Weekend, 2-3 October 1999

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

In yet another slow news week (Beatty DOESN'T announce and Daly and Semel got out of the cement, so Toy Story 2's Internet trailer release is the only remotely interesting story), it occurred to me that I hadn't really wrapped up the summer. So, here is header 2:

SUMMER WRAP-UP

10. Plus Two Equals The Twelve Films More Than $100 Million This Summer: Star Wars, The Sixth Sense, Austin Powers 2, Tarzan, Big Daddy, The Mummy, Runaway Bride, The Blair Witch Project, Notting Hill, Wild Wild West, The General's Daughter, American Pie. In that order. Two sequels, three remakes and seven, count them, seven glorious originals. Biggest winners of the summer: Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis. Worst bet to repeat: Mike Myers. Proof you have to have a star: The General's Daughter. Proof you don't need a star: The Mummy. If the semen doesn't fit, you must be a hit: Big Daddy and American Pie.

9. The Number Of Kids Allowed To Sneak Into South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut: If there was a great lost film of the summer of 1999, I might make a case for this one over The Iron Giant. This movie was balls-to-the-wall funny the way The Matrix was a non-stop action machine like no other we've seen in a while. (And for me, The Matrix was even better than T2.)

8. Lots Of Movies Ate It This Summer: Anyone remember Black Mask, The Thirteenth Floor or Chill Factor? There is always plenty of ugliness to go around.

7. The Number Of Summer Films That Grossed Over $50 Million But Were Considered Box Office Disappointments: Wild Wild West ($113 million), The Haunting ($90 million), Deep Blue Sea ($72 million), Eyes Wide Shut ($56 million), The Thomas Crown Affair ($66 million), Bowfinger ($64 million), South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut ($52 million). What a difference a year makes. When you look at this list, you will notice a lot of Warner Bros. red ink at the top of it. That's why transitions happen. But compare this summer to last summer and you see some fiscal sanity among all the chaos. Only one $100 million-plus grosser is a loser, still likely to hit real-life black ink, but a dud when considering a tiny cost-to-earnings ratio. Last summer, Armageddon, Godzilla, Lethal Weapon 4 and The Truman Show all put dents into the corporate piggy banks despite grossing over $100 million domestic. This year, WWW was the only massive miss, though it's clear that The Haunting and Deep Blue Sea should have been made for a lot less money considering that they are still traditional B movies.

6. Forgotten Agony: Gee, it took about 30 seconds for the fight against the MPAA to disintegrate into nothing, didn't it? Why? Because you can't fight what happened (Eyes Wide Shut), you have to fight what will happen. Sadly, I don't think that critics and entertainment reporters are creative enough to keep it up. Theater owners don't seem to feel a need to fight, lest they lose the opportunity that most of them take to wink as the kids head into the R-rated films. And the studios never want to give up any tool that allows them to rein in talent when the heat is on. We lost the war because we never really fought it. And that is something we (that is, all of us who have the honor of being read, listened to and paid any attention to at all) should all hang our heads about.

5. Iron Giant: What happened? So goes the conversation. Over and over. In fact, this has been so mulled over with so few real answers that I can't really write much more to enlighten anyone. I know that Warner Bros. made the effort. I was seeing the film, with kids in the room, months and months before release. People at Warners have admitted that Cannes may have been a good idea, but say there was no final print ready in time. All I know is, good movie, completely overlooked by the mass audience. Did we lose the next Wizard of Oz? Please. But the film and the filmmakers deserved better. And angry at them or not, so did Warner Bros. After all, they did pay the fare for the movie to get made and they did choose to try something that wasn't the same old same old.

4. The Number Of Art Films That Did Over $5 Million: Was it a great summer or a terrible summer for art films? Hard to say. Miramax had the biggest hit, assuming we are disqualifying The Blair Witch Project as art, with a near-$20 million for An Ideal Husband. Lions Gate, Sony Pictures Classics and Artisan had the only other three mini-major art releases to get over $5 million, though none of them passed $10 million. Lions Gate's Red Violin may actually get there, still deservedly rolling along at almost $100,000 a weekend. SPC's Run Lola Run, perhaps the most potentially commercial non-English language film of the year still can't seem to get running and should top out around $7 million. And Artisan had the one true surprise with Buena Vista Social Club, which has quietly done business despite being a documentary, despite often dropping out of the English language and despite being a musical, in the loosest sense of the word. True, summer is not the best season for art house flicks, but it is a tough business and not quite the panacea that some would have studios, all except Warner Bros., that are now seriously in the game.

