The Hot Button by David Poland

Weekend, 1 August 1998

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

10. YIP YIP TIP YIP YIP!: Martin Scorsese confirmed to Variety's Army Archerd this week that Dino (his Dean Martin movie) is "on the back burner." With Scorsese's choice cast of Tom Hanks as Martin, John Travolta as Frank Sinatra, Hugh Grant as Peter Lawford, Adam Sandler as Joey Bishop and Jim Carrey as Jerry Lewis, this movie lover is crying bitter tears. Instead we will have to live with Ray Liotta, in his worst performance ever, as Sinatra in the horribly directed and written Rob Cohen classic (yes, it's worse than Daylight) called The Rat Pack. Only on HBO. Such exquisite sorrow.
9. RE-ANIMATOR: THE MUSICAL: Disney is making a half-hour animated movie about Princess Diana's life. No less than the Church of England's Archdeacon of York has questioned the propriety of the choice, but just think of the potential. The voice of Demi Moore as Diana. The voice of Bruce Willis as Prince Charles. The voice of Antonio Banderas as Dodi Fayed, aka The Beast. And Angela Lansbury as the evil Queen Mother. Watch as the stork brings two babies to Diana and Charles. Watch as Diana sings a song about self-love as she forces herself to vomit while President Clinton (voiced by Wilt Chamberlain) and Hillary (voiced by Anne Heche) stand for a photo op in the next room. And, find out what really happened in the limo. (Hint: No one really died!) Yeah. That's a good idea.
8. OH, THAT LEO!: Leonardo DiCaprio took some time to visit 17-year-old paralyzed Chinese gymnast Sang Lan at New York's Mount Sinai Rehab Institute last week. Paramount took full advantage of the rare positive Leo sighting of late and sent Sang an advance copy of the Titanic video. No truth to the rumor that Leo's visit was primarily an effort to win a bet with a buddy over a particularly offensive rumor about Asian anatomy. Nor that Leo simply wore out the last of the eight girls he met through Make-A-Wish last month.
7. COMING OUT IN A BIG WAY: The Black Cauldron finally comes to video next week. And in response, the Disney marketing department has lost its collective mind! First, Disney will go to Witchville, U.S.A. (Salem, Mass.) to break a Guinness World Record with "world's largest cauldron." Geez, didn't know there was a competition. It's seven feet in diameter and weighs more than 250 pounds. And, as a finale for the evening, well, I'll let Disney tell it: "The awe-inspiring grand finale; will light up the sky as magnificent flames and glittering mines shoot out of the cauldron 50 feet into the air." Couldn't have mocked it better myself. That's when "the 'Black Cauldron Boogie,' an all-new, toe-tapping, hip-shaking line dance created especially for this event" begins. I guess they won't go out of their way to make me laugh even harder by staging the dance in a bath of red ink.
6. FRANCHISE WATCH: Sony lost round one in the fight for James Bond, being ordered not to develop a screenplay for the Bond film it hopes to make (after being heard in court on their rights claims) next December. Meanwhile on the Franchise Watch, Warner Bros. has been toying with a new-look Batman series while Superman is on full stop, Universal is going prequel for their Flintstones follow-up, Disney is doing a major remake of at least one old family film from its library each year, Paramount is ready to go (pretty much) with Mission: Impossible II (and trying to figure out how to do Titanic or Braveheart 2) and Fox has Star Wars on the way.
5. I CAN'T GIVE YOU A BILLION, BUT...: Michael Douglas was named a U.N. Messenger of Peace this week at a press conference. Turns out that Douglas wants to fight for nuclear disarmament and small arms control. (Apparently some disgruntled movie patrons held him at gunpoint until they got their money back for his last nuclear bomb, The Ghost and the Darkness.) Douglas earned the title after participating in some anti-nuke fundraisers in L.A. and seems quite sincere in putting his best effort forth. However, his original U.N. title has been shortened from Messenger of Piece of Ass.
4. FLOATING MICKEY'S BOAT: Disney finally set sail this week with The Disney Magic. The 83,000-ton ship will carry 2,400 passengers and a crew of 915 and looks really, really cool. What Variety managed to leave out was an eight-month delay in the launch, including four months of paid bookings that were canceled and will have to be made up for in the next year. And in all the hype, Mr. Eisner said, "You never know. Someday we may be in six or seven different cities." Eisner and Variety failed to mention that the cruise line is part of a one-week Disney package that includes only three or four days on the boat, one of them spent visiting a privately owned Disney island. Before they go to six or seven different cities, they'd better get a few feet from home base first.
