Tuesday, 27 July 1999

FIRST (TIME) LOVE: The magic of Hollywood has fallen upon Joe Nussbaum. Variety reports that the director of the parody short, George Lucas in Love, which made the rounds a few months ago by way of the kind of supposedly bootlegged tapes that have become a popular method of getting your student film seen, has gotten a job with DreamWorks. So keep hope alive. You too can get to direct a studio movie with almost no experience if you just push the right buttons. I, of course, hope that Nussbaum is a genius and that his short just called up the true value of his work. But there is a big jump in quality between the kids who have gotten first pictures based on short films and the men who have shot dozens of major league commercials. Both groups think they are visionary and almost no one really is. Give them a lot of credit for having the balls to get where they've gotten. But the commercial guys are all excellent craftsmen at the least. The short film guys don't have that going for them. Oh well. One of these days I'll do my guide to hiring a first-time director. It won't change anything, but in a moment of a lot of cost-cutting, the studios are hiring more first-timers than ever, it seems.

SO SUE ME: You know, I would so like to be able to rip into Blockbuster Video and take the side of the independent video store owners who have filed a suit against the massive chain. But I can't. Blockbuster has managed to stay alive in a business that still probably has less than a decade left in it. By creating a way to maintain the video revenue stream for the studios in what has already been a dying business for a few years, Blockbuster made video a very real alternative to Pay-Per-View movies by being even more convenient and offering a wider variety of programming. I'm sorry for the mom-n-pop stores, but it's time for you to be finding a new line of work anyway. The only video business left for the entrepreneur is porno and the margins in that business have gotten every bit as thin as in the "straight" business. Of course (here's your MPAA Slap O' The Day!), there are few stores left where you can get those nasty NC-17 movies that aren't pornographic. You know, like the uncut Eyes Wide Shut or Henry & June. But Jack Valenti says that's not restraint of expression. Uh-huh. My favorite part of the lawsuit is that it suggests that Blockbuster blackmailed the studios into going along with the new strategy of buying a huge number of titles at a deep discount by threatening not to buy as many movies as they used to. Tee-hee. I would imagine this was more the Blockbuster side of the conversation, given the state of the company just a couple of years ago. "Hello, studios? This is Blockbuster. We're going out of business. No, we just can't afford to stock enough copies of the hit titles and that's what drives our people in and away from their HBO. Really? You'd do that? Cool. That may work. Yes, we'll even buy The Avengers. Great. I'll have my lawyers call your lawyers and we'll bill the renters. Bye."

CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?: Just when you thought that the media hyperactivity over the death of JFK Jr. (as though any of us really believes that the media gave a second thought to the even more tragic loss of two daughters in one family at the same moment) was over, Fox and Paramount are having a pissing match over "exclusive" footage that was really "excluded" footage, since Fox let everyone but Paramount's "Entertainment Tonight" air it. Apparently, "Fox Files" aired some exclusive home video of JFK Jr. and his wife Carolyn Bessette (who never went by Kennedy until dead) at a Kennedy party and denied only the request of E.T. to re-air it. E.T. aired it anyway, presumably on the premise that its wide release made it virtually stock footage. It's good to see that the media can always keep perspective on what really matters.

MCGOOD: The Hollywood Reporter says that video director McG will get the Charlie's Angels gig. That tells us where this one is going. Hip, current and sexy. Kind of where The Mod Squad was hoping to go. Let's all wish that it works this time.

MPAA FUN DU' JOUR: I want to welcome Peter Bart and the New York Film Critics Circle to the MPAA party. Bart, who chooses his fights carefully, takes on Jack Valenti in his most recent column and does a good job of sizing things up for Jack Valenti. On the "other" coast, the New York critics finally aired their grievances, though not as clearly as the L.A. Film Critics. I couldn't find the complete text of the letter they published Monday anywhere on the Web. As best I can tell from the trade stories, the N.Y. group once again chose to focus on Eyes Wide Shut. And again I say, that is trouble. It cannot be about one movie or nothing will ever change. The selected quotes I was able to pick up: "The fundamental issue underlying this controversy is that the Classification and Ratings Administration of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is out of control. It has become a punitive and restrictive force, effectively trampling the freedom of American filmmakers." True enough. The New Yorkers also were "strongly condemning the decision by Warner Bros. to release a censored version" of Eyes Wide Shut, demanding a "full, detailed, chronological account" of the changes made for the R." That I cannot agree with. Blame Warner Bros. and you give the MPAA wiggle room. Warner Bros. is not the censor, the MPAA is. No one movie matters. Obsess on one film and the pressure can be relieved by making concessions on one film. The goal has to be protecting the next movie. "The process by which this bowdlerized edition of Kubrick's final film came into being has been shrouded in vagueness and misinformation." Yes. And so were the NYFCC awards given out last year. Not an issue. Vagueness and misinformation is what studios do. They do not have the power of the MPAA/CARA. I'm glad you put your ante on the table. Now find your poker face. This fight is just starting. That is, unless it's over already.

