Jon Katz To Be Played By Jeff Bridges

Robotech_Master writes, "Long-time Slashdot veterans will remember Jon Katz, the editorial writer whose Slashdot articles invariably generated heated controversy. It appears he may have the last laugh; how many of the Slashdot posters who ridiculed him went on to be played by Jeff Bridges in a movie? From the article: 'In his new book, "A Good Dog: The Story of Orson," Katz chronicles the life and death of the lovable but troubled border collie that transformed his life. It continues the story begun in Katz's last book, "A Dog Year," now being made into a movie starring Jeff Bridges as Katz.' Katz critics may get a chuckle out of the plot synopsis for the film: 'A man having a mid-life crisis has his life turned upside down when he takes in a border collie crazier than he is.'" The film should be released in late 2007.

Comments

Good casting

[coolgeek]

A man having a mid-life crisis has his life turned upside down when he takes in a border collie crazier than he is.

Can't think of anyone better than Jeff Bridges to play that role.

Re:Good casting

[s20451]

I hope they get Wilmer Valderrama to play Junis.

Re:Good casting

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they get Wilmer Valderrama to play Junis.

For those with shorter memories, read about Junis in one of Katz' greatest hits "A message from Kabul". Highly recommended in this post-Columbine world.

CowboyNeal

[Anonymous Coward]

They've also announced that CowboyNeal will be played by a CGI'd Andy Serkis.

Re:CowboyNeal

[Gilmoure]

They're using CGI to make a character that looks like Andy Serkis?

If I wear them elsewhere, they chafe.

This dog has fleas

[Scareduck]

I hadn't remembered Katz's journalistic peregrinations here, but I sort of assumed he had gone the way of the dodo. Is he somehow related to the movie's producers?

Re:This dog has fleas

[PCM2]

Indeed, the way of the dodo -- like the American educational system. In its place, a Satanic hellhole of perfidious opporession. The greater question here is not whether Jon Katz is related to the producers... but whether, in this post-9/11 era, any of us can truly say that we are more than a few degrees of separation from the producers ourselves? And what does that say for our crazy, mixed-up culture, when so many of our voices are forever silenced, gagged by forces every bit as insidious as the MPAA itself? I say here's to the new heroes of this tumultuous age, so powerfully exemplified by the likes of Jon Katz and the heart-wrenching experiences to which he was subjected in this, the cruelest of online forums.

Re:This dog has fleas

[zero1101]

oh, THAT guy.

Re:This dog has fleas

[Bertie]

Say what you like about the tenets of the American educational system, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

Re:This dog has fleas

[Custard]

I signed up for an account just so I could block him. If only I had known earlier. I could have had one of those cool four digit numbers.

Roland

[pete-classic]

In other news, Tom Cruise to play Roland Piquepaille.

-Peter

PS: Dude, you're being very un-dude right now.

Re:Roland

[bunions]

Co-starring an irate Corey Feldman as Zonk.

Jon Katz?

[zerocool^]

I thought he was dead!

I've had him blocked in my preferences since 2000, when the feature was introduced. Voices from the hellmouth, indeed. What really happened at columbine (as told by someone who hasn't been a highschool kid in 30 years, and who was a thousand miles from colorado when it happened).

Now, he wrote a book about a cat. I wonder if it's as preachy as his other dribble? I'd guess so if it's a hollywood movie now.

In conclusion, DIAF. All you new slashdotters that missed him, be glad. He used this website as his personal soapbox.

~Wx

Re:Jon Katz?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Seriously though, I think a few things might have changed in thirty fucking years. Like the whole cultural backdrop.

Lets see, civilization has been around for about 6000 years or so. During this time teens:
    - sometimes felt alienated
    - sometimes fell in love
    - sometimes were enslaved or exploited
    - sometimes got sand kicked in their faces
    - sometimes had little to hope for
    - sometimes were harassed by bullies
    - etc, etc, etc

So there are some minor differences, so what? It's not like we're talking about silicon-based lifeforms here. Trying to understand the lives of other people is what historians, anthropologies and authors do. It's their job, and they are often good at it.

The pathetic thing is the tendency for people to think that their situation is special and nobody has ever been in that situation or could even comprehend it. Man, kids griping about how tough it is to be a kid today should be drop-shipped into Bagdad or Sudan to see what they think about tough lives.

Re:Jon Katz?

[bunions]

that's a great point. Maybe we should reflect on the works of Pliny the Elder for a relevant perspective on the Columbine Shootings.

Some people are cat people

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Some people are dog people, and Jon Katz is a dog person despite being named Katz. I don't know if that explains why his version of "mid-life crisis" was "tinfoil hat" theories about Columbine followed by plugging his own books on Slashdot, but if I ever go that crazy, I hope to have friends like Cmdr Taco around to let me promote my own books.

That border collie...

[Angostura]

...really tied the room together, man.

I can understand why Katz liked his dog.

[davmoo]

I can understand why Katz and his dog were so close. What Katz wrote was almost identical to what came out of his dog's rear end.

