Tuesday, 1 February 2000

FIRST: It seems that the Atlanta-based roughcut staff suffered a serious case of the Super Bowl Flu on Monday, and somehow my column didn't get published. Go figure. If they are feeling better, you can read yesterday's Sundance wrap-up by clicking here. Not only was it a missing column, but I am pretty proud of the piece. Especially as I wrote it under the duress of being stuck in Utah for an extra day...not that it was that bad, but when it's time to go home, it's time to go home. And besides teasing them, I want to again express my thanks to the whole roughcut.com crew and writers Ray Pride and Rod Hewitt for all the hard work during 10 Days at Sundance 2K.

SUPER: I did get to catch much of the Super Bowl despite my airline problems in Salt Lake City (which were put in some serious perspective with the Alaska Air crash.) The only movie ad I saw was the one for Mission To Mars and it was pretty damned good. But more surprising to me was the complete absence of the images that are in the trailer that seemed so reflective of the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now, it's possible that the Disney and Brian DePalma didn’t hear the hue and cry about the seemingly stolen images, which, to be fair, may not be stolen at all. (Of course, it doesn't help that Mr. DePalma is King of the Homage.) But maybe, this is a reflection that Disney did hear those of us who whined and responded.

NEWSWEAK: At the Salt Lake City airport, I picked up a copy of Newsweek, curious about the story, "Inside Wrestling Inc". Now obviously, I work for TNT, which has more than a little interest in the wrestling game. But I have to tell you, it is not a big priority for me. Ironically, when the WCW/Warner Bros. wrestling movie, Ready to Rumble, had an on-set, I was just another writer, not part of the family. In any case, I was amazed by the story. Not so much by what was written, but by what wasn't written. The story is all about the WWF, dismissing the WCW in a few sentences. My career, oddly enough, coincided with the first massive rise of the WWF, care of NBC. I was working for "Saturday Night Live" and Dick Ebersol brought WWF to the network. No mention of that period. By the butt-kissing tone of the piece, I would say that the period goes unmentioned because it was, ultimately, a failure and the prime celebrity of the era, Hulk Hogan, is now a WCW wrestler (or did he retire or something...) Also completely unmentioned amongst current players is Barry Diller, whose USA Networks is the key to the WCW empire. (Dean Valentine, the head of UPN, does get column inches though. Huh?) It is Diller who forced McMahon to tone down the sex and violence soap opera, just as he had a guiding hand in the Jerry Springer tone-down. I didn't expect that Newsweek magazine, a legit publication, would get sucked into writing an article that is so Vince McMahon-centric, beyond reality.

But had that been the end of the ugliness, I wouldn't be writing about the issue. It was followed by an interview by David Ansen and Jeff Giles with six top directors (Norman Jewison, Michael Mann, Anthony Minghella, Sam Mendes, Kimberly Pierce, M Night Shyamalan) that was as vacuous as People magazine often tries to be. I'm not saying that it isn't nice to read how cute this group can be, but geez, it was like a gossipy lunch where no one had any really good gossip. And then, to have the unspecified Newsweek question towering in bold over the answers of directors who have more to say than there was any room for...well, it was more than a little grotesque. I have spoken to 4 of the six directors about their films and expect to see some of them again after the Academy Award nominations on February 15. Each one has a lot more to say than this piece would ever make you think.

And then...there is as worthless a piece on a movie as I have ever read. Did reporter Yahlin Chang even see the movie The Beach??? Shouldn't a magazine like Newsweek have a story worthy of printing the dehumanizing (to both sides) phrase "pu*** posse" before printing it? What is the story? A big picture of Leo...a bog picture of Virginie Ledoyen and a couple of small "candid" shots. But all the stupid story does is to repeat every rumor, even if the rumor has been denied and the magazine has no form of proof whatsoever. Only a moron or someone who is disingenuously looking to score attention points would write of this movie that it's " 'Road Rules' runs smack into Lord of the Flies." Saw that on a Website a year ago, huh? Of course, the story then has to smack Leo again for being in Talk magazine. Every indication is that the writer hasn't seen the film and that she was asked to tear it down. My guess? Time has a cover coming. I thought this competitiveness between the companies hit its nadir with The Phantom Menace (another massive story by someone who hadn't seen the movie), but this is making Newsweek look terrible. And yes, it fits the WWF/WCW thing too. Time is part of Time-Warner, which owns Turner Networks, which owns WCW. This WCW is the enemy and "any enemy of my enemy is my friend". That attitude is great for the Star and the Enquirer, but our two major newsweeklies should be above this crap. And certainly, a critic as venerable as David Ansen should be careful not to be party to any of it.

