Kid Cudi Gives 'Fright Night' The Music Video Treatment

"Fright Night" doesn't hit theaters for another week still, but that doesn't mean you can't sink your teeth into the vampire thriller a little bit early. Kid Cudi's "No One Believes Me" music video made its grand premiere today, a video that's directly pegged to next week's "Fright Night." Not only does Cudi's latest deal with the vampire menace, it also comes courtesy of filmmaker Craig Gillespie, who directed both the video and the movie. Check out what Cudi has to say about his latest in the video below: "I kind of wrote it to the original 'Fright Night' and I wanted to stay true to the plot and story," Cudi told MTV about "No One Believes Me's" origins. "We were inspired to create the song for the movie, which is something I've never done before. It was a challenge. I didn't want it to be a cheesy, clich type of record. I wanted it to be something people could play and absorb and enjoy without thinking this is for the 'Fright Night' movie." But looking at the "No One Believes Me" video, it's impossible to ignore vampire lore as Cudi walks along a darkened street, passing cars and bedrooms painted red with human blood. Indeed, Cudi himself bears his own fangs at multiple points, and the "character" he plays absolutely has an arc. "The video is true to the format of the film. It looks like a mini movie," said the rapper. "I portray kind of a Charlie like character from the movie, the only difference is I'm a vampire and I don't like it too much. I'm fed up with being this monster. I didn't ask to be this monster. I'm seeing all these murderous things happening around me and I'm unfazed and numbed to it." But in reality, Cudi can relate to the fanged monsters: "They stay up all night, and that's meI never go to sleep at all. When I do sleep, it's day time. I'm always working." "I'm not working on killing people," he added with a laugh, "but I'm working!" Tell us what you think in the comments section and on Twitter!

EMMYS: Why Movies & Miniseries Combined

EMMYS: Movies & Mini-Series Race What doMeryl Streep,Jessica Lange, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Jack Lemmon, Halle Berry, HelenMirren, Maggie Smith, Geoffrey Rush, Holly Hunter, Katharine Hepburn,Jane Fonda, Ingrid Bergman, Joanne Woodward,Laurence Olivier and Vanessa Redgrave (among many others) all have in commonbesides their Oscars?They have alsoeach won an Emmy in the category of Leading Performance in a Movie orMini-Series. Given this distinguished star power, and the prestige factorof the projects they choose to do for television, then why does it increasingly feellike the Movie and Mini-Series categories are suddenly the bastard child of theEmmys primetime telecast? The reason is that, in recent years, the four broadcast networks havebasically abandoned the formats that once shoneso brightly on their air. They also broadcast the Emmys and foot the bill. So they've been grumbling that the Movie and Mini-Series categories are one longcommercial for HBO and that the Academy Of Television Arts & Sciences should downsize them. It was seen as more or less inevitable for a category that has averaged fewer than 10 Emmy submissions annually since 2005 declining to 7 in 2009 and a scant 5 last year and generated a paltry two nominations each of the past two years. So now the miniseries submissions are being consolidated into a single Made-For-TV Movie/Miniseries groupingobliged beginning this year to compete with single-night originals (typically two hours or thereabouts).There is a measure of irony that this is the strongest year for big-budget miniseries submissions since the categorys fate has hung in the balance.Four Mini-Series --HBOs Mildred Pierce,PBS Masterpiece Theatre's Downton Abbey, ReelzChannel'sThe Kennedys, and Starzs Pillars of the Earth -- are competing head-to-head with the HBO docudramas Cinema Verite and Too Big to Fail. John Leverence, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences SVP of awards, asserts that years of thin submissions finally prompted the TV Academys Board of Governors to bring to a vote whether to keep top Mini-series as its own stand-alone designation. When assessing categories to excise, the TV Academy board abides by a so-called Rule of 14, wherein if a category spawns 14 or fewer entries for two consecutive years, a category revision or consolidation is addressed.The miniseries category hadnt had more than 14 submissions since 2004, Leverence told Deadline