day, or if your day has already gone horribly wrong, I recommend that you invest about three minutes watching videos at UK newspaper site The Sun. First up is a clip of Aardman Animations' "Creature Comforts" (different from the ones that won the Oscar, just as delightful), followed by "Pop Songs for the Deaf," which has nothing to do with Queens of the Stone Age and is... well, watch it. (Linking because the Sun won't let me embed and their presentation beats me extracting the videos from YouTube. Nice work, guys.) And again: Good morning. [The Sun]

This falls under geeky but amusing: Remember Cinemanow? Probably not; it was created in 1999 by Trimark Entertainment, before they became part of Lions Gate (and later, Lionsgate) and back when Variety still used words like "'Netcasting." It's safe to say that the glory days then predicted by Trimark chairman Mark Amin never came to pass ("The potential of the Internet and broadband is now well established, and we feel our early start in this medium will contribute greatly to our future success." Ah, youth.) Anyway, Sonic Solutions, a company that makes digital media software, bought Cinemanow for terms that were "not disclosed." That's often slang for "not enough to be worth talking about," an impression borne out by a release that doesn't even mention the company was partially (dis)owned by Lionsgate.

Briefly there was RedLasso, a web video company that let you edit and embed a ton of TV clips almost in real time. It would have been the answer to everything if it weren't wildly illegal. Now there's 1Cast, funded by cell-phone pioneer Craig McCaw, which opened today in private beta. Dan Frommer describes it as:

"a growing, legal, video clip library from TV and news networks, such as CNBC, Reuters, the AP, AFP, etc. (The company says it's in the process of signing up pretty much everyone in the business.) Via 1Cast's browser, you can build embeddable video "casts" about a certain topic -- a person like Barack Obama, a company like Citigroup, etc. -- which gather more clips over time, and put them on your Web site."

Frommer has some criticisms, but as a former RedLasso fan I'm too excited to indulge. Besides, this is beta day one -- get an invite while you can. [SAI]

The auto industry is begging like James Brown to please, please, PLEASE give them $25 billion for a bailout.

So far, Congress has been less than sympathetic; the public, it would seem, even more so. As Nicholas Carlson points out, YouTube viewers this video two stars out of five, with more than 181,000 views -- and the top referrer is a GM-owned site. [SAI]

Although YouTube viewership dwarfs that of Hulu (83 million unique viewers vs. 6 million), digital media research group Screen Digest says Hulu's ad revenues are growing more quickly and may draw level with YouTube's in 2009. Writes Tim Bradshaw and Matthew Garrahan, "The feat suggests traditional media companies can make money online without having to cede control to Google, as the music industry did to Apple, whose iTunes music store dominates the digital music market." Says Screen Digest analyst Arash Amel, “YouTube is in a very tough place right now. Most of that user-generated content [on YouTube] is worthless or illegal. The next 18 months will determine whether or not it was just an expensive mistake for Google.” Echoes Tracey Scheppach, video innovations director at media agency Starcom, “YouTube hasn’t done a great job justifying why advertisers should migrate online.” And even Matthew Liu, a YouTube advertising product manager, admits as much: “We’re in the early stages, I wouldn’t say we’re where we want to be.” [FT]

RELATED

• What the hell is "Screen Digest"? [Valleywag]
• Actually, Hulu is already making more scratch than YouTube [MediaMemo]

For someone like me who doesn't actually like going to movies that often, this is really quite handy. [Cinematical]

This was a good week for the culture jammers. First the Yes Men distributed 1.2 million copies of a fake New York Times announcing the end of the Iraqi war; then, indie filmmakers Dan Mirvish and Eitan Gorlin wrote a new play for the How To Get Ahead in Hollywood handbook: Create a political pundit, make him famous and then confess that he doesn’t exist.

The NYT broke the “Martin Eisendstadt” story Thursday, explaining that the would-be John McCain pundit who publishes a blog, operates a Washington, DC consultancy and is the subject of multiple YouTube videos as well as the apparent subject of a BBC documentary, is actually the creation of filmmakers Mirvish (co-founder, Slamdance Film Festival) and Gorlin, whose “The Holy Land” won the Slamdance grand jury prize in 2002.

Eisenstadt was initially created for a sitcom Mirvish and Gorlin are pitching, “The Pundit.” With Gorlin portraying the character in popular YouTube videos, the myth remained relatively intact throughout the election cycle; sources ranging from CNN to the Huffington Post took his existence on faith.
Mirvish and Eitan also manipulated the spin cycle to spread rumors that Paris Hilton was feuding with McCain, that Sarah Palin received a $900 spray-on tan and that Joe the Plumber had a tryst with SNL's Kristen Wiig.

