The Hot Button by David Poland

Weekend, 3 October 1998

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

10. THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT LAWSUITS: Hack screenwriter Vince Offer filed a lawsuit against the team that created There's Something About Mary for allegedly stealing scenes from his unreleased saga The Underground Comedy Movie, which starred such luminaries as Gena Lee Nolin, Michael Clarke Duncan, Joey Buttafuoco and Slash (THB 10/01). Expected next is a class action suit comprised of men who have masturbated before dates, interracial couples who have blonde daughters and NFL quarterbacks who can't act.
9. THROWING THE SECOND STONE: Sharon Stone got impregnated by the New York Daily News this week. Parents for the child lined up and celebrated the blessed event despite protests from Stone. By the end of the week she had lost the child, which was not all that tragic, since she was apparently never pregnant in the first place. Or was she? Her response to the press stories, sadly, reflects a woman who lost a child to miscarriage far more than a woman who simply was never pregnant. But frankly, it's none of our damned business. Until Stone lies about her pregnancy to a grand jury, I'd say that I have no right to know what's going on inside her body. That's the last you'll hear about it in The Hot Button until Stone poses nude and pregnant for the cover of Vanity Fair.
8. CHOOSE WISELY: Three years after the fact, Clara Sichinga plead guilty to embezzling $733,000 from Roger Corman's Concorde-New Horizon's film company. She was then forced to plead guilty to ultimate stupidity. If she had embezzled it from a major studio, someone might have just figured that they were paying for some video effect that never made it into a movie such as The Avengers. (You know, the one that made it worth watching!) Instead, she stole from a guy who could make two films, a video and pay for his daughter's wedding with that kind of money.
7. 20TH CENTURY FASCISM: Nothing says entertainment like armed security guards. But fear of video piracy combined with a love of promotion left 20th Century Fox using a phalanx of armed guards to deliver videos of the smash hit Titanic on their way to video stores in Italy. Whether this group will be effective is a matter of debate. Previously, Fox used the group to keep moviegoers from walking out of Speed 2 and they were, sadly, overrun.
6. HI-YA!: Sony seems to be getting in the New Line business. True, they had to be well into the planning stages months before announcing Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia on Monday, but it sure made it look like a great idea with Rush Hour racking up big numbers. The company will produce or buy four to six Hong Kong films a year, focusing on Asian markets, but clearly hoping to bring a couple of the projects to American distribution soil.
5. HE'S CGI! CGI!: Universal started the whole Frankenstein thing in 1931 and killed off their series of films in 1948 with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. But now the big guy is back. And who better to bring him back for the studio than George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic, the studio that is building Star Wars: The Phantom Menace with an unprecedented amount of CG shots. For those of you who care, Wolfman will make an appearance, but it will be in a virtual cameo. Literally. The film will be released in 2000, probably not coincidentally, a year without a prequel due.
4. THE HOT ROCK: Looking for the big winner in the meteor sweepstakes? It's looking like Deep Impact will double the profitability of Armageddon as foreign numbers continue to pour in. Everyone assumed the Willis-free Impact would be a bit slower on the international box office uptake than the Disney rock flick, but it just passed $200 million and it's still going. It's doubly troubling for Disney, as Deep Impact has managed a strong $5.1 million to date on mainland China, a market that has become less hospitable to Disney after the studio released the Martin Scorsese epic, Kundun. (Which I still can't thank them for since they did their best to bury one of the best films of 1997 and still got in trouble with the Chinese government.) They still haven't even been able to get the nation to allow them to show Mulan on the nation's screens. The one place that has dissed Deep Impact is France, where in the great tradition of that nation, I expect Armageddon to be hailed as the intellectual classic of the '90s.