contributor Ray Richmond, which means its had fewer than five nominees each succeeding year. So in fact, the rules would have allowed for a consolidation as long as five years ago. But the board opted to take a more patient and measured approach to this. It was reviewed annually, and only this year was action taken.It's just something that our board felt needed to be done to keep the category balance fair and equitable. HBO has won the Mini-Series award 7 times since 1998 andtriumphed in the Movie category an astounding 17 of the last 19 years, including the last 6 years running.When HBO loses it's usuallyto a BBC production airing on PBS.The lavish epic miniseries of yore that used to routinely pop up on ABC, NBC,and CBS like Roots, Holocaust, The Winds of War, and War And Remembrance have gone the way of the dinosaur, done in by dwindling attention spans, altered viewing habits, and the erosion of network audiences not to mention radically slashed programming budgets. ABC wasthe last broadcast net to have acontender in the movie race (2008s A Raisin In The Sun) and alsothe lastnet to actually win with Tuesdays WithMorrie backin 2000. CBS was the last tohave a mini in contention with Elvis in 2005 but itsuccumbed to PBSTheLost Prince. HBOs dominance is such that last year it swept all 8categories in the Movies/Mini-Series sector.Todd Haynes, who wrote and directed the acclaimed five-part remake of Mildred Pierce, disagrees with the notion that the miniseries form itself has grown antiquated. The miniseries is changing, but I think still as popular as ever as a form, Haynes told Deadline contributor Ray Richmond. Just look at HBO, which is looking less like a place for fictional drama and more of a place for historical drama and real-life stories. They didnt quite throw around the money on this that they had in the past for a World War II epic, but Mildred Pierce also wasnt cheap. It shows HBO's commitment to the form is still very much there. And I would posit that the proliferation of viewing options has only made people hungrier to watch multi-part events. Masterpiece Theatre executive producer Rebecca Eaton understands that these projects simply arent the moneymakers for the commercial networks that they have been in the past,and the kind of period drama thats often the subject matter is the most expensive kind to do. These are very pricey things to do. But we nonetheless remain fully committed to making them. They are our food and drink, after all," she tells Deadline contributor Ray Richmond.Its what we do, what were known and respected for.Emmys mean a great deal to us and are a great cause for celebration because we dont have the money to campaign for them, she says. When a Masterpiece project wins, its strictly on its merits. That makes for a sweeter win. A big argument against the merger of the categories has been that enormously expensive and ambitious mini-series such as pastwinnersThe Pacific, John Adams, and Band Of Brothers would dwarf any mere two-hour movie forced to compete against them. But it always seemed ill-advised to me that the Academy would even entertain a discussion to relegate what are arguably their most prestigious awards to the back of the room. The TV Academy vehemently denies that network pressure was a factor in thedowngrade. WhileIserved on the Board Of Governors representing writers [from 2005 to 2009]a votewas taken in 2007 to do the exact same thing and it passed.But Academy leaders, apparently fearing too muchchange, forced a second vote at the next meeting and the idea was tabled. Then there was the disastrous attempt to time shiftmost of the movie-mini categoriesby pre-taping them and then truncating thespeeches for air. That was met with a resounding thudin the industry, particularly by writers and directors, and the idea was quickly dropped by producerDon Mischer and the Academy. There wasalso an Academy task forcethat lookedinto all of these thorny issues and seriously discussed moving the entireMovie-Mini awardsinto the overcrowdedCreative Arts Emmys.There was even talk about creating a separateshow entirely devoted to the awarding of Movie and Mini Emmys forbroadcast on HBO or another cable channel. Whetherany of this is still on the table is a big question. But in announcing their new8-year Emmy broadcast deal with the nets, the TV Academy said the organization andthe broadcast network retain the right each year of the deal to review the awards categories and theirpresentation on the show.

