Weekend, 8-9 April 2000

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

10. Lie-yer: What can you do? When a lawyer uses a scumbag trick to get media attention for a lawsuit, do you fault the media for being suckers or fault the lawyer for being a scumbag liar? Or are both sets of accusations redundant to the nature of each beast? Whatever your opinion, Stephen Yagman, attorney for one of the men accused of stealing the missing 55 Oscars®, told the media that he had one of the 3 Oscars still missing from the shipment and that he'd be giving more info about the theft at his office on Thursday. It turns out that he had a real Oscar that he had borrowed, but that it wasn't one of the missing 3. His client, an employee of the trucking firm involved, was arrested, but then released. So, Yagman theorizes, he is due $10 million in compensatory damages and another $10 million in compensatory damages "for destroying this man's reputation and career with frivolous conduct." Wait! Maybe it's not the lawyer or the media, but the justice system that encourages someone to file a $20 million suit in pursuit of a $100,000 settlement that's an a**!

9. Everrrrr…Everrrrr…Black: The scary part about Fox's announcement that Doctor Dolittle 2 would go into production with Steve Carr (Next Friday) at the helm wasn't about Doctor Dolittle. It was the announcement that Carr came available because Jamie Foxx bailed on a project that was on Carr's schedule as his next film to do Oliver Stone's remake of A Star Is Born. I had heard rumors, but for it to actually happen…dear God who art in heaven! Color me afraid. Very afraid. I guess it's one shade less frightening than Stone doing Superman. But what is Stone thinking?

8. Whiter Variety?: Will Variety have anybody left after the dot-coms get done? The latest Variety staffer to hit the Web streets is Christian Moerk, headed to Powerful Media's as-yet-unlaunched Inside.com Website. Moerk was moved up the food chain after Chris Petrikin left, no? It seems like less than a year ago. I gather that it's not that big a surprise, as Petrikin and Moerk are buddies, but it looks like both trades are going to have to make strategic moves in the near future to avoid losing people hand over fist. It used to be that a gig at the trades was a comfort zone--not so great pay, but plenty of access. Now, stock options and freedom are the draw. The times, they are a' changin'.

7. Man Overboard: James Toback's Harvard Man has been buzzed about as Black + White hits theaters. Sarah Michelle Gellar signed on and so forth. But it seems, based on a synopsis of the movie in the Boston Globe, that Harvard Man tracks some of the same turf as Black + White. "A Harvard philosophy major and basketball star borrows $50,000 from his girlfriend (a Mafia princess) to rebuild his family's home, destroyed by a tornado. Later, his girlfriend insists he must fix a basketball game for the money, and the student finds himself trapped between the mob and the FBI--all the while tripping psychedelically on LSD.'' Remove the Mafia, the tornado and the LSD and you have the central story in Black + White. Anyway, more on Harvard's refusal to have the film shot on campus in the Globe article.

6. Worth A Thousand Pictures: A reader, wishing to turn me on to a discussion about The Road to El Dorado, sent me a URL for Wordplay, a Website set up by screenwriters Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott as a place for writers and aspiring writers to hang out and discuss screenwriting. I was tremendously impressed by the site, even if I couldn't find the places where the reader told me Ted and Terry were very open and very critical of the writing process on the movie. But it's definitely worth checking out.

5. Meesa Sellsa Video!: Okay, all you Phantom Menace bashers out there! Time to bash 10 million people for spending nearly $200 million buying the video of the latest in the Star Wars sexilogy (is that a word?) in its first week of release. "What idiots! Don't they know that Jar Jar Binks will lead to the destruction of civilization as we know it?!??!" Me thinks the critics doth protest too much. But perhaps the most stunning factoid is that despite a record-breaking opening of $102.7 million in five days for The Phantom Menace, the video sales are on pace to make that look like chump change. And at a much higher rate of return to the companies involved. (Fox and LucasFilm will divvy it up as they contracted to a year ago.) Also of interest, approximately 200,000 units were sold online, pushing the boundaries of e-commerce forward. And there was no deep discounting allowed on this video release. The average price per copy sold is $17, as opposed to Titanic, which was averaging about $5 less because it was being used as a loss leader. And one last note about the Phantom DVD…the Fox spokesman told The Hollywood Reporter, "As for the DVD version of Menace, we have no plans to release the DVD version of Menace by the end of the year." Please note "no plans" and "end of the year." I still think that Lucas will wait until after Episode Three is done to do all six films for DVD. It's not like he's in a rush to get the money and the DVD market will only get bigger. But Fox left the door open for an earlier appearance. At least, of Episode One.

4. I See People With Disposable Income: The smash of The Phantom Menace video release follows right on the heels of a hugely successful launch of The Sixth Sense on video and DVD, logging $50 million in sales and rentals in its first week. No bad for an 11-year-old.

"The Top Three"