Writer/director/stars who cast themselves in the role of the totally righteous person, while everyone else in the film is a complete idiot

list examples here

http://ruthlessreviews.com/80saction/pics/abovethelaw1.jpg

More like cowrote/starred in and casts self as multilingual superninja zen master, but yeah.

I just so happened to view Star Trek V (Kirk vs God, Kirk wins) last night.

^^^ooh good one

GIT OFF MY POLL

http://www.jossip.com/wp/docs/2009/03/clint-eastwood-dirty-harry.jpg

inspired by this thread btw: Paul Simon - One Trick Pony, C or D

never watched any ed burns movies but i feel like he probably belongs in this category

isn't Ed Burns closer to a totally righteous douche in his movies?

never watched any ed burns movies

not a movie but Ricky Gervais' Extras.

"Stardust Memories"?

see I was considering various Woody Allen movies but he's pretty far from "totally righteous" in most of them - usually he's some combination of insecure/assholish

Insecure/assholish but basically right

the Billy Jack guy

Robert Redford in that stupid Lions for Lambs movie.

Johnny Depp in the Brave (I am just guessing as I've never seen it.)

Martin Scorsese in Taxi Driver.

lolz

Was going to say Chaplin, but he's often an asshole

not a movie but Ricky Gervais' Extras.

― languid samuel l. jackson (jim), Thursday, 7 May 2009 16:01 (16 minutes ago)

In many cases, yes. But I watched several episodes of this last night and was struck by the many incredibly-difficult-to-watch examples of his character being a worse idiot than the rest of them.

re Chaplin: OFTEN? Even when he played a Bluebeard, he ended with a speech about mankind's moral failings. However, his leading women were usually virtuous madonna types.

never watched any ed burns movies but i feel like he probably belongs in this category

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, May 7, 2009 11:59 AM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark

<3

totally the first person i thought of.

can't believe this didn't occur to me right off the bat, but Michael Moore

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x141/rewriter42/AlmostAnAngel.jpg

re Chaplin: OFTEN?

Yeah, strike that, he's often an asshole but is unaware that he's coming across as an asshole

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515TGGYQX9L._SL500_AA240_.jpg

isn't Ed Burns closer to a totally righteous douche in his movies?
yesssssssss! this to me is the ultimate example. whenever i've had the misfortune of seeing one of his movies, i've always waited in vain for his characters' comeuppance ... but it never comes!

i hate ed burns so much

totally unaware of him up to now

http://smashcut.today.com/files/2009/03/alfred_hitchcock_372x495.jpg

totally righteous cameos?

Hitch as auteur = totally righteous star of movie

there's the ed burns movie with cameron diaz and jennifer aniston where every woman desperately wants to have sex with him, including his brother's mistress. i think they do end up having sex, but he doesn't like it. and then i think there's one where he has sex with his best friend's wife, but still portrays himself as the good guy. the best friend is played by jon bon jovi, btw.

yes. god. are you me? that fucking movie, i swear.

and honest to god, i've watched both of those movies until the end because i keep thinking that the final twist will be that burns' characters are in fact the villains of the film, hiding their inner emptiness behind easygoing charm. but nope -- everyone sucks except for him.

remember eric schaeffer who wrote, directed, and starred in 'if lucy fell' as an nyc artist or something who manages to get with elle macpherson and then breaks it off with her because his true love is sarah jessica parker?

I'm finding it very hard to think of examples of the opposite. Who likes casting himself as the heel?
Of the major scientologist stars, I think Travolta has been the only one to ever cast himself as a villain.

I'm finding it very hard to think of examples of the opposite. Who likes casting himself as the heel?

Orson Welles, dude.

early Woody Allen. He's a total jerk in Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Crimes and Misdemeanors (though that's unitentional; he's supposed to be the good guy).

Orson Welles plays the RIGHTEOUS heel though. like Kiefer in 24.

i don't think Woody comes out of his movies looking like a hero, ever.

Orson Welles plays the RIGHTEOUS heel though. like Kiefer in 24

Touch of Evil, I guess.

He's never a total jerk either, his self-regard is far too sky high for that (xp)

I'm finding it very hard to think of examples of the opposite. Who likes casting himself as the heel?

Larry David in CYE obviously, but that's mostly an extension of the Allen-as-asshole roles noted by Alfred (altho I disagree with him about C&D, who's the good guy there then - Alan Alda? lolz)

Orson was different -- he just gave himself the best roles, regardless of how that character was portrayed.

not a movie but Ricky Gervais' Extras.

^^ I was clearly missing some important dimension of Extras, cause it always seemed like he was casting himself as a petty, small, and continually frustrated man, per usual

hat's mostly an extension of the Allen-as-asshole roles noted by Alfred (altho I disagree with him about C&D, who's the good guy there then - Alan Alda? lolz)

If I were Mia Farrow, given the choice between the two creeps, I would've fucked Alan Alda in a tenth of a second. Forget the loafers with no socks.

yeah, that character is in many ways the pettiest of them all, because he craves the approval of all the other petty people. i can see how one could get that idea though, sometimes that element gets a little lost in the satire. xpost re: Extras

Forget the loafers with no socks
NEVER FORGET

but... Mussolini! Mr. Ed! If it bends its funny...!

i gave up on woody, but i did enjoy some of his old films so i should probably make a point to see the ones i've missed.

"Rosie project yr thinking of is "Riding the Bus With My Sister", but she didn't write or direct it (it was shamefully directed by Anjelica Huston)"

I cant believe a performance like that didn't come from a place of willful auteurist self-expression.

oh it totally did. but it doesn't quite fit the criteria since a) not everyone else in the film is a complete idiot, and b) while she may be "totally righteous" she's also playing some humiliating caricature of the "mentally disabled"

My buddy Steve owns Riding the Bus on VHS, I need to re-watch that thing.

Rosie O'Donnell Playing a Retarded Person on Hallmark TV Movie

there's also Muriel Hemingway

Mariel

murgaux hemingway

oh it totally did. but it doesn't quite fit the criteria since a) not everyone else in the film is a complete idiot, and b) while she may be "totally righteous" she's also playing some humiliating caricature of the "mentally disabled"

― Skinny Malinky (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, May 7, 2009 2:54 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

and isn't she the one who is a total idiot amirite

when she shits herself the nontards see how wonderful life is

man ed burns is a dude who sucks

I waited on Ed Burns once. He was a total jerk AND a bad tipper. He def fits this category.

I suspect that Miranda July would make this list even with only one movie down.

xxxpost

More recently there was America, which Rosie co-wrote, and in which she co-stars as a psychiatrist or counselor or something who helps the titular character, a troubled inner-city youth, confront his terrible past. Maybe not everyone else in the movie is a complete idiot, but it still kinda fits in this thread.

ed burns has got a voice like a film geek dbag who tried imitating don corleone one too many times

miranda july probably but i thought that movie was pretty dope tbqh!

"I waited on Ed Burns once. He was a total jerk AND a bad tipper. He def fits this category."

I am eagerly waiting for Selena Robert's book, E-Bur to come out now.

miranda july probably but i thought that movie was pretty dope tbqh!

Didn't like or care for the movie at all, but I've always thought her writing was pretty good. New movie supposed to be out this year.

That Miranda July movie annoyed me so much I couldn't get through it. It was a while ago now so I can't remember why exactly.

i've got a really good story about miranda july

Okay Miranda July makes zero sense as a response to this: whom are we considering idiots in that film, the freaking children?

I waited on Ed Burns once. He was a total jerk AND a bad tipper. He def fits this category.

― a sweet ballet dancer (ENBB), Thursday, May 7, 2009 6:31 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

omg erica you've been holding out on me you said he was cute in some other thread where i freaked out about how much i hate him! of course he's a bad tipper. of course he is.

omar little has inside information.

xp Children can't be idiots in your world? How narrowminded. Tsk tsk.

haha definite versus indefinite article, A!