3. CLOSER, MY LORD, TO GUM: The Oasis Christian Center wants you to walk on Jesus Christ, but the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce objects strenuously. How's that for a lead? Turns out that OCC decided to give Jesus his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame without telling the Chamber, the guys who are responsible for that institution. And they have a trademark to protect. Negotiations have begun, but look for a row of new stars for Jeffrey Hunter, Ted Neeley, Victor Garber, Willem Dafoe and Kenneth Colley. (And if you can figure out what movie Colley is from without using IMDb, you deserve a big gold star.)
2. SAVING STEPHEN AMBROSE: Quite a news cycle for Saving Private Ryan. From the problems getting the actual film into theaters on time last Friday, to box office numbers at least 20 percent higher than projected, to an unending Oscar buzz, this film has become the Beast of Summer 1998. And if that weren't enough, DreamWorks is piggybacking into the Movie of the Week business by buying Stephen Ambrose's book Citizen Soldiers as the basis for its first non-series TV project. That should kill off any of the buzz around Spielberg's last-minute inclusion of Ambrose in the Ryan party.
1. NO LONGER UNLISTED: Sixteen blacklisted screenwriters are getting their well-deserved credit for 21 different movies. The list: Leonardo Bercovici, for Under Ten Flags (1960); Henry Blankfort, for G.I. Jane (1951), The Highwayman (1951) and Joe Palooka in the Squared Circle (1950); Jerome Chodorov, for The Tunnel of Love (1958); Howard Dimsdale, for We Joined the Navy (1962); Carl Foreman, for A Hatful of Rain (1957); Daniel James, for Revolt in the Big House (1952) and The Giant Behemoth (1958); Paul Jarrico, for All Night Long (1961), Five Branded Women (1960), The Girl Most Likely (1957), and The Las Vegas Story (1951); Howard Koch, for The Intimate Stranger (1956); John Howard Lawson, for The Careless Years (1957); Donald Ogden Stewart, for Malaga (1962); Maurice Rapf, for The Detective (1954); Robert L. Richards, for The Indian Fighter (1955) and Kenner (1969) and Jean Rouverol, for The Miracle (1959). And in a startling concession, these writers will be refered to from now on as African-American-listed writers.
READER OF THE DAY: I don't give readers pseudonyms, so this reader will just have to go unnamed. "Samuel L. Jackson spoke on the Disney lot last week to a half-filled Disney Theater, and surprise, surprise, the Oscars came up. But, he had exactly the opposite sentiment (from Variety's angle) to share that day. Mr. Jackson, speaking to a mostly black audience, got on his people for blaming the Academy for the lack of black representation when the envelopes are cracked open. He argued that if How to Be a Player is what the black community expects to be nominated, they'd better plan for disappointment. He did slam the Academy, however, purporting that he doesn't 'think there really is a Price Waterhouse,' because nothing he voted for ever gets on the ballot or gets the statue. He drew applause after stating that members of the Eve's Bayou cast should've gotten nominated, in particular, Jurnee Smollett and Lynn Whitfield. But he challenged his audience and the black community to make better films. He also said some interesting things about Spike Lee. The topic came up about the use of the 'N' word in Pulp Fiction, and after making cracks like, 'What, nice? Nimble?' he said that if Spike doesn't know anyone who speaks like Jackson's character Jules, then 'he ain't never been to the 'hood.' He argued that people speak like Jules, and Quentin was just creating realistic characters. Furthermore, he said that, during the filming of Pulp Fiction, in one scene, just to see if he could, Jackson tried to use the 'N' work seven times in one sentence. As you might expect, he got plenty of laughs on that one."

E ME: Interesting, huh? Though I think that Jackson was talking about Jackie Brown because I had the same conversation with him about that film. (Or maybe he's reusing material like Ben Affleck.) What do you think? Which comes first, great black films supported by the community or an industry that supports great black films?