DP/30 @ Sundance: Little Birds, writer/director Elgin James

It’s been a tough week for Elgin James. But the acclaimed Sundance-premiering director changed his life long before he was sentenced to a year in jail this week for his gang behavior of the past. Meet the guy now…

It’s Crazy MF-ing Lawsuit Week!!!

Wow… it’s raining insane.

Last week it was Protocol Pictures’s rambling, wacky, eating M&Ms off the floor lawsuit against The Weinstein Company for bouncing in and out of an animated movie.

And now, the rambling lunacy of Charlie Sheen turned into a legal document!

I have always heard about the might of Marty Singer… but I am a little shocked that he let this one out with his name signed at the bottom.

The opener…

Magic.

I also like the idea that Charlie is suing for everyone else on the show. Like they would trust their favorite coke addict to hang onto their money. Ha! Set-up… punch!

There is an argument to be made that Charlie Sheen didn’t do anything that clearly triggered WB’s right to terminate his contract. Like every other pundit out there offering an opinion, I have not read Sheen’s contract with WB and I can only go by what people who have claim is in it.

This document doesn’t do anything to clarify the situation. For instance, Sheen’s team has told media that there is no “morals clause” in the contract. Warners has said that there is a clause that can be enforced if they think Sheen committed a felony, even if not charged. Sheen’s filing today repeatedly points out that WB didn’t take this kind of action when he had committed other felonious behavior and, in fact, gave him a contract extension. So while arguing hypocrisy by WB – not a legal issue here – Sheen’s team seems to be admitting that he does have a contractual vulnerability and that WB somehow lost their right to enforce it because they didn’t enforce it earlier.

This kind of, ” or forever hold your peace” kind of argument runs all through the document, sometimes confusingly working against Sheen. For instance, the repeated claims that Sheen was abused for years by Lorre “solely to harass and frustrate Mr. Sheen” are now being claimed as proof of a conspiracy against Sheen, even though no action was taken by Sheen until last month, in the midst of his rehabbing process.

Likewise, while Team Sheen claims the Sheen has been fired in retaliation for the “Chaim” comments about Lorre on the radio show, it also argues that Lorre had breached the showrunner agreement before the radio show, demanding that the show’s season end on March 25, instead of April 8. Why? Because, it seems, March 25 was when the show’s season was supposed to end before Sheen was hospitalized. Another conspiracy that lets Sheen off the hook.

Interestingly, one of the “key” points are the vanity cards that Lorre runs at the end of his episodes. Five are cited. Only one refers directly to Mr. Sheen. and they seem to lay out a long history of problems Sheen brought to the show, not harassment by Lorre. They include:

Oddly, I would not identify any of those comments with myself were someone I was working with published them. Another does refer specifically to “hooker in the closet,” which I assume Marty Singer is getting a trademark for Sheen on as I type.

My favorite turn, however, is the 8th Cause of Action, which is truly hilarious.

“Lorre believe, and has stated publicly, that Mr Sheen suffered from physical and mental maladies, but Lorre nevertheless repeatedly made offensive, derogatory and damaging comments about Mr. Sheen an his alleged Physical and mental maladies…”

It gets better…

Referring to the radio show, “Mr. Sheen fought back against Lorre using the same court of public opinion that Lorre used. The fat that Sheen’s defense of himself as far more effective than Lorre’s harassing and degrading comments cause both Lorre and WB to take the ultimate retaliatory action against Mr. Sheen.”

#Winning!

But there’s more… wait for it…

Yes, ladies and gentlemen… Charlie Sheen is claiming to be physically and mentally disabled!!!

(cue the streamers and balloons and the Jerry Lewis MDA Orchestra playing, “What The World Needs Now… Is Love Sweet Love…”)

Anyway… the two interesting claims in the document are that WB is refusing to pay Sheen’s backend on the show. Hard to believe. The word “timely” is used, so it may be just another irrelevant log on the fire based on a check he thinks he should have gotten some weeks ago. If WB is claiming they can withhold backend on work already done, that should be a slam dunk for Team Sheen. A third option is that WB is now withholding backend money based on the idea that they are countersuing Sheen for damages and that they will hold onto this money in anticipation of the win. Also pretty silly.

The second interesting, but highly unlikely claim is that Lorre wanted to sink this show because he has a better deal on other shows. If a lost season of the show will cost Charlie Sheen $100 million or more, it will cost Lorre multiples of that. Spite can be a powerful thing, but throwing away hundreds of millions over it? Tough argument to make.

