Hollywood has a message for you: that man laying on the sidewalk, the one wearing pants caked in his own shit, he could be a genius. He could be a wounded soul who has been beaten down by the world but who has vast stores of wisdom and knowledge and plain old horse sense to share with us. This was always what I thought when I saw that one homeless dude on Broadway whacking off with his nine inch black anaconda in the middle of the day – what could I learn from this man?
Despite the fact that America showed that it cares as little for the homeless in their movie theaters as they do in their streets with the release and sinking of Resurrecting the Champ, playing a filthy hobo is often a quick trip to the Kodak Theater on Oscar night (also: playing retards and slaves, such as Buck The Wonder Slave. If only that character had also been homeless, Kit Ramsey could have had his Oscar). With that in mind, Jamie Foxx has signed on to play a homeless dude who is… gasp!… a skillful violinist in The Soloist (Jeremy brought you this story right here).
Hoping to maybe hitch a ride with Jamie to the Oscars is Robert Downey Jr, who has signed on to play the real life reporter for the LA Times who found this smelly prodigy. Steve Lopez wrote a series of columns about this guy, and has written a book about him, which will be published next spring. This all sounds a touch exploitative, but I’m sure the homeless dude got himself a studio apartment out of it all or something.
By the way, let me make an observation about the homeless in Los Angeles: motherfuckers are bold. They will lie down and sleep most anywhere; in New York homeless people tended to stick to alleys and doorways and corners, places where they could have their backs up against something. In LA I see the homeless sleeping on people’s lawns in Beverly Hills. And I haven’t even been down to Skid Row yet, either.