3. CRUISING FOR TROUBLE: If Tom Cruise doesn't stop saving people, he's going to get hurt one of these days. First, it was a neighborhood car accident that he helped out with. Then a crushed fan at the Mission: Impossible premiere in London. This time, he chased some attackers away from a woman who was having her jewelry stolen by some thug. Cruise arrived and the bandits took off. With $150,000 worth of jewelry. Cruise asked for no thanks, but his agent made a request for 10 percent of the insurance money.
2. TITLE WAVE: Star Wars: The Prequel announced an official name for the film. It will be The Phantom Menace. And millions said, "Huh?" Cinescape suggested that maybe Flash Gordon's nemesis Phantom Menace. Or perhaps Lucas is making a comment on the Billy Zane-starrer, The Phantom, after catching it on cable TV. See you on line next Memorial Day weekend.
1. AM X HISTORY: You know, just when you think reconciliation is an option, someone has to throw another grenade. I had hoped that my Working Hollywood on American History X would offer an end to the attacks of Tony Kaye. It seemed that perhaps he finally was coming to the end of what was clearly a self-destructive fight to get New Line to give him control of the now-ready-for-release film, even though the studio had gone far, far out of its way to allow him every chance to create his version of the movie, a vision which he had not delivered.
Now, he's attacking the Director's Guild for not letting him take his name off the film. Well, the attack on New Line (and with it, actor Edward Norton) had some room for subjectivity. This does not. The Guild has rules that are long established saying that a director pretty much loses any rights to remove his name from a film, without studio agreement, when he takes the wish public and tries to damage the film with negative comments. Take a look at his ads yourself. He went more than public. I have been quite sympathetic to Kaye, seeing an artist who seems a little lost in his own convoluted reality. I think that convolution is part of art, so I can accept that, but he should have put down the cudgel and gotten ready to bask in his glory on the film's release. All reports say the film is terrific, but I still can't say for myself because New Line has "mysteriously" cancelled screenings this week and next. Can you say "spin control?" As for Kaye, you can say "out of control."
READER OF THE DAY: E.G. wrote in on a couple of topics from the last week of The Hot Button: "I'm with you on both Ronin and Clay Pigeons. Maybe I'm also getting too old -- I'm 26 -- but some moments of violence are really starting to turn me off. I've always appreciated when a movie uses grisliness well (the garage door in Scream, the sloth guy in Seven, Saving Private Ryan), but Ronin and Clay Pigeons both yanked me out of the movie at one point or another. For all of De Niro and Reno's poignant silences and musings on honor among thieves and loyalty, nobody seemed to mind blowing away dozens of innocent bystanders. (The bullet removal, however, was equally squirmy but completely OK.) And all of Clay Pigeon's aw-shucks charm flew out the window when Vince Vaughn killed one character [Spoiler: character name edited by David]. I had been chatting with a woman nearby before the movie started, and I instantly felt sorry for her during that scene. Hitchcock liked to delay suspense, but never with something that ghastly and gratuitous.
"Also, good erotic nudity is all about delayed gratification. As gorgeous as Denise Richards is, it's not all that effective to show her in the buff right away. (It's still good, but ...) But when movie stars, whom you've hankered for over the course of several years and several pictures, get naked, it's fantastic. The catch is that so many actresses are forced to do it early in their career, when they're just another pretty face, then get progressively more demure just as their mystique makes it all the more tantalizing. Watching Flesh and Bone or Dead Calm or The Tall Guy to see naked Gwyneth or Nicole or Emma feels a bit uncomfortable now, because the nudity feels much less like a conscious choice than an unpleasant job requirement. Can you imagine if any of these beautiful, talented, powerful actresses used their clout and their sensuality today to present nudity in a truly sexy manner?"
TURNABOUT = FAIR PLAY: I've regularly taken Variety's Peter Bart to task for smooching the buttocks of the entity called Disney. This week, he offered a mixed review of Michael Eisner's book. I don't know if this actually deserves congratulations, but it does get some acknowledgement.

E ME: Tell me what you thought of the new movies at the multiplex this weekend. And by the way, any of you check out the Preston Sturges library yet? Do it this weekend if you have a chance. Every title is worth seeing. And Saturday is my birthday. I am now 34. That's more than one-third of the way to the century mark. See you at the early bird dinner.