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Every so often there’s a Hollywood feeding frenzy for a New York Times “trend” story that captures the momentary zeitgest. Such is the case with the newspaper-of-record’s recent report on the charter members of “Dating A Banker Anonymous” — a support group and blog founded in November to help women dating or married to men in the banking industry cope with the inevitable relationship fallout from all the lousy financial news and related layoffs. Immediately, an NPR commentater opined on air that the NY Times got punk’d. So you won’t be surprised to learn that the “DABA Girls” – Laney Crowell and Megan Petrus — now have signed with United Talent in all areas and will be co-repped in books by Janklow Nesbit out of NYC. (I can sense you’re grinding your teeth already.) It seems UTA partner and board of director Jay Sures was up at 5 AM reading the article and jumped on the DABA website and emailed that he’d like to rep them. (The fact that these were all good-looking gals didn’t hurt, obviously.) They saw the message and vetted Jay through a mutual friend at Lionsgate. Next thing they knew, every agency was chasing them: not just UTA but also CAA, Endeavor, ICM (who reps the NY Times and was really fighting hard), and WMA. But the Daba Girls chose Sures. Now there’s going to be a book, and maybe a movie, and maybe a TV series. (I’m now starting to see the spittle forming around your mouth.)
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Oh the irony! More fodder for the empty, vapid headed execs; so clueless when it comes to the outside world. And just another testament of Hollywood’s ever declining stance as the entertainment capital.
Yaye!
Another New York to Hwood p.o.s. tale that’ll end up in the trash . . .
. . . while real writers, with something to say, real artists, work at grocery stores or wherever in this terrible economy.
Read that NY Times article and it will tell you everything you need to know of what is wrong with world we live in today.
Rumor is that this all BS and that these girls made the blog with the sole intent of attracting a potential book deal…and the NY Times article was part of the plan to ignite the interest. Pretty lame that everyone fell for it.
Let them eat D’Agostinos cupcakes.
Read the blog. There are ZERO comments for most entries. After being featured in the NYT – the blog gets no comments??? Yeah, I’d say no one cares.
Meanwhile, I couldn’t get anyone over here to get behind 100 Days in Bed because I’m just a stupid assistant and that blog hasn’t been written up in the Times. (Hollywood Rule #1, someone has to anoint it worthy so we don’t have to make up our own minds). Now it’s over at Sony and everyone wonders how it slipped through the cracks. Please. You should have listened to me six months ago.
Wow. Wow, Nikki. Disgustingly yucky, and yet it is “news”. Sad, weird, and creepy, gross news. If anything else comes of this filth, don’t tell us, ok?
This is great. Formula:
woman + dating outcast = big hollywood deal
Next up:
DAPA Girls – “Dating a Pedophile Anonymous”
DALA Girls – “Dating a Leper Anonymous”
DBLA Girls – “Dating bin Laden Anonymous”
Congrats to Jay Sures for reading the times at 5AM while the rest of us (including me) had our hands on our dicks. Good luck, Jay. Bastard.
The problem is, this kind of material is relatable to people in this town – that’s why they lap it up. But when I read on the blog that women are bitching about down grading from a 7 star hotel (sorry, didn’t know there was such a thing) to a 4 star hotel, when most people are just trying to stay in their homes and keep food on the table – I think, wow, HWood, you are out of touch.
tom- maybe you should wake up a bit earlier, get your hand off your dick and get a life
Now, if you take these broads out of their husbands penthouses, and make them homeless in NY for the first season of their TV show….then you got a show! Something I’d watch.
How about trophy wives couch surfing at all their families houses in Iowa. Or having to work at a grocery store, and struggling…NOT in a funny way…to make rent.
But seriously, if it’s another rip off of Sex in the city (Lipstick Jungle, Dirty nasty people with money, or whatever it was called, or the countless others that came and went, and were all bad) then they can hang it up instantly.
Like I said. Make it interesting. Make them live in a homeless shelter. I think that’s a great idea.
But what do I know? My favorite show on TV right now is “Kipper the Dog”
It’s the only thing my toddler will let me and his mom watch.
“You lunkheads also clearly miss the irony that all the bankers are MEN. If women had an equal shot at top paying jobs, and equal pay. they wouldn’t be forced to date these disgusting toads. The toads know it which is why they work so hard to keep women away from the top.”
You have got to be kidding. My female friends are making money (I’m not because I’m a newbie writer) and don’t need to marry it.
No one is forcing these women to date these men and vice-versa. One of my friends is married to a banker and is wife is nothing like these gold diggers. If he lost his job tomorrow they would figure it out. After all that part in the marriage vows “for better or for worse”, they take seriously.
This is why I’m staring my own studio. The first quote f’em is about right. For nine years I have pitched my scripts, had them read, been rejected etc.
To find that it’s so easy for these, I can’t even say the word in English can make money after the bankers have castrated the credit market for Hollywood and everybody else. Well, I won’t watch it. I may buy the book just to burn it.
Who cares about bankers and their fur clad, stuck up, well you know the words already, significant others. Tax cuts, bail outs, incentives as of today I say to hell with all of them. Buy mine for less then 19.99 per DVD. Like Alan Dwain, I’ll make better movies with a ten minute real for a three dollars a piece. I’ll out hoe them.
Satan here.
I’m taking time away from screening GIGLI for the 10 millionth time to damned souls in the Ninth Circle in order to shed some light on my latest master plot involving the DABA wenches.
It’s a two-fold plan of evil, mind you. First, I fill s group of narcissistic women with false hopes that anybody gives a blob of brimstone for their self-involved whining.
