A Conversation With Christine Vachon & Julianne Moore

I just caught this chat from a few months ago, done for PBS’ In The Life, between the producer and the actress. I enjoyed watching it and hope you will too.

Another Hack Attack On Eddie Murphy

Brooks Barnes’ NYT piece commits the ultimate sin for a journalist. It seems to purposefully avoid the facts and instead throws around snarky opinion without backup, like “That harsh sentence…is as good an example as any of the prevailing sentiment about Mr. Murphy these days.” Prevailing sentiment? Did they do a survey or did he just read a bunch of blogs?
Again… the facts… Eddie Murphy’s had two flops in a row. The three films before that grossed, worldwide, $799 million, $159 million, and $155 million.
As I wrote 10 days ago, the ONLY stars who can match that run of success in the last 2.5 years are Will Smith, Ben Stiller, Matt Damon, and depending whether you count Shrek The Third or not, Vince Vaughn.
That is why people still want to be in the Eddie Murphy business. No one cares if you hated Norbit when it grossed over $150 million.
As I also pointed out, if the New York Times is going to do stories about why actors are working, they will need to go after Clooney, Pitt, DiCaprio, Wahlberg, and pretty much everyone else also, because Eddie has delivered better than they have in the last 2.5 years… even with his two flops.
This doesn’t make Eddie a great guy to all or easy or the studios’ friend. But a movie star he still is. And one of the top 10 in the world without much doubt.
The question I always ask when a story that seems to intentionally tell only one side of the story, even quoting friends of the victim, is who wanted this story out there and why? And the answer here seems to be Brad Grey’s camp, who are working every press angle they can these days to spin the second major screwed-up in hire of a president of production at Paramount.
In addition, the Richard Pryor movie that has been kept out of the press gossip rounds for the sake of getting a deal closed, was most certainly not some sort of “we don’t like Eddie anymore” flat rejection by Paramount, but rather a personal stand-off between Murphy and Grey over a deal point taken very seriously by Murphy and which added no intrinsic value to the film, making Grey’s stubbornness equally if not more dubious. If not for this minor point, raised to a stand-off, the film would be in production right now for the studio with Murphy working for almost nothing, sharing risk with the studio.
But, for the record, Murphy has issues with Fox as well, over Meet Dave, which prevented Murphy’s dream project from landing there as well.
So the list of people and studios that Eddie refuses to work with grows. Though ironically… other studios where there have been issues on both sides would still be happy to work with him on the right project.
But forgiving and moving back into business is not Mr. Grey’s way. So now, we are getting a Tom Cruise-style smear job. Now it’s John Lesher AND Eddie Murphy’s fault that the studio has no big summer movie next year, aside from the Marvel sequel on which they get paid 8%.
(Note To Aspiring Smearers: When you are the company that released the last 3 hits, owns the most recent failure, and fears the presumed next failure and you aren’t even “no comment”ed in an attack story that you had to be called on by a legit news publication, your fingerprints get CSI-clear.)
Eddie Murphy is many problematic things. And he is in that 50-year-old range where stars find their old tricks failing them. But this effort to throw him out in the trash is simply idiotic… not my opinion… just the facts.

DP/30 – Jean-Jacques Beineix

Jean-Jacques Beineix is in LA for the American Cinematheque US premiere of one of his films and for the Cinema Libre DVD roll-out of his entire catalog, including Diva, Betty Blue, and a package of shorts that include the real life look at the man who wrote The Diving Bell & The Butterfly. The writer-director sat down for a 30 minute chat.
The complete video interview in QT after the jump… and the podcast is available here.

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DP/30 – The Proposal dir Anne Fletcher

Anne Fletcher spends 30 minutes chatting about her new hit film, The Proposal.
The complete video interview in QT after the jump… and the podcast is available here.

