Ron Howard Tribute Event Thinly Veiled Excuse To Trash Talk Absent Russell Crowe
Russell Crowe was not present at Sunday night's Museum of the Moving Image tribute to Ron Howard, presumably occupied with the exciting rebranding of his none-hit-wonder band, The Ordinary Fear of God (formerly Thirty Odd Foot of Grunt, saving, the $25 million per film actor recently explained, the expense of reprinting his TOFOG merchandise.) Seeing a prime opportunity in this Russelless evening to mock the self-serious superstar free of his glowering stares and the possibility of a knuckleballed dessert fork in the eye, many of the presenters had a field day at Crowe's expense:
Michael Keaton said it was "bad news" that Crowe, who starred in Howard's "Cinderella Man" and "A Beautiful Mind," couldn't be at the Waldorf-Astoria gathering. "The good news is that we don't have to listen to his band. They suck. They're horrible. John McCain came up with the anti-torture bill about them."
Jim Carrey introduced a clip from the Howard-directed "The Grinch" by observing, "A lot of people don't think Ron is tough. But he's done a couple of movies with Russell Crowe and there isn't a mark on him."Then again, Carrey added, "I haven't seen him with his shirt off lately."
Look for Mr. "Fun-having Dick" Carrey to be taken down, Mossad Munich-style, in the Kodak Theater bathrooms at this year's Academy Awards. Crowe doesn't get mad. He gets even. Actually, he gets both.