Weekend, 5-6 December 1998

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

10. PSYCHO: The media loves to bend the reality of reality. This week's celebrity victim is Tom Hanks, who was reported as having an interest in a political career, when it would appear that he made a joke. Hanks e-mailed The New Yorker as a follow-up to an article being written on him that, "My image is a really good one. I made a nice acceptance speech on TV a couple of times. I handle myself pretty well in the glare of the entertainment media. The actual ideology that anyone can glean as projected by my appearances on TV is that America is good because we are all so different, and respecting each other is not so hard a thing to do. Not a bad platform, I suppose, to run for some office." Not exactly throwing his hat in a ring, but we are all desperate for stories, eh? In the meanwhile, buzz has started that Hanks could be Charles Lindburgh in the Spielberg bio of the flyer. One problem. He's booked, booked and booked. The idea is that he'll start Robert Zemeckis' Castaway, do Martin Scorsese's Dino and then finish Castaway after a dramatic diet to give him that really lean and extremely hungry look. Theoretically, Hanks could dump Scorsese for Spielberg, but better that Steven should wait if he wants Hanks.

9. PSYCHO: For those of you who were hoping that Arlington Road was actually good, here's news that will indicate you are psycho. PolyGram/Universal has pushed the film back again, now out of January to March 12. This allows the studio to have only one major black eye in January, which is expected in the form of the long-delayed Virus. Of course, by March, which is eons away in the life of a Universal executive, the film could be the first PolyGram release to officially hit screens as a Universal title, but given the release delay, that would seem to be a mistake in the making. Expect Julia Roberts' much self-touted Notting Hill to be the first film to morph into a Universal release late next spring.

8. PSYCHO: Perhaps the greatest living insane writer, J.D. Salinger, has forced The Film Society of Lincoln Center to drop plans to show an unauthorized Iranian screen version of his 1961 novel, Franny and Zooey. The film, called Pari, actually screened in New York once before, but apparently Salinger was too busy not being seen to notice. New York law firm Cheatem, Beatem & Eatem now claims to have been hired by the long unseen Mr. William Shakespeare to stop Miramax's release of Shakespeare in Love. The imaginary complaints indicates that Mr. Shakespeare "does not like skinny blonde girls" and that he "would never wear tights of that color."

7. PSYCHO: Disney's budget-busted Bicentennial Man is back on track with both Robin Williams and Chris Columbus on board. Unlike previous films cut to fit budgets, it seems that the hits being taken here are not by big-ticket players Williams and Columbus, but in actual cuts to the budget for physical production. Talk about psycho! Let me be the first to make the media-crazed connection between this robot film and Disney's The Real Inspector Gadget, which could go either way when it hits theaters next summer.

6. PSYCHO: The story started almost a year ago. The Leo watch had DiCaprio making a $10 million version of American Psycho into a $50 million version, possibly to be directed by Oliver Stone. Well, Leo moved on to The Beach and the Yuppies Who Kill Yuppies Who Like Stuff Too Much thriller is back in business. Back is director Mary Harron, star psycho Christian Bale (who went through Velvet Goldmine with a stare so blank that he could have been in Meet Joe Black) and the $10 million budget. New on the scene are Willem Dafoe and Jared Leto. The film goes into production on March 1, a few short weeks after Leo's The Beach, so guess who will be battling whom for award recognition come next December? I give the edge to the guy with the knife.

5. PSYCHO: With everyone screaming for Scream, claiming that Psycho is just too slow for today's audiences, you would have to be crazy to do a movie about a bunch of over-the-hill musicians that wasn't a Spinal Tap mockumentary, wouldn't you? Don't tell that to Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, the screenwriters who delivered the last huge surprise of a musical hit with The Commitments. Now, they have Still Crazy coming to L.A. and New York for Oscar runs before spreading across the U.S. in January and the buzz has begun. Meanwhile, they are writing a "traditional" bank heist movie called Baker Street Blues, a true story about a robbery that ended up being a lot more complicated than anyone expected. The gang gets away with not only money, but kinky photos of high government officials. Meanwhile, Miramax chieftan Harvey Weinstein is trying to get the duo to pen a sequel to The Commitments, which I think is better left as is, which given the success of one recent populist hit seq-squeal (that would be Babe 2) may qualify him for commitment.

