The president has created a monster. After Thursday’s “beer summit” with Sgt. James Crowley and Professor Henry Louis Gates, everyone’s going to want to sip some suds on the White House lawn. Especially the celebrities who come to town.
“I want a beer on the White House lawn!” actor Marlon Wayans told us at a screening of his new film, “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra,” Friday night at Andrews Air Force Base.
“Whassup Barack?” he pleaded. “I can have a vodka and tonic; it doesn’t have to be a beer.”
His co-star, Channing Tatum, agreed. He said he told Wayans, who attended Howard University and supported the president’s campaign, “You gotta have some pull. Let’s go have a beer on the White House lawn.”
Tatum and Wayans appeared at the screening with beauties Sienna Miller and Rachel Nichols, who play the movie’s female rivals. And they made quite an entrance. The four stars arrived in a convoy of Humvees, standing in the machine gun turrets atop the vehicles. Then before walking the red carpet, they said their hellos to a group of wounded warriors that the USO had bussed in for the occasion, and signed boxes of G.I. Joe toys.
“You can’t imagine” how different it was from a screening in Los Angeles, said Tatum. “There’s nothing you can say to them to thank them. It’s almost embarrassing to give them toys.”
Tatum said the role wasn’t a leap for him: he had a shaved head for a long time, and “I have a thick neck from playing football for ten years.” He added that had he not gotten a job at a mortgage company after college, he would have strongly considered entering the military.
Wayans, who’s used to appearing in comedies, said it’s much harder to be funny than to be a tough guy. “I can act tough, at least until somebody knocks my ass out,” he said. “But funny is something you’re born with. In this one I get to play a hero with humor.”
Asked what he remembered from the “G.I. Joe” cartoon of his youth, Wayans deadpanned, “I cried over it as a kid, and I still cry.”
Director Stephen Sommers (“The Mummy” movies) brought up one challenge in transitioning from cartoon to live action. “They made 300 cartoons and they never killed anybody,” he said.
So how do you deal with that? “You kill people,” he said, matter-of-factly.
But the statement of the night might have belonged to Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who also produced “Transformers.” When asked to contrast the two cartoons-turned-movies, he said, “‘Transformers’ was more about reality, and this is more about fantasy.”
We think that says it all.
Photos: Carrie Devorah
