Hot Button Archive for November, 1997
In & Out, Brad Pitt, Robert Downey, Jr.
IN: New Line is putting all its eggs in one movie, teaming Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker and The Full Monty co-star Tom Wilkinson (who played Gerald) in Rush Hour, to be directed by Money Talks director Brett Ratner. The storyline? The Chinese ambassador’s daughter is kidnapped in Los Angeles. Wilkinson plays the ambassador’s right-hand man. But is Jackie Chan the ambassador? I don’t know, but it wreaks of Sonny Bono, doesn’t it? And I’m guessing that we’ll be seeing, as soon as a trailer hits theaters, Chris Tucker’s eyes bulging out of his head as the foxy Chinese daughter of the ambassador shows off her legs. We are the world.
OUT: Brad Pitt just dropped out of New Line’s attempt at a western, Custer Marching to Valhalla, from Dances With Wolves scribe Michael Blake. It marks the end of his longest personal relationship, having been attached to the project since 1995. “The National Perspirer” says that Brad’s split left New Line pregnant and heartbroken with a $3 million price tag for the story rights. “The Scar” tabloid says it was New Line that wanted out, returning to their original pre-Ted Turner love of lower-budget filmmaking. “The Weekly World Screws” re-printed the nude photos of Brad.
IN & OUT: Robert Downey Jr., Heather Graham and Natasha Wagner have teamed up to earn the dreaded NC-17 rating for “a scene of explicit sexuality.” The film, Two Guys and a Guy, is written and directed by infamously sexist pig James Toback, who also teamed with Downey (and producer Warren Beatty) for 1987’s The Pick Up Artist. Graham, also who stars as porn actress Rollergirl in Boogie Nights, is becoming a regular on the hotbod highway, paying off on her claim that she “wants to do out there things.” No word on whether Downey will be paroled for the premiere.
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The Big Noise Starts this Weekend with Starship Troopers
Twenty-five million is my estimate. A big number, but doable. Even surpassable. With all the people going to genre movies (see slots three, five and seven), the stage is set for this one, by far the biggest, brashest entry in the category since Men In Black last July. There are some worries about Bean stealing some of Troopers’ opening thunder, but I see these as separate audiences. I think Bean will open around $10 million, with longer legs than Troopers, but a far less explosive impact.
The numbers amongst the holdovers should make them look a bit like leftovers. With 30 percent drops, look for I Know What You Did Last Summer to pass the $50 million mark with $6.6 million, Red Corner to take fourth with $5.2 million, and The Devil’s Advocate to hit fifth, also with about $5.2 million.
Boogie Nights should drop modestly (gambling on you guys again), about 20 percent to $3.7 million for sixth place. Seven Years In Tibet finally hits the seventh slot with a 30 percent drop to $2.3 million. Fairy Tale: A Running Gag should drop about 25 percent to $2.2 million for eighth spot. Kiss The Girls may finally get slashed with a 40 percent drop to $2.1 million for ninth. And Gattaca may actually pass the magical $10 million mark adding another $1.6 million to it’s take for tenth.
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Brando and Marquez Team Up
The notoriously widescreen Marlon Brando has seduced notoriously picky novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez into allowing The Grandfather Godfather to adapt his novel, Autumn of the Patriarch, as a movie. In turn, Brando says that this film, which is centered around an aging Latin American dictator, will be his last. If the film does get made, one can only hope that it’s great, sweetening the first consummated Hollywood experience of the much-beloved Marquez, and allowing Brando to exit with the grace that his skill as an actor deserves. Good luck, gentlemen.
Hugh Grant‘s set for Mickey Blue Eyes, a romantic comedy about a high-flying Manhattan art dealer whose nuptials are threatened by his fiance’s father’s day job as a Mafioso. Grant is co-producing the film with his permanent fiance, Elizabeth Hurley, who would likely agree that for a relationship to be so endangered, something would have to really suck.