Second, I publicize it in order to draw a slew of outrage and vitriol from people too bitter to laugh this off as just another ephemeral idea with the shelf life of yogurt.
It worked beautifully. Thank you all for your help.
Pardon me while I go fire up the DVD player again.
All these angry comments! The project will probably not be done well but it’s about the world we live in, the species we belong to, folks. A significant number of women get with men for their money and a significant number of men get with women for their looks. Who could possibly disagree with this? Far more women with rich men would dump them in a second than ‘stand by’ them if the money dried up. Far more men with sexy women would drop them the second they put on ten pounds or get laugh lines or some gray hairs. It happens all the time. If a woman’s with an otherwise worthless man for the lifestyle, she’ll find someone new when he can no longer provide. If a man’s with an otherwise worthless woman for her looks, he’ll dump her at 35 or 40 because there’s plenty who still have their looks right behind that one.
To the people who think this concept isn’t “uplifting” enough, well, first who says books and movies have to be uplifting? And second, isn’t it uplifting in its own way to see people who live by superficiality dying by superficiality? Isn’t it uplifting to see people who over-value looks and money paying the price for failing to look deeper into potential mates?
Those who love for beauty or money, love conditionally by definition. Take away the beauty or money (as life has a way of doing) and the love goes away with it. Does anybody think this is not an accurate portrait of the human condition? Where does the anger come in unless you folks have deluded yourselves into thinking looks and cash are actual measures of people’s worth.
These people still don’t get that the seemingly lost lifestyle they are pining for was propped up largely by outright thievery and swindle. The stories that keep coming out of the lives of the stupefyingly monied set continue to boggle the mind.
Few people would begrudge anyone’s right to earn and spend a legitimately earned fortune however they choose but whining about the loss of extravagance funded largely on outright theft is enough to make people take the streets with pitchforks and torches. Toss in the obvious narcissism and it’s enough to make even the strongest stomach wretch in disgust.
The ironic part is that the main audience that they’re targeting are the same out of touch middle class whitebread suburbanites that have been f*cked over by the same Wall Street banker types. Hey, what can you do. Some dynamics never change.
thisistheworld,
Your lame attempt at rationalization missed by a long shot.
You’re not as astute about the human condition as you think you are.
What’s upsetting about this (to a lot of us) is the trend of Hollywood morons reading chick lit blogs and thinking there are movies and television shows in them.
It’s insulting to actual women who can write about being a woman. This blog nonsense is akin to overgrown 13 year-old girls writing in their diaries.
They are getting book deals off this dreck and more recently they are getting film and TV deals off of it and it’s sad. It’s sad that execs and agents think there is any merit to this crap.
You ever spend 10 seconds reading a chick lit blog? You want to poke your eyes out.
Not to mention most of the women who write them are textbook narcissists. Why do they need a bigger platform? They have nothing interesting to say.
There are pilot scripts floating around town now that are “inspired” by chick lit blogs. They are all awful.
They are major steps backwards in character based storytelling and they are derivative (and not in clever ways) of Sex and the City.
They’re for the “I wanna wear jeans and bitchy high heels and go dance tonight” sect.
Right now, that sect is taking a long look in the mirror and realizing the 20-50K they are in credit card debt from buying overpriced shoes and bags may not have been the most worthwhile investment the past 7-10 years.
Wait’ll they start filing for bankruptcy in the coming year to get out from under that behavior.
Hollywood needs to take a look back and realize movies like Mooonstruck, When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle were entirely entertaining and thought provoking and people enjoyed them. They weren’t about cartoon characters. They had real women in them. Women that other women hoped they could see a part of themselves in.
You can still make movies like that. Making movies for vapid 20 somethings and cougars is the worst idea you can have.
As the money continues to dry up, those women are not going to want to see themselves having a good time on screen.
They’re going to want to see something grounded a little bit in reality.
Hopefully, Shopaholic performing poorly is the first warning shot that those kind of stories are past their prime.
Although if I know the idiots in Hollywood they’ll blame Isla who is excellent…it’s not her fault it tanked. It’s the world we live in today.
Dear Ugh,
I don’t think you understood what I was saying.
Please re-read my post. I didn’t say I’d watch this show. I didn’t say anybody would or should.
I did say that films or TV shows or novels have no obligation to portray people in the best light possible or make anybody feel good about themselves, their gender, their race or their species.
I also said that the type of behavior described (women getting with for money and dumping the men if they lose the money) is very much a part of the human condition. I added, in fairness, that men do the same with women they get together with for looks)–it’s not just women who are shallow.
I don’t think you could possibly think you live in a world where there are more people who behave like the people in Moonstruck, Harry/Sally or Sleepless in Seattle than there are shallow, vapid, selfish, egotists. In fact, you lament the very same thing at the end of your own posting!
And while I’d never watch this show or read a chick lit book or watch just about any “RomCom,” I defend this show only in the sense that it demonstrates human nature as it is, not as it ought to be. And to me, that’s a good thing.
I’m not clear though what it is you think I’m rationalizing. Maybe read my whole post before starting your own misguided response.
I totally read the article when it first came out and laughed my ass off. Not because these girls are funny but because there are girls like this out there. Ridiculous Bitches! It is ironic that their men are going down and they are on their way up! It is about woman’s power and the power of all mankind, fend for yourself and leave anyone less fortunate in the dust!
PS WOW’s comment is the best!
Wouldn’t it be funny if the girls allowed this Hollywood movie thinking they would be glamorous icons and really the producer revealed their true characteristics of ugliness and they were shamed and shunned for life! Like some slut on the Real World that didn’t know what a bad lush she was until she saw herself on TV.
Oh wait that probably (hopefully) will happen!