The Rundown: Let’s Steal The Rock’s Massive Dinosaur Skull

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

The facts are important here, so I am going to start there. The Rock was a guest on the playoff edition of the Manningcast this past Sunday, for the game between the Rams and the Cardinals. That alone is kind of a lot if you think about it. Imagine explaining to someone 20 years ago that the Manning brothers would be hosting a wildly popular simulcast during an NFL playoff game and one of their guests is The Rock, who is now one of the 10 biggest action movie stars in the world. I assume the person from 20 years ago would be blown away by this. Once they got over the thing where time travel exists. Big day for them.

Anyway, more important business here: While Rock was on the Manningcast, while he was discussing playoff football, there was, just sitting there, a massive Tyrannosaurus Rex skull behind him. Here, look.

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 18, 2022

Uproxx’s Robby Kalland — a good man and a tireless investigator — already did some legwork here. The T-Rex is named Stan. The original version of Stan, one of the most complete dinosaur skeletons ever discovered, sold at auction recently for somewhere just north of $30 million. There are also Stan replicas floating around for much more reasonable prices. I choose to believe it’s the real one, though, mostly because it would be funnier (when presented with two equally plausible options, you should always choose the funnier one), but also because it allows me to remind everyone about the time Nicolas Cage outbid Leonardo DiCaprio for a dinosaur skull and then later had to return it to the Mongolian government when he discovered the skull had been stolen. It is maybe my favorite thing ever.

As it turns out, the skull had been stolen from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, and the buyer was Nicolas Cage, an actor who among his dozens of films has starred in a movie franchise about the hunt for rare treasures.

A publicist for Mr. Cage confirmed that he bought the skull from the Beverly Hills gallery I.M. Chait in 2007, according to Reuters. The Department of Homeland Security contacted Mr. Cage about the skull last year, and the actor agreed to turn it over.

Perfect, all of it. I love that dinosaur skull collecting is a thing in Hollywood. If you click that link up there, you’ll see that DiCaprio is at the center of multiple dino Venn diagrams. He got outbid by Cage for the stolen Mongolian one, and when Russell Crowe was selling his dinosaur skull (Russell Crowe owned a dinosaur skull, obviously), the paperwork revealed that he bought it from, you guessed it, Leonardo DiCaprio. I choose to believe they have a secret dinosaur club and have meetings in Leo’s house. You cannot convince me otherwise.

Anyway, not the point. Kind of the point, maybe, but also not. The point is more straightforward: We should steal The Rock’s dinosaur skull. A whole Ocean’s operation. Lasers, wires, misdirection, disguises, all of it. I bet Cage would help. He’s probably still sore about the Mongolia fiasco. It could even be a movie, I guess. Nicolas Cage as himself stealing a dinosaur skull from The Rock, also as himself, to replace the stolen one he had to return to the government of Mongolia, which is again, a real thing that happened. Sucker writes itself.

But it would be more fun to do it in real life. This much is undeniable. Please picture a world where you wake up some morning and open the social media platform of your choice and are greeted with a headline like “TEAM OF HI-TECH THIEVES STEAL THE ROCK’S $30 MILLION DINOSAUR SKULL IN DARING MIDNIGHT HEIST.” Imagine how thrilling that would be. It might honestly be the best day of my life, and that’s before we get to follow up headlines that include phrases like “NICOLAS CAGE SUSPECTED” and “BANKROLLED BY LEONARDO DICAPRIO” and “OUTLINED IN AN INCRIMINATING ARTICLE BY A BLOGGER WHO IS ALSO A SUSPECT.”

The only catch here is that we need a getaway driver. Cage could do it but he’ll be too busy verifying the skull for us. We need someone with experience behind the wheel. Someone who maybe has an ax to grind with The Rock. Someone who, just spitballing here, lives his or her life a quarter-mile at a time…

I need this. I am not joking. The last few years have been so weird. John Wick 4 got delayed until 2023. I need some excitement. I deserve some excitement.

Let’s steal The Rock’s dinosaur skull.

What we have on our hands here is yet another Two Things Can Be True At Once situation. In this case, those things are as follows:

I don’t know. I am strangely at peace with this hypocrisy. Some of that is because the band is all getting back together. (Showrunner Graham Yost is back. Longtime director Michael Dinner is back. Freaking Timothy Olyphant is back as Raylan.) Some of that is because I am a simple man. And some of it is the premise.