What can you say about a project that people have been trying to finance for four years, but whose massive budget left Paul Verhoeven making Showgirls and Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Mr. Freeze costume? Verhoeven is saying, “Let’s try again.” With Starship Troopers about to hit theaters with some major thunder, the RoboCop/Basic Instinct director is anxious to get his Arnold-attached Crusades back in the pipeline. One little problem, Verhoeven told Variety, “It can’t be made for less than Titanic.” That’s before you get ready for the protests from the religious right. If you think they were upset when the current “Greatest Filmmaker Alive,” Martin Scorsese, made The Last Temptation of Christ, just wait until they see this trailer: “From The Director Of Showgirls and That Bug Movie, Arnold wants the Grail and he’s killing Jews by the thousands to get it! (image of Arnold’s rippled, sword-carrying torso, ready to hack someone to death) “Cwucafy you? It’s naught dat kind a Cwusade!” (Arnold swings the blade, cut to black on the sound of the decapitation and then a card, reading, “Coming for The Cup, Christmas 1999”).
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Titanic Finally Set Sail in Japan
With a triumph for Jim Cameron and an even bigger one for Paramount and 20th Century Fox publicity. For Cameron, it was the wildly enthusiastic reaction of the crowd to the film. For the studios, it was their success in getting a handle on the estimates of overwhelming production costs that have been bandied about by the media. Back while the film was shooting, estimates ran up to $300 million. But, Entertainment Weekly serves up a warm, wet smoochy, Cameron-driven cover story on Titanic with the $200 million tag and BOOM!, the media falls in line. Remember when you read this stuff — those of us who write it tend to be a bunch of bleating sheep. But in the end, who really cares? No one goes to the theater to see a budget. They go to see movies that they’ll like and, apparently, Titanic is one of those. Congratulations to all.
Another test of the media’s honor is the Roman Polanski story. He’s coming back and is getting away with child molestation. Has he paid his price by way of exile? Perhaps. But the tendency in the Hollywood culture is to forgive the “indiscretions” of its own. Indiscretions are anything that doesn’t cost me money. I don’t know whether it’s better, or even more disgusting, that the precocious object of Polanski’s lust has sold her story to “Inside Edition.” Samantha Geimer will appear in a two-parter just in time for November sweeps. Makes you want to take a shower just reading it, huh?
The inalterably pleasant Yasmine Bleeth is set for her first feature film, It Came From the Sky. She plays a mysterious stranger who is either a con woman or a real-life angel, Non-Charlie Division. She starts the film after completing her latest TV movie, The Lake, a science-fiction thriller about a small town that does a reverse Stepford as locals turn evil after being sucked into the water. Get it? Shawn Weatherly turns into Erika Elaniak who turns into Nicole Eggert who turns into Pam Anderson who turns into Yasmine Bleeth who turns into Gena Lee Nolin who turns into Donna D’Errico. They all play the same character, don’t they?
Have some of your own indiscretions? Well, I’m not a priest, but I’ll listen to your confessions. Email me.
Grease is the Word at Paramount These Days
Producer Alan Carr, the most popular caftan wearer ever, aside from our own Andy Jones, is back on the lot, prepping the Grease 20th Anniversary Star Wars-like re-launch, in which more than 1,500 screens will play the remastered version on the smash hit. Unlike Star Wars, there’s no extra footage highlighting new advances, like Olivia Newton-John being able to act. This could be Paramount’s one shot at cashing in on its status as The Studio of The ’70s after making little noise with re-masters of The Godfather and Chinatown. Remember, Paramount is now owned by MTV parent Viacom, so any film that requires an attention span may be out of their range.
Meanwhile, Carr, also in re-release, has finally recovered from the 1989 Academy Awards he produced. (Remember Rob Lowe and Snow White? Disney did. They sued the Academy for copyright infringement, eventually settling.) You’ve got to respect the guy. Carr was a Hollywood Queen when Queens weren’t cool and has since survived years of dialysis, multiple hip surgeries and back injuries, not to mention the ’70s themselves. And as Sondheim says, he’s still here.
