Saving private Premieres

Frankly, I hate to be writing this story. I like the publicity department at DreamWorks; I am deeply enamored of the company’s unique way of separating quality filmmaking from the pure hype that has become so much a part of getting an audience, and I look forward to working with them in the future. But they screwed up this time. First, Newsweek backdoored them by releasing their Saving Private Ryan cover story two weeks ahead of time, which is kind of a pun because the problem with the timing was that it precluded a Time magazine cover story. One can’t really blame DreamWorks for that, though you don’t often see magazines risking the wrath of the more-established studios.
Then, Tuesday night, the Saving Private Ryan premiere hit the beach without “Entertainment Tonight.” Why? Because DreamWorks had given the “No. 1” camera spot to “Access Hollywood,” presumably in a deal that came along with special “Access Hollywood” coverage of the event. Or, perhaps someone was unhappy with E.T. and wanted to put them in their place. Regardless of why, this had to be a conscious choice by Terry Press and Co. made long before the event took place.
I’m sure it never occurred to the studio that E.T. would actually skip the event in a fit of pique. Especially since it’s a Paramount movie. And also because TV viewers would have no way of knowing who had the “No. 1” spot and who got the No. 2. But skip it, E.T. did (“respect must be paid”) and DreamWorks (who really doesn’t need any more hype for this sure-bet double-digit Oscar-nominee film) lost a day of free promo from the highest rated of the entertainment “news” shows.
NEW LOSS: I feel that I should disclose that roughcut.com did not boycott the premiere. We weren’t invited because DreamWorks made an exclusive deal with a competing Internet site. The truth is that the other site would have covered the event in the exact same way had they not had an exclusive (though I am sure they claimed otherwise, and I’m sure we will do the same when we try to get an exclusive from DreamWorks or another studio in the future). We on the Net, like the TV shows, will go after whatever story (or premiere) will get us the most viewers. The old image of the Internet as a free-for-all that rewarded content over corporation has begun to devolve into being just another form of media.
Fortunately for me, roughcut.com is here, because The Hot Button would be subject to daily censoring at any of the other major entertainment websites. Here, they let me tell the truth. At least, the truth as I see it. (And for the record, even as a member of the Time Warner family, roughcut.com has some very idealistic folks at TNT to thank for our ongoing existence, not the corporate superstructure. I know that it’s very hard for Netizens to see us as an underdog site given that we are a product of the biggest cable network in the world, but that’s what we are. And we try harder.)
SPRING FORWARD, MOVE BACK: Try to come up with the worst idea for a feature film ever. Then go lower. The Jerry Springer Movie is for real. It’s happening. They have a multi-million dollar play-or-pay deal with Spinger, and now they’ve hired a director. This reminds me of The Gong Show Movie, which ended up as a maudlin and stupid effort indeed. Also, none too successful, though it did give a feature credit to Jaye P. Morgan and Gary Mule Deer. The video may end up selling, depending on how ugly this movie gets, but as a feature, I think we should all take the Donnie Brasco position. Fugeddaboudit.
SUPERSTAR ANONYMOUS: Another interesting film idea is Detox, which Sylvester Stallone just signed up for as picture two of his three-picture deal at Universal. It’s a story about a cop who lands in 12-step (For violence-based trauma. Heaven forbid Stallone play drunk and not be able to stop slurring after recovery). and ends up seeing his fellow aspirants-to-mental-health dying in not-so anonymous ways. I’m guessing they die in ways related to the 12 steps. That way, when they hit a marketing glitch, they can change the title to Twelve and add some sepia-tone and scary music to the trailer. It’s Stallone’s first film since CopLand, so just like Arnold Schwarzennegger, one of the world’s “most bankable actors” will end up with a two-year hiatus between films. Who was it that said, “The times, they are a changing,” Bob or Jakob Dylan?
SPIN WATCH: In a lovely piece of spin, Variety is now towing Universal’s line that Stallone only got $17.5 million for the first (Daylight) of his commitment to three. Unfortunately, this is after Stallone’s $20 million per film in the multi-picture deal, which was one of the first things his former agent Ron Meyer did after becoming a top honcho at the U, has become the longest-talked-about salary figure in the last three years. The question here is who is spinning and why. Do “they” think the $2.5 million differential will make people feel that Universal has become a more responsible company? Or is someone putting Sly in his place?
READERS OF THE DAY: From Rich B.: “I want to see BASEketball simply because the previews are hilarious, and if they can approach that for an hour-and-a-half, it should be great. On the other hand, the preview for MAFIA! doesn’t impress me at all, and if I hear that little girl screech ‘Run, florist, run’ one more time I might do something disturbingly violent — but not in a cartoonish ZAZ way.”
From Randal N.: “MAFIA! will win hands down!! MAFIA!”

Readers Rant and Rave

COLUMNIST OF THE DAY: I tried to get riled up about something for today, but it was no use. I’m too happy with the industry this week. Zorro, Mary and Pvt. Ryan have entertained and me and given me hope despite soft box office numbers. Besides, I’ve got to save up my bile for the first episode of my Yahoo! Chat, which starts this Friday at 5:00 p.m. ET/2:00 p.m. PT at chat.yahoo.com. In the meantime, there are some readers who have opinions that are, shall we say, a little controversial. First, a tongue-in-cheek defense of CG showdowns. Then, I found the few people who have something bad to say about The Mask of Zorro, There’s Something About Mary and my (and the vast majority of your) beloved Out of Sight. Finally, a take on Saving Private Ryan‘s rating. The following are not necessarily (or often, remotely) the opinion of this columnist, roughcut.com or most of you. But that’s why you’ll enjoy reading them, right?
From Jason: “Dave, How can you be sick of weekly CG showdowns? Come on!!!! That is practically the best show of the summer. These companies spend millions and millions of dollars on movies, marked the you-know-what out of them, and then send them into an instant death. How can you not love all the big execs saying how happy they are with a lower than expected opening on Monday? They know exactly what they are getting into, yet week after week, year after year, they never quit. They all think their movie will do Titanic business, yet what they do not realize is that when Titanic was doing amazing business every week, there were NO OTHER FILMS WORTHY OF BEATING IT!!! It played clear through January and February, which are graveyards, and the modest films in March came close but never beat it. I personally love it when a huge budget movie bombs. I do not know why, but it is just really, really funny to me.”
From Dale M.R.: “OK. There IS Something About Mary. It stinks. The comedy is based on the single concept of schadenfreude — literally, the joy we take from the pain of others. Nothing wrong with that; it is as old as laughter. It’s why Wile E. Coyote is hilarious when he eats yet another Acme explosive device and winds up in a hole on the canyon floor. The problem here is that the Farrelly Bros. rest this movie on the slender shoulders of Ben Stiller who is subjected to an endless excess of misfortunes, humiliations and outrages. Stiller is neither much of an actor nor enjoyable to watch. His hapless geek-of-a-character fails the jokes from the get-go. We don’t care what happens to this jerk, and without the sympathy of the audience, schadenfreude is all pain and no joy. Unless you find sadism attractive. Matt Dillon makes a believable creep but, to be as charitable as possible, he is not an actor blessed with a comedic touch. Chris Elliott is both unbelievable and unfunny. On the other hand, or ear in this movie, Cameron Diaz is all she is cracked up to be. She is the one lotus rising out of this odoriferous sewer of a movie. Otherwise reasonable critics, to their eternal shame, make this dreck out to be in a league with such low-class, sophomoric and wonderful gross-me-out-with-a-spoon movies like Animal House or Airplane or even Naked Gun. There’s Something About Mary is as funny as the humor impaired Bobby and Peter Farrelly‘s other misguided movies. Pathetic.”
From GWHunting: “In my newspaper yesterday, they had the box office report, and it was saying how despite Zorro’s reviews, the best since The Truman Show, it didn’t do terribly well. The best reviews since The Truman Show?! Give me a break. I guess we forgot about Out of Sight, There’s Something About Mary, Buffalo 66, The Opposite of Sex and more. The day I waste seven more bucks on that piece of s–t will be the day I hang myself off of a ledge.”
From (a different) David: “I saw Out of Sight with a bunch of people, and no one liked it. As we were walking out of the theater, it seemed like the audience kept muttering the same thing: ‘That movie sucked, but since it got such great reviews, it must just be me.’ I heard that about 20 times. I think that’s why it’s done poorly at the box office. If it’s as great as you say, then it would have at least SOME legs to it. But it just died. The problem for me was that after each forward scene, there was a flashback scene and usually that flashback scene was really irrelevant to the story. Since the narrative was done so poorly, that left the movie to be what it really was: a character study. Which is perfectly fine except none of the characters seemed real or all that interesting. (Except for Steve Zahn’s character.) Let me give you a prime example of what irked me the most. Right at the start when Selena (sorry, I don’t know her real name) is kidnapped in the trunk by George Clooney, she (or he) says something to the effect, ‘The idea that a woman would instantly fall in love with her captor is what made me not believe Three Days of the Condor.’ Then, instantly she is in love with him. It’s a shorthand for the writer (or director) saying, ‘I can’t think of a way to show them falling in love, so instead I’ll make a cute reference to another movie that did the same thing (and better) and you’ll just have to accept it.’ So, instead of being original or creative, they basically cop out. But in a cultural-reference Tarantino way that’s supposed to suggest they really ARE clever. (Which they weren’t.) In addition, the director kept, for lack of a better phrase, showing off. The supposedly brilliant sex scene with Jennifer Lopez (Hey! I remembered her name!) and George Clooney was a showcase of his editing and directing talents. However, it COMPLETELY (for about the 10th time during the film) completely took me out of the story. I kept saying, ‘Well, at least we know Soderbergh can EDIT! It’s a good music video but its dull as all hell.’
“Most importantly, the movie was deadly dull. The best example: When I saw it the night it came out in a packed theater, people around me were actually snoring! Sleeping in the theater! The theater was completely quiet (except for the people talking amongst themselves about how boring it was.) Then, near the end, you have a moment that was funny. It was unexpected. It was interesting. It made sense. The audience enjoyed it. Unfortunately, it was virtually the only moment like that in the entire movie. But, it was the exception that proved the rule — that the filmmakers were capable of making something entertaining, and the film itself could have been good. To me, it just seemed warmed-over Tarantino. It also left me emotionally cold. Have you noticed that that is indeed Soderbergh’s directorial style though? Unfortunately, he chooses material where this style just isn’t suited for, like Out of Sight, for example, which to me seems like it should have been a more passionate, intense movie.”
From Ryan: “Dave, Why are people complaining about a rating for Saving Private Ryan? Since when has violence been considered too graphic? The Mask of Zorro contained a head floating in a jar, a decapitation, people living in squalor, and various impalements, shootings and stabbings. Yet this film only warranted a PG-13. Had Antonio Banderas been naked — if only for a brief second, or Catherine Zeta-Jones and he had a roll in the hay — it would have been R-rated for sure. [David note: Hard to argue that Spielberg gets the benefit of the doubt in one film and not the other.] So why pick on Saving Private Ryan? Because it’s based on a war that really happened? World War II was not all about the romanticized world we often perceive it to be. It was a real war, and people lived and died heroically, tragically and violently. To slap it with a harsh rating does nothing. We all know what perception the NC-17 rating has. It’s unfortunate (again, sex is BAD, bloody death, OK), but it will only keep people away. And that is a crime. It’s too important to restrict its viewing. This film represents a part of our history that too many people no longer give any thought to. It’s a period that changed a generation and a world forever, and like the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. or a Civil War battlefield, people should see it to remember; see it so they never forget. To quibble about a rating lessens the importance of what the film is about and lessens the meaning of what people like my grandparents fought for. And to show the film to anyone under the age of high school forces a subject matter that they cannot fully understand. It’s a film, folks. No one is putting a gun to your head and marching you to the theater. If the violence offends you, stay home. And for God’s sake, leave the little ones at home.”

