Desmond Mason Movie

I’m a little late on this as Daily Thunder and Deadspin have already weighed in, but any time Desmond Mason so much as does something beyond waking up in the morning, eating three meals, and going to sleep at night it at least deserves a 500-word blog post.

If you haven’t heard yet, Desmond is going to be in a movie called Just Crazy Enough which will be shot exclusively in Oklahoma. He has “a pretty big part” (his words) alongside Chris Kattan and a few other “known actors” (we’ll get to that in a second)…

Kattan’s career since A Night at the Roxbury has unraveled faster than Jermaine Gresham at an elementary school spelling bee. It’s like he and Will Farrell got together after Roxbury and said, “let’s take our careers in totally opposite directions and make people born in the 2000s as confused as possible as to why we ever did a movie together”…and then blew that goal out of the water!

Ferrell is getting basically whatever he wants green-lighted (you saw Land of the Lost trailers, right?) and Kattan is now performing in sub-million dollar budget movies shot in Oklahoma with former NBA players holding “pretty big parts.”

When I found out about this movie and started scouring IMDB for some info on the movie I came up empty (because it’s not on there) before finally coming across this home base (apparently?) for the film.

Note to self: next time you make a web site for a movie starring a former SNL actor, do not put the “Web Site Tonight” Go Daddy logo at the bottom of the page. It is not becoming. Also, don’t use alternating shades of green as the background that look like a golf course threw up all over the page.

Anyway, you can actually invest in the film for a mere $25,000 and a chance at a 10% return if the movie does well. This investment is to help raise $937,500 to pay “three known actors and fair rates to the 75 plus Oklahomans who will be working as cast and crew on this feature film.” Seriously, the site says “three known actors.”

As a general life rule I tend to not purchase and/or view movies that raise capital from locals to bring in “known actors” in an attempt to make a quality film. But maybe that’s just me.

The movie itself is about a bored doctor and crazed mental patient (twins separated at birth) who end up switching lives and learning various lessons before finally meeting at the end of the movie and having a grand celebratory get-together with family. I’m not sure how else to phrase that synopsis to make it sound better than what it is.

Mason will play the role of an mental asylum resident and “answer [questions] with random cliches that mean nothing.” On his preparation for the role he says he “got (accused) a couple of times [of acting in basketball games]. I had no problem telling a ref or a coach that because I didn’t flop. I wasn’t a flopper. Coach (Eddie) Sutton didn’t allow that anyway.” What do you think this, Cameron Indoor?

Also Gottlieb chimed in on Mason’s acting/artistic talents saying, “The guy is, like, good at everything, which is kind of humiliating, really.”

Desmond Mason, renaissance man.

What could actually be humiliating is this movie being made in the first place. I’m sure I’ll be one of the however-many people who stream it on Netflix (it’s not, like, going to theaters or anything, is it?) solely because Desmond is in it. But I also suspect it will be two of the most grueling hours of my young life.

That is unless, you know, there’s a basketball court at the mental facility and executive director Lance McDaniel decides having a bunch of insane dudes compete in a slam dunk contest is a good idea. That might be the only redeeming hypothetical thing about this entire project.