Weekend, 18-19 December 1999

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

10. Birds Of A Feather: There are only so many truly hip rooms to work in this business. If you are a young filmmaker trying to push the limits, you can work for Miramax, you can work for New Line or you can work for USA Studios, hoping that the spirit that got Being John Malkovich made as a Gramercy picture still exists. In clearer terms, you can work for Harvey, work for Mike or work for well, someone Barry Diller is too busy with wrestling to worry about you. Other studios make investments in edgy directors and sometimes even make great films (who'd have figured Lynch at Disney or Paramount financing Alexander Payne, though they kind of proved that what they really wanted was Clueless 2.). But at the end of the day, home is where there is room to breath. Can you imagine David Fincher putting up with interference from Harvey Weinstein? And so, it was fitting that Fincher and producer Art Linson have signed a three-year deal with New Line (that would be Mike-Ville) on the heels of Fox getting out of the "hip" business, at least to some degree. How does this effect Fincher's interest and/or availability for Spider-Man? Probably not at all. I imagine that DeLuca & Co. understand the massive value of a massive major-driven feature as part of the Fincher resume and would be willing to make an arrangement. Meanwhile, I'm waiting for the New Line deals with Payne, Jonze, Tim Roth and David Russell (whose "O" I did not forget, but refuse to indulge).

9. Old Line, New Line: Speaking of New Line, if you hear the giant sucking sound of a studio paying through the nose to break even, you are not mistaken. Chris Tucker is finally getting the megabucks he demanded for Rush Hour 2, though by waiting a year, the number has jumped from his original demand of $15 million to $20 million. (Tucker is getting the last laugh after a year off, booking this and the $15 million payday for The Black Knight, effectively being paid Eddie Murphy money twice after having just one $100 million movie in his career.) Add to RH2, Jackie Chan's $15 million and director Brett Ratner's $5 million (at which point I want to make a joke about the money and Rebecca Gayheart, but their relationship has been going on a lot longer than his multi-million dollar paydays, to their enormous credit) and you have a movie that will have to generate about $200 million worldwide, figuring in P&A, to break even. Or almost exactly what the original did. Did Austin Powers 2 make New Line think that they could duplicate the sequel success? Well, in that case, make it $250 million worldwide for that kind of marketing blitz. I don't know about this one.

8. Luc, You Are My Son: Luc Besson will head the 2000 jury at Cannes. So, what are the chances that Wim Wenders' Million Dollar Hotel will end up being judged at Cannes after it premieres in Berlin next year? Thin. It co-stars Milla Jovovich, the wife of Besson who is more estranged in the media than anywhere else. The film, which has a rather dramatic pedigree, written by U2's Bono, produced and co-starring Mel Gibson and sports a performance by a young actor named Monte Bain as a drunken rapist that could well, it'll make him pick up my dinner tab. He's a buddy and a good actor, not so young, but this button has turned into nothing but a brain damaged rant, so I'll stop it now.

7. But Cannes I Stop?: There was also news out of France this week that Gilles Jacob has named his successor, journalist Olivier Barrot, who will become the new most powerful man on the Croisette. There is all this media talk about whether there with be an aesthetic shake up, but I don't think it could get any more shaken up than its been in recent years.

6. Laying Wood: Speaking of homes, Woody Allen hasn't really had one for his movies since Orion went under oh so long ago. And reports that Allen's budgets are rising seem to conflict with the generally known reality that he is having financing troubles on each movie now. Nonetheless, DreamWorks has picked up his Small Time Crooks at a cost of $12 million based on a budget of $30 million. It used to be that filmmakers would talk about having a deal like Woody Allen where they could just do the work. No more. Sony, in its many incarnations, and Miramax seem to be the companies most willing to pick-up his films (Fine Line got Deconstructing Harry), no one has stepped up (good way to establish Paramount Classics, wouldn't it be?) and given Woody a home. Well, no one over 21.