However, Mirvish and Gorlin decided to reveal themselves the week after the election, when reports surfaced that an anonymous McCain source said Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent.

“Someone said it, but it wasn’t us,” Mirvish says. “So we took credit for it.”

Mirvish posted the claim Tuesday on Eisenstadt’s blog and then spent a few hours at the American Film Market. By the time he got home, MSNBC’s David Shuster was reporting the Eisenstadt-Africa connection as a breaking news story.

Eisenstadt’s political career may be over, but Mirvish and Gorlin’s has just begun. They already have received an offer from the publishers of Sacha Baron Cohen’s  “Borat” book. And, says Mirvish, “We still think he's a brand. We're doing meetings next week. Eisenstadt still has to carry on.”

Mirvish is nothing else if not persistent. He made his first film, "Omaha," in 1995; when Sundance rejected the comedy for its lineup, Mirvish responded by launching Slamdance. When he wrote and directed the “real-estate musical” "Open House" in 2004, he raised a ruckus when the Academy refused to activate its live-musical category that year.

I spoke with Mirvish as he was preparing and shuttling his three kids to school on Thursday morning. His wife, a doctor, had worked the night shift.

Did your agent know you were doing this? Or anyone else in the industry?

It's very generous for you to presume I have an agent. I've had a few over the years; I don't have one right now. There's a number of people in the TV world who knew about us and our shenanigans -- production companies, networks. JJ Abrams' company Bad Robot, Paramount TV, CBS, Comedy Central, Sony TV, Ashton Kutcher's company...

So basically, it was a massive left-wing conspiracy?

(It's the Shiba Inu PuppyCam. I saw this last week, but credit goes to Silicon Alley Insider for pointing me toward the excuse, er, reason to post it.)

So that story CNET filed Friday about a "major studio" making a deal to post full-length films on YouTube? Now that there's an actual announcement, it looks less like a game changer and more like (another) canary in the internet coal mine.

First off, the studio is MGM, which is at this point arguably major in library and MPAA status only. Adding insult to injury, the full-length content is currently limited to (admittedly classic) chestnuts like "The Magnificent Seven," flops like "Bulletproof Monk" and pure "huh?" like old episodes of "American Gladiators." If you want one of MGM's precious-few hits, such as "Legally Blonde," you'll have to be satisfied with mere clips.

As for Bond, forget about it. As Brad Stone and Brooks Barnes point out, "As part of its deal, MGM will begin scouring YouTube for studio clips, from properties like the James Bond and Rocky franchises, and pulling many of them from the site. But MGM will also work with YouTube to choose which clips can remain online, supported by advertising."

MGM co-president Jim Packer said he wants the studio's action films on You Tube to promote video-on-demand Comcast channel Impact. And while women-centric MGM movies like "Moonstruck" are also joining its YouTube lineup, "he did not see putting a significant part of the studio’s catalog on the site anytime soon. 'We will have some long-form videos up on YouTube, but I don’t think that’s the platform to have 30 or 40 movies up at once,' Mr. Packer said. 'I feel much more comfortable doing that on a site like Hulu.' " (Editor's note: Ouch.) [NYT]

RELATED

• YouTube to partner with "major studio" on streaming full-length features; HAL plays "Guess who!" [HAL]

YouTube will begin offering free, ad-supported features from at least one major studio, possibly as early as next month. One of the executives with knowledge of the negotiations told Greg Sandoval, "It's going to happen. I would say you can expect to see it, if all goes well, sometime within the next 30 to 90 days."

So who is it? Let's see... it's not Paramount, since Viacom is still involved in that $1 billion copyright lawsuit with YouTube's parent, Google. And probably not Universal or 20th Century Fox, since they're partners in Hulu and this deal would put YouTube in head-to-head competition. That leaves... Sony and Warner Bros. (I'm taking the liberty of presuming that Sandoval doesn't classify MGM as a major. The shrinking economy make these guessing games a lot easier.)

One sticking point: Google insists "on using a specific ad format, such as prerolls or postrolls, for feature films, according to two studio sources... some of the studios want the final say on how to advertise to viewers."

Hulu attracts a fraction of the 80 million who visit YouTube each month, but Hulu still managed to generate nearly the same revenue in its first year. "'We'd love to have our long-form content in front of that (80 million),' said an executive with a studio close to reaching an agreement with YouTube." In July, Lionsgate agreed to give YouTube access to short movie clips; Sandoval says at least one other studio is trying to cut a similar deal.

