Hasta La Gadget!

LeBron James is great, just not that great.

That seems to be the familiar refrain from NBA analyst and Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, who once again denied James a place among the highest immortals of the game.

In a visit with Bill Simmons on HBO’s “Any Given Wednesday,” Barkley listed his top five NBA players of all-time — Michael Jordan, Oscar Robertson, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain — and said James would never crack the list because his top five will never change. He’s publicly left James out of his top five before.

We figure James is probably blocking the noise like:

But …

That Barkley won’t even consider including LBJ is perplexing. Perhaps Barkley had his eyes closed while James carried the Cavaliers on his giant shoulders to the championship to earn a third NBA Finals MVP award.

Barkley did allow that James belongs in the top 10, but, nope, certainly not in the top five; ergo, not in the top three either.

“I’m not going to just move him past Tim Duncan and Kobe. They didn’t just die,” Barkley said. “But I will say this about LeBron James: I’ve never seen a man coming out of high school who has handled the success, been a great player, never got in a stitch of trouble. It’s probably been the greatest career ever.”

H/T For The Win

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— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

In 2007’s “Bee Movie,” Jerry Seinfeld voices an anthropomorphic bee that falls in love with a human woman. Seinfeld’s character, Barry B. Benson, tries to sue the human race for exploiting bees for their honey, with Renée Zellweger’s character — the love interest, who is not a bee — helping him with the case. The actor John Goodman voices the menacing opposition lawyer, Layton T. Montgomery.

For simultaneously baffling and obvious reasons, the movie has earned a cult following online. A popular prank in 2015 involved Facebook users posting the whole script to their profiles, causing mobile readers to have to scroll through to the end if they wanted to see the next post in their feeds. You can now even buy a T-shirt with the entire “Bee Movie” script printed on the front. 

Earlier this month, Seinfeld finally acknowledged the resurgence in popularity of his animated movie during a Reddit AMA. To the disappointment of “Bee Movie” fans, the comedian said he probably wouldn’t make a sequel. “I considered it this spring for a solid six hours,” wrote Seinfeld. “I actually did consider it, but then I realized it would make ‘Bee Movie 1’ less iconic.”

A fair, but frustrating response.

So with an opportunity to get another take from Goodman while he promoted his more recent movie, “10 Cloverfield Lane,” The Huffington Post asked the actor if he was aware of what “Bee Movie” has become.

“No, I didn’t know that,” said Goodman. “Good for Jerry.”

Another fair, but frustrating response.

After listening to a quick summarization of how the movie has gained a second wave in popularity from Tumblr, Goodman added, “Oh good. Great for Jerry.”

Well, at least he now knows what the internet has done.

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Sports movies are almost always elaborate metaphors for overcoming adversity. The new baseball movie “The Phenom” is no different, but it strips some of the genre’s clichés. There’s no ra-ra finale where the team finally succeeds, which means there’s no training montage set to empowering music, no locker-room reflections and no tough-loving coaches. There is, however, a thoughtful mentor and a troubled father. In this case, they’re played by Paul Giamatti and Ethan Hawke, respectively, with Johnny Simmons (“Jennifer’s Body,” “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”) portraying the titular baseball pitcher who is struggling with feelings of isolation despite being one of the country’s top prospects. 

Ahead of the movie’s limited release this Friday, The Huffington Post sat down with Giamatti and Hawke to discuss sports movies, stage fright, typecasting and why they have major respect for soap-opera actors.

Are you sports-movie fans? They’re very hit and miss. But I know you have another one coming up, Paul.

Giamatti: Do I have another one coming up?

A “Battle of the Sexes” movie, right? 

Giamatti: I had no idea. Am I in something called “Battle of the Sexes”?

Hawke: Are you?

Giamatti: Oh, that! I don’t know if that’s actually happening. I think that was about Bobby Riggs. Yeah, I don’t know what ever happened with that.

Hawke: Has there been a great tennis movie?

