Sunday, 31 December 2000

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2001

Each year, I have made a point of reviewing the previous year’s resolutions at the top of this column. But looking back, I kind of crapped out last year and didn’t really resolve anything for the studios. The general resolutions for 1999 are still hanging there, undone, two years later:

• Pay-per-view network
• Seat counting instead of screen counting, which isn’t accurate anyway because multiplexes vary screen allocation all the time
• More variety in trailer length
• Dumping of SDDS, DTS, and Dolby tags, and of non-movie commercials for that matter
• Ushers who act like ushers
• Revival house revival
• Move to push all these critics awards and the Golden Globes into January, where they belong

I also resolved last January to do the following:

• To make The Hot Button as complete and fair as possible
• To worry less about the advantages being given to other people, traditional media outlets, and web sites, and to focus exclusively on making roughcut.com better
• To demand that studios and publicists understand the value of the web, of you as committed readers, and of roughcut.com specifically
• To sleep more, play more, and maybe even take a vacation in 2000
• To make the readers an even more important part of the site

I am happy to say that roughcut accomplished much of that in 2000, though every one of those battles will still have to be fought as we continue into 2001.

And now, this year’s resolutions:

The Academy
Don’t be afraid! Don’t be very afraid! You have the opportunity to embrace some of the finest small-film work delivered in a group by American filmmakers since the early 1970s. Don’t be too afraid of drugs, homosexuality, corporal punishment, Mandarin, Spanish, youth, or intimacy to do the right thing when it’s time to nominate and then vote.

DreamWorks
It was the best of years, it was the worst of years. Things started off badly with The Road to El Dorado, but what a recovery! Summer movies, bling bling! But when fall came and you had two strong movies to make happen, the wheels came off. So what happened? It was always the perception of DreamWorks that, because creatives owned the company, it would be enormously talent-friendly. But since the magic of American Beauty, it seems the studio has forgotten how to make and sell the small film and is all about the big film. Or maybe there is something in the water... did Steven and Harvey Weinstein have a drink of dosed water together at a party or something? The biggest resolutions for DreamWorks are: 1) Take your hands off your filmmakers’ movies... you hired directors you trusted, now let them work. The idea that there is something magic about being under two hours, 15 minutes is arbitrary and destructive. If you want to make packaged meats, make them. But don’t sell "the artistic community of DreamWorks" and then cut filmmakers off at the knees; and 2) Make a Steven Spielberg movie! I know, I know, Minority Report is coming... it’s been coming for two years... make it so!

Variety
Embrace the Internet. You have a singular niche in the industry, and don’t forget that your past is every bit as important as the web’s future. You could blow content aggregators out of the water in a heartbeat if you chose to do so. But right now, you are not nearly web-friendly enough. Forget old school. No one comes to web sites every day to see pretty images that look like a magazine cover. They come for content. Add 10 percent to the overall crew, deliver the unique information you already have in your files in a helpful way, and you’ll sell $40 a month in on-line subscriptions inside the industry in even greater numbers than you sell the print version.

Fox
It’s been a year of fairly massive transition for the studio, and that’s left it with no clear image of its future, other than the fact that it will be global. Resolve to find definition for 2001. It’s interesting that Tom Rothman’s big kick-off at the studio comes from two art films: Phil Kaufman’s Searchlight picture, Quills; and the most expensive art film ever, Cast Away, which is already a bigger success than anyone expected... anyone except perhaps Rothman. Resolve to get an ID4-2 in the works for 2003, now that Devlin/Emmerich is needy and Bill Mechanic -- who I gather had a personal conflict with the boys -- is gone. And keep those monkeys hidden as long as possible.

Paul Verhoeven
Stop defending Starship Troopers every seven minutes. Let history do it for you. It is never going to be the film you see in your head, but let the argument that it was misunderstood when first released be made by scholars and film writers. And, yes, Showgirls is beyond redemption except as a Midnight Movie.

MGM
Resolve to forget that the year 2000 ever happened. For whatever reasons, the pockets seem to have opened up for this year. Ride Francis Coppola to some form of glory. Ride Rollerball to some kind of solvency in the movie division. Never make the dreaded Pink Panther remake or sequel or whatever... a guaranteed nightmare.

National Board of Review
Expose thyself. If you have a shred of dignity, you will reach past your pleasure at being first, and having the media suck up to you on that basis alone, and you will make a serious effort to present yourselves as players whose opinions should be valued... and if exposure means more ridicule, I guess you have it coming, right?

Miramax
In January 2000, Harvey Weinstein got sick... and Miramax never quite recovered. They may have had the most profitable film of the entire year with Scary Movie, but outside of that, clunk, clunk, clunk. A few weeks ago, Harvey shot a cannonball across the industry’s bow, announcing his previously unscheduled return to Sundance and stating that Miramax will be a vigorous player at the festival. Perhaps it was just time... or maybe he saw the bottom line of All the Pretty Horses and some of the other bigger-budget films and looked at the upcoming strike and decided that it was time. Resolve to breath deeply.

