Tuesday, 2 February 1999

WEEKEND REVIEW

CRAP: Perhaps the most shocking thing about my trip to Sundance were the eye-popping number of mistakes made by the major media outlets covering the festival. It may be All the News That's Fit to Print, but the New York Times' Bernie Weinraub printed a story that included Ally Sheedy's Sugar City (actually known as Sugar Town) and ran photos of the festival from last year. In Monday's USA Today, which covered days-old news, there were a load of factual errors, including misstatements of prices, events and the festival's consensus tone. I must apologize for some of the stupid typos that I have made in these last two weeks. (Some of you wrote in about them, including yesterday's "stars that really hanged your life." That would be "changed." No wonder the response was so light, though a few of you decoded the request.) But roughcut.com, as much as I love and respect us, is not the damned New York Times or USA Today. I just don't get it.

MORE CRAP: Director Jamie Blanks, the genius behind Urban Legend, is bouncing between projects. He's apparently out of MGM's Munchies and into Phoenix Pictures' Blood Relative. Phoenix is, of course, the company that brought back Terrence Malick and gave him the money to direct The Thin Red Line. Same difference director-wise, right? If he brings all the skill with which he directed Urban Legend, I suspect the industry will remember him with a two-picture entry in the IMBD.

NEW AND IMPROVED CRAP: Moron, moron, down the hall, what's the weirdest remake idea of them all? Well, I think it could very well be Nicolas Cage in a Jerry Bruckheimer-produced Gone in 60 Seconds, the decidedly low-tech 1974 car-theft movie from H.B. Halicki which was later the subject of a story on "60 Minutes." The film also led to a pair of Roger Corman flicks, Eat My Dust and Grand Theft Auto, which was Ron Howard's directing debut. What's not so amazing is that Bruckheimer, Cage and Con Air screenwriter Scott Rosenberg want to do a car heist flick. The question is, why remake this one? Can you say "kitsch?"

KINK: Former Sony America chief Mickey Schulof can't get the sex monkey off his back. He seems to have forgotten how much joy Heidi Fleiss brought to the studio's Culver City campus a few years ago when she threatened to go public with her list of johns. Rumors repeatedly had Heidi's girls as a regular part of the company payroll for some corporate hay rolls. Well, his new company, which dumped him last month, World Online International, is accusing him of using the gold card for the same kinds of activities. Schulof says they are developing "a conspiracy to attempt to intimidate and harass (him)." And now they are claiming that he induced another employee to join his in his recreation proclivities. I'm doing my TNT expense report for Sundance right now. Hmmm... can't bill that. Can't bill that. That was actually a medical exam, so I can bill that.

NO CRAP?: You may remember that I was kind of ticked that Kevin Costner dumped his Field of Dreams writer-director Phil Alden Robinson from the Cuban Missile Crisis thriller, Thirteen Days. I was all ready to call his replacement a "hack" and a "scumbag." But, lo and behold, the replacement director is one of my favorite directors of big movies, Martin Campbell, who brought the Bond franchise back with GoldenEye and did wonders with The Mask of Zorro. (He also directed one of the greatest episodes of "Homicide" ever, "Three Men and Adena.") Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Universal will have a chance to snatch the film back from Sony, where it went after Universal dumped it, with the hiring of a new director. And snatch they should.

MARCHING BACK FROM SUNDANCE: You may have read here the rumor that there was a real heart attack victim who took ill just as a patient flatlined in Death: A Love Story. I have never heard of that one again, so I am beginning to doubt its veracity. Here's a new one I picked up on the flight from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles today. I was told that next year, Park City will not be issuing permits to the various spin-off festivals that coincide with Sundance. My source says that this includes Slamdance, the biggest of these fests and one that has become every bit as important as Sundance in developing edgier films than Sundance now accepts. If this is true, it's a travesty. Everyone knows that Robert Redford hates the spin-offs and this year's Lapdance couldn't have helped. (I flew back yesterday with many of the porn stars who graced that festival. Everyone stayed clothed.) But Sundance should be looking at its own house and leaving the little guys alone. Those little guys are the spirit of indie film and shouldn't be squelched.

I was preparing to give you a wrap-up on which studios ended up with which films at the festival, but I just realized that I am shipping home much of my information, particularly about films that came to the festival already attached to mini-majors. But let's push ahead and if anyone has any addenda, please feel free to use your e-mail. Oddly enough, I didn't really track sales during the festival. I don't think it's the best thing about Sundance. In any case, Miramax came to the festival with several films including Guinevere, Thick as Thieves and A Walk on the Moon and added Happy, Texas (price: somewhere between $2.5 million and $12 million) and Twin Falls, Idaho (price: not reported, less than $1 million) to lead the exiting companies with six feature films. Close behind with five films was October Films, the now-in-limbo art arm of Universal Pictures. They arrived with Emir Kusturica's Black Cat, White Cat, Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune and the triple-Sundance-award-winning Three Seasons in tow. And they added Kill the Man (price: less than $1 million) and the Allison Anders/Kurt Voss collaboration Sugar Town (price: $1.25 million) to their coffers.

Other buyers included Artisan Entertainment, which brought The 24-Hour Woman and bought The Blair Witch Project for $1 million; Fine Line, which bought the gay comedy, Trick (price: $400,000), and the wonderful Tumbleweeds (price: $1 million) and Sony Pictures Classics which showed up with SLC Punk and added the jury prize-winning documentary American Movie (price: $800,000). Sony was also responsible for bringing Jawbreaker and Go to the festival, but both will, I believe, be Columbia releases, not SPC releases. Also showing up with films you will hear about were PolyGram Filmed Entertainment (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) and Showtime Cable (the Australian thriller, Two Hands).

READER OF THE DAY: From Sam He Am: "I just saw Life is Beautiful this Saturday. I now see why people fall in love with this movie. How anyone can make a comedy involving the concentration camps AND in good taste is an accomplishment to be proud of. Too bad what isn't said is that this is truly a love story: the man's love for his son, his wife and life itself.

"As for any stars that 'really hanged' my life. I don't know what you mean. However, watching Ben Affleck on 'Polically Incorrect' the other night made me realize how necessary handlers are to avoid making (young stars) do stupid things, like going on P.I. After watching young Ben, I thought, geez, maybe the rumors that the Good Will Hunting screenplay was extensively written by others whom Miramax paid to not receive credit (a la The Faculty) are true."

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E ME: Tomorrow's Ranting and Raving column looks like it will be yours. E-me early and often to get your two cents in. On Sundance, on She's All That or on life as a whole. You write it, I print it, others mock it. It's that simple.