Remember when the entertainment industry was supposed to hate YouTube? Didn't Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman called YouTube a "rogue company", what, last summer? [CNET]

In 2006, MTV told "Weird Al" Yankovic that if he didn't remove references to file-sharing sites Morpheus, Grokster, Limewire and Kazaa from “Don’t Download This Song," they wouldn't air the accompanying Bill Plympton video. Yankovic complied, telling Noam Cohen, “Instead of subtly removing or obscuring the words in the track, I made the creative decision to bleep them out as obnoxiously as possible, so that there would be no mistake I was being censored.” So why is this news in 2008? Because Techdirt picked up on the bleeping last week with the launch of MTV's new music site, MTVmusic.com -- and given how little MTV proper actually airs videos, it may represent the first time that MTV actually broadcast the Yankovic/Plympton work, censored or otherwise. (Note from dh: That last bit of editorializing is mine, all mine.) [NYT]

MySpace is making peace with Viacom videos. Rather than engage in the Whac-A-Mole exercise of taking down user-posted clips from Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" and MTV's "The Hills," MySpace will attach advertising and give Viacom a revenue share. It's part of a new partnership between MySpace and online video ad technology company Auditude, which detects and identifies the clip and overlays an ad on it, reports Rachel Metz. (Auditude has already identified and indexed 19 million hours of online video.) The first deal, to be announced Monday, is with Viacom's MTV Networks. Viacom is currently suing YouTube for allegedly profiting from clips of Viacom shows posted online. [AP]

"Peanuts" lives! Warner Bros.' Motion Comics has produced 20 new animated (but not CG) webisodes taken directly from classic 1964 comic strips. Says Jeannie Schulz, widow of "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz, "Our interest was in keeping the integrity of the Peanuts strip. They've done a very cute job of making it really look like the old animation, but better. Better in that it's brighter, the voices are still cute and charming." If you want to see them for free, download now: Starting today for "a limited time," you can download two episodes for free on iTunes. Otherwise, two bundled episodes are available for 99 cents, or the full season for $7.99. (That said, I can't find it on iTunes to link it; will add that as soon as I do. Done!) [AP]

If Hollywood directors made John McCain's attack ads... we wouldn't notice, since they'd be every bit as ineffectual as his campaign. Partisanship! Sorry; wasn't looking for a cheap shot so much as an excuse to post these videos, which contain this cubic zirconia of "Juno" dialogue: BRISTOL PALIN: "Look Levi, remember how we thought that my uterine wall was a nonstick surface and we threw your baby paste up at it? I've got a bun in the Easy-Bake with your screen name on it."  [Cinematical]

Hulu turned a year old today, streamed 142 million videos last month [TechCrunch]

Next month, Netflix subscribers with Xbox 360s can watch HD movies instantly [SAI]

MPAA continues to win cases against illegal movie websites [Threat Level]

Like Madonna, MTV is struggling to re-redefine itself. This may explain why MTV went to the trouble to launch a site that, according to Peter Kafka, is "not really supposed to be something that regular Web surfers are meant to use." MTV.com spokesman Tom Biro says mtvmusic.com is supposed to be a sort of music video repository that anyone, pro or amateur, can use to build other video sites. That would also explain why the site has such a nice clean, look: Writes Kafka, "There aren’t any ads there, because MTV isn’t selling it as a destination site." So, let me get this straight: If a site has a design that makes us want to visit, odds are we aren't really supposed to hang around? [MediaMemo]

You remember "Wassup?!" The Budweiser ad? Of course you do. Did you realize that was eight years ago? Yeah, me either. Now that I've made embrace your mortality just a little more tightly (happy Friday!), please enjoy this modern-day look at the Wassup?! guys brought to you by the same team, including its director and star, Charles Stone III ("Drumline"). Drumroll, please:

Harry Warner -- that Warner, the one who worked with his brother -- died in 1958 but he would have been hailed as a internet visionary at this week's WebbyConnect conference. At Wednesday's opening session, "A Hard Reset For Hollywood," moderator and New York Times columnist Virginia Heffernan pointed out that Warner started his business by taking a single film projector to the people who he figured would be most likely to appreciate it: Appalachian coal miners, men who had nothing else to do once they emerged at the end of the day and would certainly enjoy anything that took their minds off of having to do it again tomorrow. "He figured out who wants to watch, what are they willing to do to watch it and how much are they willing to spend. Then, you figure out what to show." What Hollywood has is a lot of great content; however, "We don't have our Pennsylvania coal miners." [HAL]

It's directed by Corey Rosen, an F/X guy who's been a creatures supervisor for "Iron Man," "Grindhouse" and "Pirates of the Carribean." Has received more than 2 million views on YouTube since it was released two weeks ago.

