Tuesday, 16 January 2001

WEEKEND REVIEW

Well, it must have been a comfortable weekend for the studio types...

Nothing all that surprising happened at the box office this weekend. Though I personally decided to downgrade the possibilities of Save the Last Dance from the often-buzzed-about tracking, I was wrong. Definitely wrong. (Though I am good driver.) This is the third year in a row that a dance-inclusive romance movie starring a hot, young, up-and-coming actress has opened around Sundance. Miramax mined the market with She’s All That, which opened during the closing weekend of Sundance (with an adults-were-away feel) to more than $16 million. Rachael Leigh Cook was in that movie and she was at Sundance with The Hi-Line, making her an instant goddess of double dipping. Last year, Miramax concocted Down to You, which didn’t do as well, opening with $7.6 million in the first Sundance weekend... but neither Freddie Prinze Jr. nor Claire Forlani nor Jason Biggs nor Amanda Detmer were up in Park City. (Smelling a trend yet?) This year, Save the Last Dance opens the weekend before Sundance (the distribution business is all about the creeping terror) and estimates $24 million for three days, which will increase significantly with teens out of school Monday for MLK Day. Julia Stiles? At Sundance last year with Hamlet... at Sundance this year with The Business of Strangers. The point? Keep sending those Dawson’s Creek kids to Sundance if you want a movie hit. It may not be logical, but the karma logic is building up.

The expansionistic Thirteen Days and Finding Forrester and the new opener Double Take were neck-and-neck-and-neck, based on Sunday’s estimates. And I have to give credit where credit is due. New Line had an estimate of $10.8 million early Sunday morning, putting it in fourth place, over What Women Want, and pulled back to what I assume is a more realistic $10.2 million estimate. Now, there may have been angry phone calls and accusations... who knows? But New Line did what I can only guess everyone agreed was the right thing and stepped back the estimate. The third wide-release newcomer, AntiTrust, opened out of the Top Ten with an estimated $5.2 million. That may be disappointing, but it’s not surprising. After all, neither Rachael Leigh Cook nor Claire Forlani has a Sundance movie this year. (Though the word on Josie and The Pussycats is that it is actually getting close to not sucking as edits continue.)

And of course, there is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the great movie story of 2000/2001. An estimated $8.2 million at 693 sites. And the big move, which I seem to recall is in two weekends, is still to come. I personally feel that at least one eight-figure weekend is critical to the film’s Best Picture aspirations. And if they get more than 1,000 screens quickly enough, that will happen. The strategy seems to be "Have a hot iron...keep it hot." Let’s hope that CTHD continues to beat all the odds.

THE GOOD: A pretty sensational radio show on KABC this Saturday. First up, Leslie Caron and David Brown came in the studio for Chocolat. It is easy to forget in today’s world of cool sloppiness what a glory "Old Hollywood" was and still can be. Caron looks just amazing, even at... that would be too impolite, to write down her age. And Brown was as dapper and as much a gentleman producer as you could imagine. (David Brown, Elie Samaha... Elie Samaha, David Brown... hmmm... Welcome to the new millennium. Yuck!) Of course, reading up on the 20th Century Fox of the late 1960s, it’s clear that Brown could slice and dice with the best of them. But his blade is so sharp, I bet you never notice. (Kind of like looking into Saul Zaentz’s grandfatherly face and knowing that your pants have been removed, your wallet stolen, and the pants cleaned, pressed, and replaced before you can say, "I loved Amadeus.")

The second half of the show belonged to Gary Oldman, who is trying hard to put all that negativity around The Contender to rest. It’s not that there isn’t still some discomfort there. There is. On both sides. But Oldman wants to be a filmmaker these days. That is what drives him. And this whole Contender thing has become a clear example of a private fracas gone public. I am friendly with Rod Lurie and I really liked Oldman and agreed with most of what he had to say about the film business in general. I have heard on and off the record from both sides, and it is amazing how each side corroborates the other’s facts... until you get to the point of argument. So in the end, to me, this sounds like a marriage that soured. Did the wife go crazy and start over-accusing or was the husband cheating on her and trying to make the divorce settlement go easier by telling people she had gone crazy? I don’t know. I can never know. Not because I think anyone is lying, particularly, but because I now believe that this whole drama has become painfully personal and when it’s about feelings more than facts, the facts are always blurry because the heart blurs truth. And when it becomes a game of Hollywood Telephone, it can get downright slanderous.

