24 July 1999

5. OBSERVE THIS, #2: Sara Maitland, a writer who was working with Kubrick on a screenplay for "The A.I. Project," reviews two books on Stanley Kubrick for The Observer. Great choice. Her first sensational observation is about Stanley Kubrick, Director: A Visual Analysis by Alexander Walker, Sybil Taylor and Ulrich Ruchti. Says Maitland: "...what the authors...are trying to do is precisely the reverse of Kubrick's own process - they are trying to put back into words what Kubrick had laboriously taken out of words and made into film." Maitland describes part of her experience working with Kubrick: "I would try to think of unfilmable sentences (`She perfectly concealed her anger'; Although his eyes were open, he could not see anything at all') and Kubrick would work out ways of making them into visual images. That was his job and his genius." Wonderful stuff. Maitland then takes on the Fredric Raphael book head on. "In Eyes Wide Open, Frederic Raphael repeatedly expresses his surprise that Kubrick didn't seem to know what he wanted..." Her response to that: "My own experience was the same, but my interpretation of it very different - Kubrick was waiting to see what the writer would say. He was on the watch, so to speak, for the writer to present Kubrick's concept in sentences or images that he then could visualize. I suspect this is why Kubrick always worked through and explored scenes at every level with his actors before he set up the shot. He was looking for the 'moment' that would concretize his idea." For those critics who keep shouting about why EWS took so long to make, an answer that fits Kubrick's filmic history. Images in Kubrick's films have lasted forever because he waits to make sure he has concrete imagery that will set forever. More from Maitland on Raphael: "This is not a memoir of Stanley Kubrick, it's a memoir of Frederic Raphael working for the late Stanley Kubrick, and retrospectively wreaking some petty revenge...This is the sort of book that no one would write (and no one would read) unless the supposed subject of it was both very famous and very dead." Now, the book I will look forward to is the one Maitland or someone else writes that, like Kubrick's films, has the perspective to reach the underlying truth of it all. Kubrick deserves that.

4. OWNING PRIVATE SANDLER: Interesting story on the ongoing battle over the church and state of actors and their work on TV. "Saturday Night Live", which can legitimately be credited with launching the film and TV careers of many of its performers, is trying to get them to agree to pre-set deals on their first films coming out of the show. As it is, Lorne Michaels has produced many of the "SNL Movies" as these new-comers came out of the gate. But apparently, NBC and Michaels now want a guaranteed piece of the first pie or two for the talent that they have a big hand in making famous. The deal also specifically calls for 5 percent of all licensing and merchandising from characters created on the show. That will be interesting because many of the show's best known characters were created on stages long before the actor got to SNL. But my question is, are the show and the network wrong for wanting a piece of the action they have created? I think it's a very interesting issue. On one hand, it seems almost fair. On the other hand, why should talent be penalized for becoming famous? And if this is allowed to happen, wouldn't NBC eventually extend this demand to every sitcom and hour-long star?

3. OBSERVE THIS, #3: "Movies are made for one reason - and one only: ego and glamour and the desperate hunger of fat, middle-aged men to try and see what Michelle Pfeiffer looks like with no clothes on - a pretty expensive obsession when you don't have a theme park (or a TV network or a publishing business or some other such side deal) with which you can refry the beans of your hits and into which you can dump the costs of your duds." These words are not mine, but Christopher Byron's from The New York Observer, in a Back of the Envelope column he wrote for the July 12 edition of the paper. This was part of a great piece called "Kerkorian's MGM Is A Big Money Pit" and indeed, it is. Unlike most film writers, Byron really gets it. Probably because he's looking at the bottom line and not up Michelle Pfeiffer's dress. Byron goes on to explain the attempted magic trick that Kirk Kerkorian is trying to do right now in clear terms which I will try to convey briefly here. He and a number-crunching friend figure that the studio is losing about $40 million a picture now, "meaning a total film production cash drain of $500 million annually." The studio is reporting a drain of just $450 million, so they figure that "the rest of the business - which basically amounts to licensing and syndication fees from its film library, and nothing else - is bringing in $50 million a year in cash." They argue that the built-up film library the company holds could be sold for a generous $1.5 billion. The rights to Bond could be sold for $300 million. And say, $200 million for the company name and logo. That makes the company worth $2 billion. Wall Street has, through stock values, the company worth $2.7 billion. And anyone wanting to buy the company would have to take on an additional $1.5 billion in debt. So, the company would be a buy worth $500 million max at a cost of $2.7 billion. Fascinating.

PAGE THREE: "Going Digital, Going For I.D. And Going To War"