DISCLAIMER: Sorry all. Column’s a little lightweight today. Must be the full moon last night. Oh, there wasn’t a full moon last night? Damn. Maybe I should blame my mother. Nah, she’s already taking the rap for global warming. Don’t want to overload her. I’ll take the heat and promise to push the envelope the rest of the week. And read on. Maybe I’m being a little too harsh on myself. (Why should I be the only one to escape my wrath?)
PITT PUFFS FROM PIPE: Is anyone else’s favorite Brad Pitt performance his turn as the pothead roommate in the Tony Scott-directed/Tarantino-written/Elmore Leonard (and every other pulp fiction writer dead or alive)-ripoff classic, True Romance? Well, maybe it’s Brad’s too. Or maybe he caught Sean Penn in The Falcon and the Snowman on cable last week. Whatever the reason, Pitt is all-but-attached to Smuggler’s Moon, the true story of two brothers who appeared to be wealthy documentarians (that should have given them away right there), but were really pot smugglers. Pitt’s interest inspired New Line to cough up more than a million bucks to the brothers who will be receiving their big, legal check (shhh, the IRS may be listening) just eight months after getting out of Lompoc Prison.
FRANCIS, THE TALKING STUDIO CHIEF: What would you do if you won $80 million in a lawsuit against Warner Bros.? Well, if you were Francis Ford Coppola, you’d resurrect Zoetrope Studios, the on again-off again mini-mini-major that Francis has been breathing and sucking life from in alternate five-year spans for more than two decades now. Coppola is planning on knocking out four to six movies a year under the banner, splitting foreign and domestic rights in order to finance the work on smaller ($2 – $5 million) pictures while taking the big projects through the studio sludge. As for his own directing work, he’ll be doing another epic and another musical, plots undivulged at this time. With Spielberg in World War II, Soderburgh in the ’70s and Coppola being financed by Warner Bros., albeit unwillingly, to go back to his future, the cry for the great gritty filmmaking of the past may finally be coming into its own.
WHY GRANDMA, WHAT BIG CHEEKS YOU HAVE!: Last Friday, I joked about There’s Something About Madeline, directed by Roman Polanski. But Pippi Longstocking creator Astrid Lindgren probably wouldn’t think my joke was too funny. Interview magazine has apparently spoofed Pippi in a series of “erotically charged photos” (that’s according to Variety). I guess she won’t be signing off on the Larry Clark/Harmony Korine version, Pippi Does Manhattan, with Chloé Sevigny as the sassy redhead.
PEOPLE, PEOPLE WHO NEED FACTCHECKERS: People magazine, the bastion of insightful reporting, reported rumors last week that Tom Hanks was buying a Malibu house for the Clintons to retire to when they leave the Oval Office. It’s that old real estate saw, “location, location, location,” as the First Family indulges in proximity to Jodie Foster, Demi Moore and Charlie Sheen. The family that plays together, stays together. Of course, the whole thing is untrue, as Tom Hanks debunked the report. Next week, People will be running the story of Bobby Brown doing rehab in the Lincoln Bedroom.
FARRELLY THEY ROLL ALONG: For guys who are so original in their vision, The Brothers Farrelly sure like to piggyback off other people’s ideas. Looks like they’ll stay at Fox for their next project, a space comedy called The Space Man, based on a pitch by David Dorfman. There’s Something About Mary also started as someone else’s script (Ed Dector’s and John Strauss’) before the boys got their gooey hands on it. Ironically, the one project they don’t seem to be clamoring to make is the film of brother Pete’s best-selling novel, The Comedy Writer.
HERE’S ZORRO IN YOUR EYE: Antonio Banderas has made life safe for himself in New York. No, not because muggers will be afraid of him now that he’s Zorro. But because he has decided to pass on the role of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. A good choice for Antonio considering that for a great cup of joe in New York City, you have to go to a Greek diner. Considering the Greeks really hate the Turkish and didn’t want to see Ataturk made into a hero. And considering that urine and spit do nothing for the flavor of coffee.
CHATTING: This Friday, my weekly chat premieres on Yahoo! Come on by — 5:00 p.m. ET/ 2:00 p.m. PT.
EYEBALLS: About half the people who won eyeballs in the The Beyond contest haven’t sent addresses. So, eyeballs will be sent to everyone who did cough up their location today. The rest of you will just have to go third eye blind.
READER OF THE DAY: AJ wrote: “Damn! That was a FUNNY movie. I haven’t laughed that hard during a movie in a long while. Thank God the Farrelly Bros. have the gonads to do what they wanna do! I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a funnier moment in a movie, or sicker one for that matter, than when Stiller opens the door for Diaz with [joke censored for your comedy protection]! By the way, next week I’ll see Saving Private Ryan AND Mafia!. That’s almost as weird as watching ‘Jeopardy’ and ‘Wheel of Fortune’ in the same hour.”

The Weekend Wrap-Up

The results of this weekend’s box office race offers one Hollywood truism and one big question mark. The truism is that R-rated films will do less business than PG-13 films. There’s Something About Mary would appear to have had more positive buzz than any film except The Truman Show this summer, but it only managed a soft $13 million for fourth place in its debut weekend. Everybody likes to claim under-17s have no trouble getting into R-rated films, but history tells us otherwise. And now Mary is telling us again. Then there is The Mask of Zorro, which seems to have the right stuff to make audiences remember why they loved movies before CG, but opened with only $22.7 million. First place, but not encouraging. Which brings us to the question mark — can summer films win with long legs anymore? Keep in mind that last summer there was not a single film that did $10 million or better in its fifth week. Not The Lost World, not Men in Black and not Air Force One. In fact, Hercules had the best week five with $8.34 million. If Zorro doesn’t drop a bit for the first four weeks and falls to $10 million in week five, it would still be hard pressed to hit the $150 million mark. I’m going to keep my fingers crossed, hoping that a Titanic-like break in “the rules” will occur, but it doesn’t hearten me that Out of Sight dropped out of the Top 10 in just week four.
In the second spot, Lethal Weapon 4 dropped only 38 percent to $21.2 million, which would have to be considered a major victory with such a weak installment of the previously-terrific series. Armageddon dropped 32 percent to $16 million. I’m bored with this saga, so I’m laying off for today. Though I find it extremely bizarre that I am getting mail from people who think Godzilla is one of the worst disasters in movie history and that Armageddon, which should gross $20-$30 million more domestically and cost roughly the same, is a hit. Spin wins. Dr. Dolittle passed the $100 million mark in fifth place with $8.8 million, dropping just 32 percent in week four. In sixth is Small Soldiers, which didn’t die, but may just fade away, dropping 41 percent for a $8.3 million take and the unfortunate likelihood that the film will not make it past $50 million domestically. Mulan also became a member of the $100 million club, dropping into seventh with $4.7 million (a 33 percent drop). Madeline zoomed past the $15 million mark with a Top 10-low 30 percent drop-off from last week’s pathetic opening. This film could make $25 million! It could happen! (I mock, but $25 million would be really great for a film that opened so weakly.) The Truman Show passed the $120 million mark with another $2.2 million in a 39 percent drop for ninth place. And in the 10 Spot, there are two films (so I guess it’s the Top 11 this week), with Six Days, Seven Nights and The X-Files going mano-a-alieno with an estimated $2 million apiece. Which studio will win this battle, Fox or Disney? No comment.
THE GOOD: Andrew Sarris, one of the truly historic film critics out there, is back in the saddle at the New York Observer. You can go to their site, but it won’t do you any good unless you are an AOL subscriber. Check him out if you can. Also, from the NY Observer, Rex Reed hated Out of Sight, so now I am completely sure it’s a great film.
THE BAD: I guess it’s going to be me. After ragging on Disney for spinning, they had a real accomplishment with Armageddon, breaking the German record for the best four-day opening ever with about $8.9 million. That compares to $4.8 million for Deep Impact in its first seven days. And Godzilla hasn’t stomped ashore yet. For a little perspective, Titanic (which I believe holds the three-day record) is still in the top film of the year there and still ranks in the Top 10 there after grabbing more than $125 million.
THE UGLY: Nothing really that horrible comes to mind. Guess I’m getting soft.
THE CHAT: This Friday, my weekly Yahoo! Chat premieres at 5 p.m. EDT/2 p.m. PDT. It’s your chance to voice your opinions, ask all your questions and get some quick answers. And there may even be a special surprise guest. (It won’t be a surprise to you. You’re a Hot Button reader.) Mark your calendars.
TWO MOVIES EQUAL: There’s Something About Mary + The Mask of Zorro = There’s Something About Zorro. Leonardo DiCaprio may commit to the Farrelly Brothers’ romantic comedy about an awkward young man who tracks his best friend from high school down to Mexico and realizes black leather and swordplay get him really hot. DiCaprio will reportedly get $50 million for playing another awkward teen and $787,000 for every kiss involving another man’s tongue. Keep an eye out for a running gag about Zorro’s cat who always seems to be in the wrong place when he pulls out the whip, and the film’s “money shot,” in which Zorro gets stuck to the saddle, literally.
JUST WONDERING: Why do critics feel the need to give away the jokes in a movie like There’s Something About Mary? I think Paul Cullum‘s review of the film in New Times is one of the best written reviews of the film that I’ve read, but I won’t be offering a link (write me if you really want it) because he gives away the big jokes, one of them in a parenthetical comment about one character’s resemblance to Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day. I mean, a complete throwaway! Really pisses me off.
BAD AD WATCH: While Saving Private Ryan is still happily going along (this weekend in a three-page spread) without pull-quotes and Mafia! is making up pull-quotes (“I laughed so hard my gums bled,” N.Y. Syndicate) the Bad Ad of this week goes to the indie film I Went Down, which is essentially a criminal/road trip/buddy movie, but features a woman in a very short shirt and a skin-tight top. Yes, she is in the movie. No, she’s not a lead, and she certainly has nothing to do with the title. (There’s Something About Mary is first runner up, as Fox uses pull-quotes that hint at some of the most shocking surprise gags ever put on film. If there is a hell for critics — that would be redundant — those giving away jokes in their reviews should be sent there post haste.)
READER OF THE DAY: Got lots of happy mail about Zorro. (And one negative letter about Out of Sight from Dr. J., though it’s still only one compared to the tons of mail I’ve gotten thanking me for pushing them to the theater.) Plenty of well-written letters, but Krillian hit a point that I found most compelling. So even though I hate to give any one reader page space so often, he gets to be ROTD: “Saw Zorro opening night. I feel almost sheepish for defending Armageddon now. [David note: That’s not the point I found so compelling.] Zorro has brought back what used to be truly enjoyable about summer movies — STUNTMEN!!! [That’s the one.] Zorro only had a couple of explosions, but it had swashbuckling, choreography, stuntmen flying and falling, swordfights galore, and even a very cool horse-stunt scene (my family owns five horses; we were tickled). The day after, there are parts of the plot that are fading on me, but at the time I was watching it, I was marveling at what a perfect popcorn movie Zorro is. And for once the villain wasn’t totally flamboyant. He was a normal politician who just used killing people as one of his means to an end.”

