In a World...

Is this what Troy Smith eventually has to looked forward to?

An item that most probably missed in this morning’s paper (although it wasn’t in the sports pages so we understand why it was missed) said that Eddie George (yes, that Eddie George) is following a trail blazed first by another notable Heisman trophy winner, O.J. Simpson.

No, Eddie isn’t in trouble with the law, at least as far as we can tell. He’s just in trouble with good taste. According to a blurb buried in the entertainment section, Eddie has gone Hollywood, sort of. Perpetual Hollywood partygoer, fashion victim and serial drunk Tara Reid has been signed to star in and executive produce an “indie” romantic comedy called “Honestly.” But to Buckeye fans everywhere, the more notable mention was that Eddie has been signed to “co-star” in this project.

Before venturing into the nature of his new project, a quick recap of Eddie’s film career is in order. Yes, we said “career.” It seems that “Honestly” will be Eddie’s second feature film. A search of movie database website www.imdb.com revealed that Eddie played the character “Jones” in a low-budget straight-to-video martial arts film called “Into the Sun.” The movie and we use that term loosely, was made specifically for the Japanese film market and appeared under the name “Yakuza.” The tagline of this thriller is “Only One Man Can Stop the Yakuza.” Given that his specialty was offense and not defense, we doubt that George was that one man but anything’s possible. We haven’t seen the movie.

Notably, Eddie wasn’t the star of “Yakuza”. That honor went to the bloated Steven Segal, who also co-wrote it, and we use that term loosely as well. It was directed by some English bloke named “Mink” whose previous career was as a gopher at Disney Studios. It’s probably not giving much away to tell you that the plot of this R-rated thriller revolves around the assassination of Tokyo’s governor by Yakuza members and the one man who can stop their treachery: Steven Segal. Think Jack Bauer and 24 but with less plausibility and more continuity problems.

It’s not clear exactly what Eddie’s role was in this movie but we’re guessing that since Segal is, like, 173 years old, he’s surrounded by an entourage, one of which includes a scowling ex-football player who was probably drummed out of “the league” for being “too violent.” The guess, too, is that there are the gratuitous scenes where Eddie escapes from the Yakuza either with a head fake or a chop block or possibly an illegal use of hands. We couldn’t get the trailer to download from the IMDB web site, naturally, but we’re pretty sure it starts like this: “In a world…”

We’re not sure how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences missed honoring this film, but consider yourself warned if you happen across this at the local Blockbuster. It supposedly includes frequent profanity and gory violence (both givens) as well as swordplay and nudity, but hopefully not at the same time.

We’d say that Eddie’s latest project holds more promise but that likely would be damning with feint praise. In the first place, it’s doubtful that Tara Reid can stay sober long enough to actually finish the movie. And even if she can, since she’s also supposedly the executive producer, it too is likely to contain generous amounts of frequent profanity, gory violence and nude swordplay. So from that vantage point it doesn’t seem like much of a step forward.

But it is a romantic comedy and if you’re like us, when we think of romantic comedy our mind immediately goes to Tara Reid and Eddie George. According to the article, Reid plays a private eye (“doctor” was just too much of a stretch) who works as a temptress to test the fidelity of philandering husbands. Hilarity and mayhem ensue. Filming is scheduled to begin this summer in Los Angeles. Given what is inevitably a low-budget, our guess is that filming concludes two days letter and you’ll be able to rent the film a few weeks after that.

We don’t begrudge Eddie’s right to forge a career post-football. We just wonder if this is what his Mom had in mind when she made him promise that he’d get his degree. Still, there is hope for Eddie. He’s just 14 films and several bit parts on bad television shows before he equals the career of another, equally talented thespian/ex-football player, Brian Bosworth.