Joel Axler, the co-founded of popular Canadian comedy club Yuk Yuks once told me that the entertainment business is a great one to be in but you need to be prepared to deal with a lot of death. He told me he would cringe every time owner Mark Breslin would call him for fear that it would be news of another death.
I suppose most people have heard of Corey Haim's death by drug overdose by now. He was 38. Haim was an iconic teen star of the 80s who, along with constant collaborator Corey Feldman, who also struggled with drug addiction, made some likable if wholly forgettable films. Haim had been out of the spotlight for a while, being most recently seen in the A&E reality show Two Corey's, which, not surprisingly, I never watched. I'm not really affected or surprised by news of this death, Haim has been out of the spotlight for too long to get nostalgic over and unlike John Hughes, who's work also dominated the 80s, his films have not aged into memorable classics. Still it is always sad to hear of the death of someone much before their time. It seems that these celebrity deaths happen in groups of three. A couple years ago it was Brad Renfro followed by Heath Ledger and Anthony Minghella. This year it has been Brittany Murphy and now Haim. Who will be the third?
In other depressing, albeit more ironic news, the LA Times is reporting that someone was stabbed in the neck during a screening of Shutter Island, a film about an institution for the criminally insane, at the Lancaster Cinemark 22. The story goes that the man was upset by a woman seated close to him who was talking on her cellphone during the film. When he confronted her she left with two other men who returned several minutes later and stabbed him in the neck with a mean thermometer. No word is given on the man's condition except that his wounds are serious and the suspects have not been found. Yikes, what is the world coming to when it's not even safe to go to the theater anymore?
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