Tuesday, 20 June 2000

I HAVE MY ANSWER: It took Sam Mendes a few plays and one Oscar® winning movie. It took J.K. Rowling a few million books about a kid named Harry Potter. It took Michael Caine 44 years, over 100 films and TV shows and 2 Academy Awards to get the same recognition as the other two got in just a few years of fame. All three will be awarded knighthoods by the Queen of England. But it is Caine who took the long road generally considered a tradition in the knight business. I have nothing against Mendes or Rowling, but if Michael Caine and Elizabeth Taylor are just getting loaded up, aren't the knighthoods for these two a little quick on the sword? Of course, there is no actor who deserves the honor more than Caine. He is an actor who turns up in some of the very best films, giving some truly great performances. A THB salute to the Sir, with love.

GETTING A JOB: Deeply important news from the entertainment magazine front…Leeza Gibbons is back. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the woman who rose to fame as the younger, smaller Mary Hart will be back hosting an entertainment news program, "Extra." Dear God, will the business ever be the same?!?!?

WAX & SEX: Lord knows when New Line's Town and Country will actually get a firm release date, but its talented director, Peter Chelsom, isn't waiting around to find out. He's been set by Miramax to do a romantic comedy with John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale called Serendipity. The film starts shooting next month, which is surely before T&C will arrive. The latest press release on this film is about Molly Shannon joining the cast and includes this line: "Shannon would play Beckinsale's lesbian best friend who owns a candle shop." Why do I find that hilarious in and of itself?

JUST WONDERING: What section of the video store does Billy Baldwin expect to find his new sure to be direct-to-video feature, Double Bang, stocked?

OVER AGAIN: Two popular movie characters that also marked the near end of the careers of the actors who played them are trying to make a comeback. A new Fletch series, without Chevy Chase, is reportedly being pitched around town. And Paul Hogan is revving up for Crocodile Dundee III, a dozen years after the last sequel, Crocodile Dundee II. Oy!

THANK STEVEN!: Dieter is dead. Or at least it is for now. Spielberg tried to patch things up and Imagine's Brian Grazer has been extremely quiet about the whole thing, but one last meeting with Myers seemed to suggest that closing down was better than making up. So, the 25 people who were still working on pre-production went home. Myers and Universal will surely settle their suit eventually, most likely with Myers doing another film for "just" $15 million instead of his reported $20 million price tag on Dieter. Of course, it will be reported/leaked as $20 million anyway…nice and quiet.

SOMETHING I HATE: The New York Daily News' Mitchell Fink is reporting about Matt Drudge's bizarre homemade controversy over a sequence in The Patriot in which young boys kill with guns. I've written about the sequence before. The thing I hate is that Fink writes about the issue coming up in "recent Internet reports." No. Just Drudge. Drudge is not The Internet. He is one voice on the Internet. If the guy wants to take a flyer, give him the credit or the blame. Don't paint us all with one ugly brush. And by the way, Mitch, I read your "Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet" comment on the Internet.

INTERESTING: There is a cute mention of Bob Balaban in Fink's column as well. But what was interesting in the piece wasn't Balaban getting shot in yet another movie, but the idea that Julia Roberts will be shooting his character in the head. As far as I recall, Ms. Roberts has never even picked up a gun in any of her other roles, much less fired it into someone's brain pan.

THANKS, BOYS: I have gotten crap from e-mailers regarding my publicly stated policy of respecting review embargoes. But Monday's Variety reminded me of why I am willing to do what I consider the right thing and why self-indulgent embargo breakers like Jeffrey Wells are poised to screw up the party for the entire Internet. Variety's Jonathan Bing credits Wells with the first reviews of Gladiator, The Patriot and Me, Myself & Irene. He's simply wrong about Irene. After sitting with Jeff at an Irene screening, I beat Jeff to print by days on the film. And his new attitude about the film, printed last week, reads an awful lot like my opinion. Hmmm…

But in the cases of Gladiator and The Patriot, Wells' "scoop" was nothing other than a willingness to break the embargo without regard to anyone but himself. Sony made the mistake of not demanding an agreement from Wells to embargo his comments on The Patriot when they allowed him to see it. I feel somewhat responsible because I am the idiot who let him know there was a screening. Sony let him see it as a gesture of good will. And they got screwed for their gesture, as Jeff disregarded a series of post-screening calls asking that he not write about the film when he did. He also screwed me directly, as my post-screening comments made up much of his "buzz" review. Yes, I was the unnamed journalist who suggested that a Steven Soderbergh version of the film would have been an improvement and that Warner Bros. would be pleased by the length and slowness of the film. Little did I know that Wells would "scoop" me with my own thoughts. He has since agreed out loud not to pull that kind of stunt, stealing my thoughts which I use for a living as his column fodder ever again on threat of never hearing a thought of mine again.

