Magnolia Pictures and Landmark Theaters Owner Mark Cuban was voted off ABC’s Dancing With the Stars last night. Above, watch his final performance; below the jump, in his ABC-mandated exit interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Cuban talks about wearing a onesie, buying the Cubs, and baring his “unshaved” hip replacement scar on national television. Throughout this whole DwtS thing, Cuban has downplayed his secondary career as an indie film mogul in order to play up his persona as a magnanimous billionaire of the people, so it’s not a surprise that recent Magnolia controversies did not come up on Kimmel.
UPDATE, 10/18 8AM: Hudgens’ rep told Access Hollywood that her client still has a job; Disney says they’re “still negotiating” with the entire HSM cast.
Because this is a blog generally devoted to movies, and not to the naked exploits of barely-legal, barely-famous starlets, we’ve stayed out of Vanessa Hudgens topless photo non-scandal. But OK! is running a story that I just can’t not comment on, because if nothing else, it seems like a soon-to-be classic example of what old media companies are doing wrong when it comes to the web.
A bit of background for the uninitiated: Hudgens starred in two High School Musical movies for the Disney Channel, along fellow tween heartthrobs Ashley Tisdale and (Hudgens’ real-life boyfriend) Zac Efron. Both movies were such enormous successes on cable, iTunes and DVD that Disney decided to bring the entire cast back for a third film, this time aimed at a theatrical release. Then, in September, relatively tame images of a naked Hudgens, allegedly meant for a boyfriend’s eyes only, were leaked to the internet. Now, OK! is reporting that, over a month after issuing what seemed like a non-judgmental statement in regards to Hudgens’ internet nakedness, “Disney has made up its mind about what to do next and that the 18-year-old actress will not be asked to board the boat for the third HSM film.”
If this is true, then I think Disney is making a big mistake, for three reasons. Details after the jump.
Apologies for the poor quality video, but above you’ll find evidence of sometime-movie mogul Mark Cuban’s debut on Dancing With the Stars. The Magnolia Pictures chief/simultaneous distribution evangelist/financier and distributor of Brian DePalma’s Redacted performed last night; his fate as a reality TV star will be decided by “America” tonight.
What you don’t see above is the prologue, which you can allegedly watch on ABC.com (I’m still waiting for the video to load). In a segment designed to introduce the audience to Cuban and his partner, Kym, Cuban revealed that he had hip replacement surgery just seven weeks before rehearsals began for Dancing With the Stars. “Most people are still on crutches,” Cuban says, lifting up his practice shorts to reveal a massive scar. Kym’s voiceover commends Cuban for working through the pain while we watch footage of him practicing with a tortured expression on his face. Cut to Cuban, interview style: “I’m not going through all this pain and agony just because. I’m there to win.”
It strikes me that, whether it’s his doing or that of Dancing’s producers, Cuban has managed to hit on a magic combination of about 100 winning reality TV cliches: rich fish out of water, an American Idol’s beginner’s enthusiasm for competitive performance, Extreme Makeover-branded physical struggle, non-household name reifying his stardom by going on a show mostly staffed by declining B-listers united in the deception that they’re so famous they don’t need to be there. On a show like this, it seems like a brilliant strategy: the audience, it seems, unfailingly rewards not those who perform well, but those who perform *surprisingly* well.
Mark your calendars for September 24, when I’ll start live blogging the vertically-integrated studio mogul’s debut as a dancing reality TV star, right here on SpoutBlog.
Yesterday, TMZ breathlessly announced that they’d landed the tightly-guarded list of the cast and alternates for the upcoming season of ABC’s reality competition, Dancing With the Stars. Then the page view whores made us click through a maddening gallery to confirm earlier rumors that one of those alleged dancing stars is indeed Mark Cuban, the brash billionaire who owns the Dallas Mavericks and who, as owner of Landmark Theaters and Magnolia Pictures, is also at the forefront of the movement to close the theatrical/DVD distribution window.
I’m willing to bet that Mark Cuban is not on the final list, which is set to be announced on ABC’s Good Morning America tomorrow. My reasoning is three-fold: First, according to an interview that appeared late last week in Portfolio, Cuban is currently recovering from hip replacement surgery. Second, he already did the reality TV thing once, and it didn’t go so well. Third (and probably most compelling), today TMZ published a blurb covering their collective asses if the official cast list fails to match their gallery: “Well placed on-set sources tell us that execs, fearing someone would leak the cast to TMZ, gave the show’s staff and crew names that may or may not be 100% accurate.” Looking at TMZ’s list, Cuban and one of the two former Beverly Hills 90210 babes seem like the easiest names to scratch off.
So here’s the deal: If Mark Cuban is *not* on Dancing With the Stars, I win the satisfaction of being correct in my assumptions. If it turns out that the part-time movie mogul *is* on the show’s official cast list, as punishment for being wrong about this I promise to live-blog Cuban’s Dancing performance for as long as he manages to stay on the show. I’ve convinced myself that either way, I win on this — I mean, if Louis B. Mayer had entered a dance marathon, we would have wanted a document of it, right?
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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UPDATE, 10/18 8AM: Hudgens’ rep told Access Hollywood that her client still has a job; Disney says they’re “still negotiating” with the entire HSM cast.
