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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

The Fog Of Bore

“This goes a long way of dispelling the notion that people don’t want to go to movies anymore,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-officer tracker Exhibitor Relations. “People aren’t waiting for the DVD on this one. They are going out to see it.”
Yeah…. the mythological notion that you have been part of selling for a year, Paul.
This weekend doesn’t prove anything any more than last weekend did… or the $100 million-plus start for X3… or $194 million for Ice Age: The Meltdown or $89 million for Failure to Launch or $209 milion for Wedding Crashers or $179 million for Hitch, et cetera, et cetera, ET FUCKING CETERA!
I am dead sick of people tap-dancing around Last Year’s Lie because they can’t simply admit that it was NEVER true.
The reality is, this year’s crop has been way too expensive and DVD is not as strong as it was, so even though people are STILL going to the movies in droves, profitability will be more difficult this summer than it was last year for all but a few studios. And profit is all that really matters in the box office derby. And Paulie D knows that. But reporters don’t want to quote that and their editors don’t want them to write that.
I don’t even need a mea culpa. Just stop spreading the shit. Pirates’ opening is a big event. But it is not the start or end of anything other than that movie’s earnings.
ARGH!

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9 Responses to “The Fog Of Bore”

  1. Aladdin Sane says:

    No one’s waiting for DVD for this one because the previous POTC has a lot of goodwill cos of DVD.

  2. wolfgang says:

    David, though I understand what you’re pointing out (and to a degree I think you’re right) isn’t this a kind of apples and oranges comparison?
    As I understand it, Exhibitor Relations covers only box office results, not film profits – or lack thereof.
    If a film is not profitable due to budget overruns or a bad marketing plan, then that’s a problem for the studios, not the exhibitors. Paul Dergarabedian probably wasn’t asked how much PotC:DMC cost ($250 million, which would rank it close to SR) and the subject of films being “way too expensive” isn’t something he’s about to get into.

  3. David Poland says:

    Fair enough, Wolfie… but “The Slump” is still not something we are recovering from… it was a blip based on an outlier… just as Pirates would create be if it grossed more than $400 million domestic or $1 billion worldwide.
    My biggest problem with most current box office analysis is that it sees everything as one long line with statistical repetitions that don’t account for the significant variations.

  4. Sheldon says:

    The cost quoted for Pirates 2 is actually the cost of both films combined…2 and 3.

  5. Direwolf says:

    David, when you reference the slump are you referring to last year’s down year at the box office? If so, what do you mean when you say it “is still not something we are recovering from…it was a blip based on an outlier.” Does this mean that you don;t believe there was a slump or that we are not actually recovering from the slump?
    Thanks.

  6. Chucky in Jersey says:

    Why does the press (AP in particular) keep quoting Paul Dergarabedian? He is a rent-a-quote hack for an industry-controlled company that has a subscription-only website.
    AFAIK theaters report their grosses to Nielsen EDI and Rentrack, not Exhibitor Relations.

  7. David Poland says:

    The slump was grossly exaggerated last year based almost exclusively on Passion of The Christ, which twisted the 2004 numbers… not to mention summer outliers Shrek 2 and F9/11.
    Eliminate two two outlying indies, Passion and Fahrenheit and 2005 was just less than 2 percent behind 2004. Which is about what the annual drop has been every year for a decade.
    There was no major shift. It was an illusion and anyone who was not committed to beating the drum could figure out that out.
    I’ve never said that there is not some shifting happening. But exhibition is very healthy and the main damage to it has been caused by choices to increase revenues in Home Entertainment, not because audience preferences are shifting.
    Making this worse, most reporters are of the age when people go to the movies a whole lot less… something that DVD has made easier. So there has been a rooting interest amongst those reporting on all of this for the system to shift to the mode that would be most convenient for we over 30 types.
    As much money as there is in selling razor blades, you’ll notice that they still sell the razors themselves and don’t just give them away. Hollywood is finally coming around to the reality that exhibition isa neccessity, not a luxury.

  8. Cadavra says:

    But you can’t deny that the gradual decline of “middle-class” movies and the resultant two-tiered structure of fan-boy tentpoles and dreary hard-art has taken its toll on those of us of a certain age. Over the past two or three years, I’ve noticed the number of first-run films I want to see has steadily eroded, and films like PRADA and PRAIRIE have now become exceptions rather than the rule. When people ask me how I can watch so much television (and I mean that literally, as opposed to movies-on-DVD), I tell them it’s because there are fewer films out there right now that interest me.

  9. wolfgang says:

    Sheldon,
    There’s an article by John Horn of the L.A. Times that reports the production and marketing costs of Pirates 2 and 3 at $600 million. It’s buried in the eighth paragraph:
    http://www.discoverkate.com/2006/01/13/hollywood-studios-rewriting-pay-system-for-their-talent/
    I got the $250 million budget figure from BOM.

Quote Unquotesee all »

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