Hoax Museum Blog: Entertainment

Old School Hoax — Inspired by the movie Old School, a bunch of teenagers fake a kidnapping outside of a Wal-Mart. Succeed in terrifying the watching crowd.

Daria Movie Rumor Page — Here's the Unofficial Daria Movie Rumor Page. I'll let its creator, Barry Edelman, describe it in his own words:
I just finished your book and I loved it. I had to check out the site,
which is also good. Since you have a section on hoax sites, I had to submit
mine. My brother and I, annoyed by bad Hollywood movies based on television
shows (and bad Hollywood movies in general), for a few years maintained a site
called The Unofficial Daria Movie Rumor Page. The premise is that the MTV
cartoon series _Daria_ has been turned into a movie starring Jennifer Love
Hewitt in the title role. (The title role, being an intelligent, sarcastic
loner with a monotone voice, is probably the last character Hewitt would be
cast to play.) Although the page is explicitly labeled a parody (see the
bottom of the page) and some of the rumors reported are rather improbable, many
people have written in to express their outrage at the movie industry doing
such a thing, or, occasionally, to submit their own rumors. (Interestingly,
the actual writing of the page was disrupted by a hoaxer on a Yahoo! club, who
repeatedly submitted fraudulent news articles, which produced a few interesting
plot twists in the rumors.) Enjoy.

Metallica Lawsuit Hoax — Metallica sues the band Unfaith for unsanctioned usage of the chords E and F. I saw this story yesterday and thought it was strange. But then I figured, well it is Metallica, after all. So it's probably true. I should have known better. Today it's revealed to be a hoax concocted by Unfaith's singer/songwriter Erik Ashley (if you've never heard of Unfaith before, join the club. I hadn't either). Quite a good hoax. Believable enough to seem true at first, but in hindsight you kick yourself for having fallen for it. Plus, it makes fun of someone worth making fun of.

Carl Spangler — A reporter at the Roswell Daily Record gets fired for printing a quote he claimed to have gotten from a groundskeeper at a local golf course named 'Carl Spangler.' In reality, the quote came from Bill Murray's character in Caddyshack, 'Carl Spackler.' The quote referred to a new type of hybrid grass developed by the groundskeeper that had this amazing feature: "you can play 36 holes on it in the afternoon, take it home and just get stoned to the bejeezus-belt that night on the stuff."

National Blonde Day — Oops. I forgot that yesterday was National Blonde Day, so designated by the Blonde Legal Defense Club. The day is designed to promote respect for the intelligence and accomplishments of blondes. In reality, it's a publicity stunt for the Legally Blonde movie.

No Sex Change for Toto — Toto's keyboard player is not going to have a sex change. It was just a joke. Personally I was more surprised to discover that Toto was still around.

Believing in Fargo — Now here's an odd story. An article in the Guardian tells the tale of Takako Konishi, a Japanese girl who apparently believed that the movie Fargo was real (perhaps because it says it's a true story at the beginning, though it isn't) and went off to North Dakota to find the million dollars that one of the characters buries during the movie. Unfortunately Takako died trying to find the money. Or so everyone thought. The reporter who went to investigate finds out the real truth behind what happened to Takako.

Unreliable Facts — The Unreliable Facts website, established in 1851, offers a motherlode of misinformation.

Fake Abductions — The hot new thing in extreme adventure: Fake Abductions. People are actually paying for the excitement of being abducted. Bizarre.

Push, Nevada — Elaine Dutka, writing for the LA Times, notes a minor prank that occurred on ABC's 'Good Morning America' show:

Producers of ABC's "Good Morning America" inadvertently served up a plug for a new drama-reality series airing on the network, Variety reports. As weatherman Tony Perkins was chatting with folks outside the studio, he encountered some fellows who claimed to be members of the Push, Nev., hockey team. As it happened, there is no such town--except in ABC's new series of the same name, executive-produced by Ben Affleck and Sean Bailey. The athletes in question were really actors hired by ADD--a company employed by ABC to mount a guerrilla public relations campaign for the show. No one at ABC News had been advised of the prank, and Perkins was unaware of the show. "This is a show that is very different and we are trying to market it in a different way," an ABC spokesman said. "ADD didn't take into account the kinds of questions that could arise by enacting this sort of strategy within the same company."

TV Fakes — A short history of TV fakes from the Scottish Daily Record.

Simone — The movie SIMONE is coming out this weekend. It's about an actress who's not real, because she's just a computer simulation. But everyone thinks she's real, and so a director, who must maintain the illusion that his actress is real, gets dragged deeper and deeper into the hoax that he has created. It's getting pretty bad reviews. The New York Times calls it "tepid and vapid." So I'll probably skip it.

Good Samaritan Fooled — The LA Times tells of a good samaritan who tackled an armed man who was chasing three people down an alley. Unfortunately the armed man turned out to be an actor who was shooting a scene from the upcoming movie "Hunter." (registration required to view story).

Get your villains here — Hoax Website: villainsupply.com

The Illusion of Entertainment — Interesting piece by Neal Gabler in the NY Times about the American love for the fake over the real, as applied to the entertainment industry. Gabler argues that at the movies and on tv we now experience only the 'illusion of entertainment,' as opposed to entertainment itself. He argues that the audience itself is to blame for this, basically because they're lazy. The 'illusion of entertainment' frees them from the burden of having to be emotionally engaged with whatever is on the screen. Entertainment becomes something like junk food for the brain, instead of being healthy. Of course, critics have been making this same accusation about the shallowness of popular forms of entertainment for hundreds of years. What I think they fail to acknowledge is that modern entertainment largely serves the purpose of relaxation. We don't always want to be emotionally engaged by it. Just diverted. The stresses of modern life emotionally engage us quite enough. We come home from work, we're exhausted, and we just want to collapse in front of the tv for a while. We don't want to have to commit ourselves to the subtleties of an elegantly produced drama. Just bright lights, laughter, and a few special effects will do just fine. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with this. Nor do I buy into the argument that this mindless entertainment is going to overwhelm and crush 'true art' with a flood of mediocrity. Mindless entertainment and more carefully crafted art can and will live happily side by side.

Signs Renews Interest — The LA Times reports that the upcoming movie Signs is renewing interest in crop circles.

Signs, Crop Circles — Daily Variety gave Shyamalan's new film Signs a mediocre review. I loved The Sixth Sense, but found Unbreakable disappointing. So I'm not expecting much from his new one.

Naperville Crop Circle — Large crop circle found in a field of soybeans outside of Naperville, Illinois. Is it real, or a publicity stunt in anticipation of the release of the movie 'Signs' on August 2?

Crop Circle Movie — Wired has an article today about crop circles, in anticipation of M. Night Shyamalan's movie Signs coming out next month.

Antiques Roadshow — vAntiques Roadshow dealer is convicted for making bogus appraisals of items. It turns out that some of the appraisals were staged. Wow! If you can't even trust the Antiques Roadshow, who can you trust?