The show returns to Givens’ story eight years after he’s left Kentucky and now is based in Miami, balancing life as a marshal and part-time father of a 14-year-old girl. A chance encounter on a Florida highway sends him to Detroit and he crosses paths with Clement Mansell, aka The Oklahoma Wildman, a violent sociopath who’s already slipped through the fingers of Detroit’s finest once and wants to do so again.

This is fine. It’s good. It’s good and fine. Justified was a great show, one of my favorites ever, and one I still return to every now and then even while acknowledging that its “shoot first, ask questions later and maybe never get around to asking questions at all” lead character didn’t age beautifully since it premiered. I’m going to be super happy to re-visit it all with a new story and a new perspective, even — apparently, although let’s not rule it out completely — if it comes without my beloved lawbreaker Boyd Crowder attached. Again, I’m at peace with this hypocrisy. The lessons here are twofold:

This was a good talk.

We’ve talked about the upcoming Hulu series Pam & Tommy. The trailer was an incredible piece of art, in part for reasons relating to stars Lily James and Sebastian Stan looking kind of a lot like Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, in part because it contains a shot of Seth Rogen strumming an automatic weapon like a guitar while wearing pearls and three watches, and in part because… like, all of it. It’s cool and a lot. I love stuff like that.

And it gets better. Variety ran an article this week that previewed the action, and at the risk of spoiling a potentially historic television moment for you, that article contained this passage…

But we’re beating around the bush here. Once viewers catch Episode 2 of “Pam & Tommy,” they’ll all be talking about a specific scene in which Tommy, who had just met Pamela, wonders whether he’s falling in love — and discusses it in a heart-to-heart talk with his penis.

The penis tête-à-tête is inspired by an actual passage in “Tommyland”: In the series, Stan, as Lee, is seen carrying on a conversation with the chatty organ (voiced by actor Jason Mantzoukas)

Perfect. All of it. Especially the part where Tommy Lee’s talking penis is voiced by Jason Mantzoukas. Jason Mantzoukas is the greatest. He’s one of those guys who pops up in everything and makes everything he pops up in a little better. Sometimes a lot better. He has this perpetual chaotic energy that works even when it shouldn’t. This isn’t one of those situations, though. His energy is pretty much ideal for “voice of an extremely famous celebrity penis.” I am so proud of everyone involved here.

Let’s read on.

From a technical perspective, Gillespie describes shooting the scene as “just awkward. You’ve got four puppeteers working with an animatronic penis. And then, how much is too much, and do you start to lose his emotional torment of what’s going on Hopefully it works.”

Meanwhile, Stan says he eventually approached the scene like working with any other acting partner. “By the end of it, I treated it like it was an intimate buddy conversation that one might have when they’re falling in love.”

The ambition on display here is commendable. Like, why not shoot a scene where the damn Winter Soldier talks to a magical penis that is operated by numerous puppeteers and voiced by Rafi from The League Why not just go ahead and try to have it all You are only limited in this life by your own imagination. It’s good to remember that sometimes. It’s even better when the reminder is delivered by a talking penis puppet. I have always said this.

Total badass

pic.twitter.com/n7VYD69Nzo

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) January 20, 2022

Okay. The important thing here is that this lady is fine. She got hit by a car on live television and brushed it off like a champ, explaining — in a fascinating twist I would love to unpack more at some point — that it’s not even the first time she’s been hit by a car. She’s fine. I want to be very clear that I am establishing this so I can move on to the next thing without you yelling at me for being insensitive and brushing over her health. She’s fine. Everything is okay. I’m going to move on now.

Did you hear it Did you hear her slip into her regional accent in the aftermath of the car hitting her Did you hear her say “I gawt ‘it biya corr” in a deeply pronounced suburban Philly accent I did. I clocked it immediately. This is because I’m a maniac who has spent his entire life in Eastern Pennsylvania and has a lot of opinions about the food selection at Wawa. It sounded like home to me. Like “heaume,” if you will.

But I wanted to be sure. I wanted to double-check just in case I was projecting my own biases onto things. So, I poked around a bit and ended up on her Twitter profile. And I looked at her bio…

There are a couple of things worth noting here:

And guess what: This wasn’t the only notable example of the Philly accent making news this week. There was also this, from Abbott Elementary, a good show we discussed last week.