Monday, 12 July 1999

WEEKEND REVIEW

Well, as it turned out, the weekend was as much about Eyes Wide Shut as anything else. Oddly enough, by the time next Monday's column rolls around, I expect it to be just another box office story. But even without seeing it, there was plenty to rile me up about it this weekend. That follows the box office story. And you should make sure to catch our live chat from the premiere party for The Blair Witch Project (10pET/7pPT/3aGMT), deep in the woods of New York's Central Park. It should be fun. (If not, I'll refund all the money you paid to attend.) Also, we should actually be doing a bunch of American Pie chats later this week. Keep your eye out. They could start as soon as tomorrow night.

THE BOX OFFICE ROUND-UP: Hi, hi, Miss American Pie. Full of Chevy's and Gene Levy, you're the box office high. And good young kids having sex with a pie, saying this'll be a real career high...this will be a real career high. Did you write the book of...Okay, enough singing. $18.1 million was a nice draw for the R-rated teen comedy. Like many of Sony's teen comedies seem to do, American Pie dipped from Friday to Saturday and Universal was fairly conservative with their $4.9 million estimate for Sunday. Wild Wild West took a surprisingly big bite of Saturday's box office after being in third place on Friday, jumping from $5 million to $6.85 million and ending up with an estimated 40 percent fall to $16.7 million. But Big Daddy won the surprise of the weekend award, also rising sharply on Saturday and estimating just a 19 percent drop in business to $16.3 million. Tarzan also estimated just a 19 percent fall to $11.3 million and fourth place. In fifth, The General's Daughter tied down all but 24 percent of its business. In other words, despite not being obliterated, Wild Wild West was the only Top Five film that dropped more than 24 percent in its estimates. Not encouraging.

The other fairly wide opener was Arlington Road, which managed $7.4 million. The sampling was big enough to get the film rolling if people connect with it. I obviously was a big disconnect. South Park took a 37 percent hit according to estimates and Summer of Sam was off 43 percent. So, all-in-all, the three Fourth of July releases were probably the weakest big releases of the summer so far, in three very different categories. What does this mean? How will it effect booking practices in the future? Probably nothing and not at all. What it means this summer is "not very good film," "good film with bad timing" and "decent film that was tough to start with and wasn't quite good enough." You arrange which is which.

And now for something completely raging...

THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE TROUBLE WITH EYES WIDE SHUT:
There are many at Warner Bros. marketing who I respect and like quite a bit. I will continue to feel that way after this piece. That said, I wish someone could explain to me how the Eyes Wide Shut situation kinda took a life of its own. Instead of controlling the flow of information to the public, an effort which I consider a critical part of the job description of a publicist, however much it may piss me off sometimes, the gamesmanship on this one seems likely to end up in media reprisals over the next two weeks, not only from those of us who were not given early opportunities to see the film, but even among those who were.

The circus began with Kubrick's death and the difficult give and take over whether the film was truly complete. Those of us who started with doubts were overwhelmed with the promises that Cruise, Kidman, Semel and Daly (The last two being the top men at Warner Bros.) truly believed that Kubrick's vision would be kept intact no matter what. Problem solved.

Next up, the ratings issue. Rumors spread a couple of times that the MPAA had tagged the film with an NC-17 and that cuts would/might be needed, without Kubrick's input. Again, Warner Bros. assured us all that it just wasn't true. The film had not gone to the MPAA. But that has turned out to be a Clintonesque parsing of the situation. EWS executive producer Jan Harlan indicated at the first junket screening on Saturday night that there was a verbal negotiation with the MPAA over one particularly natural, though non-graphic sexual sequence (The Orgy Sequence, as it is now known) and that a concession was agreed upon. Simulated sex acts, even without exposed genitalia, by two nude adults would demand an NC-17. So, the reality that the film had not been submitted and given an NC-17 was true, but that studio posture that there was never an MPAA issue was untrue.

The concession was that WB would obscure the potentially offending couplings with CG people. Jan Harlan explained to Saturday night's screening crowd of about 100 that Kubrick knew this was a possibility, having been warned about it as the scene was shot, but that Kubrick had chosen not to bother covering himself. Did the choice to "cover up" the issue stem from fears of people like me reaming the studio for putting visual graffiti on a master's last work? Could be, but I bet that the backlash that's already on its way because of the tap dance will be greater than the pounding had WB taken the issue head-on. It's the Godzilla lesson. You never know what kind of animal you are dealing with until you let some people with a different perspective offer their opinions. It may be love or it may be hate, but building tension and then unleashing an uncomfortable surprise always seems to build a tsunami of trouble.

The situation was exacerbated by the studio's inexplicable choice to show Saturday night's audience both the uncut version and the still unfinished CG overlay of computer-created people blocking the more graphic (but not really graphic at all) sex. The CG overlay is supposed to be ready for this Friday's release. But one has to wonder what the studio was thinking when they showed a room full of critics a fix that wasn't ready. From what I am told, the overlay that was shown was the same rudimentary stick-figure quality work that the studio showed the MPAA in March to explain how they were going to obscure the 65 second NC-17 section of the film. Todd McCarthy, chief film critic of Variety, suggests by omission that the version that was shown was the completed version, and he then dismissed its impact as "negligible." But Roger Ebert will be in print in the Chicago Sun Times today bashing the fix as the "Austin Powers scene" and he feels that the overlay is a "travesty, distracting viewers just at the moment when they should be absorbed by Kubrick's tone." Jeff Wells seems to feel the same way and indicated that others did as well. What really makes me wonder is, if the CG cover was not finished, when would it be finished? The studio had until about Sunday night or so to finish whatever work they were going to do on the film if they were planning on getting prints struck on time for Friday's release. Maybe it was done and was just plain unsatisfactory, leaving the possibility for Saturday's critic-laden audience that it could be more satisfactory than it really will be. Or maybe it really wasn't ready and it will work brilliantly. But showing a bunch of critics the unblemished film and then a crummy looking blemished segment was a recipe for disaster.

PAGE TWO: "MORE EYES WIDE SHUT TROUBLE AND READER'S OF THE DAY"