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
According to Nikki Finke, a $14 million weekend for a movie about acapella singing fronted by Anna Kendrick and Brittany Snow (who hasn’t had a theatrical release in 4 years) is meh.
Actually, saying that ticket sales are irrelevant is like saying it doesn’t matter who has money as long as money is being earned, which is FAR MORE Republican-like.
Of course, there is an even larger problem here. Ignoring the fact that higher ticket sales imply higher box office intake is a very miopic thing for a b.o. analyst to do. Studios should never loose track of how many people see their movies. It’s all too easy to loose track of audiences that way. Which is probably why they choose not to draw too much attention to these figures. It’s too bad that people like DP are all too willing to eat that up.
(Approximately) $49 million opening weekend for Taken 2!? Wow. To see the kind of movie that the likes of Van Damme, Seagal, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Christian Slater, etc. make 3-4 times a year. I mean every Tuesday year round sees the DVD release of a movie like Taken 2. People sure like Liam Neeson, Action Hero.
As far as meh openings…V/H/S deserved better…best anthology since TRICK R TREAT. Wow that is a brutal number for BUTTER, and a surprisingly decent rollout for PAPERBOY given the pretty bad reviews, and sensationalism around the film.
I liked V/H/S but I would have watched it at home had I not seen it at a film fest. Probably something that was always going to do better on VOD/DVD.
Kinda odd that both Butter and The Oranges opened the same weekend — more than a year after they played at the 2011 Toronto Film Festival and, presumably, other fests.
Also worth noting: English Vinglish did much better than either of them, on fewer theaters.
The “Butter” release has to be some kind of contractual obligation thing for the Weinsteins. Here, it opened in just one remote suburban location — and even that wasn’t announced until the Monday before its opening.
Chris, are you in Boston? I didn’t think it was opening locally and then I realized it’s at an arthouse in Newton, Mass.
The same is true here in Milwaukee. It’s playing at an AMC in the burbs and nowhere else.
In Chicago, BUTTER is playing at the “Arboretum of South Barrington.”
I was planning to watch “Butter” on Amazon.com this weekend.
But changed my mind when I saw the price hadn’t dropped to $6.99 the way it did w/ “Bachelorette” and “Arbitrage” once they opened in theaters.
What is “#Hold Your Breath” and why does it have a Twitter hash tag in its title?
Proman… dare I say it again? Bullshit.
The issue of how studios and exhibitors deal with revenue between them is a completely separate issue. When I say “no one cares,” obviously, I am aware that less popcorn and soda is being sold. Exhibitors have a reason to care. And in 15 year, quite literally NO journalist has been as aggressive, consistent, accurate, and thorough about arguing about all things studios have done to take advantage of exhibitors.
But no one makes a movie that focuses on tickets sold.
Moreover, the estimate that is the “tickets sold” stat is so general as to be statistically worthless. They don’t break out 3D bump, the % of tickets sold for 3D movies in 2D, IMAX bump, city-by-city variations in ticket pricing, etc, etc, etc. You – and no one except for people in dark offices of studios… and even then, often not – really know what the ticket sales are and what the average cost per ticket of any given movie is. So you are arguing undeniably false numbers when you talk about tickets sold. Every single time… no matter how well intended you are.
“Studios should never loose track of how many people see their movies. It’s all too easy to loose track of audiences that way.”
Seriously delusional to think that studios have a track of audiences.
Every movie is a new product being sold. There are elements of familiarity. And there are core audiences which studios hope they can bring in as a foundation for certain genres, actor, etc. But they don’t have control of audiences. You see this time after time after time. This one is supposed to be a star so the movie should open to X. There are no elements that make sense for this movie, so they’ll be thrilled to open to X. People who think they can cake walk get walked over in this business. There are a few exceptions, going both ways. But there is no audience track of which to keep hold.
There are a few good uses for ticket sales. Judging the health of the industry or a delivery system is not one of them.
