By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Men in movies in the black: Barry Sonnenfeld
Casual neurotic Barry Sonnenfeld adapts to the modern economies of Hollywood, writes LA Times’ John Horn. The 53-year-old director, writes Horn, “is a complex combination of insecurity and confidence, a tightly wound showman who wants to do well by Hollywood but is among its most refreshingly unguarded critics… There are people in Hollywood who are openly gay. There are people in Hollywood who are openly vegan. Sonnenfeld is openly neurotic.” After Men in Black II, “I had this fear I was never going to direct a movie again… So I thought I better find a TV show and hope it’s a home run and it’s my dowry.” 
… 2002’s “Men in Black II,” grossed a strong $190.4 million in domestic theaters, it seems to have left pretty much everyone (Sonnenfeld, the studio, the producers, the audience) unhappy.” Sonnenfeld tells Horn that his one misfire as a director was not the incomprehensible Wild Wild West, but the second Men in Black. “It was a huge payday for me, but not really… Because that [movie] made me not work for the next 3 1/2 years, in many ways. So if you take the money I was paid on MIB II and divided it by four, it wasn’t all that brilliant of a move.” His newest, RV, cost a reported $50 million rather than the $150 million level he’d grown accustomed to. “I love my family,” Sonnenfeld tells Horn. “But I really like to work. I realized that over the last couple of years of not working how much I missed being in charge. Because when I’m home, I’m not in charge.”
