Bare Cheek: All the goss – News from Hollywood

Austrian auteur Michael Haneke is shortly to begin work on his first comedy. The doom-laden director of ‘The White Feather’ and ‘Amour’ has apparently been hoping to work on something “more light hearted” for some time, and his new project – ‘Desolation’, the tale of a HIV-positive child murderer, has been described as “a laugh riot” by those who have read the script.

Newly-married heart throb George Clooney has revealed that his first film as a married man is to be an adaptation of the ‘90s UK sitcom ‘Men Behaving Badly’.

The film, due to begin shooting in December, will star Clooney as wage slave “new lad” Gary Strang, with Brad Pitt as his slacker flatmate Tony Smart. And is there a cameo for George’s new bride, human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin, as the sexy girl upstairs? “Ha ha ha ha, that would be telling,” says Clooney. “Now f**k off and leave me alone.”

After ‘artistic differences’ saw him part company with his former film studio, Ridley Scott has decided to make the sequel to 2012’s ‘Prometheus’ on his own, with a slashed budget of only five thousand dollars. “Okay, so it’s not a great deal of money to make a two and a half hour sci-fi special effects epic,” said Scott yesterday, “but I found out my laptop can do some pretty cool effects, and I’m going to make sandwiches myself, which should cut down on the catering bill.” The new film, ‘Lapetus’, was to star Harrison Ford, Charlize Theron, Jennifer Lawrence and Ryan Gosling, but Scott will now be making do with former ‘Eastenders’ actor Dean Gaffney and a number of wigs.

Quentin Tarantino is about to direct his first remake, a “re-imagining” of the 1930 Laurel and Hardy short ‘Hog Wild’. “I’m gonna be true to the spirit of the original,” said Tarantino, speaking via loudhailer from his platinum-plated helicopter. “Let’s face it – it’s a goddamn movie about a guy trying to put an antenna on his roof, and we’re gonna stick with that. Just with more kung-fu, and gun-battles, and sex scenes. Oh, and it’s gonna be blaxploitation, too.”

You may wonder why you haven’t seen ‘Matrix’ star Keanu Reeves up on the big screen for a while, and the answer is a surprising one – he’s been working in Boots the chemist. “I got kinda disillusioned with the Hollywood system,” said the ‘Bill and Ted’ star, “and I was living in London at the time, so I decide to get a part-time job, just to pass the time.

The job centre sent me to Boots, and to my surprise, I loved it! I get a much bigger sense of satisfaction selling a bottle of vitamin C tablets and some hair dye to some old lady than I ever did as a movie star.” According to the branch Reeves works at, he has been made ‘Employee of the Month’ twice and is shortly to be promoted to the pharmacy counter.