Tuesday, 8 June 1999

FIRST THINGS FIRST: Before jumping into my detailed look at Words Into Pictures, I want to speak to Monday's comments on Robert Bucksbaum and Reel Source. I spent all day Monday, trying to be fair to Mr. Bucksbaum and his company, by calling people, hoping to find anyone who would suggest that he was a legitimate source of insight on the box office. I particularly felt that I might have been a little unfair to the AP writer, who got sucked into my whirlwind of anger at Reel Source. But, I didn't find a single person at a studio, a publication or publicity house who said, "This guy knows something." Not even the one individual I spoke to who quoted Bucksbaum recently. He was polite, but mostly sputtered and said he was surprised by my call. I received the materials that Reel Source uses to try and entice potential subscribers to their site. No help there either. And the end of business on Monday, I heard from one person whom I respect who knows someone who may feel that Reel Source is a credible source of information and insight. And so, out of that respect, instead of printing my conclusions today, I will wait until Thursday (though some of this may leak into Wednesday's Rant & Rave). As for adding Mr. Bucksbaum's voice to the conversation, his work speaks for itself (as, I hope, mine speaks for me).

WORDS INTO PICTURES: As I told you yesterday, three days of thought is a glorious find here in L.A., even if the conversation was benign a little too often. Also, being only one man, I could only attend one seminar at a time, thus catching Brian Helgeland and Jack Valenti (among others) on violence meant not spending an hour with Larry David or Ron Bass. But c'est la vie. The first seminar I attended was the most politically loaded of the weekend, entitled "Guns Don't Kill People...Writers Do." Though organized before Columbine, the conversation was truly of the moment. However, the downside was that only playwright cum screenwriter William Mastrosimone took the position of pinning much of the blame for violence in America on Hollywood. After his opening salvo, he basically sat silent as writers eloquently explained why Hollywood really wasn't responsible. The one scary thing though was that almost every panelist was willing to examine some element of the media, whether the local news or video games, to shift some blame there. I don't often agree with Jack Valenti, the MPAA Chairman and creator/defender of the current rating system, but this time I did. Either you believe in the First Amendment or you don't. If movies are to blame, then start tightening the screws on publishers of all forms of thought. If movies aren't to blame, don't start attacking video games or the nightly news or "Catcher In The Rye" to shift the heat away from your personal trough.

Also stepping up strong to the plate was Steven DeSouza, action king and clearly, an intense thinker. He even brought visual aides to make his point that the most dangerous form of speech is the seemingly innocent speech that hides truly dangerous principles beneath the surface. Brian Helgeland represented youthful Hollywood in a pair of surfer shorts and unruly hair. (How old does that make me sound, "unruly hair?") His message: to thine own self be true. These kids today! Writer-producer Sy Gomberg added to the senior set that deserves respect, but seems to be constantly living in a refrain of "In my day!" That won't help anyone. Gomberg pointed out that there have been recent movies with hitmen as heroes, leaving unsaid that Helgeland's Payback was one of these films. But as all Hot Button regulars know (perhaps too well), the film was based on an even harsher 1967 release, Point Blank.

My favorite seminar was "The Big Picture: Movies in the Year 2000," which featured 2 agents (Jim Wiatt of ICM and David "Doc" O'Connor of CAA), a studio chief (Bill Mechanic), a critic (The L.A. Times' Ken Turan) and a trade publisher (Peter Bart of Variety). Notably, there was no representative of the Internet invited and sure enough, the first item of note was the dismissal of the Internet at the top of the program, especially by Bart. (No doubt, Bart is aware that at least one Internet columnist likes to dismiss him as well.) However, Mr. B. did end up having some really interesting things to say. It seems that when held in check by being in front of the people he regularly castigates in his column, his long experience and truer insight into the business exposes itself. He spoke about how "convoluted and complex" the business has become, remembering fondly the days when an idea, a producer and a studio exec could get a movie rolling. Jim Wiatt described the same problem as an industry loaded "with people can say `no' but can't say `yes.'" And everyone agreed that the business is in the process of a needed financial "correction." Doc O'Connor then explained one very real problem as a talent rep in this era: "explaining to your talent what is really happening in the marketplace." Big people are still making big money, but studios are trying to find clever ways to cut out "the cost of failure." And by that, they didn't mean failed films, but primarily projects that fail before even getting past the early stages of development.

Not surprisingly, Bill Mechanic was the highlight of the panel for me. My first real contact with Mechanic came at the start of my EW days when he basically laid out the next five years of the movie business as clearly as one could. People scoffed, but he was 100 percent right as companies followed his and Fox's lead in how they ran their businesses. As the man on the panel who really has to watch the bottom line, his perspective on where the business is and where it is going was most fascinating.


"More Mechanic, Sandler Handlers And Killer Brooks"