News By The Numbers

10. THAT’S A CIGAR IN MY POCKET: Here’s a little ditty about Jack and Fidel, two guys who smoke cigars and like to chase girls like hell. (Apologies to John Cougar Mellancamp.) Nicholson hit the beaches of Cuba last week and hung out with Castro. After the meeting, Nicholson said he hoped Clinton would mend America’s relationship with Cuba. Nothing came of it as the week progressed, and Nicholson was last seen trying to smash the bulletproof window of the presidential limo with a two iron.
9. I’M JUST GLAD TO SEE YOU: Milton Berle had a big birthday party celebrating his 90th birthday last Sunday. And in deference to the size of his legendary manhood, there was a party on Monday for the part of him that crosses the International Date Line wherever he stands.
8. THE WIZARD OF P.C.: With New Line scoring with the latest re-release of Gone with the Wind (about $3 million so far) and Warner Bros. planning the release of more classics into theaters, the WB announced plans to re-release The Wizard of Oz theatrically this Christmas. Look out for protests over “flying monkeys,” the horrible stereotyping of WASPs as represented by the Tin Man, disrespect for the mentally ill as represented by the Scarecrow and Armageddon fans who claim Michael Bay does have a heart. Middle-aged women trying to pass as teens will not be heard from.
7. TRUE ROMANCE: Quentin Tarantino was in court on Monday, pleading “not guilty” to assault on a woman at a Manhattan restaurant in a scuffle, apparently started by Quentin’s perceived verbal disrespect for blacks. If found guilty, Tarantino could spend some time in jail, where he might find out just how effective his classic catch-phrase “Do I look like a (woman) to you? Do you want to (make sweet love to) me?” is. Here’s a hint, QT: You usually give that dialogue to a guy with a big gun who is taunting someone else. This time, the guy will have the big gun and his answer is as likely as not to be, “Yes.”
6. AT LEAST HE DIDN’T BITE HIS EAR OFF: Alec Baldwin (6′, 200 lbs.) was in court all week defending himself against the allegation that he broke the nose of paparazzi/cameraman Alan Zanger (5’7″, 160 lbs.) without reasonable provocation, when he confronted Zanger, who was shooting footage of Baldwin and wife Kim Basinger’s arrival home with their first-born child. Baldwin’s attorneys got permission to use the term “stalkarazzi” when describing Zanger, and Zanger was given the right to bleed freely. Actually, I feel for Baldwin. Being a star shouldn’t mean that you have no privacy. I mean, look at the terror that Madonna went through when she ended up on the cover of magazines with the first pictures of her new daughter just as she had to deal with the pressure of releasing a new album. The horror. The high-paying horror.
5. ARMAGEDDON SPIN WATCH: After two weeks-plus of fun, fun, fun, it would appear that Disney has succeeded in turning the Armageddon tide of public opinion. There are still a lot of people who will rip Armageddon and make gagging noises when it is mentioned. But the film looks to come up right behind Godzilla’s gross after this weekend, and if Disney has fudged the numbers in order to get there, it won’t really matter as it passes El Lizardo next week. As I’ve written before, this is all about image. I would guess that general public opinion now is that Armageddon is not the disaster Godzilla was. In truth, neither is a disaster. Just failures of perspective.
Both studios invested a larger-than-usual percentage of their annual operating expenditures to make and market these films, and they will get only a minimal return on those investments. But neither film will lose money. Had they made four or five normal budget pictures for that money, they may have had one major hit that alone made more profit for the studios than the big gun films. In any case, the Disney spin seems to be over. Next week, when Saving Private Ryan opens, anyone who loved Armageddon as some sort of patriotic film will be snapped back to reality by a real patriotic film. And the world will go on. Until a real asteroid shows up.
4. GOJIRA GOES JAPANESE: Like so much of the buzz around Godzilla, you never know which report to believe. But there is no conflict over the fact that Godzilla drew a record 500,000 people in Japan last weekend and sent thousands home disappointed. Because they couldn’t see the movie. Did you think I meant… no. Couldn’t see the movie. Estimates of the total estimated take in Japan is between $40 million and $100 million, though $40 million seems more reasonable given the fact that last weekend’s record meant a gross of about $9 million.
3. PLOT POINTS: A company did a survey that told them moviegoers care about plot more than movie stars. Can I get a “duh!” from the choir?! Again, as always, it’s a matter of perspective. Movie stars are paid in direct proportion to their perceived ability to “open” a movie. Not to choose good scripts, but to get butts in seats the first weekend. They are the centerpiece of the marketing campaign. And there is still good reason for that. If you want, as a studio, to have a movie open with more than $20 million, you had better have a major star in your movie. Nowadays, that star can be effects. It can even be Steven Spielberg’s name over the title. But you have to have more than a great story.
Now, you can be the biggest hit of the year without the major star (Leonardo DiCaprio became that star in Titanic), but that’s a matter of making the right movies. And when a studio greenlights a movie, they can only hope all the pieces will come together, even if they have good raw material, a solid director and good actors to start with. In other words, there’s a lot of luck involved. Movie stars are a tangible marketing commodity. You can track their success with about 75 percent certainty. Not that studios don’t rely on non-stars to have star-like effects at the box office and fall on their faces. As I said, there are only a few true openers. But the system will continue as long as Harrison Ford can open iffy movies like Six Days, Seven Nights, and Mel Gibson can tap dance his way through Lethal Weapon 4 and still charm dark rooms filled with popcorn-buying people.
2. COME TOGETHER: Studios continue to contract and expand at the same time. Sony is in the process of shutting down Tri-Star and consolidating all operations under the older, more venerable Columbia banner. Now Disney is pulling their film operations closer together under Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group. The basic idea is to stop having divisions within the same company competing for material and more importantly expending massive dollars for development of so much material that will never be made. Disney will actually keep all three banners (Disney, Touchstone and Hollywood), but they will become individualized brands under which to release the 15 or 20 films a year the company will produce.
David Vogel, who will head the company under Joe Roth and Dick Cook, has already hinted that Hollywood Pictures may become a genre label, much like Miramax has their Dimension banner. The other upshot here is that many scripts will be officially put into turnaround, which will disappoint a lot of hopeful writers and introduce a mini-glut of “previously attached” screenplays into the market. In other words, you might want to wait a few months before trying to break into Hollywood. The agencies will have their hands full trying to get these unproduced projects set up to sit unproduced at other studios for another few years.
1. COLOR MY WORLD: Sounds like the industry has finally woken up and smelled the Soul Food. Just as all the studios have jumped on the indie bandwagon (which makes you wonder what’s really indie anymore), it seems that there is now a groundswell for films by, about and primarily for black Americans. In the post-Blaxploitation era, it was really New Line Cinema who invested in the new generation of black filmmakers with movies like House Party. When Ted Turner bought New Line, he transformed the company into a more mainstream, bigger-budget operation, leaving room for the newly formed Fox 2000 to take up the niche market. (Miramax, in fact, hired an exec with the same idea, but didn’t end up making many movies under her tenure before becoming distracted by slasher division, Dimension.)
Now, after movies like Soul Food, Eve’s Bayou and even The Player’s Club have found audiences without the kind of P&A (Prints & Advertising) costs the average film spends. New Line, somewhat independent again, is making a strong move back into that business. Warner Bros., though still lily white, has made it’s first low-low-budget ($4 million) picture under their banner. Fox 2000 is still knocking them out. MGM has tried, at budgets too high for profit, to make serious black films. And now, Disney is joining the fray. But perhaps most intriguing of all, Robert Johnson, who broke ground in cable TV by successfully starting BET (Black Entertainment Television), is now starting a feature production arm that will make TV movies for the cable net and three low-budget features a year. The gentrification of the movie business continues, but maybe it’s turning out to be a good thing. In part. For now.
READER OF THE DAY: From Chris: “I saw Small Soldiers and thought it was really good. For a movie that is controversial, it sure is inoffensive. There is no sex and scarcely any language or vulgarity to speak of, yet Burger King throws a fit. The movie was dark and, unlike Godzilla, had a lot of action. The violence was SOOO tame, though. They almost never used guns. It was mostly fiery tennis balls and grappling hooks. I highly recommend it! Jay Mohr (my favorite comedian) was flawless. Phil Hartman was good, too. I expect it to hold over well.”