4. PSYCHO: In what is likely the first ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-change at Universal since Casey struck out, the studio unceremoniously dumped their next George Clooney picture and their next Steven Soderbergh picture, which happened to be one in the same. Leatherheads, which was announced last July (THB 7/31), is exactly the kind of quality project that doesn't stink of commercial upside that may be dropping off the Universal development lists left and right. No more Out of Sights or Primary Colors for this studio, even if they were the best pictures on their 1998 release schedule. In the meantime, a rumor that Jonathan Mostow is returning to the project as the writer with an eye to directing it. This is the same Mostow who has had his U-571 tied up in budget and star battles at Universal for months.

3. PSYCHO: The latest political statement/publicity stunt from Anne Heche and Ellen DeGeneres was the fodder of the angry talk show circuit all week. The most popular response to the duo was, "Shut up already." Of course, the duo would certainly tell you that a response like that would be similar to America knowing but doing nothing about the Holocaust in the '40s. Uh, shut up already. Cashing in on this tragic story is the L.A. Times Website, which turned the now infamous interview into an archived item requiring payment for access. That was after already extending the story over 15 Web pages in order to fatten their page view counts. Blech!

2. PSYCHO: The knife slashed through the Universal Studios executive floor again this week. Goodbye to Casey Silver, who follows Frank Biondi out the door. Next to go will be newly appointed President of Feature Production Stacey Snider, but not because of bad movies or a shocking inability to get films opened. Word is that Snider will take pregnancy leave come March. But don't call Winston Wolf to clean up all the mess quite yet. December is Hollywood's favorite time to execute executives. Why? Because while the press is vacationing in Aspen, pretending to be part of the party, the Turk can work his magic with hardly any coverage. What? You thought it was a coincidence that every executive change ever made at Disney occurred on a Friday afternoon?

1. PSYCHO: There's some movie remake opening this weekend that's getting a lot of attention. I can't quite recall the name.

READER OF THE DAY: I have heard strong feelings for better or worse on Shakespeare in Love, but this is a good silly story, so Paul B. gets to be ROTD: "Just a funny story I figured I'd share, since you mentioned Shakespeare in Love as a 'big fun' from Miramax. I hope they've got something else up their sleeve, because I really was pretty underwhelmed by what I saw. Then again, I hated The English Patient, so...

"We (my wife and I) got free tickets to a screening of Shakespeare in Love the Wednesday before Thanksgiving (they were handing them out in Union Square in Manhattan). We weren't going anywhere, and I was pretty excited to see the movie (especially after seeing the similar time-frame Elizabeth, which was awesome), so we decided to take them up on it and check out the flick. We arrived at the theater in time to get in with no problems, bought a big bucket of popcorn and a big soda and sat down for the show. Sat through the first 30 minutes of the movie, and it was OK, but really not very funny and not very interesting, but hey, it's free so who cares? Then suddenly the audio de-synched from the image, and the voices were about half a second off from what was going on screen.

"I've been to movies where this has happened before and usually it takes them a minute or two to re-synch them and everything is fine. Not so here. After about 15 minutes of the de-synch getting steadily worse (to the point where the sound was off by a good 10-12 seconds -- the audience was in hysterics because when men were speaking women's voices were heard, and vice versa), they shut the movie off and announced that they were going to fix it, and would restart the movie from the beginning (!!). At this point, about three-fourths of the audience just left. They offered us free tickets to the screenings coming the next week, but about four people out of the 200 or so people who left, took the offer. Not the best sign. And while this may be a total fabrication of my overactive imagination, we were sitting in the third row (I love the front of the theater!) and it really looked like Harvey and Bob Weinstein sitting in the front row! About 10 minutes into the de-synch, the Harvey look-alike got up and walked to the back, so there might have been some nasty words exchanged somewhere, but who knows?"

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E ME: Anyone else want to cough up a story about an encounter with a studio head?