Monday, 30 October 2000

3. SONY TWO—ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST: The "that parrot's not dead" spin of the Sony restructuring got spun back on Thursday, as Jeff Blake flexed his newly enhanced muscle and shoved marketing president Bob Levin out the door. In an odd way, it seems we are seeing a reverse of the situation that ran through Fox earlier this year, as Peter Chernin flexed his muscle and pushed aside Bill Mechanic and, ultimately, Tom Sherak. Both are acts of corporate strengthening, but Sony seems to have put a lot of faith in distribution master Blake, where Fox decided to go against their distribution master - the only distribution guy in town who carried the same kind of figurative weight as Blake. Ironically, now Sherak will be encamped with Blake, as the company he joined, Joe Roth's Revolution Studios, has an output deal at Columbia. And Fox will, eventually, find out whether Sherak deserved all the accolades and loyalties he received over the years, or whether those will be easily replaced.

2. LIKE A FOX: Speaking of the new Fox team stepping out of the shadow of Mechanic and Sherak, Bruce Snyder, the studio's president of distribution turned front man for the first time, announcing the studio's summer 2001 line-up: June 1, Moulin Rouge; June 8, Dr. Dolittle 2; July 6, Jet Li's Kiss of the Dragon. And July 27, Planet of the Apes. Also scheduled for summer, but undated, is the still unstarted Martin Lawrence movie, Black Knight. You may recall that Big Momma's House was made under similar time pressures. Planet of the Apes is clearly moving because it can't make its complex schedule. The choice to throw Moulin Rouge into June and not late July/early August suggests to me that the studio has some real faith in the Baz Luhrmann musical as a crossover hit, not just for kids or just for adults. And both Li and Eddie Murphy seem like solid summer filler that can deliver profit, if not overwhelming excitement.

In pre-summer scheduling, Fox is bringing the Farrelly Bros. to spring, releasing Say It Isn't So, the incest comedy (an oversimplification, but it is the Farrellys after all) on February 2. Ashley Judd will be in a comedy… though its title, Animal Husbandry, makes it sound like she's in danger again. The good news: She has an on-screen romance. The bad news: It's with Greg Kinnear. Monkeybone is going to be coming out… they swear! I don't know if it's fair, but it seems like this movie has been buzzing in my head for a long, long time (April 11). And Freddy Got Fingered stars—who else?—Tom Green, who also directs from the script he co-wrote. And they're off!

1. DING DONG: The SAG commercial strike is history. Unfortunately, the actors lost. As always. Why? Because they won what they could have gotten without a strike. A 9 percent pay raise over three years? Don't blue-collar workers do better than that as a basic rule of thumb? A 9 percent increase, in light of the increasing dominance of cable in advertising? Want to bet that the percentage of plays that an average commercial, which also plays networks, gets on cable has increased by more than 9 percent in the last three years? This is being called a victory because there weren't rollbacks. Who was really expecting rollbacks? As I recall, the suggestion of putting network spots into a quarterly buyout mode hit the table only after the strike began. It's called adding roadblocks so you can take them away at the end and make the other side feel like they aren't getting screwed… just don't sit down. The L.A. New Times column "The Finger" raised the ire of SAGers last week, but in the current column, despite a certain extra abrasiveness, I think they got it right. Read it here. And welcome back, kids. On to the next strike.

READER OF THE DAY: This letter came from A.G.2K—"How is the act of studios producing a report of how they are marketing their movies equal to censorship? What is being censored by this specific act?"

DAVID RESPONDS: That's exactly the evasive attitude that allows this to happen. Just as the industry is being pilloried for nonspecific acts, A.G.2K demands that censorship be "specific." And my point all along has been that it's not going to come specifically… that would be unconstitutional. All of this promotes self-censorship.

A.G.2K continues: "Like the rest of the country, I believe it's impossible to feel sorry for Hollywood. Why? Because they brought all of this on themselves. Studios got caught screening restricted material to children as young as nine. As a result, an inquiring eye will be aimed at their marketing practices.

"Tobacco companies got caught marketing cigarettes to children. As a result, companies like Philip Morris have self-imposed restrictions on their cigarette advertising. Do you think they wanted to? No, but they had to as a business strategy. Hollywood must now do the same.

"You can argue the legal differences of the above cases but, in spirit, they are the same. It's pretty much a consensus that what Hollywood was doing was an unethical business practice. Emphasis is on BUSINESS.

"This particular case has nothing to do with 'your' business's 'art.' Nobody has asked the cigarette companies to change their ingredients, and nobody is asking Hollywood to censor its movies, yet. (Cutting movies to get certain ratings is the FILMMAKERS' choice. It may mean the death of the movie's profit, but from an artistic standpoint, they are free to release a movie intact.)

"For now, all the American people are asking is that Hollywood market movies to their rightful audiences. I know you fear what this action may be leading to, but you can't know for sure what will happen down the road. Why is the Hollywood mindset that they are the intellectual superior of government and the 'common' man? Besides, government has a knack for not getting things done. And remember, it's liberals who are known for reactionary policy.

"As for the 'Herr' McCain comment, maybe you should take a deep breath and count to ten before you start writing your column. What a highly offensive label. You'd have to add it to Gore and Lieberman's names, too, to be fair, but I don't recommend using it at all. Associating McCain's beliefs with Nazism is the height of slander and bad taste."

DAVID RESPONDS: Well, I would say that your attitude about Hollywood is worse. I don't actually think McCain is a Nazi or I would have said so. You have accused Hollywood of being… well, a lot of stuff. You take your position and assume it to be the standard ("like the rest of the country") and then you excuse the threat of censorship with "well, they are all screw-ups in Washington anyway… don't sweat it." Bad taste, maybe. Hyperbole, definitely. Slander, no. You see, it's called freedom of speech and certainly freedom of hyperbole. But you would draw that line a lot tighter, no? Tell me what I can write? Hmmm…

And on a lighter note, this came from Mr. MR: "Seriously, if you haven't seen Legend of Drunken Master—and judging by the "a month in which I've gone almost a month without a good movie" comment, I'd guess you haven't—then you should really find the time to make the trip. I know you probably won't take this seriously, but it's right up there at the top of my list of most enjoyable movies this year, a list that is qualified by my having seen maybe a dozen movies this year, but still. The comedy is top-notch, with Anita Mui giving one of the most hilarious performances by a woman that I can recall. It's definitely something that's probably not going to be palatable to many Americans, but I found it dead on the money in terms of slapstick, Charlie Chaplin–type humor. The action… I've seen a lot of action/martial arts movies, but this is on an entirely different level from anything Jet Li's ever done, and even most of Jackie Chan's movies can't come close. I'm sorry—it's one of those movies that you can't really describe accurately how you feel about it. It's not perfect, because most of the drama becomes melodrama, but I will say that it's the first movie I'll wind up seeing three times since…god, the Star Wars re-release way back when. Each time I have to see a movie, it's a 15-mile roundtrip bike ride through Appalachian mountaintops, so if I see a movie multiple times (or even once), it has to be good (in my opinion, at any rate). Legend of Drunken Master is a completely unique experience, so I've been heartily recommending it to everyone I know."

E ME: How do the industry's changes affect you?