The Hot Button by David Poland

Weekend, 13-14 February 1999

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

10. BACK TO SUNDANCE: I spent Thursday night reliving my Park City experience. I started by running out to catch a movie that I missed at Sundance, Lovers of the Arctic Circle. Very interesting movie. I find it fascinating that there are so many serious coming-of-love stories out there (like Sundance's Praise and Guinevere). It's not all She's All That and Cruel Intentions (though I have no reason to dislike either film, but they both seem very packaged, as I'm sure their studios want them to be). Take Romeo and Juliet, add The Hairdresser's Husband and twist in a serious sensibility and you have this film. Director Julio Medem is not the most polished technician yet, but his ideas are wonderful and clearly heartfelt. One warning. This film will bore and irritate some of you. If you come to this one with a closed mind or heart, you will not make it past the first half hour. But I encourage you to be open.
9. BACK TO SLAMDANCE: After my Sundance movie, I had to run, almost literally, across town in just about 10 minutes to catch the Grand Jury Award winner from Slamdance, Heidi Van Lier's Chi Girl. They were doing a Slamdance-in-Los Angeles mini-fest at the newly renovated Egyptian, under the aegis of the American Cinemateque. The film is a neat little black and white confection, starring Van Lier herself, with the pretense of being a documentary. Indeed, the "filmmaker" following the pathetic character that Van Lier has made herself ends up stalking the object of his work. Very whiny, very rough-edged, very funny. And just like in Park City, I left a theater at 11:45 at night, went home and wrote a column. (Of course, in Park City, I'd have gone to see an 11:30 show in addition. It's good to be home.)
8. BACKING INTO TROUBLE: Jack Frost 2 anyone? That's what DreamWorks' Galaxy Quest is beginning to look like in these tired show business eyes. It's another movie of the lightweight variety that is having a hard time getting out of the blocks, probably karma suggesting that the film should simply not be made. It's one thing to wait for years to do Unforgiven and another thing entirely to lose directors because you want to get into the Tim Allen/movie star business. Harold Ramis fell out this week when Allen became the top choice for the film. And it seems unlikely that Mr. Ramis has a personal problem with Mr. Allen at this point. (Though friends tell friends all kinds of things.) Be afraid. Be very afraid.
7. BACKWARDS FORECASTING: Go figure this one. Just as Disney was announcing that Fantasia 2000 would appear on 100 IMAX screens during its run, the stock market is downgrading IMAX for a "strong buy" recommendation to just a "buy." I think Disney's move is the next big step for IMAX -- buy now while the market is looking the other way.
6. BACKING INTO ACCEPTANCE: One of the most interesting reactions to Oscar® came from Sir Ian McKellen, who told reporters that he felt his nomination for Gods and Monsters was a morale-booster for gay rights. I don't know that I agree, but I hope that he's right. He told SkyTV, "There is a shift certainly in American society as there is in British society toward an acceptance of gay people as being perfectly ordinary. The film industry is at last beginning to catch up with that and reflect it." Perhaps. The gay influence on network comedy has long been every bit as pronounced as the early Jewish influence on the feature film business. But as McKellen relates, "When we were trying to get a distributor to sell this movie having received critical acclaim, there were still some producers, some very big producers -- whose names I won't mention -- who said they wouldn't market that because it was about gays." Those producers were probably gay themselves. It always seems that there is more homophobia in this town among the potentially persecuted than amongst the average Joes. Not that there isn't homophobia, but business is business. Homosexuality has the awkward burden, unlike "black movies," of having to point out its nature to make it part of the story. And yet, who wants to have to point out their sexuality all the time. ("Black" films do have other burdens.) We will explore this subject and lots of others on Wednesday when we chat with Sir Ian on Wednesday at 10:00 p.m. ET/7:00 p.m. PT on Yahoo! Chat.
5. BACK-SLAPPING SILLINESS: In lock-step with the Oscars®, the Razzies were announced this week. An award show with all the legitimacy of the Golden Globes, the Razzies awards talentlessness in a given year. The bottom five films? Spice World, Godzilla, An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, The Avengers and Armageddon. For me, only Burn Hollywood Burn and The Avengers deserve spots on the list. Nominations get a little goofy. For instance, Bruce Wills was nominated for Armageddon, The Siege and "His separation from Demi Moore." Burn Hollywood Burn led nominees with nine nods, The Avengers grabbed eight, Armageddon got seven, Spice World wanted, really, really wanted six nods, Godzilla ate five and Psycho got pinned with three nasty nominations. The winners are foisted upon us on March 20, the day before the Oscars®.
4. BACK TO GLOATING: The Clinton "gloat-free zone" has become about as secure as the border in Tijuana. Norman Lear, mostly silent through the last year of fun, fun, fun from the White House and Congress, has decided it's time to pipe up. His People for the American Way is starting a $5 million campaign against the Republicans and specifically the 13 Republican congressional managers who brought the impeachment to the Senate. I think that most of you know that I do not honor and respect this president and his lying ways, in or out of the Oral Office, but glomming on to a rather hollow victory is just gross. Everyone wants the issue dead, let the issue be dead. No one won here. Least of all the American public, many of whom are now waking up to the hangover of support for President Clinton pious enough to make them forget their own actual values in lieu of winning this fight. And don't think that I'd be happy if Clinton was thrown out of office. There was no honor there either. Once it was clear that Clinton wouldn't resign, my concern has been with liberal groups (and I consider myself a strongly liberal person) bending their own ideals to fit the fight. I hope that's over on every side. I think that Jerry Falwell attacking the Teletubbies is a strong indicator that the Right is ready to move on. I hope that the left and Norman Lear will do the same.
