Continued ...
16 May 2002

MARTY AND HARVEY, SITTING IN A TREE:  Pat Kingsley has struck again, showing her absolute genius in handling a problem story.  As I thought about it yesterday, it occurred to me that I could never do what Ms. Kingsley does so well.  I can identify it when she does it – usually – but, I could never conceptualize it early enough to make it happen.  And I would never have the brass cojones to move forward, worried that my effort would be seen through or that the players would turn on me.

Oh yes… the details.  Kingsley was hired by Miramax to “handle” the Gangs of New York mess that flared up a few months ago when the movie changed dates again and chafing between Scorsese and Weinstein started to become the story.  While the film is still not likely to be highly commercial – Scorsese pictures never are – it could be buried if the story becomes about nothing but the friction between producer and director.  It happens every few years.  Movies like Ishtar and The Cotton Club were good enough to have much bigger audiences, were it not for the press that covered everything but the movies themselves.  Even weak movies, like All The Pretty Horses and Rollerball, suffered from non-movie publicity.  That’s why companies now look to get out way ahead of the curve.   DreamWorks set the tone for the fall release of American Beauty even before Fox started selling Fight Club in earnest.  Lucas has played the media on Clones, as The Penquin might say, like a harp from hell.  And while lots of media outlets are trying to get out ahead on the Matrix sequels, AOLTW is giving an exclusive to the family friendly Jess Cagle at Time (as in AOL TIME Warner). 

What is the key on all three stories?  The defining story.   Bernie Weinraub set the American Beauty story with a very early screening and an anonymous online review from IMDb.  Harry Knowles set the Attack of the Clones story with a review from a screening by a secret source, while other web outlets got official screenings that came with embargo dates.  And Cagle got the only unembargoed set visit on The Matrix. 

Pat Kingsley needed a defining story on Gangs of New York.  Too many people had too many opinions based on too many rumors about what happened on the film.  Someone legit needed to do the story.  And to get someone legit to do the story, there had to be admissions about some of the problems on the film while also calming the waters and setting the numbers.  (This is another classic ploy.  Get a major – more often than not, Entertainment Weekly – to run a budget number and that becomes affixed to the film, even if it is an outright lie.)  Not only does this set certain stories in much needed perspective, but it tends to make other writers and editors less interested in digging around in the dirt.  “It’s been done” becomes the cry in newsrooms around America. 

Enter Kim Masters.  She is legit.  She is smart.  And she handles the knife with which her bread is buttered with the deftness of a first rate surgeon. 

Esquire is the outlet and Kim has provided the definition.  Lovable, gruff Harvey has a culture clash with loveable, fast-talking Marty and it’s all just for the love of the movies.   Ms. Masters smacks Weinstein around with all the condescending hubris that makes the reader think that she’s pulled one over on him and the handlers who gave her access to the dynamic duo.  Scorsese is the filmmaker with blinders on, always ready to go another round in the editing room.  Masters gets all the historical details of the project.  She sets the boundaries of “truth” for the film. 

The movie is, once again, unfinished.  That’s why it’s not opening Cannes... not because, as rumors have it, Giles Jacob passed on the film as the opener… not because, as is a given, Miramax decided not to spend the money to release the movie mid-summer… and not not not because Miramax doesn’t really believe in the movie.  (Of course, the winning answer to the delay to December is always, “We see it as an Oscar movie and it has the best chance to be a serious contender with a December release.”  That backfires, however, if they move the film to October or out of Oscar contention with a January/February 2003 release.)

Masters sets the over-budget budget at $115 million, maybe more.  But lazy journalists will use that $115 million figure like a life preserver. 

Leo really wasn’t a problem, Daniel Day-Lewis is still an obsessive method actor and Cameron Diaz is still the fairest of them all.  Everything fits. 

There is some more anxiety between Scorsese and Weinstein, but it is all in the name of the two men doing their jobs.   Harvey seems so real when he asks Marty to think like a Jew.  Marty is so anal about getting every shot just right.  I guess that would be called praising with faint damning. 

Scorsese takes the hits in post-production too.  Any moron had to know that a 3 hour, 40 minute cut was not meant for release.  Some brave executive, who probably never did anything creative his or her self, is quoted by Masters:

"I think [Scorsese] is just wrong," lamented another at that stage. "He's so caught up in the making of it and the look of it without worrying about story or characters you give a shit about. . . . Does the word succinct ever occur to him? Martin Scorsese is enjoying the view of his navel." 

OY!!!!  If you don’t have enough perspective to understand process and to appreciate that no matter how much navel gazing there may be, Scorsese is not an idiot and has always made character driven films, you should shut up, lest you embarrass yourself.  But this person probably thought Kundun was a waste of film.  Even a bad movie, as the release print of Meet Joe Black was, is more than its weakest parts.  There is some wonderful filmmaking in the film and a 30-minute cut probably would have made it quite watchable.  But to say that Marty Brest was not worried about story or character would be an idiotic comment.  Kubrick was not navel gazing with Eyes Wide Shut, but he was making a picture that was not commercial at all, unless you consider the grosses for Memento – another brilliant, non-commercial film - acceptable for a Tom Cruise movie.  

I’ve digressed… 

It’s an excellent story and Masters does her usual, thorough work.  But we must never forget that it is, in the end, still a piece of publicity.  This is a story that Miramax wanted… that PMK wanted.   And they understand that if they wanted the story to feel real, they needed to take the heat on some things.  But they got what they wanted.  I believe there is a story working at the New York Times Magazine.  And there will be a little buzz around the 20 minutes shown at Cannes.  (That is perhaps the most telling thing about this story… they showed Masters only the 20-minute promotional clip, not the whole, damned-near-completed film.  Why?  And why was that acceptable to Kim and her editors?)  But expect this story to quiet the rough waters around Miramax for a while.  Spy Kids 2 will front the next round of Miramax stories.  And the next time Harvey and Marty talk publicly about Gangs will be sometime in the fall. 

Mission accomplished.

(You can read the whole story here.)

READER OF THE DAY:  The Sphere wrote at 2:36 a.m.:  “As I was leaving the theatre this morning after watching a midnight screening of Attack of the Clones.  I began to think about all the negative reviews I have read and all the other reviews that seemed to like the movie but find flaws in it.  Then the spoilers I have read for the last 2 years.  And even more stuff related to this movie. 

In about 2 minutes after seeing the film.  I came to a revelation; I really do not get any criticism of this film.  I may be a Star Wars die hard fan, but I am not a fool. I do not live in a hole somewhere in the woods.  I try to watch, listen, and read as much as I can so I get as full a grasp as I can for what is entertainment in our society today.  I admit, it might have a sort slant here or there.  However, I feel I am a well rounded guy.  A guy who cannot understand why the dialogue of Attack is being attacked.  How is this dialogue different from any other movie that comes out?  The dialogue in Fellowship of The Ring is easier to follow than this?  This criticism baffles me.  (Was it better) before you became an analytical and cynical human being?  That is all I ask, really.  Maybe that is all Lucas asks, but people seem stubbornly against giving it to him.  It is sad really.  Truly and utterly sad that we live in a culture that cannot appreciate Star Wars.  That cant appreciate something that is more special then most films Hollywood pumps out week after week, and year after year.”

E ME:  Force yourself to write me an e-mail.  And remember, there is no send button.