What the document lacks is much of any real legal positioning against the contract. It only argues, repeatedly, that WB didn’t have the right to terminate because this is personal, not professional.

Like or hate WB or Chuck Lorre or The Weinsteins, the facts laid out in these two lawsuits are miles away from anything that could seriously float in a court of law. Unless the attorneys are holding something back – and these documents have DNA of their spleens all over them – the arguments are, for the most part, laughable. This doesn’t mean they will be thrown out overnight. Nor does it mean that they won’t both be settled. The facts of the Weinstein suit, in particular, are bizarre and hard to follow, and actually money may well be owed.

It also doesn’t mean that either party may be capable of making a serious legal case out of their situations. There just isn’t anything real in these documents. They are, ironically, public relations documents. “Hey, it WB didn’t like all the drug use, they should have said something in Year Four.” “Poor charlie. That Lorre is a prick!” Yadda yadda yadda.

All in all, these are epic pieces of legal writing, because they are so funny. People will – seriously – be studying them, especially the Sheen document, for years to come.

Singer’s filing actually reads like it was re-written by Sheen to add personal invective and the manic repetition of phrases that Sheen has been babbling on with over the last two weeks. It reads like a drug addict’s claim… everyone is responsible but me.

Sadly, I feel like this whole thing is still heading to a very dark place for Sheen. Every step seems to be deeper into the hole. And little doubt, Sheen has 10s of millions or more dollars coming his way, so only tragedy seems in a position to slow his roll.

Wow.

DP/30 Sneak Peek: Why Do Some People HATE Joe Swanberg?

I Love Guillermo, But…

$150 million movies…

There have been eighty $500m worldwide grossers in movie history.

The ONLY ones that have been R-rated were the Matrix and Terminator franchises and The Passion of The Christ.

Movies like The Hangover, Gladiator, and Saving Private Ryan got close. But none of them were looking at $500m as a break even point either.

And with due respect to Tom Cruise, who is probably undervalued as a star right now, he hasn’t ever hit $500m with an R-rated movie and is now 5 years past his last $100m domestic film.

Guillermo has never had a film gross 1/3 of $500 million worldwide.

You have to make a lot of money for a studio before they disregard the numbers and make this kind of leap into hopefulness. And 9 out of 10 times, the same people who are mourning for Guillermo this week will tell you how stupid the studio was for making the investment in other directors… even some directors that are well respected and liked.

I don’t need to get into how it all fell apart or whether this was really a call that Langley or Fogelson or Meyer was allowed to make on their own (dubious) with new landlords to answer to or whether any elements (like Lovecraft’s name or Jim Cameron as a producer) are relevant to a project’s viability at this level.

GdT had some righteous anger over Biutiful‘s non-reception from the Hollywood distributors and stated repeatedly that a film like that would be all but impossible to make again. Hallelujah! I may thing that opinion may be a bit beyond, but a fight completely worth having.

But I am truly shocked that, gloriously talented and charming and brilliant as Guillermo is, the media has jumped on this $150m bandwagon as thought they were fighting for his right to make an art film and get a studio to release it.

Guillermo is a big boy. He makes his choices. He takes his medicine. And he drew a line in the cement on this film… that he wants it made a certain way. God bless him. He’s smart enough to know he doesn’t want to half-ass it.

But a studio not going forward – especially Universal!!! – with a $150m geek-core thriller is not a sign of the changing realities of studio life… unless that change is SANITY.

State of Play, Land of the Lost, The Wolfman, Green Zone, Scott Pilgrim vs The World

They all had (at some point) directors we should love. Smart guys. Pushing it. Expensive films. Financial red ink. So do they just keep trying until they hit it? Is the price for going deep into their pockets for Battleship or Cowboys & Aliens that they have to do it again for Guillermo? The two directors on those films have much stronger commercial histories than Guillermo, even if neither can touch him as an artist. But $150m is not an aesthetic choice. It’s a bottom line choice.

Fox making this? Are you crazy? That idea of that studio, of all studios, is being asked to make a $150m R-rated movie is like asking Tom Rothman if he’d also like some rectal cancer for lunch. The ONLY way it could ever be possible would be if Cameron leveraged Avatar 2, 3, 4, and 5 to get the movie done. And even then, Fox would be selling off as much of the movie as they could to private equity companies… doesn’t matter if the script was printed on penises and every sexy actress in Hollywood was wiling to suck until the ink disappeared. That is not how that boy’s club rolls.