3. BACK-BITING BUDDIES: It's one thing to be bitter and backbiting when you are deeply disappointed about not getting your expected Academy Award nomination. It is another thing entirely when you get the nomination and you can't keep your mouth shut. I don't know what it is, but Warren Beatty, who shares his screenwriting nomination with Jeremy Pikser, is being absurdly attacked from a pair of Beatty insiders and one outsider who is often cited for his big and reckless mouth here at The Hot Button. Let's start on the inside. It's been cold here in L.A. this last week. The fight was taken public as what I suspect was a stunt by Daily Variety's Peter Bart to promote his new book. (Don't buy it!) The story is that Beatty undercredited James Toback and Aaron Sorkin as early scribes on the Bulworth screenplay. (Is anyone else worried that the editor of the leading trade paper held a story like that for his book and didn't print it in his newsmagazine?) Anyway, the stunning part of this is that Toback seems to have gone on the record with Bart and said amongst other things, "When I saw the final shooting script, there was a lot of my stuff in there." There are a lot of people like Toback in this town. He's been a happy substance buddy to many, but he basically has Beatty to thank for picking up his shattered career in the mid-'80s and reviving him. First, Beatty supported Toback as a director, taking the executive producer role in 1986 for The Pick-Up Artist when no one trusted Toback. Then, with Bugsy, Beatty made Toback a hot script doctor again. Does Toback's writing skill have something to do with it? Absolutely. But talent is not enough in Hollywood. Why would Toback turn on his notoriously press-controlling friend, even in this subtle way? I don't know. But Toback gave Bart the ammunition to try and hurt a friend. Or a former friend.
2. MORE BACK-BITING BUDDIES: Next up is Aaron Sorkin, who has had a rocky relationship with Beatty from the beginning. Beatty wandered thorough the hallways of Castle Rock (Sorkin's virtual home) for years. He toyed with Misery, but Rob Reiner finally decided to go with James Caan when Beatty wanted to make changes to William Goldman's screenplay. Likewise, Beatty did not become The American President, this time dragging Sorkin's screenplay through the possibility of major changes and then falling out at nearly the last minute. Sorkin was hired to work on Bulworth at one point and Bart, ever the vigilant mudraker, coughs up this non-informative info: "Sources who worked on Bulworth say they found many signs of Sorkin's witty, sophisticated dialogue in the final version, for which he received no screen credit." To make an issue out of that is as preposterous as any comment ever written about the industry. There are writers, including Sorkin and Toback (and I'm sure he wishes, Mr. Bart), who earn seven figures a year with no intention of being credited on the films of mediocrity on which they toil so selflessly. (Feel free to read the sarcasm there.) Beatty also offended Sorkin to the point of litigation in 1997 over a film that was never made, Oceans of Storms. He blamed "Beatty's irrational, incomprehensible, and unwarranted personal animus, and hostile feelings" toward him. The bottom line is that it was the $475,000 he didn't get paid for working on the film that never got made. (He got only $225,000. Ouch!)
Beatty talked to The New York Post to get his side of the story out. (I guess that using perennial clippings-king Army Archerd in Bart's Variety seemed a little too close to home.) To wit, "He was wildly inaccurate in his account of what took place on the picture, but because he's the editor of Variety, no one ever calls him to task for his sloppy research. I guess it's hard to sell books, but they could be in deep sh--. Boy, did they not get this book. They f---ed up." No "F" up. This is standard procedure for Bart. One day, he's kissing butt. The next day attacking. Fortunately, I'm sure that I don't reach so high on his radar to demand that he attack me, but I would rather shuck clams than work for that man. He is the worst of what "entertainment journalism" has sunk to. And that's saying something. And it's not that I love Mr. Beatty, but fair is fair, no matter whom the victim or the perpetrator is. Well, maybe not in America these days. But we'll find our legs in truth again someday.
1. BACK-STABBING HOLLYWOOD STYLE: The other major story of a writer stabbing his colleague in the back is Oscar®-nominated Marc Norman, who seems to feel the need to take as much responsibility as possible for Shakespeare in Love away from his co-writer and co-nominee Tom Stoppard. The New York Times' Mel Gussow made a statement last week that I consider misguided for reasons other than Norman's, but here it is: "The movie was Mr. Norman's idea. Other than that, the division of labor between the two screenwriters is not specified. But the dialogue has the linguistic limberness of Mr. Stoppard at his wittiest." (In my opinion, Stoppard was years more sophisticated and funny in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.) So, Norman calls up The Hollywood Reporter and offers, "Stoppard did what we would call a dialogue polish. He added some important ideas; he added the Marlowe character and the wager and some of the jokes, which I was frankly afraid of, but, he, in his theatrical wisdom, knew would work." Yadda, yadda, yadda. Stoppard would, I'm sure, be above such sparring with someone he was sharing an honor with. As much as I love the camp of Breakout from the '70s, Norman's only other feature writing credit in the '90s is Cutthroat Island. Sharing anything with Tom Stoppard should make him happy and quiet. Not that he could share Stoppard's writing jock. He couldn't fill it.

E ME: Sorry, no room for ROTD today. But I'm sure you'll have plenty to write me about from this weekender. Clinton, Beatty and Shakespeare. Imagine them together at a local pub. Hide your virgin daughters! See you Monday.

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