5. An Ally Fight: Look, I can't vouch for anyone on this. But when one reads the New York Post about how Ally Sheedy lost her mind doing the stage show Hedwig And The Angry Inch, you have to wonder a little. After all these reasons why she was a problem child, the story says that producers asked her to end her run early and that's why she quit the show. So, could any of this have anything to do with the failure of the show here in Los Angeles and the sudden availability of the original and extremely popular Hedwig, Michael Cerveris to return to Off-Broadway? Just asking.

4. I'm Dreaming Of A Black & White Christmas: Fred Zinnemann was one of the industry's most intense crusaders for artists' rights, battling any effort to colorize, cut or otherwise slice his (or anyone else's) work. Now, his son is carrying the family torch. Tim Zinnemann is suing an Italian TV station for broadcasting a colorized version of his father's The Seventh Cross, which was fought over by Fred Z. himself in the months before his death. These windmills are the kind worth tilting at as the fight for "moral rights' continues. But I suspect that time will heal or perhaps reopen the wounds as technology allows viewers more and more choice: colorized or uncolorized, wide screen or TV format, eventually there will be standards. But sadly, even if they turn out the "right" way, morality will likely not be party to them.

3. Talkin' S**t: Over at Slate, David Edelstein, Sarah Kerr, Elvis Mitchell and Roger Ebert spent this last week hashing over the year in movies in e-mail after e-mail. Honestly, I found much of it unreadable for its arrogance, baby expelling and excessively florid language, but when I clicked on this URL on Friday morning, I found a ferocious Roger Ebert putting things in perspective. It becomes more and more amazing to me how much Roger can surprise me with simple clarity at times. Oddly enough, the same was true of Ken Turan of the L.A. Times this week, whose weekend reviews all made sense to me for the first time in a long, long while. Not that I completely agreed, but there was clarity and insight that I admired. It is strange being in my admittedly self-appointed position as critic/industry analyst/media critic/opinionated ass. Most people choose one because I have to tell you, the overlap's a bitch. I fear that I have damaged my relationships with people like Roger Ebert by what I write in this column each day, much as so many relationships have been made by this column. But this is another column. Read the conversation at Slate. It is worth your time.

2. Don't Toy With Us: There were reports just before Toy Story 2 came out that some had seen early screenings with bloopers attached, a la A Bug's Life. It seems that Disney realized the value of the game would be enhanced if instead of having new bloopers drawing people in for a second or third look, they would leave the bloopers out entirely until after hitting the $100 million mark. The blooperfied version of the film will roll out next weekend for your perusal. And it could be the first time the current #1 Film In America launched a second-tier campaign, that is if Anna & The King can't beat Buzz and Woody out.

1. Deja Lizard: Sony is firmly back in Godzilla territory again. No, no sequel announcement, close the window now, thanks. But they have picked up rights to Sid & Marty Krofft's "H.R. Pufnstuf" and "The Land of the Lost" and face exactly the same dilemma that they had with Big Green. How do you generate $100 million with a guy in a silly suit VS. How do you update a guy in a silly suit and not disappoint millions of fans who grew up loving the characters you are recreating? I'm still not sure exactly what it was, but there was always some sick sexual subtext to HR Pufnstuf, a sexual ambiguity: the talking pens, I mean, flute, the only mature women being witches, the little gay British guy who was a lot older than he waas pretending to be, the flamboyant colors and Charles Nelson Reilly to boot. What was going on there? I mean, could there be a better place for Madonna to do a sequel to her book Sex? No, there is no sequel announcement, close the window now. Thanks.

READER OF THE DAY: RoboWillow writes: "RE: Griffith award -- your comments are right on the money. It reminds me of my college years, when many controversial speakers came to our campus (State Univ. of NY at Buffalo) -- we had Tim Leary, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Dick Gregory -- you name it, as far as the Left was concerned -- but, when they tried to book George Lincoln Rockwell to speak, even the PROFESSORS came out with the picket-signs, and the speaking-gig for Rockwell was cancelled. It was the one and only time I actually carried a sign (advocating "First Amendment Rights for ALL" on one side and "What are you afraid of?" on the other.) I was mugged -- by "peaceniks"!! No one saw the irony in any of this.