HS - he was handsome but smug and smarmy and everything you'd expect including cheap. Also - all over Heather Graham in a gross and creepy way.

Miranda July is the luminous star round which affectless toddlers and the jewish cowboy from deadwood revolve. at least that's the message I got from that movie.

He wasn't a cowboy in Deadwood. He owned a shop like a good jew should.

but... he had a hat and a gun!

Omar - spill it.

"but... he had a hat and a gun!"

Yeah but it was a bowler and the gun was small.

Well like 90% of everything July's done lately is about taking people's desire for and huge problems with connecting with one another and literalizing them in almost pathological ways, which in that film means her character spends a striking amount of the running time sitting alone in her apartment wanting to talk to the guy from Deadwood while the guy from Deadwood struggles to juggle parenting and his crappy job and most of the other main characters make their own vexed attempts at connecting with other people on a spectrum of woundedness and weirdness in which July's character's is actually somewhere in the middle and possibly toward the lamer end, so ... I dunno.

I guess seeing as they all have pretty much the exact same overarching problem, I find it hard to see July's character as somehow more righteous about it; I guess she makes "clever" video art about the topic of the film, but that doesn't seem like any huge setting-apart, and anyway if she made video art about some other theme it wouldn't fit in very well

I mean like if she made video art about the Armenian genocide it might be a little jarring

You've convinced me. She's an idiot and everyone else in the film is totally righteous.

Hey Horseshoe - I just checked and it was the surprisingly fun Ashley Judd thread on which we had previously discussed Mr. E.B.

thank you for being in a position to corroborate that he's a dbag!

This may be totally off-topic since I've never seen that Miranda July film, but I read her short story collection and it seems to me that she's less about totally righteous central characters surrounded by complete idiots than she is about delicate innocent whimsical free-spirited snowflakes surrounded by callous inhuman indifferent represenatives of Society.

x-post - NP glad I could help. I probably didn't mention that part then because I didn't want to be all omg here's my celebrity story etc. but now you know!

man, I could get really save-a-July up in here, not even out of fondness but just because some of these readings seem so weird: like of the characters in that book I can remember firmly, you can only read them as innocent whimsical free spirits if you completely ignore the bits where she's pretty clear about prodding them over into being damaged or pathological -- I mean, first story, the woman who cuddles up to someone who's just had a seizure!

I have no idea what any of you are talking about. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY BEAUTIFUL THREAD

oh right umm how about Steven Seagal

like I don't even know if I've seen On Deadly Ground or not, but I'd be willing to bet a year's income that Seagal's is the most righteous character in it by a long, long shot

the postman trailer is one of the greatest trailers ever imo

do any female directors do this? Streisand? I haven't seen her movies, so ...

Her 'The Mirror Has Two Faces' SOOOOO fits this. It's awful. Oh, just thinking about it makes me want to kill myself/her/everybody retrospectively. Such a shit, shit, shit shitty shit of a film.

'If Lucy Fell'--that was the one where they put Elle Macpherson in glasses so she'd look "intelligent", wasn't it?

man, I could get really save-a-July up in here, not even out of fondness but just because some of these readings seem so weird: like of the characters in that book I can remember firmly, you can only read them as innocent whimsical free spirits if you completely ignore the bits where she's pretty clear about prodding them over into being damaged or pathological -- I mean, first story, the woman who cuddles up to someone who's just had a seizure!

― nabisco, Thursday, May 7, 2009 11:42 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yeah, it wasn't so much the individual characters as the stories all read together that did my head in. On their own I might have enjoyed and remembered each story, but read in aggregate they just stopped feeling sincere. Or something.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand: I agree that this thread was created for Kevin Costner.

Writer/director/stars who cast themselves in the role of someone who gives out hope like it's candy in their pocket

i want every postman hunted down

Costner vs. Tom Laughlin FITE

Check out http://www.billyjack.com/ for Laughlin evidence.

This is Steven Seagall's son, Kentaro (the one with the bazooka):