MCN Columnists
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

INTERNATIONAL B.O.

It’s not a joke about the French! The foreign (to America) box office has become equal to or greater in importance to the overall bottom line of the movie business. So, take a gander.
L.A. Confidential finally debuted in France and disappointed, managing no better than third place. The reason? The distributor waited too long to take full advantage of the great Cannes buzz. If you read The Hot Button regularly, you’ll know that it’s just another case of a foreign nation following in the footsteps of America. In poli-sci terms, it’s Mutual Assured Destruction of a very good film.
While we’re talking American bombs, Speed 2: Cruise Control looks like a $100 million-plus overseas hit, already grabbing $99.1 million. It’s especially popular in Thailand where actors with big square heads and no emotional range apparently draw a crowd.
It’s no surprise that Air Force One is taking off in Europe. But it might surprise you to know that, like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Disney’s 1996 animated disappointment at the domestic box office, 1997’s soft-grossing Hercules is now expected to generate more than $200 million thoughout the rest of the world. Something to keep in mind if Fox’s European-tinged Anastasia doesn’t light up the U.S. box office like a Christmas tree.
Finally, some numbers to gag on. Men in Black just passed $250 million overseas, pushing its worldwide figure to almost $500 million. The film is currently setting box office records in Croatia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic where men in black are more dangerous than Tommy Lee and Will could ever be.
Any Europeans out there? Email me!

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon