Frosty Cold Nixina
To answer someone’s question from last week… Frost/Nixon is Ron Howard’s lowest career grosser (leaving out Grand Theft Auto, for which an accurate gross is elusive).. more than $5 million behind the previous low, the 1982 perceived-hit, Night Shift ($21.1m).
Aside from a lovely party the other night, Universal has basically bailed on the film, dumping 2/3 of the screens it added after nomination week. They cut 57% of its screen count this weekend, leading to the estimated 47% drop in gross (a good hold under the circumstance, really). $20 million domestic is not looking likely at this point.
Besides the obvious – the movie should have opened in Peter Morgan territory, early October – I have say that I have never seen Universal miss the mark on a movie this solid with awards play. It’s going to do less than half of what The Queen did in America, which really makes no sense.
I would argue, gently, that political fatigue hurt the get-out-the-audience effort for this film. And when the many who just decided not to bother with this film end up seeing it on their TV, they will wonder how they missed it.
Even Munich did $47 million!
In 1993, In The Name of the Father did $25 million.
You have to go all the way back to 1983, to Tender Mercies, to find a Universal BP nominee that did a number this low ($8.4m).
Frost/Nixon is not a game changer… but it is a really solid piece of drama, with strong comedy moments and insight into the human condition as much as politics, with great performances and material for which Ron Howard found just the right tone. It really is a shame that more people didn’t see it.
“I would argue, gently, that political fatigue hurt the get-out-the-audience effort for this film.”
Then, also gently, I would retort that it was political irrelevance that hurt the effort, not political fatigue. Nixon’s story here, good or not so good, doesn’t have mass appeal anymore. The historical animus against him had long ago adopted Bush and Cheney as it’s new focal point. The country’s emotional connections to Watergate have faded to a great degree; and the dividing line between those who think of “Deep Throat” as a political figure before a sexual act is getting shifted aside by the latter’s contingent every year.
In “The Queen” you had a somewhat recent event with appeal to the Anglophile audience and a rare non-tabloid look behind the scenes of the monarchy, not to mention Helen Mirren, who’s a bigger draw than Frank Langella. And “Munich” had an awesome set-up, bolstered by some action movie/thriller crowd appeal, regardless of what people thought of the resulting film.
Hal: right on. This generation has moved past Nixon even though we just had to deal with his peeps over the last eight years. So he’s relevant and not relevant at the same time.
That was very well put, Hallick. Big props.
Still coming back to political fatique I have to ask how you would explain the performance of Oliver’s Stone’s “W” which, while it outgrossed “Frost/Nixon”, didn’t really excite the movie going public that much either?
You said, “the historical animus against him had long ago adopted Bush and Cheney as it’s new focal point.” In terms of attendance “W” probably did similar to Stone’s own “Nixon”, which grossed $13.6 million back in ’95 (not that much and way less than its $44 million budget – at least they had a good sense to lower it for “W”.). Kind of makes you wonder if outside of Watergate Nixon was really all that “sexy” a political figure at all?
I think both factors are at play here.
That’s in addition to some others – did people really understand the importance of Frost whose name was given equal weight in the title? Was it really worth it to go out to theaters to watch a movie about a TV interview instead of waiting to watch it on their TV?
The Munich comparison, really didn’t make much sense though and not just because it’s a completely different type of a movie. I always felt that it did posses sufficient broad appeal could have done a lot better had they gone wider with it and didn’t pretend to hide through limited marketing (even if that ultimately hurt its Academy Awards chances). It did, after all, make $130 million worldwide.
Hate to admit it, because I really liked the movie, but I think Hallick and IO raise valid points. After all, Dick didn’t gross very much, either.
I actually thought it was Howard’s best movie.
Not to play Chucky in Jersey and talk anecdotally about local L.A. suburb multiplexes to the exclusion of readers from other places, but did notice in the Times newspaper ad for it, “Frost” and even (especially) “Milk” have been effectively shuffled off to the boonies here in the film capital of the world. Sure, they’re still in the big houses like the Arclight where all the guild members go… but in the Valley, Burbank, Pasadena area… pretty much either GONE completely or relegated to the three-row room at the arthouse.
The 30 Burbank screens, in particular, generally hold on to stuff so long I’m pretty sure “House Bunny” is still taking up a screen, so saying a lot that two Oscar contenders were in and out of there before the cermony. (Then again, L.A. multiplexes generally cater to gel-head teenagers and emos, so not a huge surprise NIXON wasn’t on their must-see queue.)
No one’s gonna acknowledge DP’s Tone-Loc pun?
I always prefered Young MC myself.
“Best friend Harry
Has a brother Larry
and five days from now he’s gonna marry…”
GENIUS.
As loathed as I am to admit, I think it was Lex who made a very good point a long time ago about all these older filmmakers who are still fixated on telling stories from their generation that we’ve seen time and time again. All well and good, but what does something like Frost/Nixon show us that isn’t easily available on Wikipedia?
What does it show us, that the DVDs does not show us? Heck. The basic facts of the matter of this: teenagers go see movies in droves. The older people who go see movies occassionally, would go and see this film, but most of them fucking hate Nixon.
So this leaves a generation that not only lack pop culture knowledge from just five years ago, but historic knowledge from 10 years ago. Let alone 30+ years ago.
Thus leaving an very little to know audience for this film. Some kids may know Nixon more from Futurama, then his time as president. It’s just the state of things with this generation. They do not give a damn, and it shows.
Looks like IO was right:
They should’ve nominated THE BAT.
Lex; when The Reader beats Mumbai. Most people will be as pissed off as I was back on nomination day. Except Anghus: who has to be double nickels, married to Beth Ono, and now goes by the name “HAMPTONS HOWIE.”
Oops. I forgot. The Oscars do not mean anything, they do not help put money in MCN’s coffers, and they are a totally pointless award not worthy of 20 weeks of columns. I stand corrected, and apologize for any misunderstanding.
I am also perplexed as to why the JAZZ SINGER is on at 3 in the fucking morning CST? I mean, yeah, it’s not exactly in line with the times, but it’s THE FUCKING JAZZ SINGER! It should not be relegated to the Bob and Carol Ted and Alice time slot. If you want to teach the kids something about film. You might as well show it when they can WATCH IT!
This would have to revolve around their schedules, and not involve some reality show they like being on. It’s still the Jazz Singer, the first talkie, and deserves a proper slot because of that alone.
The Reader IS going to beat Mumbai.
I’m sticking to it. Reader FTW.
TAKE IT TO THE BANK.
Lex: here’s hoping! If the Academy has to go down. I want them to go down like Nero using pyrotechnics! BURN BABY! BURN! ALL THE WAY TO THE GROUND! TURN IT ALL TO CINDERS! LAY IT ALL TO WASTE! WHHHHHHHHHATTTTTTTTTT A RUSSSSSSSSSHHH!!!!
DP not that it has much to do with the points raised but I’d say that both GTA and NIGHTSHIFT were bigger boxoffice successes than F/N in terms of admissions.
Well Young MC gave Tone Loc WILD THING for FREE. Without it he wouldn’t have had a career. That dude had sweet lyrical genius.
“You can get killed walkin’ your DOGGY!”
I can get killed for telling you this shit
But MANHUNTER beats HEAT.
It’s Tricky-Dicky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that’s right on time. It’s Tricky-Dicky.
I think this is all Universal’s fault. They never should have gone with a limited release, which hurts the film for viewers outside of major cities.
Living in the Northeast, this was at the top of my must see list. The only problem was, that was two months ago.
They waited so long to go wide with it that, by the time it did, even I had lost interest in it. When it finally opened two weeks ago, there were two or three other films opening the same week that I decided it was close enough to the DVD release that I could wait a little longer to see it.
These limited release strategies don’t work. The cast appears on all the talk shows, which gets people to want to see it right away. They check the paper, see it isn’t playing, and move on to the next film. Each week three or four new films open, with a new cast making the rounds and week by week, no matter how critically acclaimed the film, it gets forgotten.
To wait weeks, even months before releasing the film, those cast members aren’t making a second round of THE TODAY SHOW. Instead, audiences have forgotten about the film.
Moviezzz: I agree completely, but have been told I am a ninny for feeling this way. The thing of it is: LIMITED RELEASING DOES NOT WORK IN AN INCREASINGLY 24/7 WORLD! It’s hard to get people to care for something that they see advertised in November, then do not see until January.
Until this changes… this is how things will go. Sure there are Junos from time to time, but most of the time it’s a F/N situation.
I wonder if they regret not casting Warren Beatty now?
JBD: You are correct. Very, very correct.
Love Manhunter… doesn’t beat Heat. Thief comes closer. Heat has a weakness in the DeNiro romance, but the other relationship work is spectacular. And the bank heist is a cinematic landmark.
And no, Burma, I don’t think they regret not casting Beatty. It’s not the movie. It’s the marketing. And Beatty wouldn’t have changed that. I would say that at least 85% of people I know who have seen the film feel really good about the film. But many just didn’t go.
I think the rollout thing is real… though I also think that limited to wide can work – see: Gran Torino – but that when you roll out, you have to roll out like it’s opening weekend, not like you already shot your wad.