Ashton Kutcher Winning Over ' Men Cast & Crew

LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- Ashton Kutcher is quickly making an impression on the set of Two and A Half Men as the CBS sitcom moves on without Charlie Sheen toward its September 19 premiere. The taping went really well, a source on set told People.com. No one mentioned Charlie. Following the first show, Ashton reportedly threw a party for his cast and crew at Los Angeles venue the Troubadour, Us Weekly reported on Tuesday. Ashtons wife, Demi Moore, was reportedly at his side at the event, which occurred last Friday. At the party, the actor was buying drinks, a source told the mag, and his attitude is already helping him win over his workmates. Everybody is loving Ashton on the set, the source said. Hes really coming off like a cool low maintenance guy, and with everything that went down with Charlie everyone is breathing a sigh of relief. In a new cover story for Details magazine, Ashton said he still hasnt met Charlie, but the actor has reached out. I dont know him. Ive never met him in my life. But, you know, he sent me congratulations and wished me well. Via Twitter, Ashton said, likely referring to Charlies Tweets of May 14, when he wished him well. #Winning Congrats to the cast and crewCBS & WB..! My best to @aplusk !! Sheen Tweeted at the time. The show must go on You got the right guy! c. As for why he took the job, the former That 70s Show star said he had been mulling a move back to the small screen for some time. Ive been flirting with going back to TV for a while. When this opportunity came up, I thought to myself, why not? he said Copyright 2011 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Viola Davis on How She Questioned, Then Embraced, The Help

It’s crazy to think that Viola Davis’s Oscar-nominated breakthrough in Doubt came only three short years ago, considering how forcefully the theater and film veteran has emerged as one of the more compelling actresses of her generation. As Aibileen Clark, an unassuming middle-aged maid in 1960s Mississippi in Tate Taylor’s ensemble drama The Help, Davis wears the emotional toll of the Jim Crow South in her gait and gaze, an everywoman living through one of the most difficult times in America’s past. And yet, thanks to the film’s origins and the controversy surrounding her role, Davis nearly balked at taking on the “extraordinary” project. The Help is adapted from author Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 bestseller about three women whose lives intersect in segregated 1960s-era Jackson, Mississippi: Aibileen (Davis), a black maid still mourning the death of her son who pours her love into the white children she nannies; Minny (Octavia Spencer), Aibileen’s friend and fellow maid whose backtalk lands her in trouble with her employers; and Skeeter (Emma Stone), an affluent, young, white recent college graduate whose desire to become a journalist leads her to write a book about the unacknowledged black experience in the volatile South. It’s meaty stuff, but Davis had one big reason for hesitation: The Help was written by a white woman. “I picked up the book and saw that this white woman wrote it and I went, ‘Ugh,’” she recalled to Movieline. “My heart sank.” But Stockett’s novel won Davis over and the themes struck a chord, so when a script came in that did Aibileen’s characterization justice, Davis dove into the project. As a result, Davis and her co-stars (including Spencer, Stone, Jessica Chastain, Cicely Tyson, Allison Janney, Sissy Spacek, and Bryce Dallas Howard as the deliciously malicious “Darth Vader”-socialite antagonist of the film) elevate The Help to something of a modern women’s period film with a historical-social conscience. Movieline spoke with Davis about her trepidations with the film, the ghosts of the past that still linger in the South, and how Tyler Perry represents a very different, but valuable, alternative vision when it comes to portraying the black experience on film. There’s so much affecting material in The Help, but you’ve said that you had hesitations about taking the role at first. What was it that finally drew you in? I just thought that the characters were so fleshed out. I did not see stereotypes. I saw maids, but I didn’t see stereotypes. Stereotypes to me are people where the humanity is not explored, that they become just cardboard cutouts. I didn’t see that. It was a chance for me to really go on a journey with a character… I’ve done August Wilson plays on Broadway — he really put me on the map, August Wilson — and August Wilson is a playwright who decided to chronicle ten decades of African-American life, but he chose to do it by writing about ordinary people. He didn’t write about Ida B. Wells and Martin Luther King, or Malcolm X — he wrote about old, married people, illiterate, garbagemen, ex-slaves. And this is what was fascinating to me about The Help; they were ordinary people who did extraordinary things. That Aibileen starts the movie as someone who basically is dead, has kind of died to herself, and is living, just getting by, and then finds purpose and becomes something quite extraordinary in a very ordinary way in the end. That intrigues me. That always intrigues me. It does gives the film a more universal everywoman way in, because we still see the specific moments in history and the Civil Rights movement happening in the background, but it’s framed in a more relatable way. Absolutely. What did you think initially about The Help? Did you first hear about the book? I heard about the book and I said, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got to read this book,’ and I didn’t know that a white woman wrote it. Nobody said that to me, they just said, ‘The Help — Oh my god, you’ve got to read it.’ Everyone failed to mention it was a white woman, I think, because nobody really wants to talk about race. Every once in a while people do. So I picked up the book and saw that this white woman wrote it and I went, ‘Ugh…’ My heart sank. It’s a common reaction that folks have when they discover that. It’s a feeling, the expectation of whatever. But I have to say, from the very first page, the dialect didn’t turn me off. And what intrigued me was that she captured the humanity of these women so well that I recognized them, and I wondered how she did that. I don’t know how she did it, you know? Maybe that’s the mark of a great artist and a great observer of life. And maybe it’s me who just thinks a white woman can’t write about black women. You know, maybe that’s my thing. But I just thought it was extraordinary. Did you have this experience and revelation about the book before or after the film adaptation was presented to you? Before. So given that you were pleasantly surprised by the book, what was your trepidation about starring in the film? When the filmmakers came to me I said, ‘The screenplay has to be good.’ Because here’s the thing with Aibileen: most of her life happens in stream of consciousness because she’s quiet. That’s very difficult to do. It’s very difficult to play, and it’s very difficult to transcribe. So I didn’t know how that was going to work out. Also, you just feel, as a woman of color, a built-in responsibility to your community. I’m aware that I’m a 21st century woman of color playing a maid, and eyes are on me. I knew the controversy that was going to come with it. So those two things — how it was written and the controversy — made me go, ‘I don’t know.’ What finally turned the tide for you? What turned the tide for me was Aibileen. Aibileen is so… there’s just something about her heart. I think she’s a woman with extraordinary emotional capacity. Sometimes you see how humanity can rise above any kind of cultural ills and hate that a person’s capacity to love and communicate and forgive can be bigger than anything else. That’s what I found with her. I found Aibileen to be a liberated woman. That’s what’s so interesting to me with Skeeter and Aibileen, because Skeeter’s a very modern woman — but so is Aibileen! You don’t recognize it at first but so is she, because she’s a writer and she understands her gift and she understands self-affirmation, that if I tell this young girl from the time that she’s a baby that she’s wonderful — ‘You’re kind, you’re smart, you’re important’ — that when she grows up that’s always going to be instilled in her. That’s liberated! To have those ideas, and to finally stand up to the Darth Vader character and say, ‘You know what, this is who you are, I don’t like it, I’m not going to be a part of it, you’re a godless woman! I’m going to walk out of the known, my comfort zone in life, and I’m going to walk into the unknown. I don’t know where this path is going to take me, but I know I’ve got to go there.’ That’s liberated. And that’s how Aibileen really subverts the stereotype of the submissive maid that people might see at first glance. Absolutely. It’s not, ‘Kiss my behind,’ I’m gonna have my hand on my hips — it’s that, but in a way that is more empowering. If I had a fantasy about Aibileen, because I really don’t know what she’s walking into — she doesn’t know — but if I have a fantasy, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever her purpose is in life, it’s going to be something bigger than herself. I can see her being a civil rights activist. As a matter of fact, Fannie Lou Hamer was my kind of mold for her. You mentioned that you think nobody wants to talk about race now, it’s a difficult subject — did these issues, these topics of conversation, come up on set with your cast mates? Especially considering you have these difficult scenes with Bryce Dallas Howard and Emma Stone, who are not only white but much younger, and probably don’t have as much of a personal connection to that experience? They don’t. Some of the conversations came up, especially between me and Octavia [Spencer], but people were more focused on the characters. Because you know, the civil rights aspect of it is almost just a backdrop and it informs the relationships. So I think that’s what most