Giamatti: Uh, not that I can think of.

Hawke: There’s been some good tennis short stories. I remember Kerouac has a short story about tennis that’s really good. No, what am I saying? His short is about baseball, and David Foster Wallace has the great tennis stuff.

Giamatti: I did a good high school wrestling movie. That’s a good movie, actually. It’s called “Win Win.”

Hawke: I saw that movie. That’s a terrific movie.

Giamatti: It’s Tom McCarthy, the guy who did “Spotlight.” It’s hard to avoid sports movies, but as you said, there aren’t necessarily a whole lot of good ones.

Hawke: The trouble is it’s a little like the horror genre. People will see a bad horror movie. It’s not that there aren’t also good movies, but because people enjoy sports so much, they will sometimes just go see the movie because they want to watch the sport.

Giamatti: If you press the button somewhat accurately, it’ll satisfy them.

Hawke: It’s like, OK, you know if you see a sports movie, you’re gonna get that feeling at the end that you have when your team wins the Super Bowl. And I want that feeling, so I’m going to go see the movie. The genius of “Rocky” was that it misdirected that. You had that feeling even when they lost.

Giamatti: The genre of boxing movies, I like that. I watched a lot of those. I feel like most of the good ones are boxing movies.

Look at “Creed” last year. 

Giamatti: “Creed” is a really good movie.

Hawke: I really like “Creed.” Or even, what was the one with Nick Nolte? The UFC movie was pretty interesting, “Warrior.” That kind of hand-to-hand combat lends itself to cinema well.

Giamatti: It’s stripped-down drama.

Hawke: Baseball is interesting because it’s so photogenic in a certain way because it’s the field and the pitcher. It’s a little like bullfighter and the bull. It’s such a mental aspect to the game, and that’s what interests me about this movie. Paul said this, but in a lot of ways this movie could have been about a young piano player. It’s so much more about what it’s like to have a talent and what it’s like to outshine your family.

We’re so used to getting that final showdown on the field. “The Phenom” doesn’t have that, which is nice.

Giamatti: I love that this movie doesn’t do that. All that matters really is what’s happening off the field. What’s on the field is not really that important.

Hawke: It’s a great idea because really what matters is what’s happening in his head, and once what’s happening in his head is right, who cares if he wins the game?

Giamatti: It doesn’t matter!

Hawke: He probably will win it, but you get the sense that he’s not going to freak out. And I’ve had different moments in my life as a stage actor where panic can set in, and when panic comes to rest on your shoulders, you don’t know what brought it there, but it makes life miserable. It’s so nice when it leaves, and it obviously comes because of something going on inside you. 

Does it hit you in the middle of a performance or right before you go onstage?

Hawke: I’m talking about the whole month around it. It’s a haze of anxiety. It can sometimes not come, but once it’s in your dressing and in your psychic space, man …

Giamatti: Have you ever had that kind of real stage fright? I don’t think I’ve had real stage fright.

Hawke: I have.

Giamatti: But like, “I can’t go out there, you’re going to have to shove me out there”?

Hawke: Yeah.

Giamatti: I don’t think I’ve had that. I’ve had bad anxiety. I’ve had terrible anxiety. I’ve had near panic attack kind of thing, but I don’t think I’ve ever had what people say to me is genuine stage fright, which is just like, “If I go out there, I’m going to fucking die.” What did you do?

Hawke: I kind of made a documentary about it. That’s what prompted me to make “Seymour: An Introduction,” because I met this pianist and they have it a lot worse than we do. For me, it was shocking. A little bit like “The Phenom,” I was 18 when “Dead Poets Society” came out. I was jettisoned to the top of my class before I knew what I was doing. Once the hubris of youth wears off, it creates this haze of “Maybe I wasn’t put together right. Maybe I didn’t build this ship right.”

Giamatti: There are pieces missing.

