The Hot Button by David Poland

Tuesday, 16 February 1999

WEEKEND REVIEW

It was a weird four-day weekend. It didn't feel like much of a holiday. Of course, I know that most of you didn't read yesterday's column because you weren't at your appointed computer, hung over by Valentine's Day love and post-impeachment malaise. That malaise reached the box office as Message in a Bottle couldn't even manage to break the $20 million barrier over four days. It made $15.5 million over three days and an estimated $19.1 million over four. How do I read this? I think that the general critical lambasting of the film, which I found mostly about critics trying to prove their "edge" by judging the film as though it were meant to be a cutting-edge drama, had to hurt. But the decent weekend combined with what I am sure will be nice word of mouth from people who actually like quality melodrama should give it decent legs.
The other debutantes didn't humiliate themselves, but didn't rock the world either. It can't be a happy Tuesday at New Line with Disney's all-but-thrown-away My Favorite Martian outdoing movie-star laden Blast From the Past by at least $1.5 million. My Favorite Martian seems securely ensconced in third place with $8.4 million in three days and an estimated $11.1 million in four. On the other hand, expect Blast From the Past to fall from fifth to sixth after New Line made the absurd Monday estimate of $2.7 million for a $9.7 million four-day total after doing just $7 million in three days. The film falsely leapfrogged Oscar® contender Shakespeare in Love, which did $7.3 million over three days before estimating a more reasonable $2.2 million for Monday for a $9.5 million four-day estimate, which put SIL in sixth. Miramax's prize flick more than doubled its box office as it more than doubled its screen count, making it easily the most successful Oscar® nominee leaper of the weekend. The only other Oscar® nominee to make the Top 10 was Saving Private Ryan, which improved only marginally (3 percent), drawing $3.7 million in three days and an estimated $4 million in four.
Amongst the holdovers, Payback fell a quite-average 35 percent to take $14.5 million over three days and an estimated $18.4 million over four. She's All That also fell 35 percent, with $7.7 million over three days and $10.2 million over four. Without the benefit of a single Oscar® nomination, Rushmore's leap from 103 screens to 573 produced a skip of just $1.1 million, for a $2.9 million three-day total and an estimated $3.7 million four-day. Disney still has to be somewhat happy with the weekend, though if they aren't they have no one to blame but themselves. Rushmore finished the weekend in eighth place. In ninth, it was Patch Adams losing 34 percent ($2.9 million in three and $3.6 million four) while Varsity Blues rounded out the Top 10 with a 29 percent fall to $2.7 million in three days and $3.4 million in four.
THE GOOD: Wow! This word will always have special meaning here at The Hot Button thanks to Ron Brewington and Armageddon. But I mean it. The two-part episode of "The X-Files" was pretty much the movie that I dreamt The X-Files movie might be. It was conclusive. It was well-acted. There were lots of cameos. And it was honestly shocking all around. It's as though they were planning the movie last year and said, "We can't do too much or we'll mess up the series." As soon as they got past the movie and started the new seasons, they woke up and decided to make February sweeps the month to run the movie that they didn't give us. I would have been happy to lay down my eight bucks for a slightly more visually dramatic version of this two-parter. I still feel a bit screwed by the movie.
THE BAD: Thanks to a friend who faxed James Toback my weekend column (THB 02/13) on the Peter Bart-driven battle between Warren Beatty and Toback over credit for Bulworth, I got a call from Jim Toback this weekend. The reason I write "Jim" is that the conversation ended up being pleasant and informal. Nothing Jim told me struck me in any real way as unreasonable to the point where I would question his comments. So, here they are in my words: Bart focused on Toback being the first writer hired on Bulworth and later said, "When I saw the final shooting script, there was a lot of my stuff in there." True enough. What Bart left out is that when Toback joined Beatty and Jeremy Pikser in 1995, there was a 20-point outline and that when he left the project to work on Two Girls and a Guy, he left behind a 120-point outline that he, Beatty and Pikser had created and that his 77-page draft of the script was still unfinished. Toback relates that he felt kind of bad not finishing the job because he was shorting his buddy Warren a bit. But he wasn't focused enough to finish because he knew that it wasn't his project. It was Beatty's. Pikser's too, but really Beatty's.
Toback also pointed out that he surely could have won a credit in Writer's Guild arbitration because of the "idiotic rules" that guide arbitration. The same "idiotic rules" that left Hilary Henkin in first position on the Wag the Dog screenplay even though Barry Levinson swears that not a single syllable of her work ended up in the shooting script. Toback admits that had he arbitrated, there might have been bad blood between he and Beatty. But Toback insists there is no such bad blood now and that he didn't arbitrate, despite the enormous residual financial benefits of getting the credit because he had done the work for a friend and because he knew that he simply did not deserve that credit. It was that simple. And finally, Toback wanted to correct the notion that he works a lot as a script doctor. He has the reputation, though he swears it's not true. He says that the only doctoring job he's had was for friend Barry Levinson on one scene of Disclosure.