people focused on, because Bryce and Emma, they’re so young. They don’t have a perspective on that. It’s not even a part of their lives, at all, which is the most beautiful thing. Can I just tell you, I think it’s the most beautiful thing about young people today, it gives me so much hope for the future, that they don’t really recognize race the way my generation does. I mean, Emma is 22. I’m more than twice her age, and as much as people talk about hip-hop and rap and they blast it and they break it down… I remember when I was young, the black and Hispanic kids liked disco and the white kids liked rock and roll, and that’s how we separated. Now, hip-hop is just all over. I love that! You filmed on location in Mississippi, and I’ve spent some time visiting nearby in a lovely town called Oxford. As much as the area has progressed through generations, there’s still the sense that racism and the history of the South still lingers, unspoken. Absolutely. History is too powerful for any of us, even individually. Our past, so much, is what informs us. But yeah, it still lingers there. Absolutely it lingers there. In the murkiness of the Tallahatchie River, where Emmett Till’s body was found in Money, Mississippi — six miles from Greenwood and Baptist Town, which is an all-black community that has an 85 percent unemployment rate, that has maybe one or two high school graduates in the last five years. [Proceeds from a July 30 screening of The Help went to revitalizing the historic neighborhood, which was used for exteriors in the film.] They still live in sharecropper homes, a lot of them. It’s just extreme poverty. And for me, it is just a symptom of the past. It’s something that they kind of sweep under the rug, and there’s just no escaping it, the ghosts of the past. Wow. Someone actually just told me that when they dug up the bodies of [Michael] Schwerner, [Andrew] Goodman, and [James] Chaney back in ‘64 — they were freedom fighters, the basis of Mississippi Burning — when they dug their bodies up, there were 800 bodies that they found in that dumping site. Eight hundred bodies. [Pause] You know, you want to move past things, but as someone said, if you want to have the last word, apologize. And I think an apology first has to come with a sense of acknowledgment of a huge wrongdoing, an acknowledgment of wrong, and that really hasn’t come. Because of that, it’s kind of a dirge; it’s a feeling that you have when you’re there that so affects you and yet you can’t put a finger on it, and yet nobody talks about it. This is The Help, 1961 — this is everyday life. And yet I didn’t find one person in Mississippi that would own up to it. Not one person said, ‘Oh, that was my mother.’ Everyone said, ‘We didn’t know anything about the bathrooms, if we had a maid we always treated her nicely and she could say what she wanted, nobody ever said the word ‘nigger’…’ That’s how they’d like to remember it. At the same time, Southern hospitality was in abundance, and the food, all of that, was beautiful. This is the other side of it. The last time we spoke you were about to have your Tyler Perry film come out. Along the topic of race in film, Perry gets a lot of flack for his perspective on the black experience. How do you weigh and balance doing both of these types of work? Well, I did Madea Goes to Jail — first of all, I loved doing Madea Goes to Jail. I loved working with Tyler Perry. I hadn’t worked in eight months, and the role came along. I have nothing but praise for him, because one thing that I understand now is that at least he’s creating something. Now, people may not agree with what he’s created, but I give him big props in wanting to be in the driver’s seat, of wanting to take control over the images that are out there. The reason that people, especially black people, flock to his films, is because we want to see ourselves! We just want to see ourselves. I mean, listen, we all want to see ourselves. As an Asian-American woman, I completely agree. Yeah! Exactly. And Meryl Streep, Sally Field, Helen Mirren, they’re all my idols and I love them to death. But at some point, you know, it’s still Cicely Tyson that made me want to be an actress because she looked like me. She looked like my mother. You want to see yourself. And as a matter of fact, that is statistically accurate because a lot of women, supposedly at Cal Northridge, don’t seek positions of professor because they don’t see a lot of women in those roles. Because they don’t see it, they don’t seek it. You’ve got to see it, to be able to dream it and believe it for yourself. It’s pretty tremendous, then, that Cicely Tyson was also in The Help. You didn’t share scenes with her, but was it still thrilling to be on the same set? I was like, ‘Wow…’ Was that the first time you’d met her? No, I met her at a party where I was gushing over her. [Laughs] And I grabbed her hand and started rubbing it against my face and kissing it. I mean, I was such a dork! ‘I love you, you’re my idol!’ The Help is in theaters nationwide this Friday.