Last night, we took in a screening of Gentlemen Broncos, the new oddball comedy from Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess, one that New York film critic David Edelstein described in this week’s magazine as being “enchantingly freakish.†At the end of the screening, the director and stars of the film took part in a more-entertaining-than-usual Q&A session, during which an audience member asked Hess how he was able to keep the film’s fantastical yet intensely low-budget sci-fi sequences from looking too slick. “We didn’t really have the money to make it look too awesome,†Hess responded, before deadpanning: “I don’t know which looked more real, the new wolves from New Moon [or the home-crafted animatronics in his film].â€
Everyone in the audience immediately erupted in laughter, including actor-director (and former Amazing Race contestant) Mike White, who plays a character in the film he described as “an albino Slick Rick.†This is notable because White is old buddies with the penis-having director of New Moon, Chris Weitz: The two co-starred in the bizarro buddy-comedy Chuck & Buck back in 2000. While we’re fairly certain that the crappy werewolf transformation CGI from the trailers will not do much to keep away the hordes of teenage girls who will storm the multiplexes when the film opens on November 20, we are sure of one thing: Catherine Hardwicke wouldn’t have settled for anything less than the best.