Weekend Preview

This is a primo movie weekend. Maybe the best of the summer. You’ve got the first great “movie movie” of the summer in Zorro. None of the effects of Godzilla or Armageddon, but a classic tale of good vs. evil, tons of style, the beautiful damsel (who manages to be of her time and still kick some butt) and the truest movie star performances of the summer from Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones. This could be the breakthrough hit of the summer. (Or not. Who the hell can figure that out anymore?!) Twenty-eight-million dollars and first place for starters. And watch the word-of-mouth take off.
There’s Something About Mary is the best comedy of the summer so far. And again, a serious bit of star power from Cameron Diaz. (Will Hollywood finally figure out what do with her? I don’t know. Everyone has wanted to “make her happen” since The Mask, but she’s lingering in art films and ensemble pieces. For a beautiful woman, she’s showing more comic range than any female star in decades.) Ninteen-million dollars and second place should be a good start, considering this is an R-rated film. You can still see the best drama of the summer of the year in Out of Sight (which looks to drop either to 10th place or out of the Top 10 this weekend with about $2.5 million). I now receive at least one e-mail a day thanking me for being so persistent in pushing this film. And still, not one negative letter about this movie. Of course, next weekend, with the arrival of Saving Private Ryan, the category splits between Best Comedic Drama and Best Serious Drama, so as not to snub either “must-see” film. So get your asses out to the movies, would ya?
I would expect Lethal Weapon 4 to drop by about 45 percent to third place and $18.7 million. In fourth, who else but Armageddon? Will Disney allow the film to drop by 40 percent this week? I don’t think they’ll have a choice. Fourteen-million. (And I’m being generous. The film should fall by at least 50 percent. ‘Nuff said.) Small Soldiers held up pretty well during the week, but this weekend will be the real test. Maybe parents who won’t be talked into taking the kids to see the R-rated Mary will satiate their request for edginess with the soldiers. Or maybe they’ll just go see Zorro. Or Dr. Dolittle. I expect the good doctor and the good soldiers to be neck and neck, both with about $8.4 million and in a dead heat for sixth and seventh place. The other two kids’ films should take eighth and ninth places, with Mulan finally passing the $100 million mark with another $4.2 million and Madeline staying just above the crowd with about $3.2 million. As I wrote before, 10th place could go to Out of Sight or other contenders Six Days, Seven Nights, The Truman Show or The X-Files. We’ll know Monday, right?
THE GOOD: I finally saw Lethal Weapon 4. It managed to be enjoyable despite what appeared to be a completely improvised first act, limited use of Jet Li, even more limited use of Rene Russo and the misuse of Chris Rock, who ended up doing two-minute stand-up sets until he finally scored up to his skill level going one-on-one with Pesci. OK, OK, OK. But that’s not the “good.” The film closes with credits that include photos of almost all the crew. I thought that was great. Sure it’s a conceit. Sure Joel Silver seems to be in every photo. But it really reminds an audience that all those names are real people who are of no small importance in making the big names up front able to do their jobs.
THE BAD: I also finally saw Six Days, Seven Nights, and while I was charmed by Harrison Ford and enticed by Anne Heche, I was pretty much appalled with the obvious change of tone the film made after Heche came out of the Ellen closet. The whole “uptight New Yorker” vs. “homespun tough guy” was thrown out the window as a series of worthless action pieces were thrown into the mix. This could have been a really sexy, romantic film. Instead it is fluff which is not even worthy of Ivan Reitman. And what the hell was the wonderful Danny Trejo doing as “Tough Guy No. 3?” And where was the “money shot” of the airplane pontoon flying at the screen? And…. Don’t get me started. It could have been great.
THE UGLY: What did Warner Bros. do when movie audiences couldn’t quite figure out the combination of cool style and mind-numbing loudness in The Avengers trailer? They made a quicker, simpler preview that is even more confusing and now can boast a total lack of style. And worse, it looks like it was cut with a chainsaw. I mean, these guys are professionals, but this looked hideous. And I saw it twice, for bad measure. The Avengers may be a perplexing film to the WB’s marketing department, but now those of us who finally “got” the original trailer don’t know what to expect from this movie either.
TWO MOVIES EQUAL: There’s Something About Mary + Madeline = There’s Something About Madeline. Set in Paris, this modern horror story, directed as a love story by Roman Polanski, stars Ben Stiller as the man who just can’t get enough of the Olsen twins (named Madeline and Madeline 2). Watch for the hysterical repeating punchline, “Those Americans are so uptight” and a sight gag that may be funny, but will have to be cut before the film can be legally shown in this country.
JUST WONDERING: Is it me or has David Schwimmer joined the group of “Friends” stars to have gotten breast implants?
BAD AD WATCH: After seeing Lethal Weapon 4, I would have to point to Bobbie Wygant of NBC-TV, whose pull-quote (“Lethal Weapon 4 is the best yet! More action! More laughs! More thrills!”) means that she was either looking to take the pull-quote championship from Ron Brewington or was having a brain hemorrhage when they asked her what she thought of the film. I took exception to those who claimed Harry Knowles “couldn’t” have cried at Armageddon. Who knows what a person feels when in the throes of patriotism? But I consider it a scientific fact that Lethal Weapon 4 is not the best of the series. I liked the movie OK, but I love the series and there is no way. Not on any level. Not on any objective or emotional basis can you say it’s the best. This is non-negotiable. I love Chris Rock, and Jet Li made a very impressive American debut, but Bobbie, Bobbie, Bobbie. How do you look in the paper each day?
READER OF THE DAY: Mark D. responds to Valentine, Thursday’s ROTD (THB 7/16) in a letter with the subject line, “My sunny, funny Valentine:” “What is it about movies? What is it about that medium that makes people hate one another’s choices so much? How is it that someone would disregard all other considerations and pronounce judgment on my intelligence, ethics and personal integrity if I like a movie that he does not? Why do I hear so much ranting — passionate to the point of incoherence — on what is, in the final analysis, such a trivial topic? Why, Dave, why?”
I wish I had an answer. Instead, another ROTD. From Sel: “I have been watching newspaper and TV critics to see if they catch a small, yet annoying, problem with Madeline. I have only taken occasional glimpses at the book, but I do know that this girl is, in fact, supposed to be French. So why does she have an English accent? Why does nearly the entire cast have English accents? I know, it’s a minor point, especially when you consider how difficult it is to find a kid to fit the part that can act. But why go with the English accent for everybody? Did they think we don’t know the difference? (Do all of us know the difference?) If they’re going to have them talk with the wrong accent, I suppose an Austrailian or American or Jamaican would have done just as well. After all, the French and the English have the same kind of relationship Americans have with Canadians (i.e.: they can’t stand each other). I wonder what the French think of this movie.”

Trouble In Woodyville?

Woody Allen‘s financial tribulations have been covered in this column. He is financed primarily through personal relationships now, and it has cost him the services of some of the greats with whom he has worked in the past. Woody spoke to Newsweek magazine this week (for some reason, Newsweek is not on the Web) and minimized the problems in typical Woody fashion: “We’re in a state of major emergency. The crews go without coffee or sometimes even water. We can’t afford actual technicians, so we’ve assigned people on Workfare to do all the costumes and sets. The lights and sound are worked by Mexican aliens who we house in a bunk. I don’t think we’ll be able to pay the actors for my next picture, but perhaps if we eliminate using film in the camera, we can swing it.”
WHERE’S DABNEY?: You know, I was just saying to some pals the other day, “Whatever happened to Dabney Coleman?” Well, the answer is here: He just finished the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan/Nora Ephron movie, You Have Mail and he is about to start shooting The Real Inspector Gadget as the certain-to-be-cantankerous Police Chief. Glad you’re working, Dabney. Love your bite.
BARGAIN BURLY: David Rabe‘s Hurlyburly has finally made it to the big screen, but like Lolita, it’s not coming to theaters in a blaze of glory. The drugs, sex and bile-laden film was privately financed by Storm Entertainment and, after a series of studio screenings, the film has gone to New Line’s Fine Line division for between $2 and $3 milllion. Pretty cheap for a Sean Penn/Kevin Spacey/Robin Wright Penn movie, huh? Even better, the film was made on an $8 million budget, so Fine Line is getting it for just around 25 percent of its cost. You don’t get bargains like that at Sundance.
RATING THE VOICE: New York’s Village Voice has had some terrific articles lately, and thanks to the glory of technology, you can read them. But first, a warning. Each of these stories requires a rating, a la the MPAA, because the Village Voice does not restrain itself as we gentle folks at roughcut.com do. First, Peter Braunstein gives us Days of Retro, a PG-13-rated (for intelligence) article that amusingly explains why we all missed the cultural significance of The Wedding Singer. Next, it’s a series of articles about the new Adrian Lyne version of Lolita. It’s rated R (for decadence) and you can click your way there. Finally, there is the very NC-17 rated Michael Musto column. I’m not just saying this. There are words in there that start with “c,” “s” and “f.” Really. On the other hand, Musto talks about Vincent Gallo in such an amusing way, you have to read it. If you are of age. So, can you e-mail me a driver’s license? Oh. I guess that won’t work. So, one more time, if you are easily offended by words, do not click here. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.

ARMAGEDDON SPIN WATCH: Well, kids, I think we are getting to the end of the spin cycle. I’m sure that many of you are happy to hear it. But I still have to point out that all the “numbers were better than expected in week two” stories may have been, in no small way, another form of spin. You see, every week, movie studios call in their grosses to Exhibitor Relations on Saturday morning with Friday numbers and Sunday morning with Saturday numbers, when they also make their Sunday estimate. It is almost always the case that the difference between the Sunday estimates you read and the Monday afternoon “final” numbers are based on adjustments of the Sunday estimate. And those adjustments are almost always down, not up. This weekend, Armageddon‘s reported Friday number ($7.17 million) rose to $7.4 million on Monday. Their reported Saturday number ($8.84 million) rose to $9.49 million on Monday. And the Sunday number rose from $5.661 million to $6.661 million. No one I found could remember when this kind of jump happened last. Quite the opposite. (In fact, Armageddon reduced their estimate by about $500,000 last weekend.) And don’t write to me complaining that this requires a conspiracy. The only real check and balance on these numbers is inside the studio. And maybe here. (And for those who remember the Scream 2 debacle, that was a $6 million misstatement. This, if it is a fake, is much more subtle. And, of course, Miramax is a Disney company.) You make the call.
READER OF THE DAY: Valentine X is not nearly as restrained as I have been on this subject. But he has some well-thought out points. He also has some tough words for those of you who love Armageddon. And the media doesn’t get off lightly either. That’s why he’s the ROTD: “Dave, why don’t you just say it? Point No. 1: Peter Bart [Variety editor] does for his pallies. Point No. 2: Jerry Bruckheimer is an astute-enough politician to have made sure he IS one of those Peter-pallies, for situations like this. Point No. 3 (might as well just say it and face it): The entertainment media hated Armageddon for the most part and took GREAT — though somewhat premature — delight in its apparent stumble on opening weekend. It’s an unsatisfying, irritating, pretty-much- empty-in-all-departments movie. Michael Bay really IS the devil, in my view (he was born in ’65, only one year prior to the birth of Rosemary’s Baby in 1966).
“Alas, those Omega Man scruffs, those junk-food-diseased morons out there have kept it afloat regardless. So the media came off as (slightly, though deservedly) elitist, having (slightly) advanced its very well-taken agenda (ie: this movie is calculatingly hateful in ways we hadn’t even imagined could be manifested) by cackling with a tad too much glee after that disappointing opening weekend. Nobody misread the situation — those numbers were obviously disappointing, somewhat, to Roth, Bruckheimer, Cook, et al — but the delight certain media types took in reporting this development was not sufficiently (appropriately) concealed.”

