WEEKEND PREVIEW

Welcome to the dog days.  I haven’t seen any of the three films, so I’ll keep my pithy comments to myself.  Besides, I have one of those personal fest director/columnist conflicts…. I really, really like John Madden and his wife Penny and don’t feel like dissing John’s work… so I will probably wait a long while to see Captain Corelli’s Mandolin at all.  I love Rat Race… many have called me a combo of Cuba Gooding, Jr., Jon Lovitz and John Cleese.  And a personal invite from Ali Larter couldn’t get me to see American Outlaws.  However …

There was bombshell news Friday morning. Variety’s Peter Bart took a “temporary leave” from the trade magazine due to “conduct (that) may have been inconsistent with (the Variety parent) company's values and standards of conduct.” Bart denies the unnamed allegations, which can be found in a memo on the Drudge Report site.

Thing is, I read the article a few days ago, expecting something rough. Well, I read about half the article before my dinner companion arrived. Nothing explosive. Turns out I stopped right before the part that likely got Bart in deep doo-doo. Amy Wallace writes:

“A gay man says that Bart asked him about his health during a job interview. Another former Variety reporter heard Bart say, `I’m not hiring any more fags, because they get sick and die.’ According to more than a half dozen people, he peppers meetings at Variety with derogatory terms: fags, bitches cunts, Nips.”

That’ll kill you at any company.

There are other things in the article that make one question Bart in various ways. But for the most part, I would venture to guess that much of the article would be seen as Bart, at least privately, as complimentary. Bart is repeatedly painted as incredibly smart and even his most heinous deeds are made swashbuckling when excused as efforts to shake things up. When you know how soft headed entertainment reporters can get, anyone who shakes things up is heroic. Wallace’s toughest charge, which she buries in the last page of the 12 page article, is that Bart continues to seek and get work as a screenwriter in the industry he covers. But the memo from above at Cahners doesn’t seem to be about that issue. Wallace’s evidence on that issue is not hearsay from “unidentified third parties,” which is where the memo points.

I suspect that the length of this “temporary leave” will be directly related to the number of lawsuits that come from homosexuals, at Variety, formerly of Variety and not hired by Variety, accusing Bart of bias. And if Bart is forced out, it will be fascinating to see how the story gets played. Between George Christy at The Hollywood Reporter, “David Manning” at Sony and now, Bart, the fast, loose and stylish “Hollywood” style of doing business is under direct attack. But under attack by whom? There is no conspiracy. The irony is that the old school is under attack from its own spawn. Payback’s a bitch. (No lawsuits, please.)

THE GOOD:  John Lippman is doing the Hollywood Journal column for The Wall Street Journal.  The column (click here if you are a WSJ OnLine subscriber) is about the failure of Hollywood to effectively build new stars by way of P.R.  Lippman focuses on the Penelope Cruz thing… more magazine covers than tickets sold.  Ironically, the biggest story of hype hyperactivity is currently on display with Colin Farrell, whose price is now $5 million a movie after appearing in a total of one film that generated very little money.  His second film to generate very little money, American Outlaws, arrives today.  His future is promising… but it is $5 million stars who don’t generate a dime in box office that over inflate budgets far more than $20 million stars who generate $20 million openings.  Farrell is one of those.  Meanwhile, Reese Witherspoon has to fight to get to the $5 million payday, despite being the only frontperson in a major moneymaker this summer, opening the film to over $20 million.

The Ugly?  Tom King will be back writing the column next week.

THE BAD:  I guess I should be pleased that five studios are making a concerted effort to join the internet revolution, building a bridge to a movie industry Napster that can be controlled by the studios.  On the other hand, there is that fear that while the Nazis invading your shores are really well organized, they really don’t understand the idea of national sovereignty.  It is hard for me to imagine anything other than an organization that is very much like the last incarnation of studio-involved web efforts… destined to be a half-billion write-off before the real answer to the question arrives.

The only reason for an on-demand movie service on broadband, or any other current form of the web, is to try to seem hip to the room.  I can imagine no revenue model by which anyone who wasn’t interested in the “amusement” of being a web head would prefer a web delivery system to cable, satellite or Video/DVD.  The excitement of Napster for millions of people was the theft.  You get music on the radio for free.  Downloading it for free felt right.  Downloading old songs that you didn’t want to buy a whole CD to get felt right.  Creating your own “Greatest Hits” CDs felt right.  But it was still theft, no two ways about it.  It was theft that the record companies kind of asked for, given the $6 per CD the industry has been pickpocketing from consumers since the cost of CD production became less than the cost of tape… oh, 15 years ago.

But will the kind of revenue models that the record industry is planning for their re-launch of “Pay Napster” – making more overall revenue by giving us more for less but expanding the customer base to much higher levels - make any sense for the movie business?  No.  The movie industry has already leveraged itself to the degree that existing ancillary markets make up more than 50 percent of overall revenue on most films.  The video window is often less than 6 months from release, less than 4 months (or sometimes 4 days or sometimes no time at all) from the end of domestic theatrical.  Pay cable waits no more than a year for their slice.  Basic cable and network TV waits less than another year.  But the reason network TV has all but bowed out of the competition for first free-TV run features is that with few exceptions, the juice has already been squeezed out of the fruit before it arrives on their air. 

So tell me, how will an added early revenue stream help?  More to the point, will it help make domestic exhibition – still the goose that lays the egg that will be painted in ancillary gold – even more marginalized? 