Others agree that Toback would have been well-served to have another project bringing him income. And he is absolutely right that Guild rules would have almost certainly given him a writing credit. So, again, I have no reason to feel spinned here. I do, however, have reason to reiterate that Peter Bart is not a man I have a lot of respect for. And I will repeat my previous comment, Bart is the worst of what "entertainment journalism" has sunk to. And that is definitely saying something.
THE UGLY: You know, I like to beat up Hollywood as much as anybody, but it really hits me the wrong way to read the comments that Nick Nolte and director Alan Rudolph made at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this week. Rudolph has, in a 27-year career, directed 18 films so far. Only the first two, which were exploitation films, and perhaps Demi Moore and Bruce Willis starrer Mortal Thoughts made the slightest effort to be "commercial." That's more than one art film every two years for almost three decades and he's complaining, "The business of movies in America is almost more important than the films themselves." Well, duh! That business sensibility has been pretty good to Rudolph.
Meanwhile, Nick Nolte, who was there with Rudolph to promote their adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel Breakfast of Champions, according to The Hollywood Reporter, groused, "The studios won't touch anything that isn't there to make money (primarily). It's sad to see. I foresee the day when they will bore the audience to death (and the crowds will stop coming). Then they'll say, 'What do we do now?' We'll tell them, 'You forgot to tell stories.' " I suppose he means stories like Affliction and The Thin Red Line. Both films and Breakfast of Champions beat the odds to bring art to that stodgy old Hollywood sensibility. Bruce Willis, the biggest financial success of the trio, who produced Breakfast of Champions and decided to finance the film with foreign money and sell it to America after production was over, was both politic and perhaps the fairest, saying, "I'm in a pretty fortunate position. I'm asked to appear in both types of films -- large-studio films and independent films which focus on story and acting." And there you go. Sure, Hollywood sucks, but get a little perspective, gang.
THE CHAT: It's Sir Ian time! Tomorrow night, live from London, live from Hollywood, live from Santa Clara, it's time to chat with The Man. He is a god and I am a monster, so check out his Website, for all the best news on Sir Ian. And come to Yahoo! Chat tomorrow night, 10:00 p.m. ET/7:00 p.m. PT/3:00 a.m. London time.
Just Wondering, Quote Whoring USA, Happy Trailers To You and Bad Ad Watch are on hold in honor of the holiday. God Bless Lincoln. God Bless Washington. (The issue is really length, but admitting that on President's Day might conjure up all kinds of rude jokes, so let's honor the guy with the hat and the guy with the wooden teeth.)
READER OF THE DAY: From JS: "I read the 'Bad Ad Watch' part of your column today (THB 2/12) and I just wanted to clarify something for you. Since you got some sort of bias and hate for Saving Private Ryan going on right now, the reason why it was proclaimed the 'most honored movie of the year' is because it IS. Oscar® nominations don't mean jack -- as Matt Damon once put it, it is basically just 'political BS.' (I mean, for one example, what happened to Joan Allen's much deserved nomination for Pleasantville? How could Judi Dench's six-minute performance in Shakespeare in Love garner her a nod and not Joan Allen's amazing performance in Pleasantville? And how did Mighty Joe Young get a best visual effects nod?!) But it does not matter if Shakespeare in Love received two more nods than Saving Private Ryan. Saving Private Ryan was basically the most honored movie of the year because more than 60 critics (and most are respectable ones, I might add -- not Paul Wunder, of course) proclaimed it the best picture of the year. The NYC and L.A. Critics Circles also proclaimed it as best film. Shakespeare in Love, of course, probably was 'thought of' as a 'contender' for best picture, but Saving Private Ryan won those honors from all the critics. So, again I reiterate my point, just because Saving Private Ryan 'only' got 11 nominations doesn't mean that it is NOT the most honored movie of the year. Hence, it should not be in the 'Bad Ad Watch' section."

E ME: Well argued. Except for the part where you accuse me of hating or being biased against Saving Private Ryan. You couldn't be more wrong. My preference for The Thin Red Line doesn't mean I hate Saving Private Ryan. The movie is No. 3 of my Top 10 of 1998, so why do I have to defend myself? Oh, yeah. I don't. I didn't get any mail from ya'll about Toback, Sorkin, Beatty and Bart, yet L.A. is all abuzz. Have I missed your hot button? Let me know.

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