On Gladiator, I saw and had problems with the movie weeks before Wells saw the film. Dozens of others saw the film then too, including many on line writers. But the embargo held. Except for Wells. In point of fact, after being told I'd have to embargo, I complained about Ain't It Cool's screening in San Francisco and being asked to embargo after Harry was given a screening, and was told by one exec that I could run a review if I really wanted to do so. But I still embargoed. Firstly, that one exec doesn't speak for everyone at the studio. And more to the point, I felt no need to try and bury Gladiator. That's not my job. Ripping a film weeks out does nothing for anything other than my ego. My ego's a little stronger than that, thanks.

In any case, Bing's story, which leads with "The old rules of entertainment journalism are changing…," takes a turn towards the less flamboyant and more accurate by the end, pointing out that the result of embargo breaking by Web names is that "old print stalwarts are increasingly willing to break release dates." That will lead, in an act of self-defense by studios, to much more aggressive enforcement of screening rules, not a new freedom of the exchange of ideas. This is similar to the new, more cautious attitude about test screenings that studios with big fanboy movies have taken, as well as the increased interest in bringing Harry Knowles in to see a movie early, to get ahead of the test screenings. It's not a mystery. The studios develop tools to regain control of the buzz all the time. As Bing's story closes, an unnamed studio publicity "maven" says, "The Internet can be a marketing tool, but it can also be a marketing hurdle. We may have to make sure these Internet critics only see the films at the all-media screenings, not as part of the long-lead screenings."

I am, of course, angry at Jeff for endangering me and my work opportunities with his antics. On the other hand, studio execs reading this should be aware that Wells will honor an embargo if you make it 100 percent clear with him. He has, at times, worked around the embargo and rationalized that he was reporting on the opinions of others and not himself. But if you nail him down, Jeff won't screw you. Not that I'm offering a guarantee. But the responsibility is an individual one, not an Internet-wide one. (Countdown to a screaming phone call from Wells as he read this… 3… 2… 1…)

READER OF THE DAY: Just so you don't think I'm the toughest person in America on A.O. Scott, here's a letter from Mr. M.R.: "David: I usually don't write to perform as your amen corner, but here goes: A.O. Scott is a pretentious, muddle-headed fool, who, IMHO, neither understands nor likes movies. Just look at the central assertion of the lead paragraph of the article you linked to: 'Film and the novel are cousins not far removed, and the DNA they share is narrative.' Scott compares an entire art form (film) to a single discipline (the novel) within an art form (literature). Does this give the reader a clue as to Scott's value system? To illustrate: perhaps the feature film and the novel are cousins, but wouldn't the short film have such a relationship to the short story, and documentary to journalism? And why couldn't film be viewed as a closer cousin to poetry, considering that both forms are processed in similar ways? The spectator involved in a film enters something akin to a dream-like state, and the reader of poetry, rather than following a narrative, must allow the mind to immerse itself in the poem's imagery or mood. David, so sorry to have pursued Scott's literary musings this far. The piece was an abject failure if it was intended to be a serious comparison of the feature film and novel. Rather, it was more of a platform for Scott to trot out capsule reviews of novels adapted into features. By the way, if Scott is preoccupied with auditioning for heavy rotation in the Times Book Review, then Elvis Mitchell, whose work I've often enjoyed in the past, appears similarly obsessed with hip-hop and club culture, often ignoring the films allegedly under review. Janet Maslin may have needed a respite, but, my god, there must be a platoon of Internet critics (James Berardinelli, Harvey Karten, Mike D'Angelo just to name three) who write more perceptively film criticism than the second-rate graduate school blather the NYT has presented these last few months."

And alternate take comes from AV: "Yikes... The NY Times finally puts together a group of critics who can write and do it with a point of view--or do you miss Maslin's soft-headed cheerleading?--and the best you can muster is a bit of faint-praise damning for the third-stringer, and, naturally, another shot at A.O. Scott (who was, if memory serves, writing about the difficulty of adapting novels for the screen...a valid bit of reporting, yes?)

Lay off, lighten up. Or at least take the time to wonder why Kevin Thomas not only continues to write for the LA Times, but seems to be getting more column space than ever (it was one thing to rave about obscure foreign films, there's a kind of value-by-definition in that, but the man's kind heart has recently led him to some brain-stumping accolades. Boys and Girls--huzzah!!)"

E ME: Do the rules of journalistic etiquette mean anything to you anymore? Have they ever?