Ranting and Raving Again

I was going to use this space to day for reader responses to the question I posed last week, “What advice would you give the studio heads?” Got some good answers and editing them is fun and interesting enough that it’s like having a day off. But I changed my mind.
I am compelled to apologize for my self-indulgence before I even start. But, I have decided to respond to an issue that seems to sit forever on the stove like a pot of old coffee, staying warm, but growing thick with sludge at its bottom. The issue is anger. Hatred. Rage. I’ve been getting more mail than usual lately accusing me of those feelings. The e-mails have been well-written, well-thought-out and well-off-the-mark of how I really feel. I respond to each of these e-mails individually, as I do all my negative e-mail. It is only a tiny percentage of the mail get, so it is easily handled. But, in all honesty, it sticks with me longer than the fan mail.
I worry a lot about my objectivity. I am very aware of subjects that seem to drag on forever and start to look like a vendetta instead of reporting. And I understand that I have to earn the privilege to have you click on my bookmark six days a week. But I’m also aware that everyone is going to disagree with me sometimes and, when I take a hard look at a subject that is near and dear to the hearts of some, I will draw venom. That’s fine.
But what actually worries me is when I am accused of letting my personal feelings get in the way of my analysis. Whether the issue is Titanic, Harry Knowles, Godzilla or Armageddon, the news keeps on coming, whether I like it or not. I do not create these stories. I just analyze them. That’s my job. I spent months on Titanic, through every high and low. The fact that I didn’t love the first 90 minutes of the movie didn’t keep me from saying how great the last hour was and that people should see it on a big screen. Nor did I flinch from reported box office anomalies. And I sure as hell didn’t put the words “I’m king of the world” into Jim Cameron‘s mouth on Oscar night.
I don’t hate Harry Knowles, but I have real questions about some of his choices, and I won’t give him a free pass because he’s not from the big city. (Just call me Sgt. Carter.) It’s that simple. He’s been a freshman long enough. Time to declare a major.
I felt Godzilla was attacked a lot more aggressively than it deserved to be attacked, but I also printed negative comments aplenty, including the infamous Krillian’s List.
And now, Armageddon is the story because there’s no real reason to think it will do much better than the much-hated Godzilla, yet Disney is spinning the media harder than I’ve seen in a long, long time. If they stop spinning, I will happily stop writing about the movie. But every day, I seem to wake up to another set of bizarre excuses. And I’ve got to tell you, there was very little of this spin from Sony or Devlin/Emmerich after Godzilla hit the fan. If Jerry Bruckheimer would just stop blaming the critics and the media in a new way each day, there would be no stories for me to write. But not to write about it as it continues would be to be spun myself. No can do. Sorry.
Ironically, Ryan, the Reader of the Day just below, a regular who always has something interesting to add to the column, falls into the same trap I’m talking about, albeit in a subtle way. He writes with disdain about the media types who thought Godzilla was the film to beat, didn’t think audiences would flock to The Truman Show and thought Titanic would lose money. Well Ryan, it’s not always just a bunch of stupid, ill-tempered movie-haters trying to ruin it for you all. Sony was chasing the same kind of opening that shocked everyone the year before when the stiff that was The Lost World had a hype-based $90 million-plus opening. This year, the public got wise, and the rules were forever changed. The Truman Show was a risk, but it was a good risk given the Weir pedigree, and to say that the media didn’t support the hell out of the film once they saw it would be unfair. And Titanic was a completely unpredictable phenomenon. As I’ve written before, had the film opened in the summer, it would have likely petered out with about $200 million domestic, a far cry from the record-breaking run that was helped greatly by a generally crappy line-up of winter and spring films this year.
OK. Wait. Now, how many of you are thinking, “Damn, he hates that movie! He won’t let it go!” My point exactly. My analysis is based on the market, not on the movie. Two-hundred-million dollars in a much more competitive summer market is not an insult. My $120 million prediction for The Truman Show wasn’t an insult. Nor was my $110 million prediction for The X-Files (to which it will not get close.) Frankly, most of my weekly estimates are high, not low. Including Armageddon. I was absolutely shocked by the soft opening weekend. That wasn’t affected by whether I liked the movie or not. That was a perceived failure of marketing based on the same 1997 rules that made Godzilla‘s even-bigger opening seem like a failure.
OK, I’m done. Sorry to drag you through my angst. The truth is, the site is more popular than ever, you all are great to write for and your participation brings me joy every day. Working in mass media, I suppose I should toughen my shell and just work through the little adversity I am faced with in my e-mailbox. But sometimes, I just want to pull each of you close and whisper in your ear, in the words of Michael Corleone (really Puzo and Coppola), “It’s not personal. It’s only business.”
READER OF THE DAY: Ryan wrote: “Perhaps you’ve noticed that I am no fan of the media. However, I will spare you my usual ranting and raving and just hit upon one story in particular that caught my eye today. It perfectly illustrates the self-important, ‘we know better’ attitude pushed by critics, analysts and reporters. In the New York Post (I know, I should know better than to take anything in the Post seriously, but I digress) they had a big article all about Leo’s new film. One of the basic points in the article was about the excessive drug use in The Beach that could be exploited and graphically depicted by Danny Boyle and company onscreen, and how Leo’s fans would not want to see it. This brings up two issues. Did any of these people actually read the book? It’s an insult to Alex Garland to claim that his novel is about drug use. The Beach is no more about getting stoned than Jack Kerouac‘s On the Road was about it. Yes, the characters indulge in it. Is that what they’re all about? No. In fact, Leo’s reported character is more addicted to nicotine; and the hallucinations and illusions he suffers throughout the book are NOT drug-induced. Anyone who has read this acclaimed novel about Gen-X experience would know that.
“Second point — why is everyone so concerned about Leo alienating his fans? Is it not his career? So, The Beach is much more appealing to males than it would be to females. Seems to me that this could only be beneficial to Leo. And anyway, he’s not in the business to please fans. He has said on several occasions that he is not interested in being a movie star. He just is one in spite of himself. He would rather be an actor, and The Beach is the perfect role to remind everyone of how much acting talent he has. Maybe they’ve all forgotten that before Titanic he was not a ‘heartthrob,’ he was an indie-favorite. Of course, all these analysts, critics and journalists were also the same ones that said Godzilla would be THE film to beat this summer, nobody would pay to see Jim Carrey in a dramatic role, and Titanic would never ever make its money back.
“The film media — critics, analysts, and journalists need to remember their place in the movie power hierarchy. They are only a mere fourth. Third is the talent — actors, producers, directors, writers, musicians, cinematographers, etc. Second is the product itself — the art, the film — how it all finally comes together. First is always the audience. Without us, the rest of them wouldn’t exist. So maybe instead of speculating or out-right telling us what we think, perhaps they should take the time to look at we actually think. Like you do, Dave.”

News on the BEach

A passionate reader, Ms. Sheila H of Houston, Texas, wrote in to give me somhttp://mcnblogs.com/movabletype/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&blog_id=15#
Bolde info on the novel, The Beach, including the fact that it is not, as I miswrote, about war. Sorry about that. Here, in her words, is what it is about. “The Beach is a superb book about a backpacking subculture of drifting Gen-Xers in search of paradise or, at least, a paradise not yet discovered and overrun by tourists. It is set in Thailand, and the central character is given a map to ‘paradise’ by a mysterious stranger who commits suicide. It could be described as a cross between Lord of the Flies and something out of Joseph Conrad. The main character is a guy obsessed by video games, nicotine and movies about Vietnam, and he bites off a whole lot more than he can chew. Anyway, it’s well worth reading whether it gets made into a film (it could be a great one, IMO) or not. And could be the perfect director for this. It’s also a hell of a better fit for Leonardo DiCaprio than American Psycho.” Thanks, Sheila.
40 ACRES & A GATE: Funny, I can’t tell whether that title is a racist thing or just an appropriate reference. I guess you’ll let me know. Anyway, BET founder Robert Johnson is in the process of starting the first black-owned movie studio ever. The studio will make black-themed films for TV and the big screen. As New Line and Fox 2000 have proven, this can be a very lucrative business, and there is a lot of talent just waiting for an opportunity. Johnson’s initial capital investment will be $100 million, in stark contrast to the $1 billlion or so invested in DreamWorks so far. But Johnson is looking to start with three low-budget films a year and 10 TV movies, so the investment in that amount of product, before distribution, is probably less than $60 million total. That’s less than the budgets on most of the DreamWorks products to date (Paulie and Mouse Hunt were cheaper).
ARMAGEDDON SPIN WATCH: America is doing great at the foreign box office, but I have to wonder why Variety gave Armageddon the headline in Monday’s story. As I read the article about Armageddon‘s record opening in South Korea, I realized it’s the same story I read last week. But the story was dominated by Deep Impact‘s No. 1 position with $9 million in 18 territories and reaching a cumulative international gross of $137 million so far. And Dr. Dolittle was clearly the No. 2 story, opening in Australia (a much bigger market than South Korea) with the second biggest opening there ever (beating ID4) with $3.9 million. And Mulan and Six Days, Seven Nights are kicking butt, too. I’m not suggesting that Armageddon be buried, but it seems to be getting excessive coverage for opening magnificently in one territory.
GODZILLA TOKYO WATCH: Can’t accuse Variety of burying Godzilla. El Lizardo set an all-time attendance record in Japan as 500,000 people saw the new and abused version of the Japanese icon. The film had the advantage of also having more screens than any other film in Japanese history, but it beat out the previous record-holder, The Lost World, by about 150,000 audience members. Of course, that’s a lot fewer people than who saw the film here in America on its opening weekend, but Japanese box office analysts expect the film to top $100 million in Japan alone. But will that help Sony? Toho holds the distribution rights to Japan as part of the deal for remake rights. Will Sony see any of the money? Probably. If not, $100 million could be the highest licensing fee ever.
MORE ON HALLOWEEN: H20: Saw the movie with a recruited crowd and a bunch of journalists Saturday night. I don’t think Miramax meant to do it, but they even got a drunk guy in there who was yelling at the screen at the wrong times. Just like real moviegoing. The film, which stars Jamie Lee Curtis and completely disregards any Halloween sequel since No. 2, has one of the best horror flick third acts ever. Almost no dialogue. Action is king. Then there are the first two acts. Kevin Williamson‘s name is all over this project, but whatever contributions he made are either negligible or worthless. There’s no thrill to Michelle Williams from “Dawson’s Creek.” (I don’t want to wait for our death to be over.) This new kid, Josh Harnett is as beautiful as he is wooden. And it’s a treat to see Asam Haan-Byrd all grown up. But the teen angle that was so fun in the original film is just filler here. On the other hand, Janet Leigh is used particularly well, especially if you are a film geek. Director Steve Miner does an OK job, but one really wishes Carpenter had been on board. He’s just better. But this is Jamie Lee Curtis‘ movie and no one else’s, and she delivers big time. I think Miramax may have overestimated the film by moving it to August. It isn’t the next Scream. Nothing new here. But old, for lack of a better word, is good. Old works.
STAR WARS PREQUEL EXCLUSIVE: This exclusive glimpse at page one of the Star Wars script comes care of Vishal Sharma. Click here and don’t worry. No spoilers here.
READER OF THE DAY: From Jamie T: “I enjoyed your roughcut.com article on scenes cut from The Truman Show. When I saw the movie, I felt that there were two scenes missing — scenes you didn’t mention in your article. 1. I read a newspaper review of the movie that mentioned Truman’s wife was paid $10,000 each time they had sex. I expected to ‘learn’ this in the movie when Christof is interviewed, but it wasn’t there. Did I miss it? 2. Toward the end of the movie Truman is introduced to a new co-worker. He seems attracted to her, yet the next scene has him ‘escaping’ from his basement. Was there a relationship between them? Do you know if other scenes were cut which explain my confusion?”