Read the full article »

Friday Estimates by Klady – Box Office of The Fallen

What can one say about the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen opening? It’s a huge sequel number. But keeping it in perspective, only Spider-Man, Iron Man and Harry Potter had the first film in their franchises open stronger. So, this number shouldn’t be that shocking.
This film is about $20 million ahead of the first at the end of the first Friday. Friday was about 50% higher than the first Friday last time, but last time, the film rolled out a day earlier in the opening week because of the placement of the 4th of July holiday. So, for instance, the end of business Wednesday was behind the last film’s end of business Wed by $5 million or so. But that also included one more business day. On the other hand, history shows us that the end of the first weekend tends to repeat historic norms, no matter whether it was a 3-day, 5-day, or 6-day launch. Thus it makes some sense that the first weekend day had a big bump.
It is possible that Sat/Sun will also be up 50% a day from the first film, which would make for a $199 million 5-day. On the other hand, it is possible that those two days will be up just 30% from the last time, given a much harsher word-of-mouth on the film, leading to a $189m 5-day. It could be “worse.” But in this case, the worst reasonable estimate for the rest of the weekend still has this as the 2nd biggest first 5 days of all time. It would also be #2 if you counted it as a 6-day opening.
Of course, the story of this year at the box office is not only the ongoing march to bigger openings, but to record lows in multiples. So what the end game of Tr2 is remains an unknown. $300 million seems like a cakewalk. But this is the year that Wolverine did about 53% of its domestic box office in its first 5 days, which looks like it will become a new record for post-opening futility. But Fast & Furious and Watchmen also ended up in a similar position.
Even if Tr2 ended up breaking X3’s unhappy record of the opening 5 days being 55.5% of total domestic gross and the opening 5 was 60% of the total, $300 million is still the result. And it may well do better than that.
But comparisons to The Dark Knight in any kind of perspective are specious. TDK did $203 million in five days starting on a Friday with no holiday weekend involved… so days 4 and 5 of the record opening were weekdays tagged onto a $158 million 3 day. If Tr2 ends up doing $20m-plus on any weekday in the upcoming M-Th week, I will willingly acknowledge that I was wrong. But I would expect the low teens to be what we’re looking at this next week before a decent hold over the holiday weekend.
The Hangover continues to roll, around $40 million ahead of Wedding Crashers as of this point in its 2005 run. It’s also ahead about 12% on fourth-Friday vs fourth-Friday. WC had another $73m in the tank, domestically, after this point. If Hangover follows in its steps and we consider the uptick so far, Hangover is looking at near $250 million.
Up is the #2 Pixar film after 29 days in release, behind only Finding Nemo (by about $4 million). The film will pass Cars and Toy Story 2 to become the #4 Pixar film ever domestically with plenty of box office to be expected. And it should pass Monsters, Inc. and The Incredibles by the end of the Fourth of July weekend to grab that #2 slot with Nemo just over $70m away at that point. The film is a long way from defining itself internationally, still not open in any of Pixar’s Top 5 international markets and not due in some of them until the fall.
After a slow start, the summer is beginning to look more like prior summers. We’re now looking at two $200 million-plus films (Star Trek/The Hangover) and two $300 million-plus films (Tr2/Up). Potter 6 and Ice Age 3 look to add another pair of $200m domestic films to the mix. We have been rather spoiled by the three-quels and so forth, but this will only be the third time in history that we’ve had as many as six $200m+ movies in a summer, topped only by 2007’s seven.
A strong start for The Hurt Locker in a 4 screen release, but I worry that Summit will Che’ the film into ecstatic obscurity by opening it as an indie event. It’s very challenging to open a film wide without stars. But this one hypes itself. People really get it once they see it. And there is The Hangover as a template this summer. These are the films that turn marketers’ hair gray.

Are There Really 10 Best Picture Candidates?

This has been delayed by a couple of days because I was without a computer, but now I have my computer and this link, in which we have pulled the Top 20 from our annual critics’ Top 10 chart. Here is what my personal look at the last 3 years delivers…
2008/9 Oscar Nominees
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
Note that nominee The Reader was #32 on this list… the only case of a nominee outside of this measure’s Top 20 in these last 3 years.,
I have no problem picking 5 more excellent nomination candidates from the critics consensus top 20
Wall-E
The Dark Knight
The Wrestler
Rachel Getting Married
Man on WIre
A Christmas Tale
The Visitor
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
And that doesn’t even include Doubt, which would surely be one of the next five nominees.. and was ranked #25.
2007/8 Oscar Nominees
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood
I have no problem picking 9 more excellent nomination candidates from the critics consensus top 20
The Diving Bell & the Butterfly
Into The Wild
Ratatouille
4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
Sweeney Todd
I’m Not There
Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead
The Lives of Others
The Savages
And that doesn’t even include Zodiac, which has a very passionate following.
2006/7 Oscar Nominees
Babel
The Departed
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen
I have no problem picking 6 more excellent nomination candidates from the critics consensus top 20
Pan’s Labrynth
Borat
Little Children
Dreamgirls
Volver
The Proposition
And that doesn’t even include United 93 or Children of Men or Half Nelson, which have very passionate followings, U93 most likely to make the cut.