I would not have reacted so strongly if I had not seen (in preparation for a production of Brecht's "The Private Life of the Master Race") a newsreel of Hitler's first time speaking in public in a political context. He had been given the scut-work job of announcing the results in some piddly local Bavarian election -- with about as much potential for thrills as listening to someone read the phonebook, considering how many political parties they had in Germany then -- yet, by the half-way mark, not only was Hitler's audience giving him standing ovations -- sometimes for the way he said the party-names or even the LOSERS' names!! -- but we kids watching the newsreel, including those of us who didn't speak German, were mesmerized. That film alone (because whoever shot that newsreel had something to do with the experience, too) showed me how Hitler came to power, and forever made me observant of those with gifts for reaching out and grabbing their audiences by the guts.

So, I wanted to see what Rockwell had that made people believe him for more than two seconds, given what the world knew about Nazism. I realized that the Right wasn't afraid of Yuppies like Abbie Hoffman, because they could attend and heckle with no stigma attached, but that the Right and the Left were not only so afraid of confronting Rockwell, but afraid that their mere presence at his speech might look like advocacy, they didn't dare let him speak.

It's the same kind of chicken-chit here: If the award in this case was for activism, or moral values, or even patriotic values in film, then maybe they might've had an excuse for changing its name. But: the award is for FILMMAKING, and -- even after all these years, there are few directors (even with all of today's marvels of technology at their disposal to aid them) who have touched the gift Griffith gave us. Not only that, but -- paradoxically -- Griffith's portrayal of the noble Klansmen is one of our only artifacts of the reason groups like the Klan came into power in the first place. Yet, NO ONE watching Birth of a Nation now is going to run out to join the Klan, any more than I would've signed up with the American Nazi Party after seeing that Hitler newsreel!!

As to Reifenstahl -- her films -- as objects of filmmaking -- have no peer. That they were banned at all is obscene. Yet we can watch "America's Funniest Car-crashes" as much as we want...La-di-dah, as Annie Hall used to say...

RE: Marc's comment that Indiana Jones is more tolerable in its anti-German stance than Saving Private Ryan because it is "popcorn" -- I disagree. It makes it easier to not only tolerate but espouse hatred if it is made into a cartoon, just like it is easier to take Daffy getting his feathers blown off w/a firecracker than it is to see the images of the mutilated child in the beginning of Arlington Road or Gene Hackman, surrounded by flying bullets, tottering around blinded by his bleeding head-wound in Bonnie and Clyde (two scenes in film that made me literally pass out). That's the reason "The Simpsons" and "South Park" get away with stuff that live shows could never do. Indiana Jones is even more insidious because it is a cartoon made with real people. Yeah, it's a groovy cartoon, but the "Steve Canyon" style of the title for "Lost Ark" gave it away to everyone over five years old. And, most insidious of all, many people in their twenties only knew of Nazis at all from watching "Lost Ark" -- I know this, because my son did a poll of his high school senior class (in '97) in which he asked "Who were the Nazis?" and the only ones who were able to respond said "The bad guys in Indiana Jones" (not only that, but only ONE kid in 200 responses knew both the groups fighting the Civil War and which side won!)

Re: what FDR should've done...he didn't dare expose the Nazi atrocities, because that would've alienated England, which was extremely pro-Nazi until they started bombing the pistoles out of them. Heck, even after the Blitz, they still loved Rudolph Hess!! That's the same reason the USA has no compunction about fighting Sadaam to "help the poor Kuwaitis," but won't help the people of Tibet get their country back. All the Tibetans had were yaks and snow and a lot of old rusty Buddahs. But China -- whoa! Sixty zillion people + the bomb + lust for jeans and Burger Clown = no contest!

Whew!! I haven't ranted like this in years. Pant, Pant!!"

E ME: Was that good for you too?