The Weekend Wrap-Up

This is the kind of weekend after which guys like me should probably just shut up. But what fun would that be? There’s not a lot to say about the success of Lethal Weapon 4. Warner Bros. rushed the film through development and into production on a short schedule, determined to hit its July 10 mark to fill the troubled studio’s summer “event” void once they decided that they didn’t really believe in The Avengers (a fact they’ve been telegraphing to the media for months) and realized they (Mr. Daly and Mr. Semel) might not survive another bad summer. And it worked. Brilliantly. Will the film hold up? Who knows? But the heat is off the WB for the moment.
Meanwhile, Armageddon had one of those weekends that just leaves me shaking my head. The film dropped just 37 percent overall for the three days, falling 48 percent on Friday, 21 percent on Saturday and 40 percent (based on the Disney estimate) on Sunday. These jumpy percentages may just be a natural correction (despite my B.S. meter going wild) since last Saturday was the 4th of July, causing the box office to dip that day. That didn’t stop Disney from throwing Daily Variety the Bizarre Stat Of The Week, and I quote, Armageddon “enjoyed a strong 27 percent jump in sales from Friday to Saturday.” (Fox, feeling no need to spin, didn’t bother to tell reporters that Dr. Dolittle jumped “a strong” 52 percent from Friday to Saturday.) Also, Armageddon ended its second weekend with $100,000 more in its estimated coffers than was in Godzilla‘s two-weekend take. Do we think that is a coincidence? Armageddon may fall back behind Godzilla‘s pace as final numbers are released today. (Disney’s Sunday estimate was lowered more than $500,000 last weekend.) No, this is not some grand conspiracy that I’ve got racing in my head. It’s the subtle shading that can make all the difference in how the media reports this story. Less than a 40 percent drop, more than a 40 percent drop. Doing better than Godzilla, doing worse than Godzilla. Most people don’t get further than the headlines, so make sure the headlines are in your favor. That’s the game.
The other newcomer was Small Soldiers, which pulled in $14.5 million for third place. I’d say the opening is just about right, and the strength of the film’s legs will become apparent (or not) next weekend. It hasn’t been a big story in the media yet, but this summer has been really good for kids’ films, with Dr. Dolittle (fourth place with $12.8 million), Mulan (fifth place with $7 million), newcomer Madeline (a soft $6.6 million sixth place finish that was still better than many expected) and Small Soldiers pulling in altogether more than $41 million this weekend and, as a group, grossing more than $200 million domestic so far.
The final four could all switch positions by the release of final numbers today. The high estimater was The Truman Show with $3.73 million and the low was Six Days, Seven Nights with $3.5 million. The X-Files was in the middle (with $3.7 million), tied with Out of Sight, which will gross less than any of the other four films in this bracket. Which is a horrible irony, considering that it’s the best of the lot. And I’ll add this. People have loved Truman and The X-Files and even Armageddon, but there have been others who have strongly disagreed. I haven’t seen one letter saying anything bad about Out of Sight. Not one. So, if you haven’t shelled out to see it, do it now while it’s still on some good multiplex screens.
THE GOOD: Another film that looks like it may outgross Out of Sight, though not quite as dramatically, is Everest, the IMAX smash-hit mountain movie that was actually No. 11 in last weekend’s box office race, adding another $1.1 million for a $24.6 18-week total. With numbers like that, it may not be long before they make a “real” movie in the monumental format whose total screen count is growing steadily.
MORE GOOD: Caught Halloween: H20 on Saturday night. If you love the original Halloween, this film will not disappoint. Sure, there’s plenty of room for criticism, but what’s the point? It’s a horror movie, for God’s sake. (More tomorrow.)
THE BAD: Disney spun some more on Friday, this time attacking critics directly. From the mouth of Jerry Bruckheimer (“they” are the critics): “I made a different picture than the one they saw — I made a real entertaining popcorn movie, and they didn’t get that. The same critic who likes My Dinner with Andre is not going to have the same response to Armageddon. I make popular entertainment. If critics don’t like popular entertainment, they shouldn’t be reviewing it. Critics who review classical music and opera don’t review popular music, do they?” Uhhhhh, wrong! I really enjoyed Bruckheimer’s last two action epics, Con Air and The Rock. But, I also like My Dinner with Andre. And two guys who work under the Disney banner, Siskel and Ebert, are similarly flexible. Both loved Andre, yes. But both gave “thumbs up” to Con Air. And Siskel, who gave “thumbs down” to The Rock, gave “thumbs up” to Armagedddon, while Ebert was “thumbs down” on Armageddon and “thumbs up” on The Rock. To paraphrase James Carville (though I think Bruckheimer is extremely smart), “It’s the movie, stupid.”
THE UGLY: Funny that Bruckheimer took on critics in a bunch on the same weekend that I want to take one on as an individual. You tell me, is the following paragraph from a film review or a college mid-term? “It’s an adult’s paranoid dream come to life, so setting it in a juvenile context may have inadvertently undone the foundation of the story. And while the picture’s sense of a toy store turned upside down, courtesy of dazzling f/x, will draw young viewers, ultimately the film’s mean-spiritedness and serious underpinnings will turn off its core audience. The result will be rapid commercial erosion and disappointing theatrical box office; ancillary movement, particularly on video, could provide the picture with a more vital afterlife.” You can put down your dictionaries now. If you haven’t figured it out, the review is of Small Soldiers. And it’s by Leonard Klady of Variety. . Some movies and some critics just are an unreasonable match.
TWO MOVIES EQUAL: Lethal Weapon 4 + Madeline = Lethal Madeline 14. “She’s 14 years old, she’s menstruating and she ain’t taking any crap!” Follow the adventures of young Madeline as she comes of age and decides it’s time to break out of those two rows (“I’m getting too old for this s–t!”) and hit the streets of Paris. Watch out, nuns!
JUST WONDERING: Have any of you noticed Ben Affleck‘s new teeth making their debut in Armageddon? They were bought and paid for by Disney. You see, when director Michael Bay lined up young Affleck’s first close-up, he decided in a New York-destroying second that Big Ben’s teeth weren’t nearly as pretty as his pecs. Twenty-four hours and $18,000 later, Ben was no longer dentally challenged and he was ready for his close-up.
BAD AD WATCH: This section is usually moist with bile, but not this week. As I leafed through Sunday’s papers, I was taken with the good ads for a change. First, there’s Saving Private Ryan, which is going pull-quote free. Bravo! I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that DreamWorks’ other July release Small Soldiers is doing the same, though it may be for slightly less lofty reasons. (“Two Thumbs Down.”) Meanwhile, Sony left off the names from pull-quotes by two NBC stations (Chicago and Dallas) and one L.A. local on The Mask of Zorro, perhaps sensing the names would have only negative value if any. (I expect some big-name raves by next weekend.) And best of all, there wasn’t a Ron Brewington quote as far as my eye could see.
READER OF THE DAY: From Krillian: “I just saw Armageddon and thought it was a great summer movie. What’s with all the hype about Armageddon being a bomb already? It’ll hit $100 million domestically by Tuesday, and you know this movie will do great overseas, so why doesn’t everyone calm down and stop trying to kill a movie’s business with negative box-office non-stories? And it’s not just you, it’s every single movie site I’ve checked. Sure Armageddon had dozens of flaws, and I could probably come up with an equal number in the list as I did with Godzilla, but Armageddon had better characters, wittier lines, cooler special effects, and they actually… [edited out spoiler]. Armageddon is three-and-one-half stars for enjoyment, and maybe two stars for an actual film. It’s a movie that I know will suck in two years, the way ID4 bites it now, but at the time, I thought that was great, too.”

News By the Numbers

10. FROM BRENTWOOD TO BURBANK: Universal signed Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush to be the bad guy in its upcoming “from the comic book of the same name” feature, Mystery Men. The description of the film says the Mystery Men are would-be super heroes who do unique things, like one who “channels his anger,” one who “does creative things with forks” and one who can “really wield a shovel.” Sounds like Universal has finally done what the LAPD couldn’t do: solve the Nicole Brown Simpson/Ron Goldman murder case.
9. RELEASING LOLITA: The long-delayed and controversial Lolita is finally scheduled to arrive in America’s living rooms on August 2 on Showtime cable. So what is it doing in L.A. and New York City theaters on July 22? Trying to win an Oscar. See, there’s an Academy rule that says if your film hits cable before it hits theaters, it’s ineligible for an Academy Award. If you want to know more about that rule, call Linda Fiorentino, who was a sure-bet Academy nominee for The Last Seduction, but was ruled out by law. But that’s not all. The Samuel Goldwyn Company will release Lolita into theaters in September to try and develop a profitable theatrical run. As far as I know, it will not be any kind of “special edition,” so what’s the point? Money, money, money, money, money. Given the specialized nature of Lolita, this release is the equivalent of sending the film to revival houses after cable, only better. The prints will be cleaner. My guess is that Goldwyn is investing $10 million or less and will hit profit at about a $15 million gross. That would confirm my earlier suspicions that the lack of a domestic distributor was about the cost of distribution, not the controversy around the movie. I doubt that director Adrian Lyne and Pathé would have accepted such a soft release, given the $55 million negative cost of the film, except at the last minute. And here we are.
8. HILLARY!!!!! ROCKY!: Sly Stallone got moneyed Miamians to cough up more than $800,000 at a fund-raising dinner in his home that featured sea bass terrine, filet mignon and the President of the United States. Stallone presented Clinton with a pair of boxing gloves and analogized Clinton to Rocky. President Clinton responded by asking (in my imagination), “How do you get these things to stay on your knees?”
7. REVERSE ARMAGEDDON: 20th Century Fox is developing Challenger, the story of the tragic space shuttle explosion. Seems a little tame for a feature, so here is a suggestion to spice it up: It turns out there was an asteroid headed toward Earth. And NASA launched two shuttles and blew one up as a distraction. Christa McAuliffe was an alien who was returned to her planet. But she was David Duchovny‘s sister and he found out. No, no, no! It turns out Jim Cameron may do it, and he’s going to make Christa McAuliffe a 19-year-old Brit, and there’s a stowaway who has real insight and a cute butt. But the captain of the shuttle chases them with a gun and blows a hole in the shuttle. No! Before the movie, there’s a 2-hour trailer for Speed 2 (great recycling opportunity) and the 73-second shuttle launch and explosion, uncut and with no rock music, runs. The End.
6. MR. W. & TINA: Tina Brown left The New Yorker to do a magazine/TV/movie deal with Miramax. This is big news in New York and almost meaningless in the industry town of Los Angeles, unless you are fighting for the last table at Spago on a Saturday night and Tina has it now. You were one of the greatest magazine editors ever, Ms. Brown. Welcome back to the bottom of the Hollywood hill. Start pushing the rock.
5. FUNERAL WITH A SIDE OF FRIES: Roy Rogers has gone the way of Bob’s Big Boy, only Mr. Rogers is unlikely to make a comeback. Personally, I never liked his cooking. But besides being the name on the sign for over 600 restaurants, Roy Rogers was also one of America’s most popular figures in the 1940’s, the personification of the great singing cowboy. By all accounts, he was a great guy and a real humanitarian. Happy trails to the Bruce Willis of his generation. Yippee Ay Yo Kayay, Roy.
4. DREAM A LITTLE (MORE) DREAM: Paul Allen made his money with Bill Gates, and then took his billions and became an investor. He is not a foolish man, even if he has the bad habit of buying sports teams in Seattle. So, it must be reassuring now that he has come close to doubling his stake in DreamWorks SKG by buying out most of the stake that was held by South Korean food conglomerate Cheil Jedang Corp. Allen now owns more of DreamWorks than Spielberg, Katzenberg or Geffen with 24 percent, but the trio still controls the company completely with 22 percent each, adding up to their 66 percent total. The stock purchase cost about $160 million, bringing his total investment to about $660 million. That’s a lot of Small Soldiers.
3. COMMITTING LEO: Looks like Leo DiCaprio is finally ready to sign on the line that is dotted and will actually grace us with another movie. It’s called The Beach, and it’s a war drama that will be directed by Danny Boyle of Trainspotting fame. The film won’t start shooting until January, which will give Leo more time to hang out with Playmates, bust up hotel rooms and generally act like less than his 23 years. Go, Leo, go! Just don’t look back because Ryan Phillippe or some other kid with brighter eyes may be catching up with you.
2. ARMAGEDDON SPIN WATCH: Disney had quite a week trying to convince us that Armageddon was a great success for the studio. When Joe Roth complained the media was unfair in portraying The Hunchback of Notre Dame as a failure even though it grossed $322 million worldwide, I bought it. When he brought Simpson and Bruckheimer back into the fold to create gritty event movies even after their disastrous “visionary alliance” with Disney, I said, “Interesting.” But when he tells the world that he was happy with a $53 million opening for Armageddon, I laugh my butt off. If the movie drops by less than 40 percent this weekend, the spin will continue on Monday. If it drops by 50 percent or more, look for dead silence from the Mouse House. Can’t make any excuses after that excrement hits the fan.
1. THINK THEY SAW BATMAN & ROBIN?: A jury awarded Francis Ford Coppola $20 million in actual damages and $60 million in punitive damages in his suit against Warner Bros. over efforts which resulted in Coppola’s version of Pinocchio never reaching the screen. So, $80 million is the going rate for NOT getting your film made. Interesting. I have some old screenplays I should get out of the trunk. But seriously, this award could be the most significant ever, since it basically penalizes the WB for doing what studio executives have done since the end of the studio system: kill every project they thought had potential, but decided not to make, so that if it ever became a hit somewhere else they wouldn’t look stupid and lose their job for which they knew they were underqualified and overpaid in the first place. Keep in mind, they go through hundreds of projects each year and make about 20 movies. Hollywood is the land of “What if?” Better for them that no one ever answers that question.
READER OF THE DAY: From Julian from Melbourne, Australia: “I’m sick of being the one who knows what sounds good, what sounds bad but seeable, and so on. Years of media saturation means I’m always the one my friends and family ask when they want to know about films that are out, or what’s arriving soon, or what’s meant to be good. For once, I’d like to be the one who goes into a film without knowing anything about it, and be completely surprised by the plot, characters and happenings of the film. In the last couple of years I can only say independent films have really caught me by not having the whole plot revealed beforehand. Does this mean I’ll stop visiting web sites such as roughcut.com or reading the odd entertainment magazine? No, because I love movies and want to know what’s good, what’s bad and what’s it all about. However, I would think film publicists would remember mystique can draw just as big by letting it all hang out. To give credit where it’s due, (and I’m not a fan here) Star Wars had a tiny release, originally. What it does mean is that I miss the position of being told by a friend ‘I saw this movie yesterday,’ and not being able to tell them more about it than they knew without having seen the film. Just my tuppence.”