Saturday Night Live wants its own on-demand website, Hulu be damned. Alex Weprin reports that "the site would include a mix of sketches culled from the vast SNL library, as well as dress rehearsal skits that have never aired. It would also feature additional original comedy similar to The Line, a Web series created earlier this year by SNL writers and performers." SNL and The Line content can currently be seen on YouTube, Crackle and, of course, NBC's Hulu. Althought the 2008 election has provided the 33-year-old variety show with a(nother) renaissance, that doesn't resolve a nagging question: How you gonna make money? Some compare the SNL project to Funny or Die, a site co-founded by SNL vet Will Ferrell, "but one NBC insider notes of that site's financial performance, 'Funny or Die itself isn't doing that great.' " [Broadcast & Cable]

CBS has begun showing full-length TV shows on YouTube, including "MacGyver," "Star Trek" and the original "Beverly Hills 90210," the season premieres of Showtime's "Dexter" and "Californication," and current episodes of "The Young and the Restless," Abbey Klaassen reports. "This is the first time we're putting on full-length content from a partner on a consistent basis," said Jordan Hoffner, YouTube director of content partnerships. The content includes pre-, mid- and post-roll ads; Hoffner said other partners are expected soon. The content appears on a new player, TheaterView, which plays video in a higher-quality format. [AdAge]

What looks like a threatening letter from Michael Moore's lawyers may be intended as a bit of culture jamming. Last week, TorrentFreak broke the story of a naughty Swedish "Slacker Uprising" downloader receiving a cease/desist letter, even though Moore has made the film available as a free download in North America. Writer Enigmax thought the whole thing silly enough to have been intentional; today, Moore spoke with Ernesto at TorrentFreak and hinted that might be the case. “What do you think I’m up to? I know it may not be obvious to most, but I think you guys get it. I only own the US and Canadian rights. So my hands are tied. But this is the 21st century. What are ‘geographical rights?' I’ll say it for the hundredth time: If I buy a book and read it, and then give you the book to read, I have broken no laws. Why is that not true for all media?” Dunno, Mike. You might want to ask Harvey Weinstein, who bought the doc and started selling it to foreign buyers in 2007. [TorrentFreak, Variety]

For his latest movie, "Slacker Uprising," Michael Moore proudly announced that it was available for free download -- “email it, burn it, and share it with anyone and everyone.” So why are his laywers sending letters demanding that it be removed from Sweden-based bit torrent search engine BTJunkie? Because Moore (inexplicably) wanted his offer applied only to North America, something that's virtually impossible to legislate on the internet. The threatening letter went to BTJunkie's DNS provider, easyDNS; said its cofounder, Mark Jeftovic:"I did point out this seeming contradiction in Michael Moore’s message vs his lawyer’s actions.” [TorrentFreak]

Michael Arrington reports that CBS is beta testing a new online product, Social Viewing Room. "The idea is that you show up to the site, pick a show that’s on right now, and watch it with your friends or whoever is there. You can comment, LOL or take quizzes for points." For now, he's unimpressed: "Given how awesome on demand TV is, I don’t see this kind of thing being very popular. With one big exception: live broadcasts, which are by definition shown at a certain time and watched by everyone then." Live link here; click on image for larger screengrab. [TechCrunch]

>> Related: On-demand TV portal Sling.com moves into beta testing [TechCrunch]

The Sundance Online Film Festival was suspended today after Sundance severed its relationship with Mediastile, a company that bills itself as "a breakthrough innovation and service that provides broadcasters, film studios, and content owners with the tools necessary to manage their own digital distribution." Unfortunately, it appears that Mediastile couldn't manage its own business; Sundance terminated the deal when multiple filmmakers complained that Mediastile would provide neither royalties nor traffic reports. Although the Mediastile site lists four partners, Eric Kohn writes that the company is "currently whittled down to a single elusive employee." [indieWIRE]

YouTube content creators can use a new feature, Hot Spots, to see exactly where viewers gain and lose interest in their videos. Among the applications that suggest themselves, Jason Kincaid writes: "Publishers can objectively determine which segments of the video are the most appealing, and edit their content accordingly. Advertisers can use multiple YouTube videos to run different versions of an ad to see which ones are the most effective. Other users will likely find more creative applications -- I wouldn’t be surprised to see a comedian test out a stream of jokes to see which ones bomb." [TechCrunch]