Re:I can understand why Katz liked his dog.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's so amusing to see a comment mentioning the "rear end" moderated as insightful.

Cut from the write-up as submitted...

[Robotech_Master]

Further amusement comes from this article about the movie's filming, with this quote from the owner of the house used to double for Katz's:

Mercaldi said she was looking forward to seeing the film, with her home of 13 years as a co-star, "especially since they trashed it," she said. "The character was a real slob, so it doesn't look like our house."

And Junis?

[dedazo]

Who plays Junis? Kevin Federline?

I think it was the motherboard.

[khasim]

He had ordered a new PC via mail order. When it was delivered, the cards were loose. So loose that his dog picked up the motherboard in its mouth and walked around the house.

Anyone who has actually assembled a computer will see the flaws in his stories. Or anyone who has owned a dog.

Predictions

[Dirtside]

Don't get me wrong, I think Jeff Bridges is great (Tron atones for a multitude of sins), but in my family we have a saying: "Want your movie to fail? Cast Jeff Bridges."

This dog was stolen

[SoCalChris]

I'm not saying that the dog was living a good life, but he flat out stole the dog, and then wrote an article about how the dog was stolen.

http://www.slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2113564&GT1=6 082

Re:This dog was stolen

[abigor]

No, Junis dug it up out of the sand along with his Commodore 64, and sent the dog to Katz after using his trusty Commodore to purchase food from Pets.com.

Re:This dog was stolen

[Reziac]

Speaking as a professional dog trainer, this sort of crap just fuels every sort of problem people can have with their pets, including the notion that it's okay to just confiscate dogs because you don't like their owners.

Plus he's supporting the "animal rights" loons by his willingness to be part of this outright theft. They're NOT about being good to animals; they're about depriving people of *human* rights. Hmm... they say dogs are equivalent to children, and it's okay to steal a dog if they don't like how it's kept. What if "activists" don't like how you raise your kids, should they be allowed to just take them??

I got along okay with Katz until he was a party to stealing that dog.

I wonder if the original owner knows where his dog is.

As to "Orson", my experience is that if the dog is the least little bit "off", people like Katz make the dog's behaviour vastly worse than it would be in the hands of someone who actually knows what they're doing. And THESE are the people "rescuing" dogs -- often dogs that are psychologically marginal in the first place (there *is* inherited psychosis in dogs).

One has to wonder how much of this is by DESIGN, to cause people to fear their pets and be more willing to give them up. After all, PETA and HSUS both have a stated goal of ELIMINATION OF PET OWNERSHIP.

Odd

[TheRealFixer]

I'm just surprised that in a post-Columbine world, this movie would get made.

Really?

[Greyfox]

I always pictured Katz as more of a Keanu Reeves. If Keanu wasn't available they could always have tried that guy who played the hero in "Team America: World Police". His acting was a little more lifelike and less wooden than Keanu's but he'd still have been a good match (IMHO.)

Every time I've just about forgotten about Katz something comes along to remind me of his existence. Usually a "Whatever happened to Jon Katz" posting on this site. Apparently he was not killed by a pack of wild dingoes as per my previous speculation. So I'd suggest looking forward to that 20 part "Columbine Revisited" story any day now. On the plus side I probably won't see it if it's posted on this site -- I got my account here for the sole purpose of disabling posts from him and as far as I know there's still a setting in the database preventing me from seeing a story by him (If not about him)

Ad Hominem

[autocracy]

Just tell me where we found a Border Collie crazier than Jon Katz...

The Dude abides.

[Onan]

Ah, JonKatz. The sole reason that I finally relented and created a user account, just so I could filter out his inane babbling. Good times, good times.

Re:The Dude abides.

[daveb]

yeah - he was the first, and I think ONLY, person I ever filtered out.

It wasn't just that he talked crap about stuff he doesn't know about (hell this IS slashdot after all). It was the volume of crap which seemed to get a high profile that drove me to figure out what my profile was for.

He was an idiot. I doubt much has changed.

Re:The Dude abides.

[garcia]

He was an idiot. I doubt much has changed.

I swear that Zonk is really Jon Katz. They're both similarly retarded.

Re:The Dude abides.

[Profane MuthaFucka]

That is *precisely* why he started writing about dogs instead of geeks. He found out that geeks are smart, and we don't accept bullshit, lies, or false sentimentality.

Now, imagine a morbidly obese divorced woman confined to her La-Z-Boy for months because her hip replacement is still healing. She has a bag of knitting on the floor, and Oprah Winfrey on the television, playing just a little too loud. In her lap is a little yap of a dog, maybe it's a Yorkie. It could be a Cocker Spaniel too.

When she gets on the Internet, the first thing she does is log into Yahoo Groups and finds the discussion area for Yorkies. Maybe the group moderator named the fucking thing sweet_yorkie_lovers or something. The moderator and everybody in the Yahoo Group is a similarly divorced obese 40-ish woman, and they write stupid shit like "litle Buster just LUVS it when i scrtahc his tumy." (SIC) Someone else replies "LOL".