I don’t really buy that Nixon couldn’t be sold. But I do think that Nixon was a more interesting idea before Bush was over than after. I think both F/N and Milk suffered at the box office for the choice, which was not inherently wrong, to push until after the election was over. The thinking was that the election would eat the films. But the reality was that by the time this very intensely watched election was over, people were exhausted by the release of emotional energy over months and months. The interest in ambiguity was sated… and the interest in “get off of lawn” and “fat guy falling down in a mall” and “girls just wanna get laid and then get called the next day” was heightened.
DP – I’ll give you your THIEF (the fetishization of his rituals was profound and original) but out of the three HEAT is the most flawed. That romance derails the film for me. It’s clunky, false and belongs on television. The heist on the big screen was a landmark in sound design and coverage for sure.
MANHUNTER broke new ground on many levels, whereas HEAT refined and exaggerated Mann’s techniques. You have to give MANHUNTER the edge for being the more impressive film historically speaking.
How crazy is it to be debating about three films that are all so fucking good. I wish this problem came up more often.
Actually I thought that the marketing was well done. As someone who was in grade school when this happened I could really care less about Frost or Nixon. Frank and Opie didn’t draw me in. I could care less about seeing the play, but the critical response and the ads did get me in. I thought that it was like a well made HBO movie nothing that couldn’t wait for video. I don’t think it was best pic worthy and I think that it made what it deserved. I happy that Slumdog and The Reader will out gross it.
To me, Heat was the longest episode of Crime Story Mann ever made.
And speaking of TV: Anyone else remember the episode of Miami Vice where Mann borrowed heavily from Manhunter to drive Crockett inceasingly closer to the edge while he “identified” with a home invader? No kidding: Don Johnson was never better in any other episode of the show.
Also: I’m very proud to announce that when I couldn’t get my WiFi working in Austin last night, I didn’t throw a fit, or threaten to go home, or sink into a black pit of despair. Rather, I simply attended the festivities for the 10th anniversary of Office Space, then drove back to my motel, opened a bottle of Merlot, watched a couple of episodes of Frasier, then went to bed.
I was thoroughly underwhelmed (good acting but overall so what feel) by the pic and not at all surprised audiences didn’t brother w/it. Unlike Quiz Show, it didn’t capture the hurt or betrayal the scandal levied in the lives of individuals, which served as a mircrocosm of the American public. Unlike A Few Good Men, the battle of getting Nixon to essentially admit he issued a code red offered little in terms of impact beyond the players w/their necks on the line and even a meh who cares to those who did. Everything was based on commentary. People having to explain to us that Frost was getting his butt handed to him. We the audience didn’t have the thrill of Bacon & Nicholson turning Cruise et al into punk li’l b*tches before our eyes. As much as I’d like to give David Frost his props, there was no need for anything beyond a 1 HR PBS special on the matter. (Beyond the doc series itself).
I would’ve thought a political thriller about something like Nixon sending troops in Cambodia, even w/limited to no battle scenes, may’ve spawned greater interest. Although Thirteen Days, that Cuban Missile crisis flick w/Kevin Costner, didn’t exactly kill it at the b.o. either.
Joe, I’m glad you made it through that dark night of the soul intact…
U botched the adverts and the actual release.
“Frost/Nixon” expanded to NYC suburbs on Xmas Day yet U didn’t choose its theaters wisely. The UA East Hampton on Long Island had the film for 3 weeks and then dropped it; the Clairidge Cinema, a 6-screen artyplex in Montclair NJ, never played the film.
Of course when the trailer and one-sheet reference “The English Patient” people get the hint that somebody’s trying to buy awards.
Christian: Well, the merlot helped.
What on earth is the possible connection between Frost/Nixon and The English Patient?
David Frost loses his thumbs halfway through the flick, and Naveen Andrews randomly walks through in the background?
“Secrets and Lies” was nominated for Best Picture of 1996 (really one of the best inclusions among any of the Academy’s annual final five) and grossed $13.4 million total, much less than your cited previous low. Granted, Mike Leigh’s film never had the fundamental commercial prospects of an intense tete-
“What on earth is the possible connection between Frost/Nixon and The English Patient?”
I’ve been pouring over various versions of both one-sheets in Google and I am at a fucking loss for an answer to that question. Chucky! Enlighten us!
The low for Universal, Rodrigo.
To paraphrase A-Rod: Chucky needs to enlighten himself about his weird Oscar/awards/poster/quote-whoring/Weinstein mania before he can enlighten us about it.
I saw the play of Frost / Nixon in London when it opened and it was amazing. The movie might be good, but is nothing compared to the live performances – and seemed a bit flat after them. Also, what did they do to Oliver Platt – he’s normally amazing.