Weekend Preview

Armageddon week two is here… the moment of truth. You know, I do this every week, but rarely do I discuss one of the guiding principals of box office: The Second Weekend Rules. It’s this simple. As much as we like to think the first weekend tells us the future, as much as we like to think the weekdays leading up to the second weekend are great indicators, as much as we use calculators, we don’t know jack until the second weekend. If Armageddon drops only 30 percent this weekend, it may do the $160 million-plus that Joe Roth (Disney Movie King) is predicting. But if it’s a 50 percent dropper, as the rest of us seem to suspect, then look for it to stay in the mosh pit of moderate hits with Deep Impact and Godzilla. (Second place, 48 percent drop to $17.3 million). So, who is the new champ? Same as the old champ. Lethal Weapon 4 should manage to pull in around $23 million for the same old, same old first-place finish. (They always &#^@ you in the drive-thru!) And look for a bigger opening than many are predicting for Small Soldiers. Let’s say $16 million.
Dr. Dolittle should hold up well enough for a $12.8 million third week, pushing past the $85 million mark and taking the fourth spot on the Top 10. In the five spot, it looks to be a rugged battle between Mulan (which should fall by about 35 percent to $7.5 million) and the new kids’ film, Madeline, which has been unceremoniously dumped into the marketplace by Sony. I’ll bet on Mulan to win this one, and I will live with my fear that I may be overestimating Madeline by a few million. Filling out the Top 10, Out of Sight fights for its life, The X-Files fights the future and Harrison Ford (Six Days, Seven Nights) fights Jim Carrey (The Truman Show) to stay in the Top 10. Don’t look for any of these pictures to stay over the $4 million mark. And if numbers continue as they have in the last few weeks, don’t be too surprised if The X-Files is drops from sight here. The X-Files total, which looks to be about $80 to $85 million, is a surprise, but it shouldn’t be. The longer I spend this kind of time examining the numbers, the more I realize history is almost always right. And the singular phenomenon that is Titanic is more and more impressive every week.
THE GOOD: After waiting an hour later than expected for the Small Soldiers premiere screening to end, we finally got Stan Winston, Henry Rollins, Dick Miller and Dionne Warwick to chat with us at the post-party. Check out the transcript here.
THE BAD: Christina Ricci, who looked great in a slinky, royal blue jumpsuit, dissed us. Just wouldn’t come on-line. I guess she’s been getting media advice form Vincent “The Brain” Gallo, who directed her in the grossly overrated and ego-driven Buffalo 66. Oh, well.
THE UGLY: Not Cheri Oteri. You know, the crazed cheerleader from “Saturday Night Live.” She stopped by for a quick chat, worrying the whole time that she wasn’t going to be funny enough. She was. But the surprise was that she looked so much like a movie starlet. It’s one of the great oddities of this job that you get to take a close look at the people you cover. You get to know who has great skin and who has fake boobs. But the one thing that always shocks is eye color. So many actors and actresses have really beautiful eyes that never come across on TV or are well lit enough in features to see their real color. So, Cheri has great eyes. That’s all I’m trying to say. She does a cameo in Small Soldiers and plays “The Mayor” in Inspector Gadget, which she’s shooting now with Matthew Broderick and Rupert Everett. And she let us know that The Cheerleader is going on hiatus for a while. “Leave them wanting more, not less,” she told me.
TWO MOVIES EQUAL: Small Soldiers + Armageddon = Small Armageddon. Plastic soldiers come to life and fight back when a small child tries to use Comet to get them clean. Led by the voice of Bruce Willis, who loses all his hair to the scrub brush. Demi Moore as the G.I. Jane, who takes half of Bruce’s body as part of the doll divorce settlement. (She takes the torso, which leaves the Bruce character with his head and his brain closer than ever.) Special appearance by Steve Buscemi as the voice of Malibu Psychotic Ken.
JUST WONDERING: Will you all go see a movie for its soundtrack if it’s not a movie that’s based around the music? Small Soldiers has such hot names as Bone Thugs N Harmony, Wyclef and Queen Latifah. Armageddon has Aerosmith. There’s Something About Mary has a great retro soundtrack. City of Angels is a smash with new songs by Alanis Morrisette and Goo Goo Dolls. Do these call for a trip to the movies or just the record store?
BAD AD WATCH: It’s killing me to see Sony using pull quotes from the amazing Ron Brewington in TV ads for The Mask of Zorro. I really enjoyed the film, which is as corny as Kansas in July but twice as sweet, and I’m pretty sure they could have gotten someone who isn’t such a quote whore to say something nice about the film. Perhaps a lesson of this summer is that reviews from the meaningless are pretty much meaningless. Opening a movie is about creating a “must-see” audience and those kind of committed moviegoers see right through pull quotes from guys like Brewington.
ARMAGEDDON SPIN WATCH: Disney was able to take the day off from spinning as the Armageddon soundtrack, driven by the Aerosmith single, “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” hit the top of the album charts. Congratulations! Of course, Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler was the first person to spin his involvement in the film, when, after being jeered at the Cape Canaveral premiere for donning an Armageddon cap, told the crowd, “Hey! My kid’s in the movie. I gotta do this!”
READER OF THE DAY: From Scott T: “I saw Lethal Weapon 4 last night and I must say that Mel, Danny, Joe and company are definitely too old for this crap. Jet Li makes an impressive American debut, and Chris Rock is good for a few laughs, but everyone else seems tired. The main problem seems to be the script that sometimes lapses into sitcom-like situations. The direction is somewhat lacking, as well. There is no flow. The plot is almost negligible. There are some good, if not unbelievable, action scenes. The most irritating aspect of the movie is the character Leo [Joe Pesci]. I can’t remember if this character was appealing in the second film, but he certainly has outstayed his welcome. His character seems to be a variation of the one he played in Gone Fishin’. If I were he I wouldn’t want to remind anyone of that mess. The sad thing is you can tell they had a great time making the movie. It’s too bad they didn’t bother to find a story the rest of us could enjoy as well. This movie, like the recent U.S. Marshals, is fun to watch but is totally uninvolving and quickly fades from memory as soon as you leave the theater.”

Weekend Preview

The first non-holiday weekend of the new year and not much to go on.The only new wide release is Fox’s forest fire actioner, Firestorm,starring the hugely popular (snicker, snicker) Howie Long. Last year,three pictures debuted in this slot. The Relic opened OK, followed bya weak Jackie Chan’s First Strike and a disastrousTurbulence. My guess is that Firestorm will do a Liotta-like $4.5million for seventh place. The unsinkable Titanic will certainly maintain first place. The weekday numbers are off, with the holidayover, by about 60 percent, but I expect that the Fri-Sat cume should drop onlyabout 15 percent because kids are back in school and another 7.5 percent or so because of reduced attendance onFriday and late Sunday. That means about $25.8 million.
As Good As It Gets seems to be in the passing lane, rushing past aremote-controlled Tomorrow Never Dies for second place with a 30 percent dropto about $8.6 million. Bond drops 40 percent to third with $8.3 million topass the $100 million mark domestically. Mouse Hunt will take theDreamWorks box office crown, dipping about 35 percent to add $5.5 millioncheese balls for fourth. Scream 2 should battle Jackie Brown for thefifth spot. Both look like 34 percent droppers, but will the long-term wear onS2 be worse than the ennui that seems to surround T3 (that’s Tarantino3). Both should hang out around $47.7 million. Firestorm will follow.Amistad should drop one spot to eighth with about $3.1 million. And Mr.Magoo should be tangling with Flubber for ninth and tenth with about$2.6 million each. The third of the Disney idiot trilogy, An AmericanWerewolf In CGI, should drop below the Mendoza line.
Reader Timothy Kooney sent us this over the holidays, responding to my Worst of 1997 list. It’s edited for space.
“Lost World should have ranked worst of the worst with a Surgeon General’s warning. This moviehad it all: hack writing, bad acting, half-dimensional characters,B-movie suspense, inconsistent science, fractured plot,lead-pipe-to-the-head “humor”/irony and more. The dinosaurs were themost life-like creatures on the screen.”
TK adds about Jeff Goldblum:
“After Lost World, I think even the Prince of Darkness will be ready toget this babbling idiot off the screen. I don’t remember my Dante, isthere a circle of hell for bad acting?”

Ranting and Ravings

The great William Goldman coined the phrase “nobody knows anything” in his 1983 classic, Adventures in the Screen Trade. (The one true “must read” for industry insight.) This summer seems to be out to prove his point in a big way. There are plenty of people who loved last summer’s The Lost World, but most people would call it a dog. Yet, last summer, it opened with $92.7 million over Memorial Day weekend. This year, Godzilla was knocked from mega status to being just another blockbuster in just the two days between its Tuesday night sneaks and Memorial Day Friday.
So, what lesson did we take from that lambasting? Too Much Hype Is Bad.
That must have been it, right? Backlash.
Screen Your Movie.Godzilla wasn’t ready for an audience until five days before release. No time for the Sony marketing team to take the audience reaction to the new animalistic Godzilla into account. If they had found that core viewers were going to react to the beast as though they had been doused with radiation by Devlin and Emmerich, they would have adjusted marketing, right?
Make A Great Movie. This is an old rule, but a good one. The Centropolis guys thought they had made a qualifying film. But the core audience responded with venom. Regular audiences seemed to like it all right, though most people concede that the human story was lame. Not so much bad as soft.
Of course, that didn’t stop Twister from racking up $242 million domestically. Though Twister had effects we hadn’t seen before (Another rule: Use Never-Before-Seen Effects), and their sidekick characters were kind of cool.
So, another rule: Use Iconic Characters, At Least As Sidekicks. And a problem for Godzilla. People felt they had seen the effects before in the Jurassic Park movies.
OK. Got it. Wrote it down. We’re prepared.
And then came the Armageddon. Disney pulled back on the hype, screened the movie for critics and junket jockeys (and some invited geek types whom the studio expected to juice the room), and they used iconic characters. In fact, they used characters so iconic that each sidekick had their own little music video about their life away from the oil/asteroid rig. But two little problems. Armageddon featured the fourth major CG (computer graphic) destruction of New York (after ID4, Godzilla and Deep Impact. What do these guys have against The Chrysler Building, anyway?) Broke that rule. And was this a Great Movie? Well, no. Personally, I consider it a soulless exercise in trying to remake Con Air in space without the weight of Nicolas Cage and with the asteroid in John Malkovich‘s role. Malkovich could sneer that asteroid into submission. But there are those of you who disagree. I certainly have to acknowledge that. But cries of “Lighten Up! It’s only an effects movie!” leave us with a real problem. I was saying just that about Godzilla. And there was plenty of mail from those who agreed with me on that picture. (My simple comparison. I thought that Godzilla was a sincere effort and that Armageddon was, as I just said, completely calculating.)
So, making a great movie isn’t the answer. Too hard to decide what that is unless you are working with Speilberg, Lucas, Cameron or Zemeckis. Then you’re safe. Audiences will always give them the benefit of the doubt! That is, unless you are trying to sell 1941, Radioland Murders, The Abyss or Death Becomes Her. Damn it! (And I really like three of those four movies.)
Could it be that coughing up the latest effects, not technology-wise but in content, is the requirement for a mega-movie now? Men in Black gave us some new alien stuff last year. That worked. But Starship Troopers had the incredible cutting-edge bugs that we hadn’t seen before and it flopped. So, effects are not enough.
But Starship Troopers wasn’t a summer movie. Maybe it should have been. And thank God Titanic wasn’t. You all know that I am not a lusty Titanic lover, but I have always said that it was a must-see-in-a-big-theater movie. The last hour is awesome. And Titanic had some great effects (though we’re going to be laughing at that overhead deck shot, with the cardboard-like CG people, in the near future). Do you smell a new rule?
Brand New Effects Plus Characters People Love Means Mega Dollars. Good! We have an answer! Finally.
But what if Titanic had made its July release date? Would it have been nearly the smash we now have in the record books? Probably not. Remember, Titanic only opened with $28 million. In the summer, that would be considered a disastrous opening. But fortunately for the Big Boat and The King Of The World, the rest of the Christmas line-up was pretty soft. And the winter schedules featured dud after dud. Titanic captured America’s imagination and sailed in smooth water for months. When it finally lost the No. 1 slot, it wasn’t due to the competition. It was simply slowing down on its own and a decent competitor finally showed up. So throw everything out! Titanic means nothing to a distribution chief trying to figure out how to navigate summer. There is never any clear water, until maybe August, but then you are limiting yourself to a three-week summer run. No one wants to get too close to the Labor Day wall.
Have you noticed yet that I have no real answers here?
Saying “Make A Great Movie” just isn’t enough. Independence Day played the patriotism card at just the right moment. Effects were good, but the best effect was the coming-of-age of Will Smith. Forrest Gump and The Lion King, the only other summer films to gross more than $300 million since Jurassic Park, changed the effects equation, as they were also low-tech phenomena. Both captured us in a way no one expected. (The Lion King did almost $100 million more than Disney’s No. 2 animated classic, Aladdin). So the effects rules aren’t enough. Iconic characters can be taken either as fun or as a trick. One never knows. Hype worked last summer with Men in Black, so that can’t be the problem. Maybe there is just no way to raise the hype envelope any higher. Just like there’s no way to do a realistic Godzilla creature that doesn’t remind people of Jurassic Park. Or maybe the reality that theatrical showings of a movie are just one small part of the viewership has finally caught up with the movies. Maybe we are at a moment in history when the $200 million gross is the high watermark, with only remarkable exceptions like Titanic, and audiences are ready for day-‘n-date PPV premieres.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. Nobody knows anything. But there are a bunch of guys in $3,000 suits trying to figure it out before they get fired. Me? I’m in my T-shirt and shorts, enjoying the weather and waiting for the next epiphany. Maybe Lethal Weapon 4 will put it all into perspective. Or Lethal Weapon 14.
READER OF THE DAY: Marianne T wrote: “What’s going on here is Titanic — great story, simple story, charismatic acting, and interacting, huge scope, comprehensible scope, incredible quality throughout. However hard it was to be a part of or to make, what comes through the screen is magic. Having felt that magic, the engineered, veneered disasters seem doubly preposterous. The direction of disaster-type movies will have to become graspable, not almost laughable. Was there an instant in Deep Impact, Godzilla or Armageddon where anybody in the audience really cared? I think not. Perhaps we now have the capacity to sit in a theater and get involved for more than two hours INSTEAD of tuning out or numbing out. The huge scale is not the problem. These movies are not too big, or loud, or filled with too many people. Titanic was all of those, and yet it seems to have awakened a collective memory of why we go to the movies (and maybe why they are made). What’s now missing is something as gossamer as film itself. Having been ‘grabbed’ by it in Titanic and most recently in Out of Sight I know it exists. It’s, I don’t know, it’s magic!”

Copping Twenty Million

It hasn’t yet gotten the attention the Art Buchwald case got, but I think that the $20 million award won by Francis Ford Coppola and producer Fred Fuchs over Pinnochio is perhaps the most important legal triumph in Hollywood in a long, long time. Why? Buchwald’s case came from an outsider, and the win was essentially a victory over business affairs. In reality, the win hasn’t done much more than to change the fine print in contracts and to, more than ever, close the gates of the kingdom off to “untrustworthy” outsiders (meaning those who don’t have enough of a stake in relationships to avoid litigation despite getting screwed).
The Coppola case is all about the heart and blood of studio business. Can studios safely continue to control and, as often as not, kill loads of projects a year so that no competing studio can make them? This jury seems to have preferred the logic of reasonability to the pure letter of the law. Warners wasn’t really willing to make Pinnochio, so why hold Coppola up? And Coppola’s attorneys went right after the WB hierarchy. WB’s movie co-chief took direct hits as “Where’s Bob Daly?” became the sing-song attack in closing argument. The movie business spends more money without signed deals than any industry in the world. But now, a lot of subtext that normally remains unwritten legally (and often unspoken) will have to be defined as this case shifts more power to the creative side. And defining language in contracts is the foundation of conflict.
With so many stars doing double duty as “producers,” will their agents now have the upper hand in untangling their weighed-down projects? And what about the thousands of screenplays that linger with years-old studio attachments that are too onerous to ever allow anyone else to consider making the films? And what about Bond, James Bond? MGM may well have the law on their side regarding anything more than one Bond film, directly based on Thunderball, at Sony. But will a jury side with MGM over Kevin McClory, who actually developed characters with Ian Fleming? Pandora’s Box may now be open.
ARMAGEDDON SPIN WATCH: The spin began in earnest over the weekend as Disney planted a story at The Hollywood Reporter that has unnamed “media executives” putting Armageddon‘s TV ad buys at no more than $15 million. Given their $2 million Super Bowl ad buy, the $5 million premiere at Cape Canaveral and the previous pervasive reports of TV spending in the $40 million range, does Disney really think anyone will believe this? This is even sillier than the $140 million budget figure that keeps being reported even though Disney passed that figure up months ago before the international add-ons and effects overruns. (Ironically, when Lucasfilm fesses up about increasing their budget by $40 million for Star Wars I, they get hammered and questioned. That’s why the major studios now make it a habit to lie about their budgets on big films more often than not.)
REFLECTIONS OF THE ARMAGEDDON: Meanwhile, Beacon Pictures, who brought us Air Force One, just hired commercial and video savant Marcus Nispel to make his feature-directing debut on the $100 million-plus Arnold Schwarzenegger film, End of Days. The Hollywood Reporter quotes “one observer” as saying, “Many studios are gravitating towards these hip, young directors because they have a new style that stimulates the MTV generation.” Was that before or after this weekend? Right now, the two hot directors of this summer are Mimi Leder and Betty Thomas. And F. Gary Gray, who came out of video but isn’t a high-gloss shooter, looks like he may end up being the most profitable transition guy of this year (with The Negotiator) as Bay, Antoine Fuqua, Kirk Wong, Spike Jonze and other guys flounder in their excesses. The verdict is still out on David Fincher, who could return to Seven-quality work with The Fight Club, currently in production.
TURNING INDIE DEPENDANT: When Miramax joined the Disney monolith, the studio and the mini-major started to battle over content. As a subsidiary of an MPAA signatory company, the studio could no longer release unrated films. Yet, releasing NC-17 product was considered a dangerous thing to do. Miramax won the battle over The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. But those conflicts have died down a bit as Miramax has restrained itself from pushing that envelope as it’s become an even more commercially-oriented company, relying on thrillers from its young Dimension arm more than on “real” art films marketed to the high heavens.
But October Films, the studio that rode so high on the wave of truly artistic Oscar contenders in 1996 (Secrets & Lies and Breaking the Waves) has quickly buckled under the harness of Universal Pictures. The first film to be dumped by October is Todd Solondz‘s Happiness, which took Cannes by storm despite it content, which includes pedophilia, gunplay, onanism and human dismemberment. (Hey, folks, it’s a comedy! Kind of Solondz’s sick version of Woody Allen‘s Hannah and Her Sisters.) Note To Universal: The idea was to buy a company that could expand your range, not to buy an expansive company and have them stick to lame, CopLand-like, celebrity-driven arthouse films that won’t push any boundaries. Bad show, old sports.
READER OF THE DAY: As promised, here’s Ryan’s letter: “Dear Dave, The problem with Harry is the same problem with all journalists in the entertainment industry — they’ve successfully sucked the magic out of the movies. I don’t want to know what Harry thinks of Armageddon. I don’t care if he goes to the premiere and reviews it. It doesn’t matter. Since when were movies about press junkets and premieres?
And why just pick on Harry? He’s no different than the catty bitches that darken E!’s ‘The Gossip Show.’ The industry has reached a point where hype and anticipation are more important than films themselves. Titanic was all about how much it cost to make, how much it grossed worldwide, how many awards it won. And how many soundbites from teenage girls they could cram into a newscast. But it was never about the film. It was either about how the film would fail or why it became so successful. To the media and the industry, the film itself didn’t really matter.
This weekend I saw The Search with Montgomery Clift and My Own Private Idaho with River Phoenix. Two great actors, two great films, and two great performances. I didn’t think about what critics thought, what went into making them or the ultimate tragedies that befell the leading men. I thought about what it must have been like to have been an orphaned child in post-World War II Berlin. I thought about what River’s character must have been going through when he confesses his love to Keanu Reeves. I thought about what a shame it was that River and Monty are no longer around to make movies. I thought about what a blessing it was that these films were their legacy. That’s what the magic of the movies are all about. That’s what I’d like to see on a Website.
Ain’t It Cool News? Not really. Your own private Hollywood? No thanks. It’s the films that remain. It’s the Montgomery Clifts and the River Phoenixes that live on because their gifts are the kind that illuminate and educate. Theirs are the gifts that inspire a passion in people. They are the reason why I go to the movies. They are the reason why most people go to the movies. Not because of the hacks on the ‘The Gossip Show.’ Not because of the editors of Premiere, Entertainment Weekly, US, Variety etc. Not Mary Hart. Not CNN. And no, not because of rough cut. And certainly not because of a film geek like Harry Knowles. In other words Dave, don’t waste your time on people or subjects like Harry. Because that’s not what it’s about. That’s not what it should ever be about.”