3. Jar Jar Stinks: Actually, I'm not among the big Jar Jar bashers. But I guess the story here is that the media saw, the media attacked, the media got $425 million in domestic ticket sales shoved in our smug little faces. The happy story is that Lucas got raked over the coals for not appearing to care about what the media thought. Stories ranged from "he's lost in his ivory tower" to "he's the most maniacal marketer ever and is just pretending not to pander." You know what I think? I think he knew that we, the media, were somewhat unimportant to his movie. He just did what he felt like doing, however egocentric that made him appear. He sat with Moyers and talked to Campbell. He had his Fox "making of" special. He never backed away from Binks or Jake Lloyd, for that matter. And the media could never work up as much scorn for anyone this side of O.J. Simpson for his disinterest in our shenanigans. I say, "Huzzah." I'm still pissed off about not being allowed to go to the junket because I am a 'Net guy. That was still wrong. Limiting my access and other Web folks' access because the company wants to control the Web is wrong. And I'm sure there were other wrong steps. But overall, screw us. Lucas won where it mattered. And of course, when angry media folks see that, they shout, "It's only money! It doesn't mean it's good," just as they shout "What do critics know?" when they want to embrace a movie like The Spy Who Shagged Me. Almost twice the number of people saw Star Wars: Episode One this summer than saw any other movie. They went because they liked it. They went back because they liked it. And what we think just doesn't matter. And you know what? On Memorial Day 2002, it won't matter either. I can see those "Will Episode One Hurt Episode Two's Chances?" stupid headlines now.

2. The Sixth Sense: If there was a release this summer that was critical to upholding the quality of studio films, it was The Sixth Sense. That's not because I would call it the best film of the summer. Not even in my Top Five. But there is the perception that audiences are seeing this movie in droves because it is smart and a little challenging and because they love the film. Somehow, it seems Disney even understood that when they marketed the movie. Not that they expected this cash cow. But they sold a Bruce Willis movie with very little Bruce Willis in the advertising. A gutsy call, but the right one. "I see dead people" was enough. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and this film are the two ends of this summer's studio spectrum. On one side you have Disney, the studio that shoved Armageddon down your throats, running a gentle, smart campaign and becoming the second highest grossing film of the summer (it will be over $250 million domestic, it looks like). Then you have New Line, the smart, scrappy, don't spend too much mini-major, spending almost $50 million to launch Austin Powers and doing great, but not nearly as great on the bottom line. You can sell a movie that people are somewhat predisposed to see to within an inch of their patience. Hollywood proves that every year. But for Disney to win so big with a little film, well, they will make more of them. And even when they don't do The Sixth Sense business, they won't kill companies. The Sixth Sense will help maintain the artistic balance.

1. Hotter Than A Witch's...: If there was one forever story this summer, it was the still stunning success of The Blair Witch Project. Of course, the telling of the saga will also be quite movielike, the movie being Rashomon. What really happened on Blair? There are enough theories to choke a horse with. Was it the only real excitement to come out of Sundance this year, priming the media pump? And was that excitement all Harry Knowles getting the media pumped or was there more going on there quietly among media that isn't quite so loud? The movie certainly broke new ground as a Website, but can a group of hard core fans really drive a movie to $140 million in domestic box office? Or was the media just sick of the hype of Star Wars and Austin Powers and feeling in need of a new drum to beat? Maybe it is just a summer tradition that we all get excited about some underdog every year and this year it was Blair instead of There's Something About Mary. But aye, there's the rub. Mary was a great comedy. Blair is hated by as many viewers as love it, maybe more. People will try to mine the gold of The Blair Witch again and again. But will they find riches or will they just find lead? It's a mystery and that's what makes it such a great story.

Post-Script: Can you feel a theme in the top stories of the summer? The battle between making movies and selling movies is probably one of the Top Three stories of the industry going into the new millennium. This is not just some obsession of mine. Selling movies now costs, on average, more than making movies. Forget the "good old days," when they programmed movie after movie and sometimes got classics. People just went because they were going. In an era of massive ad budgets, the movie business has become no different than the soap business. There's not much of a difference in the product. Branding is everything. Only in the film business, you have two weeks to brand the product for its entire shelf life before branding a new product three weeks later. No wonder things are f**ked. But that's another column, right?

READER OF THE DAY: From JE: "Top Ten Reasons Why Mystery, Alaska Will Tank

1. Who sold the concept "It's Mighty Ducks for grown-ups!"?

2. More people have heard of Emilio Estevez than Russell Crowe.

3. It's rated R with a very PG plot.

4. LA Confidential got Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce noticed. Pearce grew his hair out and made Ravenous, which made about 65¢ at the box office. See where I'm going?

5. Burt Reynolds's comeback with Boogie Nights was sorely tainted by those made-for-TNT movies.

6. If you thought the plot was paint-by-numbers, the preview insures you that it is, down to the "inspiring" speech at halftime while they're losing.

7. David E. Kelley wrote it. Kelley wrote Lake Placid. Audiences didn't like Lake Placid, but at least that had an alligator eating people. The high point of this film appears to be when Ron Eldard gets hit on the head with a shovel.

8. "Northern Exposure": The Movie! Starring Russell Crowe as Rob Morrow, Mary McCormack as Janine Turner, Burt Reynolds as Barry Corbin, etc, etc. Wait a minute. Didn't Kelley write Northern Exposure?

9. It had heavy marketing in April, and it got moved when its only competition was Lost & Found and Pushing Tin. How good can it be?

10. Why see Mystery, Alaska when you can see Three Kings?

E ME: What memories of the Summer of 1999 will you take with you into the new millennium?