As I noted, if you wanted to deal with the real issues of movie revenues, any box office weaknesses and God knows, f-ing ticket sales, are NOTHING in comparison to the lose of Home Entertainment revenue for the last 3 – 5 years. Occasional theatrical lags are a minor afterthought in comparison.
“best anthology since TRICK R TREAT”
Has there ever been an anthology movie that did REALLY well? If you have to reach back to Creepshow that doesn’t speak well of the form.
And intertwined storyline things like Love Actually don’t count – seriously asking if there’s ever been a movie that was basically a collection of shorts with a wraparound segment that made bank.
“Thanks for the ride, lady!”
CHIEF WOODENHEAD POWER.
On the subject of weird release patterns: The Tall Man with Jessica Biel) opened here in H-Town on a single megaplex screen Friday. But here’s the really weird part: About an hour ago, I saw it’s available in a Redbox kiosk.
Audiences don’t trust studios with their money. Proman is right: saying that ticket sales are irrelevant is like saying it doesn’t matter who has money as long as money is being earned.
I imagine ticket sales provide a metric of how much audiences value your product (whether they need to see it now or can wait until it’s available digitally or whether it demands the premium theatrical, maybe IMAX or 3D, medium).
We all know studios track their films awareness/demand quotients as well as exit polling (how effective the tracking is is another debate), so I say bullshit DP
So going on the basis of tickets sold, one could argue that Madagascar 3 at $216m was more successful than Ted at $218m because it’s no doubt that packed into those tickets sold for Mad3 would be a ton of kiddie prices. And that would actually fly into face of the argument that R rated fare achieving this level of success is actually quite an accomplishment because of its limited audience.
Additionally, the almost $200m difference between Avengers and Dark Knight would be greatly reduced in significance as Avengers had that 3D bump and I believe some Imax as well.
Unless there is some master computer that automatically tabulates and collates tickets by age, type, whether 3D or Imax, matinee or any other permutation that affects ticket prices, grosses remain the most reliable and trackable source of reporting there is.
Stella- yeah there is something about Liam Neeson. He’s a real movie star. People want to watch him. I’m totally a fan of this late career action hero rebirth. I had an inordinately good time at TAKEN, and I remember thinking to myself, if this thing starred Nic Cage I would hate it, but there is something about Neeson kicking ass that is awesome.
Also he should get an Oscar nomination for THE GREY, still the best movie of the year.
I love The Grey and Neeson is a great actor, but I despised Taken. It’s punishingly stupid. Sounds like Taken 2 is even worse.
The Tall Man has been streaming on Netflix for a few weeks now.
Sorry you didn’t like Taken Stella, but Taken 2 is one of the most lazy action movies you can find. Liam Neeson basically sleepwalked through the whole thing, and there were many leaps of logic.
SPOILER ALERT
One involving them driving into the US Embassy compound under gunfire, by the US Embassy, and not even being detained for questioning for at least a couple of hours if not days. The very next scene had Neeson back chasing the bad guys like literally no time had passed.
Not too mention Maggie Grace being able to drive a stick shift Mercedes through the cobbled streets of Istanbul like fucking Bill Hickman even though she was still getting driving lessons.
And imagine basically an army of bad guys who came with revenge on their mind and seemingly not being prepared for anything to go awry. Talk about rolling over and just dying.
END SPOILER
I remember posting that Liam was wasted in Battleship, but Famke Janssen was a colossal waste of talent here as well. They give her nothing to do but be the victim.
At the end of the screening I was approached by a Fox guy and asked to give my thoughts. I don’t think I was very nice to him. Poor guy.
Also at the screening there was the trailer for Die Hard 5. Talk about underwhelming.
The Grey is still probably in my Top 5 for the year, along with End of Watch.
I’m just waiting for an exhibitor to put up a sign saying “Only scrubs watch movies before 6 pm.” Or “Want to watch a matinee? Fine. But after we take your money we’re required to wash our hands.”
@bulldog, wasn’t MAD3 in 3D? So it probably sold fewer tickets after all, though that’s a good illustration of your point. The better point is that MAD3 cost about three times as much as TED, so obviously it wasn’t as successful in the U.S. Worldwide, they’re about even.
