Weekend, 21 August 1999

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

No news is no news, so only seven NBTN buttons today. Welcome to the dog days of summer.

7. You Don't Own Me: The news that Muhammad Ali has filed suit against former business associates Richard Hirschfeld and Jabir Herbert to "recover" the rights to his life story indicates that these men, in fact, have the rights to his life and that Sony does not. In other words, the Will Smith Ali biopic is on hold until the U.S. court system says otherwise. Rumors about the script, director or whatever else are thus officially irrelevant until then.

6. Much Ado About Stephen: What is the upshot of Steven Spielberg deciding to executive produce a TV mini-series of the Stephen King/Peter Straub book The Talisman? Uh, nothing. It's TV, folks. Perhaps the return of Mimi Leder to TV. That's about all the weightiness this teaming should bring. Just how slow a news week was it for me to be running this at all? Molasses slow.

5. Inna Gadda Da Vida, Baby: In the Eyes Wide Shut orgy scene, there is a verse from the Bhagavad Gita chanted. Hindus are not happy and want an explanation. The one man who can really give them one is dead. (That would be Stanley Kubrick.) Since these ethnic rights arguments always spur more, I soon suspect that we will hear protest from New Yorkers complaining about waitresses, mourning daughters and hookers who have both New York and British accents. Then, there should be a call from the National League of Women With Big Fake Hooters, upset that they have been made into mannequins by the film and never got a check.

4. End Of An Era: The end of the Andy Jones era at roughcut.com is coming. Andy let us know this week that he is on his way to another Website to bring his unique perspective on the world of entertainment to a new audience. Andy brought me to roughcut.com in the first place and will receive thanks next week as I celebrate the second anniversary of The Hot Button. Andy always wanted to make sure that things were done right for me in support of me and my work. And I appreciate that. May he bring everything to E! Online that he brought to roughcut.com as he moves up in the world of the 'Net. His legacy will long be remembered.

3. Messages In The Sand: It was almost a decade ago when Jeff Katzenberg wrote the infamous "Katzenberg memo" about the studio's film division making its next step from freshman phenom to awkward sophomore. That memo centered around the movie Dick Tracy, which managed to be one of the first films to gross $100 million domestically and show virtually no profit, if not actually taking a loss. As we approach the millennium (that's this year's phrase of the year), the industry is going through another major shift signaled in no small part by Armageddon, Batman & Robin and Titanic, two of which cost more than $200 million and one just under, but all of which generated a lot of dollars and only one of which made much profit. But it's more complicated than that this time because these film companies of the late '80s and early '90s are now all part of multinational mega-corporations (MGM/UA is still an MPAA member, but not a "real" major, in my book. New Line is much more substantive.) Fortunately for him, at this moment, Michael Eisner need not write a private memo and let it leak to Daily Variety as though that wasn't the intent. He just calls the L.A. Times. Frankly, I was surprised to see that James Bates was the messenger and not Claudia Eller but maybe I missed some shift of source preferences during the Disney/Katzenberg trial. In any case, the spin is "we are at lunch." That's Eisner's "It's morning in America" and almost exactly the same sentiment that Katzenberg expressed a decade ago in his memo. It comes down to: we've done the hard part of getting the ball rolling uphill, but let us pause to reflect on rolling the ball downhill, lest we get rolled over on the way. The live action film division at Disney did get rolled over in their "sophomore" years while animation thrived and Jeffrey Katzenberg got pigeon-holed. But the funny thing right now is that Joe Roth, now the king of Disney live action, isn't being threatened by the ball as much because the company is so spread out that sports franchises and publishing and cruise ships are the focus of cuts. ABC is more iffy a proposition than live action production. Plus, the threat of losing Roth from pushing too hard is powerful because Roth is one of a very small handful of industryites who have proven themselves as leaders. I think Roth could write his ticket into any studio but Fox at this point. And that's probably why he'll stay into the next generation sophomore season.

2. Go South, Young Man: The run to the Australian border has just gotten a little easier. Viacom, parent of Paramount, Blockbuster, UPN TV Network and the Nickelodeon family of cable outlets will be building a theme park and studio space in Melbourne as a tourist trap and as a production alternative to Fox's Sydney-based facility and Warner Roadshow's Queensland-based park-n-studio. Additionally, the nation is expecting even more studio building to come. The runaway production issue continues to draw powerful opinions and they will be aired next week in the column. In the meantime, g'day mate.

1. The Ebb & Flow Of Technology: While Pixar is busy developing technology that will better adjust the traditional ratio of film to TV (already in use for animation in the A Bug's Life conversion), Disney is finally ready to release some of their animated classics on DVD. I would call that a step backward and a step forward as the future of home entertainment technology will be based, as it always is, on powerful forces of change. I love the idea of never having to deal with "pan-and-scan" again (this is the film-to-video phenomena when you see strangely stiff pans to show you the other person in a scene when in fact the two people could be seen in frame when seen on a big screen.). However, if the conversion process is better, will average folks feel that they MUST have a bigger TV or a High definition TV. I say, start panning and scanning even when it isn't necessary and have Morgan Freeman explaining the grotesquerie of pan-and-scan at the end of every show. As for Disney and the DVDs, they are going to sell a lot of DVDs this Christmas. In fact, Disney deserves a royalty on every DVD player sold over their months of release. That's how powerful that label is. Just like the NFL has sold satellite systems. It's one of the great curiosities of technology. When will the next step reach critical mass? Which for me is not to say when will enough people own the technology for it to be important, but when will that moment in time come when something goes from "that would be nice" to "I must have that." We have a TV, a modem and a household computer revolution coming. Will they each happen separately or in one swoop? Will the cable movie nets all go HDTV before or after people get past the "I can use e-mail" stage of their computer savvy or will your next TV integrate a mini-computer even before you want one? Que sera, sera.

Page Of The Day: From Chez Jay: "I don't understand why all of these studios are so afraid of picking up Dogma and releasing it. What are they so afraid of? So some right wing groups are going to protest and complain and send you dirty letters -- WHO CARES? The fact is this film has Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris Rock, Linda Fiorentino, Salma Hayek, and many more that all reach different markets; plus it's only going for a little over 10 million! I thought this was a business? Why wouldn't a studio want to pick up a film that basically can't lose? Do these executives actually think the general film-going public listens to people like Jerry Fallwell? I don't think so! I mean, hey, Tinky Winky is still on the air, right?"

From Jeff: "I remember seeing Analyze This, which I enjoyed very much, and making the same observation you made about Mickey Blue Eyes. During the mini-shootout in AT, where characters actually did die, I began to wonder whether Mafioso henchmen being shot was supposed to be funny. The people who were shot served no purpose in the movie other than being shot. I thought the same thing about the finale. Those sequences unnecessarily darkened what had been truly light fare...a witty, cute comedy in all other respects.

Why do that? Do they think people expect every Mafia comedy to have a Goodfellas edge to it? I suppose when the next one comes out in a year or two, Joe Pesci's legs will be sawed off by fish-out-of-water Mike Myers in a hilarious comedic crescendo, taking the term "cut-up" to a whole new level."

E ME: How funny can death be?