Tuesday, 11 January 2000

COMPLETE IGNORANCE: What will the Time-Warner/AOL merger mean to the future of roughcut.com? I don't know. What will it mean to the future of this column? I don't know. What will it mean to you, the roughcut reader? I just don't know. What I suspect, at least this year, is that it will mean very little. When you look at news stories covering the merger, you will notice that we are not mentioned. So, hopefully, we will continue to live under T-W Prince Brad Siegel as a small but valuable part of an individualized Internet strategy. On the other hand, AOL's history of content mergers has been one in which they fold in the brand and devalue their existing brands. So, this could mark the end of the already budget-crunched Entertainment Asylum, to be replaced by EW-Online. AOL would do well to try and retain Marise Nazzaro, regardless of what they decide to do, but we shall see. And by the way...I suspect that a purchase of NBC is going to gain a bigger head of steam because of this merger. Disney, Viacom and News Corp. are all major networked up. Rumors still fly that Seagram's will spin off its Universal film properties, so that's not even the same fight. Sony is Sony. NBC is the available network. AOL/Time-Warner will be absolute top dog if they have a network. Hmmmm...

THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN VEGAS: The headline of the story all weekend was "George Clooney to play Sinatra role in remake of Ocean's Eleven!" Well, that's cool and all. A perfect role for Clooney. (Here's another casting hint...get Denzel to play the beefed up Lawford role, get Phillip Seymour Hoffman to play the Sammy role and get Leo DiCaprio to play the Dean Martin role.) But my favorite part of the story was that Steven Soderbergh would direct. Besides loving Out of Sight and The Limey, Soderbergh has made me an even bigger fan of his with a book called "Getting Away With It or: The Further Adventures of The Luckiest Bastard You Ever Saw". The book is from Faber and Faber and I can't find a place on the Internet where you can get it. When I do, I will advise. As of now, it is on my Top Five of necessary reading for people interested in or flailing about in the film business. A must read. Besides offering a lot more insight than Soderbergh seems to think he has, it is about as fun a book on Hollywood as you will ever read. The book is a combination of both a long, in-depth interview with director Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night, Help!, The Three Musketeers -and Four and Return of - and Superman 2 and 3) and a journal of suffering and light, as Soderbergh fights through the period before Out of Sight, when he was between periods of the movie intelligentsia crowning him a genius. Great stuff. And if your local bookstore has it, you'll be able to recognize it by looking for Steven Soderbergh making an absurdly funny face on the cover. This book was clearly a labor of love and Soderbergh looks like he's in labor on the cover.

DEAL SETTING: One of those "busy reporters" did call Amy Pascal over the weekend and get the full story on Sam Raimi and Spider-Man. Which brings up another reason for Harry Knowles to keep his ego in check...even when AICN does break news, it's often incomplete. And so it is here, as it turns out, that the reporter (Michael Fleming) found out that there are some multi-million negotiations regarding scheduling on another studio's movie to be worked out before Raimi can take Spider-Man on and make Sony's release date. Will it be worked out? Yeah, probably. But whoever leaked the info to Moriarty was probably interested in forcing Sony's hand more than giving AICN a scoop. And that has become, for better or for worse, AICN's role in industry news. Talent uses the resource to pimp the studios and producers. It's the only way to get a public response to something before the news is public. It's the same way that studios and producers and talent pimp on another by leaking info to Michael Fleming or whoever else... gage the temperature out there. Only AICN's thermometer tends to be stuck into a young, male action-loving crowd that is very valuable to the studios. So I sincerely say "for better" in that phrase, as there is something positive to be gained here and it's not much different than what already goes on, except that it is more democratic. The more difficult difference to me is that guys like Fleming release their egomania only amongst friends and Harry has, for whatever reasons, developed the need to gloat publicly. And in the end, since pissing me off doesn't matter much, it's only bad for Harry because it's hard to be seen as a real leader while you are gloating. Unlike some who just dismiss Harry, I think he is an incredibly smart and savvy and truly film-loving person. I just wish he would keep himself in perspective sometimes.

"Hanni-spit-balling, Agent-increasing & More Canada-ing"