SELF LOVE : The trades report that there will be a WCW movie. I reported it here more than a month ago. And, as would be obvious by the fact that someone at Turner called Fleming, I didn't get it from my buddies at the network. David Arquette hadn't signed when I got wind of the story, which, surprisingly, no one at Turner bitched about me running. Anyway, I'll keep the self-congratulations brief.

THE DELUCA FACTOR : New Line is perhaps the most hip home of retro at the moment. One has to lay the credit/blame at the feet of studio chief Mike DeLuca. He actually takes an Exec Producer credit on Detroit Rock City, which he only does on a couple of films a year. The film, which as I've written before, is a resurrection of what must have been a DeLuca childhood fave, Rock-N-Roll High School. He fought to keep Thirteen Days, a Missiles of October thriller, alive and now, ready to go into production. And now, his studio's bought Julian Temple's Sex Pistols documentary, The Filth and The Fury. True, New Line's Mark Ordesky's the face on this buy, but with a bunch of studios all in trouble, all trying to figure out which old-timer to replace their failing old-timers with, New Line is still cutting the edge by going back to the future.

READER OF THE DAY : From Dan: "I just wanted to comment on your recent topic of experiences at the multiplex. I guess my point is that theater owners should take a breather from all this expansion and concentrate on the fundamentals. I remember no more than five years ago when a strong midwest theater chain promised that you only had to wait in line for five or ten minutes at the refreshment stand or your candy was free. Now I know that sort of thing is expensive, but it put the theatergoer first. Now you are lucky to get a smile at the same multiplex. They have to charge you $2.65 just for an empty cup so you can have water. You're lucky if the projected film image is properly shown on the screen. I saw Big Daddy on a screen in the multiplex when it first came out and one of the speakers was blown. My brother saw Eyes Wide Shut yesterday on the same screen and the same speaker was broken. Help! I guess you get what you pay for whether it's Adam Sandler or poor theater projection."

JB sent this in: "Regarding your Eyes Wide Shut comments and 'they didn't get it' castigation. I have to express my extreme disagreement. There was nothing, in my - and many other cognant movie goers - opinion, to get. It was a muddled, wooden, idiotic mess. That Kubrick died may have something to do with it, yet that he did have full control over the project for something like two years should have eliminated the scores of gaffes present throughout the movie. It was, at best, sloppy, at worst, a shut-in's view of sexuality in the '90s. That you lumped Thin Red Line, Eyes Wide Shut and Kundun into the 'brilliant, but shunned' movies of the last two years has all but cemented my resolve to avoid Kundun. The only other time I've written was as a previous ROTD expressing my disagreement with you over Thin Red Line, which to me seemed like a monotone philosophy dictation and nature film, rather than any honest human interaction.

I felt way more cheated by the Kubrick film. It didn't work as a dream, black comedy, symbolic reality, camp-kitsch or actual adult drama - again, in my opinion. Almost every scene rang horribly false - from Count von Count at the dance to the pot-fueled crack up to the straight hooker in the West Village (Kubrick never did make it back to his home town did he?) to the leaden 'horror' of the orgy - it was like a cheap porn version of Ulysses, without the porn. Any movie that portrays pot smoking like something out of Reefer Madness is a bit out of touch. The acid trip nonsense of The Trip seemed life-like in comparision.

I greatly enjoyed and admired many of Kubrick's films, and really liked Malick's Badlands, but in no way at all is the Hollywood buzz machine to be blamed for the limp box office of the 'geniuses' latest. It seems, after all, that the public likes coherent story telling in their movies. To me, a more vexing question would be why Out of Sight wasn't a bigger hit.

PD wrote: "Dave - The Haunting was not that bad. The ending was terrible and it could have been better, but it wasn't horrible. And so what if those guys in Chicago liked it. You actually liked Lake Placid, which was sh***y as hell! Give em a break. They are real critics and very respected, so I would back off a little.

  E ME: Yes, it was THAT bad. I can understand why some people don't like Lake Placid or even Eyes Wide Shut and I am perfectly willing (well, maybe not perfectly) to accept that. But both Chicago critics said about the same thing. No story, no characters, no nothing, but we loved the set. That would be like loving Lake Placid as a thriller more than as a comedy. Bzzt! Anyway, the fights continue. Add in your 2 cents. Or more!