Could American Pie 2 have generated another $10 million in opening weekend business by going pay-per-view on cable and satellite and this internet service (were it in existence today)?  Absolutely.  But when are you stealing from Peter to pay Paul and how high is the interest rate? 

That’s my concern about the shortening of the video window and the frontloading of the box office.  I was talking to someone the other day and I said, simply, “If I were a studio head, I would never make a movie for over $80 million in today’s climate.  Period.”  And I expect that the current status of exhibition will lead us in that direction more and more.  The next Bay/Bruckheimer film at Disney will, I believe, have a $100 million cap and no freedom to defer any payments, except to above the line talent.  Why?  Because a $50 million return on a $250 million gamble is unacceptable.  Especially when The Fast & The Furious and Legally Blonde and even The Princess Diaries can generate similar or greater profits with far less exposure. 

The thing is, with so much reliance on marketing and ancillaries, the idea that big event movies drive studios is a thing of the past.  One of the scariest things is that as event films become less valuable, sequels become more valuable.   Universal had four $40 million-plus openings this summer… The Fast & The Furious and three sequels.  What advantage do the sequels have?  They are easier to market.

But circling back to the internet project… what’s the projected value to the studios?  What’s the end game?  Perhaps the studios are simply building an alternative to the dual-dictatorship video business (Blockbuster and the struggling Hollywood Video), with no interest in speeding up the process.  But on-demand video is not ever going to be a significant business exclusively on the web.  And when it expands to wired TVs, it will be a whole new ballgame.  If the endgame is an alternative to exhibition, one has to wonder how much shorter the windows can get before it become self-destructive.

Read the wire story, which includes such preposterous notions as “400,000 bootlegged films” being swapped daily on the web right now, by clicking here.

THE INTERESTING:  John Calley’s eighteen month extension is one of the oddest moves in Hollywood in quite some time.  Forget all the questions about the quality and profitability of Sony Pictures in recent years.  Think about this… Calley is not just going to leave.  He is going to retire.  Even if we assume that Sony would be happy to have him in place forever, he is, eventually, moving out.  Everyone has known this for a long while.  How did the October deadline manage to sneak up on the corporation, leaving them without a candidate for Calley’s successor, forcing the extension?  And what really happened to Joe Roth, everyone’s favorite inevitable?

My first thought is one I’ve had about various studios… there is no generation of executives who are perceived to be able to take the place of the people currently in the top studio jobs.  I’m not saying that there aren’t people out there who could do every bit as good a job as the last generation.  Maybe it’s just that most of the young comers have taken roles that are more respected than studio jobs… agents, producers, financiers. 

Then, there is the reality that anyone heading up a studio is going to have good years and bad years.  I already wrote about the idea that Sony is about to go through a good period, starting with Ali… a period that Calley will now get to enjoy from on high.  The same thing happened when Calley came in and got the benefit of a strong 18 months of previously greenlit projects… which were following a disastrous 18 months.  A three-year run of success is an extreme rarity for anyone.  That’s why we have made deities out of Eisner, Katzenberg, Spielberg, Semel/Daly, Diller and Roth.  (I’m sure I’m leaving someone out.)  They all had great runs.  All runs that ended.  But as for the movie stars they hire, a run of big hits can be dined out on for decades. 

Finally, Sony boss man Howard Stringer made the scariest comment I’ve read in a while.  He said that he didn’t need a movie guy, he needed a new media guy.  Howard… please forget you ever said that.  Maybe the world is getting smaller and smaller, but film, however commoditized, is still an art form first.  It has to be.  The movies won’t work if they can’t at least pretend to be art.   In a world of change, some lines must be drawn in ink. 

In the meanwhile, Sony in now officially in play and some of the (appropriately) nervous nellies over at the studio can relax… at least until Christmas.  Ho Ho Ho. 

READER OF THE DAY:  Hey Man writes:  “Well, inspired by that other reader, here's my ratings for the summer:

Top-Notch:
Ghost World
Moulin Rouge
Sexy Beast
Memento
Start-up.com

Entertainment Worth Watching:
Baby Boy
Shrek
With a Friend Like Harry

Flawed Entertainment Worth Watching:
AI
Crazy/Beautiful

Dumb action that bested my expectations:
Mummy Returns
Kiss of the Dragon

Enjoyable Dumb Comedies:
Pootie Tang
American Pie 2

Slightly intelligent that failed to meet my expectations:
The Score
Planet of the Apes
Swordfish
Atlantis

Wastes of my Time and Money:
Jurassic Park III
Knight's Tale
The Deep End

Hope I Never See Them Again:
Pearl Harbor
Tomb Raider

The rest of the summer's flicks I haven't caught yet, but some, like Hedwig and Wet Hot American Summer, I still hope to.  

And in regards to The Deep End, seriously, how did this film get any good reviews?  It's shot beautifully and has an interesting opening, but besides that, what's it got going for it?  Tilda Swinton is good, but her character becomes painfully one note after the first 20 minutes.  Same with her son.   It's also around that part of the movie that the film stops acting with reason or rationality.  The ER Guy doesn't even get to play one note as his character never gets any development or motivation for his changes.  You figure out the exact path the movie is on about 45 minutes into it and then just spend the rest waiting for it to end.  Nice to look at, but a major disappointment based on what I read about it.”

E ME:  Man, I am a Deep End fan.  Major.  And I too would love to see Hedwig and The Wet Hot American Summer.  Kind of like RuPaul in man-drag in But I’m A Cheerleader.  Anyone see anything good this weekend?