Weekend, 22-23 May 1999

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

10. Theoretical Thinning: A fascinating set of numbers comes out of the Fiji Islands, one of the few outposts that has gone without the influence of TV until recently. It seems that before 1995, three percent of girls reported that they vomited to control their weight, according to a Harvard research study. After 1995, which not coincidentally was when TV spread across the island, the reports of the behavior rose to 15 percent. But like all "is media responsible?" questions, he is the rub. Has TV influenced a higher percentage of girls to report their behavior or a higher percentage to participate in the behavior? And do we really believe that 4 years of television can drop the self-esteem of an island full or girls so low so quickly? It seems clear that in the U.S., atrocities like child abuse started to be reported well above the levels of its actual existence when the media started its focus. Before the attention leveled off, the truth that there was and is a problem there became an accepted social reality (though still not emotionally easy for kids to report). The chicken, the egg or the chicken omelet? It all depends on your perspective.

9. They Will Be Missed: Two deaths of note this week. Screenwriter Donald E. Stewart went to that big action movie in the sky after losing a battle with lung cancer. He wrote on two of the three Jack Ryan movies for Paramount and on Missing. Stewart started as a journalist and made the transition to big-time movies. No mean feat. Also dead is one of my very favorite character actors, Henry Jones. I played Leroy in a high school production of The Bad Seed and Henry's film performance was my guide, though I never could quite look as relaxed with a mop as he. The number of movies and TV shows he appeared on seems endless, but you may remember him in particular from the "Mary Tyler Moore" spin-off, "Phyllis", Hitchcock's Vertigo or from the Jayne Mansfield vehicle The Girl Can't Help It. The odd thing is that he died, according to UCLA Medical Center, from "injuries received in a fall at his home." And where was Rhoda Penmark?

8. Election Results or Legal Endgame?: New Line showed more good taste than perhaps pure business savvy by buying the 1997 novel The Wishbones from author Tom Perotta, the man who wrote the book Election from which the movie is taken. I bet the market for the book quieted a bit when Election failed to catch box office fire despite a massive number of loving reviews. But maybe there's more than good taste going on here. Read the story of The Wishbones, as written by The Hollywood Reporter: "It centers on a New Jersey rock band, The Wishbones, made up of 30-year-old men clinging to adolescence as the band sings cover music for wedding receptions. The plot focuses on the guitarist, 31-year-old Dave Raymond, who still lives with his parents and works as a freelance driver for a courier service - who proposes to his long-suffering girlfriend and then gets cold feet. An existential crisis comes next, followed by an affair." Could this purchase be a way of avoiding litigation over similarities to an already successful 1998 New Line project? Just wondering.

7. He's Not God, But He Ain't Stupid Neither: Mike Ovitz is getting into the Internet e-commerce business in about the smartest way possible. He's going to build his franchise around the individual celebrities themselves rather than around the merchandise. The reason this is so smart is that it understands the nature of the Internet better than most e-commerce sites. CDNow or Amazon.com may be great on-line versions of "real world" retail outlets, but you will only visit them, most likely, as often as you would visit a book store or music store. People visit fan sites dedicated to their favorites every single day, often multiple times a day. As a clearinghouse of both celebrity information and celebrity-related movies, music and other materials, Ovitz' enterprise could quickly rise to the level of the big boys of the 'Net.

6. Marred: The race for Mars is taking shape, with Val Kilmer joining Warner Bros.' project, titled Mars, this week. Their version of a Mars story is basically a take on Marooned, with an astronaut out there alone and an intense earthly effort to go and save him. Even without reading the screenplays, I'm already leaning toward the other Mars Project, Disney's Mission to Mars, which boasts not only director Brian DePalma, but great actors (more so than movie stars) Tim Robbins, Gary Sinise and Don Cheadle. Of course, first-time director Anthony Hoffman could have something remarkable in his bag of tricks for the Kilmer/WB Mars, but I'm betting on the bigger pool of talent for now. One thing about all these similar films competing with each other every year. There is always a race and the race never really seems to matter. Sometimes the first film is the hit, sometimes the second and in cases like "Big," the third of a "series" turned the trick. I think the competition for a release date often distracts the publicity effort and it becomes more about the other film. Would a piece of junk like Volcano have done better if a piece of junk like Dante's Peak not come out just a few months earlier? Sure. But Deep Impact and Armageddon were even closer and both generated big numbers. Why? Disney stayed focused on selling its film (even if they did cheat a little).


Cannes, Can't and Won't