Inside.com
Resolve to return to your old graphic style. You don’t have enough readers to stir up the outrage that Salon did when it made its near-fatal redesign, but your new look is even worse than Salon’s. If the goal is to sell subscriptions, service your reader, not your need for page views to sell banners. But even if you are just going to evolve into a banner business, the surf-ability of the site just dropped so much that you are surely losing page views... I know you’re losing them from me, and I’m a strongly committed film newsreader.

New Line
You became a hit in the business of $15 and $20 million movies... and cheaper. Go back to the force, Mike! Lord of the Rings is in possession of the studio for the next two years... great. Now keep pushing for those small, funny, angry, or wild movies that you built the studio on, surprise after surprise. New Line is not a studio meant to have an adolescence... the acne of 2000 was pretty ugly. Resolve to remain young and beautiful... get those silly tattoos... drink too much.... play too hard... we need your youth!

Richard Roeper
So now it’s been a few months. There is nothing you can do to stop the attacks on your flanks from people who felt they should have gotten the job. But you can make a move in the right direction by taking a film class or two. I know it may be humiliating, but it’s the only way to learn what you do not know. The "regular guy" thing will never work because you aren’t a regular guy... you play like a snobby Midwesterner, which worked for Gene, but only because he seemed to know what he was talking about, even when he didn’t. Roger was the "regular guy" in that pairing... even though he was the more committed film critic. Here’s an idea... rent Broadcast News and take what Holly Hunter says to heart. You don’t want to be thought of as the William Hurt character, do you? He could hide behind the desk. You’re exposed in that aisle seat every week. Learn your craft.

Paramount
Your art house division, Paramount Classics, is making great choices... they need more money to sell what they have. They happen to be the only division of your company that is delivering greatness on a regular basis... the only great movie from The Big House was Wonder Boys. Resolve to designate an exclusive Internet conduit for the marketing division. Resolve to continue rolling along... never a thrill, never a spill.

Jack Valenti
Resolve to come up with a rating that will allow all kinds of films to be made and sold to the public. Rate the films more clearly so that parents don’t have to wonder what a "hard R" is and what a "soft R" is. Sure, it’s unlikely that you will ever have $100 million hits in the NC-17 (or whatever new name you come up with to remove the stench of NC-17) category, but there is no reason that there can’t be $50 million hits. So, filmmakers who want to make "adult" films will have to work on smaller budgets. Fine. That’s the marketplace. The system now in place creates censorship. Either that, or resolve to put Bill Clinton on the ratings board and, soon, Deep Throat will be R rated.

Sony
You may have had one of the worst years of movies ever in the industry. By the time you got around to finishing strong, you were so obsessed with launching Charlie’s Angels, which despite a record opening is The Patriot of the fall... the one that got away. I can’t even begin to come up with a resolution for this studio. I believe that more transition is coming. I believe that more transition should come. And so the crystal ball remains murky.

The New Premiere Magazine
Niche, niche, niche. Entertainment Weekly has become the dominant force in entertainment-print journalism by becoming the People magazine of entertainment... any article can be read while taking a leak. You need to start virtually from scratch. Which does not mean that you need a big staff change. Just an attitude change. I would resolve to combine silly, sexy, and unbeatable depth in coverage. The weakest part of EW, thus the most vulnerable, is the features section. Blow them away. You have the access. You have the ammo. Go get ’em. You don’t have to beat EW... just fill the void that they do not.

Universal
You didn’t see Erin Brockovich coming, and Isn’t She Great, Screwed, The Skulls, and Viva Rock Vegas had to hurt. But you haven’t missed once since The Klumps came to town... very impressive. But do I really want you to resolve not to make chance-y movies like Isn’t She Great or The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle? No. Universal is back on the road now, and things are going right. And no, I don’t really care who wins the box-office crown for the year. It’s a stupid stat, and it always has been a stupid stat. Tell me who made the most profit this year as a studio and I will crow about that all week long.

The Shooting Gallery
God bless you... resolve to keep it up.

USA Films
You got seven nominations and two Oscar wins for Topsy-Turvy and Being John Malkovich. You’re about to get mach that or maybe even exceed that for Traffic. You’re good at this stuff. Resolve to stay in the art business, even if it is a loss leader. Resolve to build an art niche for television to go with your hot-n-horny USA TV Network. Stick to the edgy stuff... it’s what you are good at. Forget the Agnes Brownes and Condo Paintings. You could have made Waking the Dead work. Nurse Betty did pretty well, considering that you had no talent who could open a movie like that. Watch the budgets, but keep things going.

As for myself, I resolve once again to keep building roughcut.com and to making The Hot Button better and better. Part of that may be more than one week off for me a year. It may even be less than six columns a week. After three and a half years and almost two million words, I am ready to evolve into making less into more. But the resolution is always the same... make it sharper, make it smarter, make it better. I hope I can fulfill the resolution.

Happy New Year!

HOLIDAY SCHEDULE:
Wednesday, 12/27 - Top Ten Movies I Just Don't Get
Thursday, 12/28 - The Worst Ten of 2000
Friday, 12/29 - The Best Ten Films of 2000
Weekend, 12/30 - New Year's Resolutions
Tuesday, 1/2/01 - Hot Button 2001 begins