Tuesday, 31 October 2000

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

CHICAGO IS A BUSH TOWN: Or is it? Both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times endorsed George Bush last week. That led to a rather shocking piece by Roger Ebert, in his movie column. I say "Huzzah," because there is no question that this is about anything except personal politics. Roger Ebert is not endorsing George Bush. (To read it, click here.) On the other side of the aisle, columns about the music used at the candidates' rallies. (Click here for that.) All thumbs.

CLAUDIA'S FRIDAY SURPRISE: As has become the norm, there was a Friday column by Claudia Eller in the L.A. Times, and it requires an X-ray machine. (Read the article here.) Or maybe it just pays to be kind to Claudia. In the article, the previous regime, led by Peter Guber and Mark Canton, created a "chaotic, misdirected studio." Ms. Eller fails to mention that Calley/Pascal coasted on the success of the troubled previous regime, which only got hot after their exit, for no less than 18 months. Then, Eller starts her mission (you didn't know that journalists had missions, did you?) of laying Sony's failures at the soon-to-exit John Calley's feet and boosting Amy Pascal as someone worth keeping in charge. Calley was "quietly devising" the new power structure for the studio… you know, the one that leaves him out. Mel Harris was placed over Ms. Pascal "in a restructuring intended to quell talk of an unstable studio," not because there are questions about Ms. Pascal as a studio chief.

Pascal is not only one of "Hollywood's brighter stars," but "her rise to the top and four-year tenure at Columbia has been a struggle." You see, it was Calley's fault for making poor Ms. Pascal share power with Lucy Fisher and Gareth Wigan. Pascal gets all the credit for Stuart Little, Big Daddy, and Blue Streak, but blame for flops Center Stage, Loser, and 8mm. But the rest of the list of flops is separated out… movies like Hanging Up and Girl, Interrupted. Calley takes the hit for What Planet Are You From? and Random Hearts, because he is the one who has the relationship with directors Mike Nichols and Sydney Pollack. And of course, Calley has no responsibility for anything positive on the horizon. But what about the rest of the flops? It's a long, long list. Who is responsible for Hollow Man and The Messenger and The Thirteenth Floor and I Dreamed of Africa and Crazy in Alabama and Jakob the Liar and Running Free and My Giant and Hush and on and on? If Pascal gets credit for Phoenix Pictures's anticipated hits, The 6th Day and Vertical Limit, doesn't she deserve equal credit for the failure of Dick and Whatever It Takes? Laurence Mark hasn't been near a hit since Jerry Maguire. His producing credits since then consist of Deep Rising, The Object of My Affection, Simon Birch, Bicentennial Man, Hanging Up, and Center Stage. Can Finding Forrester make all that red ink look black? We'll see.

Pascal by Eller on Charlie's Angels: "This is a movie about totally positive female energy, and I think it's an important thing that girls can be great at everything they do. They can be in love, be tough, have jobs and not sacrifice anything, and be able to fly through the air and look great and be brilliant." It continues: "I really want this one to work because it hasn't been the world's greatest year, and it would be great for this to be the beginning of the turnaround. And it's my story." Indeed. And if that's the case, Pascal doesn't deserve to keep her job. Because even if Charlie's Angels becomes a perceived hit, production was—like her biggest achievement, Stuart Little -- way over budget; the story has been completely rewritten in post; the first-time director was way over his head; and the only reason the film will do business is the raw power of its very expensive stars. If this is how Amy Pascal is going to bring Columbia back to life, start buying black now.

We then continue with Amy Pascal's personal and professional history, with the L.A. Times acting as a kind of personal job-search firm.

Look, I'm an idiot to be writing this. Amy Pascal has been running studios longer than I have been a journalist. And she has a lot of friends in this business. She may be a great movie executive. But there really is nothing that indicates that she can run a studio. Blaming Calley doesn't make it any better. Her problem isn't that Hollywood doesn't give her enough credit. Her problem is that she has greenlit a load of bad movies and very few good ones. The good ones weren't very commercial and the bad ones weren't either. The only business that has worked for this regime was the New Line/Sony High run of low-budget teen movies that couldn't lose money. But that was embarrassing.

What is completely left out of this story, by the way, is Joe Roth, who is likely to become to Sony what Bruckheimer is to Disney, Scott Rudin is to Paramount and Imagine is to Universal and various international financiers are to Warner Bros.… the real power source. Maybe he'll have to share that mantle with Phoenix Pictures. God knows, Columbia has been looking and Devlin/Emmeich hasn't done been The One. But the new structure of Hollywood is that the studio chief isn't often the chief anymore. Fox and DreamWorks are really the only two majors left that rely on in-house decision making rather than major entities under the room. (And god knows, Fox tried to make it work with Cameron and Koppelson and others.) If Phoenix and Revolution provide 10 pictures a year to the studio between them, what is the studio chief's role? Particularly at Columbia, where the company is not as diversified an entertainment giant as Disney, Universal, or Time-Warner.

Charlie's Angels and the rest of the season won't save Amy Pascal any more than Stuart Little did last year. It's a lifeline. But it's not a magic pill. What Ms. Pascal seems to want to run doesn't exist anymore. And if it did, she wouldn't really be the model of a modern major general.

WHAT A WEEK!: What do you give the guys who had everything, but lost it on a really bad sequel that they distanced themselves from in every way except financial? Well, a cancellation notice, of course? Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 took a Taxi Zum Klo this weekend (that's a Taxi to the Toilet for those of you who don't speak German and who don't remember the art films of the early 1980s). Dan Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez stayed out of the BW2 drama, except as exec producers, though I'm sure they aren't thrilled to see their ex-wife's baby's head on the top of a stake. But they are probably even less happy that Fox is preempting their show, FreakyLinks, twice during November sweeps, suggesting very shaky ground for the new, low-rated show. Hope you have a good financial planner, boys.

PAGE 2: Politics, Quote Analysis & Politics… Oh My!