Weekend, 12-13 June 1999

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

10. Mouth Wide Open: There is an article in the June 14 New Yorker on Stanley Kubrick by Frederic Raphael, his co-writer on Eyes Wide Shut that is an absolute must read. It has what may be a couple of small spoilers in it, but for the most part Rapahel, writing the story in first person, draws a wonderful portrait of the artist and the man. Especially interesting was reading a first hand account of Kubrick's need for secrecy and control. It isn't so different than that of a lot of directors out there. Well, I guess the secrecy obsession is. But if you love the man's work, this is as close as we may ever get to him.

9. In A Pear Tree: Congratulations and good luck to Jordan Brady, director of Dill Scallion, which was a Slamdance favorite. Congratulations because he just got the deal to direct the big screen adaptation of "The Partridge Family." Balancing self-awareness and out and out parody has proven to be one of the most difficult tricks to turn in Hollywood. But regular Hot Button readers will know who must play Keith. None other than Powder himself, Sean Patrick Flannery. He's a dead ringer. Gotta figure they're signing up Jeffrey Jones as Rueben Kincaid. And Julia Stiles would make an infinitely superior Laurie. Joan Allen as Mother Partridge. And who else but Harry Knowles could really play Danny? (Sorry to bring AICN up again, but when the horizontal striped shirt fits...)

8. Easy Go, Easy Go: Last Saturday, the Words Into Pictures conference included an appearance by UA movie chief Lindsay Doran. By Monday afternoon, she should have been speaking at a producer's conference. The hook of the week is that UA and MGM will officially re-team and UA will be the art arm. That makes Doran's exit puzzling since her failure in her job was mostly about her failure to make commercial movies. Given room to make art films, as she had before arriving at UA, she actually may have been a great asset. UA's mission is, specifically, to make films under $10 million. And MGM, as I've written before, will likely make a handful of event films a year with budgets of more than $50 million.

7. Okay, That's Enough, You Two: The battle between Disney and Jeffrey Katzenberg continues. The media out here seems anxious to see something happen, but it doesn't look like anything good is gonna happen. It sure looks like "company secrets" are way overrated. Meanwhile, there's a hiring freeze across Planet Disney after the company took a hit on Wall Street due to poor first quarter results. There doesn't appear to be any decisions on movies being based on these overall stock price issues, but you gotta figure that they're watching that Inspector Gadget bottom line pretty closely about now.

6. Irons Into The Fire: There's something horrifying about a great actor falling into cheap genre pictures. But here goes Jeremy Irons, plopping himself into what might be the Olivier role in Clash of the Titans or John Gielgud's fall into Caligula or Raul Julia's role in Street Fighter. Oscar®-winner Irons is going to be in a movie version of Dungeons & Dragons. Besides emasculating Irons, the most curious thing about this film is whether it will emasculate the game or instead, bring all the intensity to it that made it the once and future target of people who want to blame the media, in all forms, for violence. They better ban Chutes & Ladders because it encourages butting in line. And don't even get me started on Operation.

5. I'm Not Going To Stockholm, Damn It!: Turner Broadcasting, Time Inc. and Advance Publications have announced their plans to build a cable network with a prominent position on the Web targeted at the female audience. So, if you see a photo of me in a wig, writing as Davida Poland, don't be surprised if The Hot Button is about something completely different at that site than it is here at roughcut.com.

4. The Real Squared Circle: Sony just can't stay away from lawsuits, but they are trying to get out of one right now. As I first brought up here a few months ago (THB 3/18), former partners of Muhammad Ali are claiming that they own a part of his life story. Sony is saying essentially, "Hey! We bought the story from The Champ! You guys sort it out!" Of course, the plaintiffs don't like that idea because Sony has deep pockets. Besides, they may just be bitter enough to prefer to see the film dead than to see just a small piece of the pie, which surely must have been offered to them before the lawsuit was filed. In the meantime, this suit, combined with the bad Wild Wild West buzz, has shoved the Ali project onto Will Smith's back burner. Fortunately for Sony, Smith hasn't found his next big project, though rewrites are being done on a movie that would team him with Whitney Houston, and if Sony can get this suit thrown out soon, they could move to the head of the line again in a hurry. The judge says he'll decide what's what before Wild Wild West opens.


"The Top 3 and There's Something About The Farrellys"