That's who Katz is writing for now.

Basically Katz is an amazing and cynical opportunist. He THOUGHT he could do his shit over here, because hey, we're socially inept geeks, right? Well that didn't work out too well, so he found a much more, ummmm, less critical audience who eats that shit right up.

Jon Katz is my fucking hero.

Re:The Dude abides.

[ConceptJunkie]

While your comparison is valid, I disagree because in this case, there are specific conservative values that were not being followed. The corruption is endemic to any powerful government, and if you don't think that's the case, then we have nothing to talk about.

To wit: Here are the conservative values that were flouted:

1. Leave the rest of the world alone unless it's in our vital and direct interest. An argument can be made that Bush was acting on this principle, but in retrospect, one has to wonder. Bush also made the mistake of trying to help make the U.N. relevant. The U.N. is corrupt and feckless, and it really doesn't bother me that various countries completely flout its resolutions because it has consistently demonstrated there are no consequences to doing so, so I can't blame them.

2. Small government. 'Nuff said.

3. Enforce existing laws before or rather than making new ones. The border issue is the perfect example.

4. Strive to maintain sovereignty. (There are a number of issues here, but this overlaps with #3 as well).

Reagan, for all his faults, made conservatism work, but no one has practiced it since. By your standard, which is a valid one, liberalism, as defined and practiced in the U.S. has also not only failed, but it cost more too.

The difference here is that unlike American conservatism or European liberalism, communism has never worked anywhere.

First the Simpsons Live Animated, now Dr Katz?

[BubbleSparkxx]

wow - i didn't know that the Dr Katz cartoon had such a big fanbase to warrant a live action movie. My head always hurt after watching it, with all the squiggly lines and all. So will Jeff Bridges be shaving his head or just going to wear a wig?

fear and loathing

[spoonyfork]

Out of suffering comes creativity. You cannot spell painting without pain.

We have suffered much for Jon's art. Must we suffer more?

aaaagh!

[minus_273]

Taco! there is something wrong with slashcode. I blocked these jon katz stories ages ago. Heck i never even read the Junis story on slashdot until someone told me. WTF is this doing on the front page. Where should i submit the bug?

Good karma from Jon

[El_Smack]

I went from 0 to +50 Karma just pointing out the most obvious flaws in his "articles". Good times.

Re:Good karma from Jon

[Moofie]

Come on, that's like kicking puppies that don't have any legs.

Jon Kat'z Style Tangent

[Oriumpor]

Well, there was this one time my sister's 14mo old labrador ran smack into my case, which had the sidepanel off and knocked it's head right into the motherboard. It didn't unseat it, or undo any screws, it bent a couple capacitors but hell it didn't even reboot. I got some bad sectors from the rattling around and eventually had to replace the power supply, HD and blow some dog hair out of the case. The mobo worked for years after that running my SMB shares and print server...

Though I guess, as the parent said, if his dog actually picked the motherboard up, number one he should be taken to jail for animal mistreatment for being so damned negligent, but more importantly he should have called The Guinness Book because he must have the only dog that can operate a screwdriver in the world. Not to mention no reputable shop would ship a mobo detached from the case. The thing would be DOA every time the way they get chucked around in transit. Ugh, which goes back to the first thing I said in this thread: ...I haven't thought of him unless to make reference to a wordy, logically unsound, obnoxious shill.

Re:Cowboy Neal?

[Korin43]

Slashdot: The Movie
-Has almost no plot, everything good about the movie is dependent on the random conversations of the people next to you in the theater.

Re:John Katz

[NDPTAL85]

The only reason why his Hellmouth article was anything near decent is because it covered a national tragedy that was pretty much non-technical in nature. So the Columbine killers played DOOM, big whoop. 30 years ago they would have been playing Dungeons and Dragons....the board game version.

People here on Slashdot hate JonKatz because he's a non-geek. He is practically computer illiterate yet he weighed in on highly technical subjects like he knew first thing about them. Look up his other articles. You'll see.

Re:John Katz

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't resentment. It was disdain. He was a terrible combination of arrogant and ignorant. His complete ignorance, naivety, and even outright stupidity made him post complete and utter nonsense all the time, and his outrageous arrogance made him refuse to accept that he was so frequently wrong, and had no idea about anything he was blathering about.

When someone posts about afgan kids digging up commodore 64s to download and watch videos on to a site for nerds, and then refuses to admit he's full of shit when those nerds call him on it, everyone with two brain cells to rub together complains about his bullshit. The fact that you don't see a problem with his crap speaks volumes about you.

Nerds tend not to like morons, especially morons who insist they know everything and are always right. If you don't know about something, don't make retarded posts on a site about that topic, and then tell the people there that they are wrong and you know everything.

Re:Cowboy Neal?

[eln]

Also, the movie is only 5 minutes long, but it's repeated 25 times.