Rothman has kept his job by not making those movies. He makes boy movies, keeps those budgets tight, and then adds in more mayhem if he doesn’t think they can sell the thing. That’s one reason why so many geek purists hate him. He’s not making this. He’s not making Fight Club again either. (Last time, it helped push his predecessor out of the job.)

But I digress…

So people thought that Inception was going to change everything? Change anything?

Inception is the work of a genius, but it was not made because of Nolan’s genius. It was made because of Nolan’s next film.

This is NOT an insult to Nolan or his film. This is Hollywood. And there’s not a damned thing new about it. As I wrote before, the only “new” thing is that some studios that seemed to enjoy sticking their heads in the mouths of hungry lions are being a little more careful now. And the only reason for that may be that the new bosses will make them do cable box repairs for 3 years instead of paying out their contracts as punishment for making The Next Great Money Loser.

I have to laugh at ANYONE who wants to offer moral indignation at any studio not making a $150m movie. It’s not a good bet, even if the return is sometimes massive. I don’t care if you look back and see Transformers and Avatar or not. It was Don Murphy’s great idea to do Transformers as a feature and a lot of other people who actually had their hand on that wheel and risked those mega-dollars. Glad it worked, financially. And that’s why Battleship is being made.

Cameron has a long track record of big dollar movies. Yet, on Avatar, like Titanic, the big price tag sent Fox running for partners in the funding. This is not a $300m+ movie. But anyone who is casual about $150m for a film is an idiot. A lot of big hit movies in recent years would have execs arguing to the death about whether the price tag was over or under $150m… because over meant that there were no (or few) profits.

Anyway… love The Big G… want him to work with a loaded palette… if he says he needs $150m and an R rating, I believe him… and some day, I hope, for art’s sake, he gets it. If he had done Hobbit, he may have had “them” where he would like “them” to be… begging him and looking past the limits he is imposing. But that, too, was his call and I respect him and whatever choices he makes for himself.

But “how can these heathen refuse to make a $150m R-rated film that we all want to see” is a shocking position for the media to take. Out of touch. And really negating the main arguments you hear, that studios should make less expensive films so they can still include quality “middle” films in their line-ups.

“But we want to see this one!”

Yeah… me too. But as soon as the standard is the movie you think you want to see, you are doing what you claim the studios do… pandering to someone’s perceived tastes. Just because they are your tastes and Guillermo is a golden god doesn’t make the argument any less hypocritical. “Pander to me! Pander to me!”

I don’t know that Universal did the “right” thing here. This film may have been a gold mine. But no one knows. Maybe if it gets picked up at another studio and does hit gold, it will be because it was a better film somewhere else. We would never have known that Slumdog Millionaire could be so commercial, much less a Best Picture winner, were it not for WB dumping it.

But will all respect and love, when you want $150m to make a movie with, you are no longer in a moral or aesthetic discussion. You are in high finance. You are capable of ending or launching major studio careers. You are asking not for 7% of a studio’s trust – one of 14 or 15 films that year – but you are asking for triple the trust that they normally put in any one film. And you are also, by the way, not asking for $150m, but at least $300 million all in with marketing.

Dismay at the loss of something we won’t get to see from an artist we love? Yes. Righteous indignation against a studio or the studio system? LMAO.

Oh, The Evolution Of The Trailer!

Summ(it)ing Up

Summit is in a fascinating position.

They have a monster 5-film franchise that will generate over $2 billion in profit for the company.

They were capitalized at $1 billion.

They have had one other modest blockbuster in their 4 years in business. But if the company is at breakeven, excluding Twilight, it’s just by the skin of its teeth.

There is no Next Franchise in sight.

So what do you do?

You can hand out checks and every investor can feel good about doubling or tripling their money in just 4 years. You can hang on to all the money and not worry about profits and losses over the next 4 or 5 years, taking bigger risks, but not too big a risk on any one film or franchise… see whether lightening strikes again. You could use the cash to acquire another company or library.

it appears that Summit has come up with another option. Get some more cash by refinancing, pay out the investors 100% or so on their investment, Project a cash pool of about $1.5 billion to come in the next 18 months and that leaves the company with only the new $550m load as debt and about $1.3 billion in cash with a $200, credit line for production and distribution costs.