Hawke: Yeah, I don’t know that I’ve been taught everything, and now I’m at the age where I’m not supposed to be promising anymore. I’m supposed to have arrived, and I don’t feel that I’ve arrived. That’s the little door that opens, the “I’m not good enough.” If you give that a lot of room, it can make a lot of noise.

Are you able to shut that door?

Hawke: If you ever see this doc about this piano player, Seymour Bernstein, what he talks about is that trying to shut the door is actually the problem. It’s the truth. You’re not good enough, and you have a lot of work today. That’s the whole point. Once you have that humility, your work can go to the next level. The only problem with fear and anxiety, really, is pretending you don’t have it. Then you create a war inside yourself, but if you can say, “This anxiety, I’m up all night and I’m going to work on my lines and I’ll be better prepared,” or, “I’m going to take that voice class and I’ll study this extra thing and I’m going to be prepared because then I’ve taken responsibility for myself.” And if it doesn’t go well, that’s up to fate. I’m not in charge of the size of my gift, and I’m not in charge of my talent. I’m in charge of my effort. And then you can relax. Then you get some experience under your belt and things start to happen by themselves.

Paul, you’ve become known for playing some vicious guys.

Hawke: And all the women you play are so kind [laughs].

Giamatti: One of the more interesting things about this movie was to go, “Oh, Ethan gets to play the guy that I would normally play.” And he’s awesome in it. It was one of the reasons I wanted to do it. I mean, the script was wonderful to begin with, but I was like, “Oh, I get to play a nice person. I don’t ever get to play nice people.”

Was there a moment you realized that all the scripts hitting your desk borrowed those same notes? You played cruel music managers in both “Love & Mercy” and “Straight Outta Compton” last year, for example.

Giamatti: Not all of them, but people definitely like to see me be a fucking bastard. It’s like, OK, that’s fine. And they’re always interesting characters, but it’s nice to play someone who’s not necessarily going after somebody.

Hawke: When I was younger, I was always being cast in the ingénue part, and that’s a snoozefest.

Giamatti: Of course it is.

Hawke: This problem is far more interesting.

Giamatti: It’s not even a problem. And what’s interesting is I’ve gone through such funny periods. I went through a period where I only played priests. I played priest after priest. Then I went through a weird period where I only played doctors. But it was very nice to say I can just be a nice guy.

Hawke: What was good for me was that, when I got the script, Paul was already attached, so I could read the script imagining you. It changes the script a lot, actually. You read it and you go, “Oh, Paul will do this great.” Because most scripts can go either way. You just have to visualize it, like, “Oh, well, if he’s playing that note, then I can play this note.”

How do you handle it when you’re struggling with the way your co-stars approach a scene?

Hawke: I would say this: Over and over again, acting is an interpretive art, and if the quality of the writing isn’t there, you can’t manufacture it. Sometimes, like this script, I read it, and I was moved. That’s very hard to do, to put life inside something and touch other people.

Giamatti: There’s also a thing when you’re reading it where you feel at ease while you take it in. Your mind isn’t going, “How the fuck am I going to make that work?” With this thing, it’s holding you up — you don’t have to hold it up.

Hawke: Every year they have the Oscars, and I actually feel like those awards should go to someone who was on an episode of “Matlock.”

Giamatti: Absolutely.

Hawke: It’s so much harder. When you’re working with talented people and quality writing on a quality project, you’d be a fool to muck it up.

Giamatti: I feel that way about soap operas. If anyone anywhere can be at all decent on a soap opera, they’re amazing because that shit is really hard to do.

Hawke: When you’re working with Steven Spielberg and some fancy-pants cinematographer and some Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, are you nuts?

Giamatti: Or it’s the guy who has to come in and play the bartender for the day across from somebody. That’s really fucking hard to do.

Hawke: I remember I had this little part I got in a movie with Jeremy Irons. He had the big showy part, and I had like four lines. 

Giamatti: The worst!

