Weekend, 20-21 May 2000

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

10. Return To Movie Star Salaries: Michael Fleming, the once-and-future king of Hollywood gossip, reports that Russell Crowe's asking price just doubled, to $15 million. Well, duh! If his agents didn't do that, he should have fired them. However, it brings up an interesting situation. There is no doubt that Crowe can have a huge payday. Yet, he has three films that he's considering, according to Fleming, and none of the three should be that payday. One is North of Cheyenne, a Jon Amiel picture that could be a hit, but has no blockbuster markings. Another is 33 Liberty Street, a character driven aspiring-gangster movie. Again, it could do business, but it does not have the feel of a huge movie. And finally, probably the best opportunity for Crowe to return to the Oscar® race, is Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind, the story of a charismatic, Nobel Prize-winning, paranoid schizophrenic. But again, Crowe should be able to get an excellent back-end deal there and probably up his price from the current $7.5 million to maybe $10 million, but I don't see Imagine going $15 million for Russell Crowe on a movie that doesn't speak directly to the audience of his first $100 million hit (Gladiator).

9. I'll Show You The Life Of The Mind!: Brain.com has a fairly comprehensive look at every actor in Hollywood who they think qualifies as smart. Interesting. It's a very long piece, so I'll give you a look at the end before you begin (or choose not to both). "Dolph Lundgren, former fiancé of Grace Jones, attended the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. The 6'6" Lungren received a master's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia in 1982. He was also awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to MIT. Acting over academics and he was drawn into the Hollywood Universe. The karate black-belt's first role was in 1985's Rocky IV." Oooohhhh! Scary!

8. Gee. No, ScientoloGY: An US magazine gossip columnist chimed in this week that he'd heard that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were moving away from Scientology. That brought the only thing more dangerous than the wrath of God…the wrath of Pat Kingsley. The magazine recanted in a hurry and in depth. That retraction led to a very funny list of retractions in Modern Humorist.

7. PC Police: Ridley and Tony Scott ran a print ad with the explicit intent of busting SAG's commercial strike, at least in their small way, and all anyone can talk about is breasts! The Scott Bros. company, RSA USA has set up shop for director Marcus Nispel (you may remember him as the guy who didn't shoot End of Days) in South Africa and ran an ad to promote the union-free set-up in Shoot, an advertising trade magazine. The ad reads, "To service clients, Marcus Nispel is setting up a temporary RSA office in South Africa, where production is cost-effective and they've never heard of SAG." But that's not the part that has people screaming…even though it should be. They are all agog at the ad's primary image, a pair of sagging, black breasts with the tag, "In South Africa, This Is What SAG Means." Okay, so they should be upset about that, too. A pair of white breasts would probably not have gotten all this attention, but that's a little beside the point…so to speak. About 150 SAG members protested outside of RSA's L.A. office on Thursday, decrying the ad as racist and sexist. (Damn! Should have used that Caucasian scrotum shot!) SAG president William Daniels made the most salient comment: "There can be no excuse for the racist, sexist image you have chosen for your ad, and it appalls us that you've decided to use a racist, sexist image to promote your cause of union-busting." Get it? Bad humor is secondary to union busting, gang! Of course, the butt-covering started in earnest. The Scotts were "upset, sickened and appalled," claiming that they "do not support the advertisement and apologize for the actions of our employees. We knew absolutely nothing about this advertisement." Yeah. You have to know that they had a good laugh when the ad came over the fax machine, threw back a shot of Glenlivet and roared, "F-em if they can't take a wee joke!" The magazine that ran the ad showed a bit more fortitude, saying "Shoot does not condone or condemn the ad. We respect the right of companies to portray themselves the way they want to in their own advertising."

6. HSX News: Interesting story in the L.A. Times about the Hollywood Stock Exchange. The gist is that HSX now thinks that it can be an information provider to the studios, tracking movies the way that the infamous National Research Group now does. Unfortunately for the dot-com, the basic underpinning of the idea is statistically foolish. The only information that a studio needs from HSX and the only information that is ever going to be valuable to studios on HSX is the public trading of "movie stock," which is based on nothing but perceived value. HSX answers the question, "Is our marketing working for the 15-20 percent of the American audience that is represented by men who have an interest in playing stock-based movie-related games on the Internet?" Now, that is valuable info. But studios don't even need to assign someone to track it every day. The Website does that for you. But how valuable is that? X-Men is tracking slightly better than Gladiator by HSX standards. But on what basis? What does it mean? I guess it means that the guys who trade on HSX have high expectations for the movie. But should Fox be worried that there has only been a minor rise in interest since the Senator Kelly spots started running? No, not in my opinion. Because they already own the HSX market. Meanwhile, Loser is tracking under $35, or a third of what Gladiator and X-Men are at. My suggestion to the boys? Buy, and buy heavily. N.R.G., for all its faults, surveys the full spectrum. No one can predict opening grosses any better than they do now. The fault is in the analysis of the data, not in the gathering. And no one has come up with a better formula yet.

5. Another Elian: There is a TV movie about Elian Gonzalez in the works at Fox Family Channel, but I can't seem to remember…that name is familiar…does he pitch for the Yankees?

4. Desperate For Copy: There is no freaking news this week!!!! Tom Cruise did "The Tonight Show." He was great. Tracey Ullman did "The Tonight Show." She was great. Sarah Michelle Gellar did "Late Night." She was great. Bill Maher from the Playboy Mansion was mastubatory crap all week. Warner Bros. and Sony have started running large numbers of The Perfect Storm and Patriot ads six weeks before release. Someone's a little jumpy, no? Okay…enough already…move along. Nothing to see here.

"Yes, There Is A Real Top Three"