But then.. you have to keep doing business.

It must be a great feeling to have a debt-free indie studio business. And it is a great achievement to deliver a full return an investment on a high-risk new indie studio in just 4 years. And now, you’re gambling with “the house’s money.”

The question is, always, do you take the house’s money home or do you keep rolling those dice. It looks like Summit will keep rolling the dice. It’s almost as though this refinance puts Twilight behind them now and allows them to move on as though it never happened, but that they have removed the weight from the company’s shoulders.

It reminds me a lot, really, of DreamWorks going to and then leaving Paramount. DreamWorks had little choice – aside from SKG eating the company’s debt – other than to “sell” itself to someone. Paramount not only ate their debt, but funded the ongoing, albeit changed, operation, allowing them to recharge their collective batteries and reconfigure with Stacey Snider and some other new players. Coming out the other side, DreamWorks 3.0 is not self-funded, but is well supported by Reliance and it’s full steam ahead. DreamWorks chose to drop the distribution challenge off their plate and to hand it to Disney, where it will (quietly) co-market with the studio as well, though Disney will pay the tab.

Could Summit 2.0 integrate itself into a bigger distributor? That would be a smart play. Why wouldn’t anyone want to be DreamWorks/Imagine/Working Title if that was a completely viable option from “go”?

Will Summit 2.0 try to grow, making an acquisition like Lionsgate? That would be an ego play.

Should Summit 2.0 just keep rolling along as it has, hoping for more Reds, fewer Bandslams, and continuing to snap at the heels of the big boys while trying not to end up becoming a Bruce Springsteen song? That seems like it might be a grind after a $3 billion franchise and a Best Picture Oscar all turning up in the first two years of operation.

The Film Delivelution: 30811

Universal First Studio to Make All Movie Clips Available Online

Missing from this Hollywood Reporter headline? “Intentionally.”

Because, as we all know, the most popular moments from many, many movies are on YouTube already. But those are not fully controlled or monetized by the studios. This announcement with AnyClip.com is another step towards studios being much more aggressive about controlling their own content.

AnyClip’s service, which seems great at first – until you look real close – is interesting conceptually. There are still very limited clips. For instance, they have Fast Times At Ridgemont High, but no Spicoli and the Phoebe Cates/Judge Reinhold bathing suit scene is listed, but is not available when you click on it. Ratings issues may be an unspoken issue. And the embed option is not currently available on any clip… and that is, really, what will make the whole thing work. It’s not looking through clips that is fun. It’s the ability to contextualize with them.

This Season’s Final Oscar Column

50 Weeks To Oscar: Fixing The Oscar Show

Do a good show. Repeat it. Watch the numbers improve.

And now, my suggestion for the show…

BYOB: A New Month, A New Week, On We Go…

Kevin Smith: Filmmaker or Carny?

So Kevin’s publicity team is announcing a Radio City Music Hall gross of $161,590 for Kevin Smith’s live show, that happened to include a screening of Red State.

Good for him.

You know, as irritating as he has been lately, his core of about 2 million loyal, see-every-movie fans is a remarkable thing and an accomplishment. About 3500 of them saw the show last night. They have 14 mores stops on the whistle stop tour. Maybe Charlie Sheen will join them for some of the stops. But I’d estimate they have about 20,000 tickets to sell for the rest of the shows. And they will probably sell most of them. That’ll bring the tour/movie to a gross of somewhere around $1 million. (I don’t know if they can get NYC prices in Ann Arbor or Springfield, but give or take $100k, $1m seems about right.) Great!

It’s not a new distribution model, because they aren’t really selling a movie. They’re selling a Kevin event.

The movie will come out, somehow, in the fall and gross $10m – $15m. Smith’s core will turn up. And we’ll all be done with it.

I assume that will make this all profitable for Smith & Co. Great.

I don’t really mind Smith becoming the Fart Joke Henry Jaglom. I guess that’s a step better than being the genius that Orson Welles was and ending up being paraded around as Jaglom’s bff. Smith, in this case, gets to be both Jaglom and Welles. (And no, Kevin… this is not a crack about your weight.) He can do well enough outside of the system and never really has to do anything more than indulge his own urges.

It does make me sad think that Smith, a talented guy, won’t ever grow as a filmmaker… not because he can’t but because his ego is too tender to go through the wound-scab-heal process that is necessary. I’ve always looked forward to Smith’s 40s being the best of him. Instead, it will be a side show.