Hawke: He would have these long monologues, and I’d have a line like “Yeah, but my mom doesn’t think so,” or something like that. I finally said to him, “I keep tanking this. You do this amazing work and it’s all left to me.” He was so generous. He was like, “Listen, I’m so glad I’m not you in this scene.” You actually can’t excel; you can only screw up.

What about superhero movies that are driven by green screens?

Giamatti: I don’t see a lot of those. I don’t know. It sounds like some of them are good. 

Hawke: You know, if people would stop going to them, they’d stop making them. It’s so frustrating to me to hear everybody talking about how bad they are, but they all keep going. Each one is a bigger hit than the other one, and as long as they keep making money and as long as we keep talking about them, they’re going to go. The victory of this movie is that it got made at all. It’s such a simple, humble movie, and yet I do feel like it will make a lot of people happy to hear their own voice inside this movie.

“The Phenom” opens in limited release Friday. 

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When it comes to reducing gun violence in America, our leaders are playing a deadly game of small ball. And everyday Americans are losing badly.

This year alone, including Orlando, more than 6,200 Americans have lost their lives due to gun violence. It is a staggering toll as we near the half way mark for 2016. An incalculable loss for every family and community struck.

And yet, the United States Congress is fighting to debate and vote on only the most incremental reforms to reduce gun violence.

While enhanced background checks, closing gun show loopholes, and imposing “no fly – no buy” provisions are important, these steps represent a fraction of what we must do as a society to curb gun violence in our communities.

First and foremost, we must stop allowing ISIS-inspired “lone wolves” to buy combat assault weapons so easily here at home.

In 1994, Congress passed an assault weapons ban that limited high capacity magazines to 10 bullets or less. The ban on combat assault weapons also made it illegal to manufacture any semiautomatic rifle with a pistol grip and a bayonet mount, preventing certain models of new AR-15s and AK-47s from entering the marketplace.

Mass shootings decreased when the assault weapons ban became law, but Congress — under pressure from the NRA — allowed the ban to expire in 2004.

In 2013, following the horrific massacre of innocent school kids at Sandy Hook, we banned the sale of combat assault weapons in Maryland. It took principled and persistent leadership to assemble a coalition of the reasonable. But we did it as a State and that’s exactly what we must do as a nation today.

While reasonable Americans in both parties support “no-fly, no buy”, the NRA has once again used their influences over our Congress to block even this smallest of steps. The law of our land remains no law in our land when it comes to combat assault weapons sales. No enhanced background checks, no fingerprint licensing provision for handgun purchasers, no assault weapons ban, no limit on magazine capacity.

It is time for Congress to listen to the vast majority of Americans instead of taking its orders from gun manufacturers and the National Rifle Association.

Our own failure to enact reasonable gun violence prevention laws is now being used against Americans by ISIS-inspired lone wolves.

The U.S. Military Academy’s director of terrorism studies notes that U.S. terrorists have turned to guns, because explosives and explosive materials are monitored more attentively by the government than gun sales. American al-Qaeda operative Adam Gadahn emphasized this troubling reality in a video to American jihadists, telling them a fully automatic assault weapon could be purchased at a gun show without a background check or ID card.

His chilling question to them: “What are you waiting for?”

The same question might be asked of us — what are we waiting for? How long will we sit idly by and allow terrorists and psychopaths to use our inaction against us?

The evidence at this point is overwhelming. Whatever the various motives, the carnage in cities and neighborhoods across America cannot be denied. The fact that ISIS inspired lone wolves are now using our failure to act to kill American citizens on American soil can no longer be ignored.

We must reinstate the combat assault weapons ban and we must limit magazine capacities to 10 rounds or less. American lives are at stake.

Martin O’Malley is former Mayor of Baltimore and Governor of Maryland. He ran for president in 2016. He served as Co-chair, Homeland Security Task Force, National Governor’s Association 2007-2014 and Co-chair, Homeland Security Committee, U.S. Conference of Mayors 2001-2006.

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