RESET: I love the idea of Spike Jonze taking on Benjamin Button, one of Hollywood's longest running "it's almost ready" development projects. Of course, the studio, with an assist from the trades, is resetting the story as "from the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story." The real names who have been attached for almost 10 years were Frank Oz and Martin Short, who threatened to start production for about 5 years before the project disappeared into Overdevelopment Hell about 5 years back. What's always interesting about these kinds of projects is the attachments that often make them too expensive to think about going back to unless you have an eight-digit star interested. My guess is that in this case, the ownership of the underlying rights turned over recently and that whatever pay-for-having-once-been-attached costs dropped away. The story is interesting. A 50-year-old man is aging backwards and must deal with it. Only one request...for his own good...don't let Robin Williams anywhere near this one.

CREEPY: I hate to be the one to publish this out loud, but wasn't the Chris Reeve ad kind of creepy? If the ad had been better at getting its message about a happy future across more effectively, I might have gone with it. But what we got was a kind of freak show, with Reeve's head on a body larger than his real one, still looking like he was walking somehow artificially with no clear point. No one I've spoken to responded to the ad as intended. Most were creeped out. How about you?

PLUM ROLE: If, indeed, Russell Crowe takes on the role opposite Claire Danes in Flora Plum, we could see a career high for both Ms. Danes as well as Ms. Foster, as a director. There has long been a sense of the tentative in Ms. Danes' work that has not served her (or audiences) well. Hard to imagine any tentativeness opposite Russell Crowe. You have to either put up or shut up. Likewise, much as I have loved much of Jodie Foster's directing work, it sometimes gets precious. And again, I think that Crowe can keep her from that. (Of course, you have to give her credit for hiring him in the first place.)

WRONG!: What's wrong with Melissa Joan Hart setting up a remake of the great classic The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer? Well, anyone who's seen the film knows that the bobby soxer is about the fourth lead, if you agree with me that the cranky uncle is number three. The movie was a revelation with Shirley Temple as a young woman with romance on her mind, but make no mistake, it was Cary Grant wooing Myrna Loy that was at the core of the movie. This would make a great Julia Roberts/Richard Gere vehicle...even better with a boy in love with the decade-older Julia and Gere as the disapproving uncle of the boy. Oh well. I guess my projected line-up of Dylan McDermott, Courtney Love and Ms. Hart will have to do.

EXHAUSTED: Okay, I give up. I really should take a vacation after Sundance. I'm tired. But I'm also thankful, after flying through snow, that I wasn't on Alaska Airlines. (God bless the souls lost on that plane.) If you are a newcomer, do look at the Sundance coverage, which will be added to in the writing of Hewitt and Pride in the next few days. And tomorrow is Ranting & Raving...as though I ever do anything else.

READER OF THE DAY: I answered my own question (about Safe Men.) It was there in 1998, the same year Sam Rockwell was also there with Lawn Dogs. And here's a side note: I believe Josh Hamilton (Urbania) was in the run of "This is Our Youth" with Mark Ruffalo.

If you have any questions/comments please feel free to contact me -- or forward any questions/comments from the website. Thanks again! E

P.S. If I write another email to you, we'll be like old college buddies.

E ME: Old?!?!?! I've been a little lax about e-mail while at Sundance. Working 10am-6am has that effect on me sometimes. Did I neglect any of you? If so, please let me know and I will try to make it up to you. (No ex-es need apply!)