But you know, it’s not my call. I am not Kevin and as long as he’s not directly harassing me – above and beyond seeing his movies at screenings and such nonsense – it’s really none of my business. If he wants to hide in plain sight, that’s his right and I have no reason to have an opinion about it, other than it is my job to have opinions. As a movie journalist, I don’t have to make it my business. I didn’t at Sundance. i won’t be doing so here in LA or anywhere else in the nation.

But I still root for the guy. There is something magical about him. And there is something profoundly sad. How can one not root for him to find his way to some true inner peace?

Anti-Semitism Turns Up At MCN

Just thought I would point out that Noah Forrest is getting hit with some really nasty anti-Semitic comments on his John Galliano post.

He’s already deleted some of them. But The Final Solution and gays being led by jews… still there…

Amazing.

It’s 2011.

Weekend Estimates by Klady

It’s the biggest opening of 2011. It would have been the fourth best opening to this time last year, behind Alice in Wonderland, Valentine’s Day, and Shutter Island. 5 animated films have out-opened it in the months before summer: Ice Age, Ice Age 3, Monsters vs Aliens, Horton Hears A Who, and How To Train Your Dragon. All of those animated movies did over $150m at the box office. No one knows what Rango‘s legs will be like.

As I said yesterday, not a sensational opening. But hardly a bad one. $50 million, a number hyped by competitors, would have made it the best opening for an animated film opening before March 27 in history. But I would still say a little more than “Johnny is Rango” might have pushed the number up a bit. Remember that the big sell on Ice Age was the “squirrel” with the nut, not Ray Romano.

The Adjustment Bureau is not a box office car wreck. It’s no superstar either. God bless Matt Damon.

Beastly is now the perfect center of CBS Films’ box office opening prowess… #3 of 5 openers.

Kind of a boring movie weekend… just after everyone seemed to get hyped up on the idea of it being a big weekend. Rango ain’t Alice… but even at $60 million, no one was getting close to Alice this weekend. Listen to the box office boo birds if you like, but prepare to fell stupid in 6 months.

Sheen, Abuse & And Scared Reporters #notwinning

I was reading Anna Holmes’ NYT Op-Ed on Charlie Sheen and the failure to see the women in his life as proper victims, and besides some overreaching on her part, what really rang a bell for me was that I have been watching some of the worst interviewing that I’ve ever seen in his back yard (literally, in his back yard).

I haven’t heard a single one of these alleged journalists – all employed by high-profile news organizations – ask a decent, probing follow-up to even the most obvious elephants in the room.

1. CBS is threatening his livelihood, so it’s war. Wait. Haven’t they paid him $100 million or more so far for his work on this show? Does he has a $2 million a week nut?

Realistically, the cost of being Charlie Sheen could cost him $1 million a month. That would not be a shocking number, assuming that he is paying for the homes of ex-wives, etc. Private planes and real estate and a payroll of sycophants can add up. The Goddesses alone must be earning at least $1k each a day.

But instead of sitting there with a dumb smirk on their faces, haven’t any of these people considered pushing this guy even the tiniest bit?

2. The Goddesses Even though Ms. Holmes seems to feel that noting that one of these women is a porn actress and the other probably has been selling her feminine wiles privately for years (based on her behavior and Sheen’s proclivities) is degrading to them… well, sorry, can’t sign off on that.

Don’t you think that one of these media monkeys would have said by now, “So Charlie… I Googled one of your Goddesses and one of the first things that came up was her being fornicated anally by two men at once. Is that going on in your home, in a bedroom near your children? If so, shouldn’t the mother of the children be concerned? And if not, did your relationship start with extreme sex and become something more spiritual?”

Or how about this obvious question… “How many times a day is one of the Goddesses engaging your penis? And if they stopped doing so, would they still be welcome in your home?”

3. Aren’t you concerned that you have now become a joke and will never again be taken seriously by the industry?”

It’s like these people are just afraid that he’ll turn off the access if they challenge him in any way and then they can’t crawl over each other trying to differentiate what is basically the same interview over and over and over and over and over. So they smirk when they get a crazy answer and delicately try to prod him into the next crazy answer. It’s more a circus act that an interview.
Read the full article »

Get Your Romanek On

Potiche, screenwriter/director Francois Ozon