Al Pacino avoided meeting Phil Spector, whom he's portraying in an HBO movie.

"It would have been meeting a different person. Now he’s been convicted and he’s in prison. I play him before his first trial."

After doing the film role, said Pacino, he didn’t feel he knew Spector much better – but that it didn’t matter, because his job was to explore the film character, not the real-life person.

“The play’s the thing,” said Pacino. “I was looking for the truth of the drama.”

It's not an impersonation, but something much deeper.  Or that's the PR for the HBO movie. Maybe it's a preemptive defense against the criticism that he doesn't seem like Spector at all.

ADDED: In other HBO celebrity impersonation news:

HBO’s new Liberace biopic was “too gay” for every studio in Hollywood, director Steven Soderbergh says.

What big name actor will be probing the depths of the truth of the drama of Liberace? Matt Damon? No. Damon's playing Liberace's younger lover. Liberace will be... Michael Douglas!

Aw, give me a break. The studios turned down this movie because it was (whine) too gay? It's obviously insufficiently commercial.

Promos of the film screened for TV critic in Los Angeles yesterday contain numerous scenes of the two male stars shirtless and about to kiss.

No one wants to see that. It's not anti-gay to say I don't want to see that. Who wants to see Michael Douglas shirtless and about to... do anything?

"A hospital nurse caring for the Duchess of Cambridge, who was duped by two DJs pretending to be the Queen and Prince Charles..."

"... is understood to have committed suicide."

The DJs... apologized for the hoax — sheepishly noting that they were surprised that the call was put through and that their Australian accents were not detected.

"Here’s a first look at the unlikely casting but uncanny resemblance of Jane Fonda as former First Lady Nancy Reagan."

"Alan Rickman plays President Ronald Reagan... The pic stars Forest Whitaker as White House butler Eugene Allen whose career spanned 34 years there."

Exactly what it says it is.

"A dramatic interpretation of Sir Mix-A-Lot's 'Baby Got Back' as if it were performed by actor Sir Ian McKellen."

Via Throwing Things.

Crooks & Liars falls for anti-Cain hoax.

How dumb do you have to be to think for 2 seconds that was an official Herman Cain webpage?

I have had problems with people impersonating me on Facebook and in comments on a prominent lefty site. When I objected I was mocked because supposedly everyone knows when it's a joke. But obviously, that is not so.

SNL's Darrell Hammond "was a victim of systematic and lengthy brutality."

"My mom did some things which have cost me dearly."

The actor is well known as the funnyman who graced "SNL" to spoof celebrities like Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Sean Connery. He said there was a darker side that played out in his life, before he became known for those roles, and then later on, backstage before he went out to perform....

Hammond says he was medicated almost all of the time he performed on "SNL" each week, but that wasn't all that was happening behind the stage doors.

"There was cutting backstage," he said, adding that one time, he was taken from the studio to a psychiatric ward because of his actions. "In fact, the week that I did the Gore debates, I believe I was taken away in a straitjacket."

Here's an older clip of Hammond explaining how he worked out his impersonations of Bill Clinton and Al Gore and how he thought in terms of color, for example, picturing both Ted Koppel and Dick Cheney as — for some inexplicable reason — "plush blue." (Like this?)

Does SNL really deserve attention for poking fun at Barack Obama?

Is it that they're doing it at all? Because they are not doing it well! Was there any new or interesting observation in this? The writing is terribly dull. I won't listen again to get the quote exactly right, but — after saying he got the Nobel Prize for not being George Bush — he says something like "I've only not been George Bush for 9 months." But he's not a 9-month-old and he's never been George Bush. Couldn't you polish that into something like "I've only been President Not George Bush for 9 months"?

And could SNL hire somebody who can actually impersonate Barack Obama? Obama has so many physical and vocal mannerisms. It could be hilarious. And it's not like when Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford without any attempt at seeming like Ford, because Chevy Chase had a very appealing and funny personal style of his own and imitating without imitating was itself ridiculous. Fred Armisen isn't doing anything.

"Saturday Night Live" is boring and lame. Giving them credit for willingness to make fun of a liberal is like giving the Nobel Prize to Obama for not being Bush. Except much duller.

I throw some movie-related red meat to the lefties, and then to the righties.

I've got to tell you, I laughed like mad at the trailer for the new Michael Moore movie "Capitalism: A Love Story":



I will definitely see this movie. Annoying as I've found Michael Moore at times in the past, I love the light but stinging touch. Quite charming, if the trailer is accurate.

Okay, see? Sometimes I throw out red meat for the liberals.

Now, here's red meat for you righties. In the trailer at 1:40, we hear and then see George W. Bush and — even though I was in a theater in the lefty hotbed of Madison, Wisconsin — I leaned over to my seatmate (the estimable Meade) and said (loud enough to be heard): "I miss that guy."

***

The movie we were seeing was — as the previous post hints — "Inglourious Basterds." In "Chapter 2" of that film, when Brad Pitt first appeared, Meade now says — if he hadn't needed to maintain Hoosierly etiquette — he wanted to lean over to me and whisper "George W."

And it's true. Brad Pitt is kind of doing a George Bush impersonation. (Meade points to 0:30 in this trailer, when the character says "killin' Nazis.") Now, it's an awful accent, really. And I don't think it's a Tennessee accent, which is what we're told it is. Oddly, later in the movie, there's a whole thing about speaking Italian with a bad accent, and Pitt's is the worst of the bad accents, so maybe there — and throughout the movie — Quentin Tarantino intended to treat us to layer upon layer of joking.

"It basically leaves it up to a website owner to determine what is a crime," said Judge Wu, overturning the guilty verdicts against Lori Drew.

In the case that grew out of the suicide of Megan Meier, who was tricked on MySpace into believing that a nonexistent boy loved her and left her.

The Instapundit on Twitter is not Instapundit.

Instapundit asks the faux-Instapundit to contact him.

Non-parody impersonation is a violation of Twitter's terms of service. Let Twitter squelch that account for you.

ADDED: Glenn says:

JUST TO BE CLEAR, I don’t think the Instapundit feed on Twitter is any sort of a scam. I think it was just set up by someone trying to help. I just want to upgrade it and need the keys. I figured it would be easier to ask the person who set it up for me first, rather than going through Twitter.

I can see why he'd want to take over the existing feed rather than eliminate it and start over, and while the person who started it may have meant well, I do think Glenn needs to control his brand. I assumed this Twitter feed was his and formed the opinion that it was awfully unimaginative. And as Jason (the commenter) notes, the fake Instapundit was following various Twitterers: "It's like Mr. Reynolds is endorsing them and I wonder if payments are being made for the follows." Well, that would be a scam.

Last night's SNL opening was funny and it could have been funnier.

It's not very good at all until Governor Blagojevich shows up 2 minutes in. Then, it's hilarious, because the guy — who is he? — playing Blago is so good. There's a political correctness issue with the material though, and it would have been much funnier if the actress — who is she? — playing Rachel Maddow had not lacked the skill or the nerve to lay it on thick: