2 Russ Meyers Memories

I have two memories from the Russ Meyer family.

I met the guy a few times, but not memorably. But Charles Napier, who is also a part of the Jonathan Demme film family, was on a bad movie that I wrote a while back and we got to talking about one of the late “works” of Meyers. Chuck told me that they found some new girls and packed into a van and headed out into the desert to shoot and when they wouldn’t perform the acts Russ wanted them to, Meyers and he and the other men in the crew hopped back into the van and abandoned these poor, young, hugely-breasted beauties out in the heat for a few hours. By the time the guys returned, the girls were desperate to perform.

When I told this story to Roger Ebert, a good friend of Meyers, he insisted that it could not be true and that Meyers never stopped to that kind of mean trick or even allowed his “actors” to engage in sex on his sets. But that protest always felt to me like it was Roger’s love for this director and friend more than a sure truth. And when Chuck Napier tells a story, God, it sounds Richard-Farnsworth-sincere.

My other memory is of Kitten Navidad, who I met and hung out with a bit back in New York about 20 years ago. She was doing a show for friends of mine at The Palladium. She was very sweet, and while her breasts were a bit too big for my tastes, still very sexy. Overtures were made, but I begged off. I remember the notion of romance seeming just so wrong. After all, I was 19. She was all of about 36… just soooo old!

And so, another tale of what morons young men can be…

Sucking It Up Like A Sponge

Paramount did a series of presentations for The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie today, hosted by Tom Kenny and Bill Fagerbakke, who voice Sponge and his best friend/sidekick, Patrick Starfish.

There was an odd genius to the presentation, as you walked into the small screening room and were faced with a gigantic SpongeBob in every seat. There were, indeed, inanimate. But still, there was something powerful about their presence in the room. My niece, the only human in the room that represented the target demographic, let out a squeal of shock and delight that still makes me smile.

Tom and Bill came out and introduced the half dozen or so clips. And I have to say, the film got me to laugh hard enough to shut my eyes at least three times, Patrick or Plankton being the culprit in each case.

I was also struck by the visual style of the film. Director/Creator Stephen Hillenburg has a very specific style of having his characters play almost everything directly to the camera, making the visual experience much like theater. The camera rarely wanders inside a scene, between characters or offering much perspective on the happenings. Perhaps the dynamic represents the visual style of watching a fish tank. I’m not exactly sure why the aesthetic exists… Hillenburg was not at the screening. But moving a TV show, animated or not, to the big screen can be treacherous. And this variation of style strikes me as one of the reasons why SpongeBob doesn’t feel “just” like a larger version of the same old show.

After the clips, Fagerbakke and Kenny hung around and talked shop. Neither could have been any more gracious.

All in all, a very good event that left me wanting more. And my niece… she was in Bikini Bottom heaven.

New Sky Cap Tags

A commercial running on MTV today included computer style print out…

“The End Of The World

Has Been Programmed

The Download Will Begin”

It’s kind of a genius idea… that the retro look is really a futurist look… not that I’m buying it… but then again, I am not their target audience.

Their first Monday grossed about 60% of what Resident Evil: Apocalypse did last Monday… about 8% further off of the RE:A numbers than opening weekend was. Neither film is getting much past $50 million domestic. But who knows, maybe they can sell Sky Cap to those America-hatin’ foreigners!

Afghanistan ad campaign tag: “Better than 9/11!!!!”

John Kerry/Gary Oldman

As John Kerry did his opening weekend chat show tour of New York this week, ending up on Regis & Kelly Lee (I know… joke), wasn’t ti vaguely reminiscent of a hard-ass acting artist like Gary Oldman ending up trying to make conversation with Kelly Ripa?

Personally, the thoroughness of the chat tour made me even more worried about the future of the Kerry campaign. After all, to expose a presidential candidate this way… exactly what every studio publicist wants for every movie star on every movie, access to every show in the same week… suggests to me that his people are desperate to make a connection to the “regular folks” of the world that they know they don’t have. When Clinton played the sax on Arsenio, that was a major national event. John Kerry reading the Top Ten on Letterman was nothing more than a footnote on the Dan Rather self-immolation story.

Regis & Kelly!!! He was on with Tiger Woods and Gary Sinise… and if it weren’t for the shock of a presidential nominee coming on, he probably would have been the third guest to come out. After all, Sinise al least has 24 episodes locked.

All that said, I can’t wait to see his hour with Carrie Fisher!

The UN-Forgotten Man

Have you noticed that since CBS has thrown endless promotional time at Gary Sinise and CSI:NY, SOny has suddenly put him front and center in their ads for The Forgotten… almost more so than Julianne Moore and definitely more than her co-star, Dominic West?

Tuesday Blog Blues

There is really nothing to write about or think about today. Is there?

Going Sideways In Santa Barbara

After rushing back to L.A. from Toronto, a happy distraction was in order. And this weekend, it came in the form of a jaunt to Santa Barbara for a Sideways mini-junket set around the Santa Barbara premiere of the film near where they shot most of the film.

Fox Searchlight set us up at the Bacara resort on the beach, preemed at The Arlington Theater, one of the few giant screens left in Southern California, and partied with wine from the many wineries seen in the movie. Very few people spit their wine into the pots.

The way this film plays, it is suddenly turning into this year’s highest potential “Lost in Translation,”
that is, “the small movie that might” work out as an Oscar contender. One thing we know… it will not qualify for the Independent Spirit Awards because it is too expensive. But there is a long way to go.

In both Toronto and Santa Barbara, Virginia Madsen and Thomas Hayden Church have proven themselves to be the kind of talkers who can charm the folks, a critical atrribute for wannabe nominees.

On the other hand, Paul Giamatti, who is clearly the star of this story and the best known of the candidates in awards circles, has been M.I.A. at both Toronto parties and in Santa Barbara. It could well be that he, understandably, does not want to get caught up in the hype only to have his heart broken as the endless buzz around American Splendor might well have affected him last year.

But a film like Sideways – truly great and truly intimate – cannot afford to miss a trick on the road to Oscar. Like an underdog sports team, they need to take advantage of every opportunity, steal a base here and there, and fight the whole way if they are going to get their just desert wines.

But the race has a new serious contender on the map…

Weekend Box Office

Len Klady estimates $14.8 million while Paramount’s estimate was $16.2 million. Either way, Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow did no better than okay. The same kindness cannot be extended to Mr. 3000 ($9.1 million) or Wimbledon ($8.2 million). (Really, how did they schedule this film and manage to miss both its namesake tourney and the U.S. Open?)

One positive story for Paramount is Without A Paddle, which inexplicably continues to hang in there like a champ, passing $50 million this weekend and rowing towards more than $60 million.

The Bourne Supremacy passed the $170 million mark this weekend, Napoleon Dynamite continues its march to $40 million and Collateral to its Cruise-an $100 million perch.

Meanwhile, lower down the weekend charts, Alien vs Predator and The Notebook are both going to slip over the $80 million mark, while The Manchurian Candidate will pass $65 million next weekend.

And the loser of the weekend? “National Lampoon’s” Gold Diggers, which averaged $376 per screen or roughly 4 people per screening.

Succeeding Disney

The dance of succession is going full steam around Disney, if not inside. Of course, as we have learned repeatedly, the media’s decision about what will happen to a strong leader like Michael Eisner has little to do with reality.

Bob Iger may not get the call. He has as many detractors as he has supporters. It would probably be advisable to team Iger with someone – like Dick Cook – in order to shore up political support inside and outside of the company.

Terry Semel is a very attractive choice. However, there is one giant problem there. He is the same age as the retiring Michael Eisner, 61. I am not an age-ist, but the presumed interests of Disney include consistent leadership over the next decade, not just for a few years.

Of all of the candidates, other than Semel, that the media is floating out there, including Meg Whitman, Steve Jobs, Stephen Burke, Peter Chernin and Leslie Moonves, only Whitman is realistic on any level. Chernin and Moonves just signed on new dotted lines. Burke has a lot of Disney baggage. And Jobs is not of the classic CEO mold for which a company the size of Disney cries.

The irony is that Iger, who is 52, could well be a short-term solution himself. If things were to go bad, he would not have the strength to hold on as Eisner has.

In the meanwhile, there is good reason for Roy Disney and Stanley Gold to be using every asset they have (including a friend at the New York Times?) to turn things dark again for Eisner. How will history view them if he leaves on his own terms, re-signs Miramax and Pixar, and names his successor?

Early Reader Reaction To SCatWoT

I think the THB reader e-mails below, received from Friday ticket buyers, pretty much sum up the two camps on Sky Captain… either you embrace the cool or you feel like a fool.

Friday estimates put the film at around $15 million for the weekend, unless it really plays like a children’s film, 50% up on Saturday, in which case it could get to $17m or $18m. This is a stark contrast to Sony Screen Gems’ Resident Evil 2 opening last weekend ($23 million) or last year’s back-to-back Big Sony/Screen Gems September openings of Once Upon A Time In Mexico ($23 million) and Underworld ($22 million). Especially cause SCatWoT cost multiples of each of those three Sony releases.

I would make the same box office argument as always… hugely enthusiastic geeks are good for about $5 million and energizing the AICN/CHUD/Dark Horizons/Etc/Etc/Etc crowd for those films has that kind of value. After that, they have no influence on the base of real moviegoers and you need to sell them something they want to see. Paramount did a pretty good job about going beyond that base, because this could easily have been an $8 million opener. But if Jude Law, Gwynneth and Angelina are worth about $7 million in opening weekend ticket sales between them, you’re only looking at a 20% reach beyond the core for this film.

But at least they’ll feel better than Disney, as that studio tries to figure out why Mr. 3000 couldn’t do more than 50% better than the unhappy openin crash of Soul Plane.

But on to the readers…

Soup-er Duper says: “Dave, I loved SCatWoT (“scatwot”- hey, that’s cool!). High 8 of 10. And I gotta say, I’m a little disappointed that you could so haughtily dismiss it. It is what it is better than any commercial release I’ve seen this year- a pure, unbridled, visually imaginative delight. The best movie that could ever be made by the smartest 12-year-old you’ve never met. The look is astounding, the performances circumspect, the dialogue slight but amusing, the plot as thin as the serials that inspired it. And there’s no fat on the thing- it comes and goes quickly. I know that I’ll see better movies before the year is out, but I doubt I’ll enjoy myself much more.”

But J-Mac Says: “I’ve been waiting for this movie to come out for so long because I _knew_ it was going to be horrible and indeed it is. This is the most lifeless overstylized piece of nothing this side of Attack of the Clones, but at least a Lucas movie delivers on some level. SCatWoT was dreadfully acted and so completely artifical it amounted to nothing more than a porn video for Art Deco fetishists. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about anything that was happening on screen for an instant. What pisses me off the most is that all the Aint It Cool geeks have been salivating over it just because it has a retro-nostalgic look to it, which strikes me as massively shallow and superficial.”

Estimating Sky Captain

The numbers are running from $15 million to $35 million… in other words, no one really knows.

Paramount’s Gerry Rich and his team have done a great job getting the focus on the action and grabbing remarkable reviews from the likes of 4-Star Roger Ebert.

The movie I’d be worried about if I was Paramount and looking for a #1 slot would be Mr. 3000, which could cross over and become this weekend’s Bringing Down The House surprise. If only they had hired Eugene Levy!!!

Two Weeks In

After two weeks of blogging, I would be curious to get some feedback from y’all…

What Do They Really Think?

There is a fascinating disconnect at festivals like Toronto, where people get remarkably different ideas of what the overall take on a film was.

I have heard so many takes on what “everyone” thinks. This can be defined by journalists who smile and lie to publicists or the few outlets that publish during a festival or critics who change their minds as they start to get a read on what The Brethren think.

In the last two days, I heard about one movie that was slaughtered by at least 80% of writers I spoke to and another that was slaughtered by 90%. Both were seen as well-liked by, in turn, a studio exec and an industry affiliated journalist, the latter left to wonder, “Am I the only one who hasn’t lost my mind?.”

Meanwhile, in USA Today, Harlan Jacobson reports that every film that came in as Oscar bait left with fish snapping at them. Uh… no! Jacobson did get one thing right on the nose. The film that came in without much support and left as a hero with the potential to break through was Sideways. But at least three films lost a significant range of support by letting people see their films.

The Ongoing MGM/UA

It’s an odd feeling, getting a call from a MGM/UA publicist for a screening event for the very well Toronto recieved Hotel Rwanda.

The switchover of the studio to Sony, film by film, development project by development project, hasn’t begun in earnest yet, though speculation – including within the walls of Sony (on the original MGM lot, of course) – is endless.

And remember, even though layoff and buyouts of most of the MGM/UA staff is inevitable, the potential cherrypicking of executive talent in this deal is going to be politically complex, considering that Sony just got through the bulk of a major round of layoffs itself.

Also, in long-term strategizing, Sony really needs to make a decision about extending its deal with Joe Roth’s Revolution Studios now (or not), because with dibs on the MGM/UA crew, Sony might want to expand in-house production in lieu of a new Revolution deal (which would have to be a lot less lucrative for Mr. Roth, et al, after Sony lost a fortune on the first five-year deal).

Anyway… I wish the folks at MGM/UA the best. There are a lot of good people over there.

Back To Life

Sorry about going missing the last few days… I am back to business.