In many ways, The Contender was a lost opportunity for Oldman and a life-changingly positive one for Lurie. So, I am sympathetic to the person who didn’t get the win. As for whether either man is anything less than perfect on a personal level, that I will decide for myself. And that will take time, particularly with Gary, who I’ve just really met for the first time. But here at ground zero, Gary Oldman is still one of the greatest actors alive and Rod Lurie’s career is well on its way. Both sides say they want to move on with their lives and careers. So be it.

THE BAD: Maybe those who say that my mindset just isn’t all that mainstream have a point. The upcoming Super Bowl match-up of The Baltimore Ravens and The New York Giants stirs my football-loving soul. Why? Because football is all about great defense and this should prove to be one of the great defensive battles in the history of the Super Bowl. I’m the same way about baseball. I love a slugfest on a hot summer day (which is rarely when they happen because the heat slows down the ball), but give me a great pitcher’s duel anytime. And I guess it is true about movies. I guess I do respect a film that can engage my mind and the hidden, dark side of my heart more than I do a movie that makes me laugh my butt off. I’ll stop and watch Blazing Saddles any time it is on, but when I watched The Right Stuff the other morning... I felt alive, rich with emotion. And I am engaged by brilliant technique, so long as it actually connects with the story. Eyes Wide Shut is a perfect example. There is no more complex dream film ever made, to my knowledge. But it was behind The War Zone, a simply told and powerful story about incest, on my "Best of" list for 1999. But South Park, American Movie, and Election all were in the Top 20. Anyway, just a thought. (And as a child of Bal-mur, go Ravens!)

THE UGLY: It’s cold in L.A. There is no news. Thank god for Sundance!

THE CHAT: The Yahoo! chats from Sundance start on Saturday, January 20, with beautiful creatures from Beautiful Creatures: Rachel Weisz and Susan Lynch. There will be a chat pretty much every day from that day on, sometimes two. Right now, the schedule includes such great names as Gary Oldman (Nobody’s Baby), Jacqueline Bisset (Sleepy Time Gal), Guy Pearce and Joe Pantoliano (Memento), Julia Stiles and Stockard Channing (The Business of Strangers), and either Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce or Molly Shannon (Wet Hot American Summer). And we’ve just started booking people.

The chats are set for 4 pm Sundance Time (that’s 3 pm PST and 6 pm EST). But keep an eye out for changes here at roughcut and at chat.yahoo.com.

RADIO RADIO: George and I are off this week because of the inauguration. But we’ll be back a week from Saturday, with George in the studio and me in Park City. Saturdays at 11 am PST on KABC-790 in L.A. and at kabc.com on the web.

JUST WONDERING: If we at roughcut feel like we are going to Condition Red as Sundance starts, can you imagine what the people who have to make the festival run feel like? It’s amazing. And really exciting. We’ve added even more bells and whistles to the coverage. It’s gonna be fun!

BAD AD WATCH: This is not a bad ad. It’s actually a delightful surprise that makes me think better of the universe. Fine Line’s Before Night Falls (Number One on my Best of 2000 list... and no, I haven’t made the ad) has the standard "We Already Won All This Stuff" ad. But below the large picture of has-to-be-an-Oscar-nominee Javier Bardem, four other actors are pictured with names below their photos. Two are Johnny Depp. It’s a shame to give that away, but so be it. But then, they highlight Olivier Martinez and Olatz Lopez Garmendia, two new faces who normally wouldn’t make an ad. True, Ms. Garmendia is also one of the film’s exec producers and the wife of filmmaker Julian Schnabel. But I don’t really think that’s the motivation. I think it’s just a more complex aesthetic mindset.

PAGE TWO: An ROTD Goes Top Ten Crazy!!!!