If you want to make the argument that tickets sold matters, just substitute it with the fact that big money movies made 25 years ago were much more profitable due to lower production and P&A costs. Revenue has not kept up with rising costs, despite stopgap measures like the DVD/Blu-Ray markets and expanding foreign box office. Eventually, we are going to have a crisis based on revenue, and we’ve already seen that with the failure of smaller studios and dependents in the last decade.
The only times tickets sold should be a metric is for armchair comparisons of all-time grossers. For instance, it is obviously out of line to say AVENGERS was a more successful or bigger movie than GONE WITH THE WIND. Though if anyone were to make that argument, it would be DP.
That seems to be the consensus bulldog. I’ve noticed that a lot of people who liked the first one strongly dislike part 2, but is it really that much worse/different? To me it basically looks like the same movie, with a different location.
Thoughts on the theory that black and white killed Frankenweenie? In light of it being a kids movie- the idea being that kids want to see flashy color movies and not black and white.
As a pretty hard core cineaste I cringe to say this but yes, the idea of a black and white kids’ animation film is such a non-starter to me. No idea why this seemed like the way to go.
I loved “Frankenweenie” and think it looks great, but I agree about the b/w probably being offputting. The peculiar aspect of it is that it seems to indicate it’s a period movie, but it takes place in the present.
With three daughters ages 11,9 & 7, they had minimal interest in Frankenweenie. And because they associate black & white with old stuff, they first thought it was an old cartoon.
I make it a habit of going through movie trailers with them and gauging their responses, so it was very tepid for Frankenweenie, and higher for Hotel Transylvania. Of all the animated films coming down the pike, Croods seemed to register the highest. They already love that female character.
Interestingly, the power of a good song can do wonders for a trailer. Legends was higher than Wreck it Ralph until the new Wreck it trailer included the tune Some Nights by Fun. Now they want to see it even more.
I actually first started that this year with the two Snow White movies and Mirror Mirror registered higher with them 2 to 3.
Frankenweenie was sort of cute but played to the AICN-nostalgia crowd (pretty small audience) rather than to kids. Sure they manage to reference Frankenstein, Godzilla, Gremlins and some rat-monster and vampire movies but it’s such a disjointed, slow and often boring film.
Also Tim Burton has been sort of ruined for me by that MAD TV sketch “Tim Burton’s Secret Formula” the Danny Elfman stuff from that sketch is spot on to the tired/recycled/insipid Frankenweenie score. At one “dramatic” part of the film, Elfman’s score sounds EXACTLY like the parody, “deedly deedly deedly. Bum Bum umm bum. la la la la deedly deedly”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFzLRP8e4vE
Genius! your best yet!
What orifice is this coming out of? “It doesn’t matter who has money as long as money is being earned.’
If you are quoting ticket sales as factual, you are quoting falsely. You don’t know. It is a very broad stat. And while it does matter to exhibitors how many people come through their theaters, it does not matter to the movie’s bottom line… at all.
I would be happy to have detailed conversations about how many people are seeing movies in theaters. But 99% of the people who bring up Tickets Sold are using the stat falsely and lazily. I guess “means nothing” is also false. “Means almost nothing to almost everyone and nothing to anyone outside of exhibition and would only mean something if there was a significantly greater drop-off than we have seen in the last 40 years” would be more fair.
Tickets Sold is one of those stats that feels like it means something. But when you get down to it, it means (see above). And as a foundation for claiming that theatrical is in trouble – oh the irony, the stat means something only to theater owners, but their promotion of it is being used by Dumb Media to attack theatrical – it is truly lazy, stupid shit.
AND in case anyone was confused, the “30” on Hotel Trans was meant to be the %, not the #. And the film didn’t recover quite as well as I expected.
I’m with Movielocke. I think FRANKENWEENIE is very much an “old Hollywood” movie: geared to adults but suitable for kids. I honestly don’t think color would’ve added much more to the gross; either you buy the concept or you don’t.