Speaking of large men, has Willard Scott finally found the right movie vehicle? I hope not. Twentieth Century Fox has paid low-to-mid-six figures for Five Day Forecast, a movie pitch about an experiment that brings evil weather systems normally found only on other planets to earth. I guess they ran out of earthbound weather disasters. “Hail Storm: The Movie,” “Smog Alert” and “Seasonal Showers of Death” were all rejected by the studio. Al Roker will pull on the tights and cape to fight the interplanetary storms. Just kidding. But now that image is in your head. Mmwwwahhh-ha-ha-ha!
What, you think I’m a natural disaster? Email’s the word…
Boogie Nights Opens at Number Four
Ouch! I know you can’t see it in my photos, but I am bleeding profusely from the nose after getting tagged hard by Boogie Nights‘ number four opening with just $5.1 million! I guess Middle America wasn’t ready for a film about porn that didn’t include porn. And I wish I could blame it on New Line being a small studio, but their magnificent Money Talks opened with $10.65 million just weeks ago! Argh! The one salvation here is that the picture should end up doing so little business (my guess: under $30 million total domestic) that if New Line plays its cards right, it could become the Oscars’ “Little Movie That Could” for 1997.
Meanwhile, the unstoppable slasher films continue to do big box office. I Know What You Did Last Summer camped out at number one for the third week, dropping just 20 percent to $10 million. Devil’s Advocate, where Al Pacino slashes the scenery with his tongue before chewing it up real good, dropped a modest 25 percent to summon another $7.6 million for third place. And Kiss The Girls slashed-n-smooched its way to fifth place with another $3.6 million, dropping just 30 percent in week five.
Another surprise, though not as unpleasant, was the success of Red Corner. I guess the China visit worked for the film — which got roundly panned by the critics — rather than against it. Pretty Man Richard Gere got a liberal $8.3 million to take second place. Also, Switchback, Paramount’s quiet entry into the All Hallows Eve thriller market, stayed quieter than I thought it might, pulling in just $3 million for seventh place.
The rest of the Top Ten is made up of holdovers, all of which I came pretty close to predicting. Big deal! I’m already bleeding. Anyway, Brad was glad that Seven Years in Tibet took in another $3.4 million in its fourth week for sixth place. Fairy Tale: A Forgotten Release, grabbed another $2.9 million while the grabbing was good for eighth. Gattaca ran out of puns — $2.7 million for ninth. And In & Out took tenth with $1.8 million.
Check out what my predictions were on Friday. Email is your way of showing me you feel my pain. Or maybe you just want to rub it in.
Legal Wranglings
Here’s a plotline: A movie producer learns a lesson about life after his child’s wish that he can’t litigate for two years comes true. Nah! Never’ll happen! Aaron Russo, who produced a half a dozen hits in the ’80s, is suing Imagine Entertainment for $25 million, claiming that producer Brian Grazer stole his idea for the Jim Carrey smash, Liar, Liar. If the suit goes to court, Russo will have produced more lawsuits (at least one) in the last five years than movies (zero). He has, however, found time to run for the Governorship of Nevada. Aha! He wanted to be a big league politician. And in the land of casino gambling, no less. Call Jim Carrey! I smell a sequel!
Never slowed by lawsuits, Imagine is gearing up behind director/co-owner Ron Howard to make Ed TV, a movie that may finally offer a character stupid enough for Matthew McConaughey to bring to life realistically. The story is about a kind of MTV’s “The Real World” spin-off (another lawsuit to come) in which a video store employee named Ed agrees to have his life filmed 24/7 by a cable network. (also sounds like the premise of The Truman Show — another lawsuit!) Wackiness ensues.
If you’re depressed because your lawsuit fails, try calling Dial-A-Wife. It’s not only a real business (no, I don’t have the number), but it’s soon to be a major motion picture. Twentieth Century Fox purchased the rights to a New Yorker article about the business which sends women to perform wifely duties without any emotional connection (in show business, that’s just called marriage). They also bought “life rights” to Beth Berg, the proprietor of the business. Fox left her payment on the bedside table and Ms. Berg took it without emotion.
Ever had an idea for a movie that was stolen by a big, bad studio? Let me know via email.
