Alec Baldwin Too Ashamed to Take Credit for Directing Shortcut to Happiness
When a director decides to go under a pseudonym in the credits of a movie, you might begin to suspect trouble. But when this happens with a movie that was shot in 2001 and is only now hitting theatres in 2007, you can rest assured there were some major problems with it. Such is the strange case of the movie Shortcut to Happiness (also known as The Devil and Daniel Webster, based on the Stephen Vincent Benet novel of the same name). Alec Baldwin directed and produced the film (which also stars Anthony Hopkins, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Dan Aykroyd and Kim Cattrall), but recently decided that he would prefer to be credited under the name Harry Kirkpatrick instead. The film will be released in a few select cities this weekend before going direct to DVD, and apparently all of its stars are now trying to pretend it doesn’t even exist. Jeez, how bad does it have to be for Alec Baldwin to want his name removed from it? I do like the guy (except when he’s screaming obscenities at his kids, of course) but not every actor is cut out to direct films, right? The thing is, I watched the trailer and thought it actually looked kind of funny — granted, mostly in an ironic sense. Still, any movie that stars Jennifer Love Hewitt as Satan can’t be all bad, can it?
Comments (1)
I gotta say, this movie looks stupid, but I didn’t see anything in the trailer that made it look like it didn’t deserve a theatrical release. It looks like it’s on the level of My Super Ex-Girlfriend or Bedazzled. These are not great movies, but people will go to see them. Plus, there is a considerable amount of star power in this thing. Hopkins, Akroyd, Hewitt, Baldwin? Doesn’t that guarantee at least some viewership?
Posted by Rian on July 11th, 2007Leave a Reply