The Hot Button by David Poland

Weekend, 18 July 1998

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."

E ME: So maybe Small Soldiers isn't offensive. What about There's Something About Mary? Does it go too far for a joke?