Weekend, 22-23 April 2000

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

10. Everything Old Is New Again: Broadway has taken up a very Hollywood tradition lately...remaking old movies. The Graduate, with Kathleen Turner's nude scene, is selling out in London. Mel Brooks' The Producers is heading to Broadway with Marty Short in the Gene Wilder role and Nathan Lane in for Zero Mostel. (Again! Lane filled the Mostel-created lead of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum on Broadway a couple of years ago.) And now, word is that South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut's Marc Shaiman and Rob Marshall will bring the John Waters PG-13 classic Hairspray to the Great White Way. The hard part will be filling the role of the Big White Mother, Enid Turnblad, played by Divine on-screen. I'll pay to go see this one long before I pay to see Footloose: The Broadway Show. Only one prayer, which is that whatever hefty young charmer takes the role of Tracy Turnblad, which made Ricki Lake a star, agrees to never host a talk show under penalty of death.

9. Correction: It turns out that the Devon Sawa movie Slackers is not a Franchise Film after all, despite Variety's proclamation otherwise (and mine in THB 4/20). It is, I am told by its distributor Destination Films, a production of Original Films and Amalgamated Inc. It is still true that Franchise has gone primetime against all odds. But the right companies deserve to be recognized.

8. Hitting Uphill: Another controversy coming out of Thursday's Hot Button was my comment that The House on Haunted Hill was a "car wreck." I may have been exaggerating a little bit, but not as much as many who wrote in wish to believe. Even if you take Warner Bros.' claim that the film cost just $20 million at face value, the Prints & Advertising was another $10 million minimum. The film did about $40 million domestic and $20 million outside of North America, which means a return of about $30 million from the theatrical run. So, the movie probably did make money on cable and video. But if you were to ask anyone at Warner Bros. or Silver Picture whether they were satisfied with that return or whether they'd do the same thing again for the same return, honesty would draw a clear, "No." Though getting your earnings from ancillary markets alone is okay for mini-majors, it is not good business for majors. The slotting of a film and the energy of getting it out is simply not worth it for a $5 million return for the big guys. On a $20 million picture, $50 million is the minimum for success among the majors. Anything else is just failure avoidance.

7. Subbin': You can read Robert Welkos' take on the U-571 submarine trip here. Ironically, there were only three invited journalists and I was the only one who didn't get a mention. Go figure. "Access Hollywood" beats the hell out of little ole' me. Also, while on the U-571 trail, I wasn't really surprised by Elvis Mitchell's soft pan of the film. As I've said before, the man loves to be a contrarian above all. He barely wrote about the film because he couldn't possibly be nice unless the film was somehow NOT Das Boot. Well folks, all sub movies are Das Boot and Das Boot is all sub movies. Embrace the moment, not the comparison. And Mitchell finishes his screed with this doozy: "And one detail is notable by its absence. Tyler sneaks off to have a smoke and chats with the cook (T. C. Carson, who offers an interesting note about racism during the period). People smoked like burning barns in the 1940s. Even the recent, lame live-television version of "Fail Safe" lived by the smoke-'em-if-you-got-'em ethos, and here the rarity of cigarettes is strange.") Uh Elvis, it was a freakin' submarine. Not a lot of extra air down there, you know. This wasn't a nuclear boomer like in Crimson Tide. It was a WWII era plodder. Cigarettes would be inappropriate and stupid.

6. I'm Looking Over: The 2nd Annual Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival is only a few days away and I am looking forward to a few days in Champaign-Urbana (or Urbana-Champaign, according to some). There are 12 movie presentations over 4 days. Here are all the titles, those that are overlooked for format are explained in parentheses: Sidewalk Stories (silent from sound era), Grave of the Fireflies (animé), American Movie/Coven (documentary), Legacy (documentary), The Terrorist, The Castle, A Woman's Tale, Children of Heaven (Iranian film, screened for kids), The Last Laugh/Un Chien Andalou (silent, with Concrete Orchestra playing live), Deja Vu, Dark City and Oklahoma (Todd AO screening)." But that's not all. Guests at the fest include directors Charles Lane, Chris Smith, Mark Borchardt, Tod S. Lending, Rob Sitch, Paul Cox, Henry Jaglom and Alex Proyas. Plus, there will be five discussion panels on issues, including The Digital Cinema, Documentaries and Women in Film. On top of all that, Tim Zinnemann will intro a Walter Murch-edited documentary on Fred Zinnemann, one of the all-time greats. Why do I keep telling you about this festival? Because you can actually come. It's just $40 for the whole festival and there are cheap hotels all over town. And here is my money-back guarantee...if you don't think it was worth your time, I will personally refund your $40. I'll tell you one more thing, Roger doesn't want to make this a big-city festival. You will have to come to Illinois to have this experience. Hope to see you there.

5. And Nicholson Should Play Spiderman: Could there be anything stupider than Entertainment Weekly Online's poll on the subject of who should play Anakin Skywalker in the next Star Wars movie? The choices were between Ryan Phillippe, Joshua Jackson and "General Hospital" alum Jonathan Jackson. And Phillippe won. Let me say this about that...if George Lucas cast Ryan Phillippe as Anakin Skywalker, I would start a new, daily section of this column to shred the choice. Of course, there is no chance in hell that it will happen. Idiocy. What's the point of this? This is right up there with a 30something Spider-Man. Don't these people have anything worth writing? (I obviously don't or I wouldn't even acknowledge this stupidity.)

4. Did That Really Require Confirmation?: Dean Devlin told Eon Magazine that and he Roland Emmerich won't be doing another Godzilla movie for Sony. He said, "What it came down to was creative differences between the direction the studio wanted to go and the direction we wanted to go...We had a vision of what we would have to do in order to do a sequel and also fulfill what the fans need. We had an idea for a monster vs. monster story, and for Sony it was more expensive than they were willing to spend and we felt anything less would not be that exciting. I think the studio was looking at it from a very pragmatic point of view -- what's the right budget to make it for and what makes sense economically. And that didn't jive with us creatively. We were planning on doing it for a lot less than the original, but I don't think to bring it down to the price the studio was looking for we could still maintain the kind of thing we felt a Godzilla sequel needed." Uh, okey-dokey. No one defended Devlin and Emmerich more than I, feeling that the harsh response to Godzilla was excessive. However, with all due respect, fulfilling what the fans need would be Devlin & Emmerich not doing the sequel. The bar for that film would be so absurdly high, not only having to be good itself, but needing to make up for the last one (in fanboy eyes) that it would require a miracle to be perceived in a positive light.

"The Top Three & Lots of ROTDs"