More Oscar Stuff Floating In MJ Wake

Every surprise of The Academy keeping a secret and making a controversial, but forward thinking move is a little undone this morning with the fumbling of a press release and planned Monday news conference to announce a change that may kill off Best Song and moving the honorary awards from the telecast to a November dinner.
This is classic over-responding to a problem in one case and crazy responding to another.
In the first case, the songs, this is a weird interim plan that is even worse conceived than foreign and doc. There will be a “quality” hurdle to qualify the category. Wha?
In the second case, the idea of a full event and dinner for these honored folks makes sense. But how can they not still end up being acknowledged during the show? It’s not that these moments make great TV, as a rule. But why do they do any of it? To honor their best, right?
The reason for this decision, on top of hoping to shorten the show, was that the Board found itself not honoring John Calley and Alan Ladd, Jr last year in a time concession. Much of the board realized that this was a travesty.
But they need to think bigger. They need to seriously consider a TV event, highly produced, to celebrate the tech nominees. A show that really celebrates how movies are made, complete with a lot of behind the scenes content, could be its own modest hit. And either give out Oscars that night… or don’t. If you want to give awards out during the big show, you can do 8 of those in 30 minutes or less if you remove the set-up.
Anyway…
Announcing today came as a result of some fumbling of multiple press releases… sigh. And the idea this time? Not as exciting or controversial. And so it goes…

Quite A Week

So what could be a more intriguing insider story this week than Nikki Finke being hired for large dollars by the next wannabe Gawker? The Academy moves to 10 Best Pictures. Top Farrah Fawcett, dead and documented at 62? goodbye Michael Jackson. Transformers: Revenge of Another Robot Thingy That Cant Be Distinguished From The Rest opening to mega-business? Yawn. Public Enemies dissapointing many as not bad, but not enough? Yawn. Even Bruno, whose embargo seems to have held, gets outed for having a MJ moment. (The LA Film Festival – and any filmmaker with a premiere – must have suffered last night, being in Westwood in the middle of the MJ mess.)
Busy busy.
One more note about the Oscar thing. Roger Ebert does a very good job of getting the story of how this all happened. But he starts a little late in the game. Even before Bill Condon and Larry Mark were hired last year, the obsession of the Academy Board was – as it still is – saving their TV show. It is the fiscal engine that makes everything good The Academy does possible.
The most wanted thing, which was dismissed over and over and over again was to shorten the show by doing fewer categories on the main show’s air. The problem was/is that “smaller” categories board members would vote in a block to keep every category in the main show. The best that Condon & Mark could do was to create the packages of awards with one presented keeping them together in a tight block during the show. But the show still ended up running over 3 hours and slightly past the 3:13 target. Part of the fill were the packages of genres of film… and these ran even as other packages were cut from air.
The new 10 BP law will play out as it does. No one knows what the precise outcome will be… more genre… more indie… more art… docs… foreign. But we do know that the show is now a little longer, not shorter. And we do know that there are still branches pushing for new awards.
The Academy still faces the Old to New Media challenge. Like others, they have to either make strong leaps or they will end up left behind. The 10 was a very interesting start.

BYOB – Non-Twitter Has Killed The Video Star Edition

Michael Jackson, RIP. (Insert Song Title Pun Here)

A much bigger, more accomplished star… but oh, how similar the deterioration to Farrah’s.
For me, MJ died years ago, replaced by The Elephant Man of his own creation. Seeing this man, with the world at his feet, with so much talent, so very broken… it was horrible.
This is an Elvis-like loss, though Fat Elvis didn’t implode in front of the world this way. He did it in private. And indeed, Jackson may be the tipping point for invasive journalism. In that, it is only appropriate that TMZ was the first to confirm what every report of his condition when paramedics arrived suggested… his passing.
Let the vultures start flying.
It has occured to me that the new Terry Fator show at The Mirage, which I saw last night, will have to quickly adjust itself, as Fator dons the hair and jacket and sequined glove, mocking the icon in the act. There is also a Jackson chunk in Bruno, soon to be released. It’s not MJ, but LaToya… but he does ask her to imitate her brother and the segment ends with Bruno stealing MJ’s phone number from her cell. It isn’t harsh, but in the midst of a very broad and funny comedy, it could harsh the audience’s mellow.
May he be happier wherever is next. He certainly brought enormous happiness into the lives of, literally, hundreds of millions of people.

BYOB Thursday 625

Death Is The Ultimate Disinfectant

Don’t get me wrong. I am sad for and respectful of the pain of any loss of life. And losing a fight with cancer is one of those losses that is particularly hard, as one watches their loved one eaten away from the inside.
But the re-humanization of Farrah marks a spectacular comeback from more than a decade of bad public behavior and questions about mental health.
Anyone who doubts America’s facility for reinvention and acceptance need look no further.
What I fear is that this indicates that we will be investing a great deal of media time feeling Audriana Partridge ( or whatever current US Mag cover bikini) and her pains some 30 years from now, somehow forgetting that her primary public accomplishment is as a figure of teen masturbation and the inspiration of eating disorders and bad romantic choices.
I know. I am a jerk for not bowing to the new perception of Cancer Farrah. And I honestly do sympathize with the family’s pain. But really… how did this become OUR pain? Especially when, in this industry, so many who have done so much more pass on with so much less attention paid.
(I suppose it doesn’t help that I am creeped out by an auction in my hotel of Ann Miller’s and Bob Hope’s relatively recently passed along stuff, plus the ongoing bloodsucking of Marilyn and Elvis, including Elvis’ prescription bottles being sold by the scumbag doctor who so clearly helped Elvis die via overprescribing.)
May Farrah rest in peace… in private.

Oscar 10 III

Wow. La Finke is about as far off the mark on her ill-informed notions about what happened with the Academy Board as one can be.
A. Not a studio-driven idea. The originator has no studio position.
B. The studios will be the ones paying for this change.
Real simple. Think Brad Grey can tell JJ Abrams that he isn’t going to spend $20m on Star Trek: The Best Picture Nominee now? No way. The $3m effects and screenplay effort just multiplied the budget while every studio in town is desperate to prune. Nancy Meyers’ movie at Sony… now a must awards budget movie. Same with Julie & Julia. My Sister’s Keeper… the new Tyler Perry… The Informant… suddenly all Oscar candidates demanding a budget.
Just what the studios were hoping for!

Top Ten, Pt 2

Sooooo…
After a few hours of thinkin’ on it – how old fashioned – and receiving some takes from others, my feeling about this change is firming up.
The real answer is still… we don’t know how it will play out. Things have changed a LOT since the old studios “ran” the Oscars – mostly by block voting – and what films fill the 10 slots cannot be predicted.
Michael Speir, who is apparently going to be The Wrap’s Oscar dude, wrote a bit of a hysterical piece about the idea of The Hangover being in the race. They will race it now… but no, not really. On the other hand, he wondered whether anyone really needed The Visitor to get nominated… to which I respond that new nominees like that woud be the most positive possible outcome… like The Hurt Locker and Tetro.
We should all keep in mind that while studios will fight harder for more, perhaps less worthy films, a more spread field allows for companies like Overture, who can’t chase a nomination with millions, but who have a movie that Academy members truly love, to have a shot.
Moreover, new sites like The Wrap – which has been positioning itself for Oscar ad sales for months already – are now much more likely to stay in business because of this move. The Hollywood Reporter and, somewhat, Variety too. More people will need more ways to get to voters. Prices per ad will be slightly lower, but the net will be cast much wider. DVD Wars will intensify. And publicists who were considering grad school will have 6 months of full employment again.
Will a crap movie that doesn’t deserve it and is advertised in get in? Yes. They do now. But there should be some sincere excitement about the door now opening a little wider for indies and foreign films and docs and some really fine films that have been priced out of the race in the past.

Oscars Return To A Top Ten List

Yes, Virginia, Star Trek, Up, and The Hurt Locker are now in the Best Picture race.
In their latest desperate, but boldly disregarding of The Golden Globes, move, the Academy Board decided yeterday to go back to the days when every studio really did get to play in the big Oscar pool, and took the race from five to ten nominees.
This leads to more people in and, as history shows us, more chance that the wrong choices will be made. Nonetheless, a critical – perhaps business-saving – moment for Variety. (And I’m not crying, as a businessman, either.)
There was serious consideration of dumping Best Animated Feature, given that the Ups of the world should now be mortal locks in a group of ten. But not this year. If Up doesn’t get a BP nod as a result, I think you can be sure that the category will be gone next year.
I’ll be doing my first charts of the year next week. (I was waiting for the Academy Board to make decisions.). And my list just got at least 15 movies longer.