There is a new Director of the Miami Film Festival.  She is Nicole Guillemet, formerly of the Sundance Film Festival.  I have a strong sense that she will make this work, in great part because she will have the freedom, funding and control that we didn’t have last year.  If she hasn’t gotten that spelled out in her contract, she’s nuts.  (I was nuts.)  But she’s a smart lady who has been around for a long time and I’m sure she will cover her ass.  Miami is ready for a serious film festival.  The deep pockets are a different kind of challenge.  I wish her the best.   

QUIET EXIT:  Alex Gartner has “chosen to pursue other opportunities…” other than running a movie studio.  As production president at MGM since 1999, Gartner has overseen a spectacularly ugly run of dreck, with only Hannibal and Legally Blonde turning strong profits for the studio.  (Heartbreakers and Return to Me were moderately well-liked borderliners.)  Was Windtalkers the final straw? 

The studio has managed to spin some into writing that the film was always intended for a November 2001 release, but got pushed back due to 9/11.  That’s not true.  The film was scheduled for July 2001 and had trailers, posters and standees in place last spring… just like Rollerball.  I would argue that the studio moved Rollerball to January and Windtalkers to summer to fill out their schedule, as they scramble to sell the studio.  Windtalkers gives MGM a major summer release without the studio having to spend the money on another major summer release.  Bond is already set for the fall legitimacy drive.  The studio knew that both films were dead last year around this time. They just had to pick dates for the funerals. 

Windtalkers is easily one of the worst films of this summer or any summer.  It is John Woo’s worst work ever… it is endlessly confused… and it fails in every basic premise, from explaining the title (the word “Windtalker” is not used a single time in the film) to exploiting its premise (in a film about Navajo code, the code is used twice in the entire movie, both times to transmit information about the enemy’s position.)

All I know is that the new United Artists is an asset to the film industry and to film lovers everywhere… let’s all hope and pray that their funding continues apace.

HE TOLD YOU DO:  Gossip writers rely on two kinds of sources.  They have angry people who tell secrets and they have professional people who are releasing information that is supposed to look secret.  This is the nature of the beast.  So I had to laugh when I read Neil Travis this morning, who was slinging his pride about being right on the Gangs of New York story, supporting the film when everyone else was going in for the kill.  And now, he's is making completely specious comparisons to The Godfather.  Geez…

The cycle of this stuff always amazes me.  I have been defending Scorsese and this film for a long time.  What is clear is that there was a battle of wills between Harvey Weinstein and Martin Scorsese.  And what compromise they have come to is still unknown to all but a handful of people.  Anyone who believes that the Pat Kingsley campaign of peace is the whole story is a moron.  And anyone who thinks that a 24 minute preview reel is a guarantor of the film’s success is equally lacking in brain tissue. 

However, Travis is correct about one thing.  Pat & Harvey & Marty have turned the tide.  I never thought that Scorsese would deliver anything less than brilliant work.  But now, they are back in the Oscar business.  It is still unlikely, it seems to me, that Gangs will ever be a movie that makes $100 million domestic.  But it seems very likely that Miramax will push both Gangs and Chicago as their Oscar movies - one a hard, tough, demanding epic and the other a frivolous musical with well-liked stars and surprising turns.  The loser in all this is Frida, which seems like it will be the victim of benign neglect from Weinstein, who has clashed with director Julie Taymor, a second-timer who doesn’t have the industry profile to win a war of words with Weinstein. 

NEW TIMES?:  The New York Times’ Tuesday coverage of the Woody Allen trial was quite odd, I thought… not just for content, but because it was in the New York Times.  Writers Andy Newman and Corey Kilgannon combined their look at the trial with an early Tuesday screening of Allen’s Hollywood Ending, which, in an amazing coincidence, was cancelled because of technical problems.  Nonetheless, there were only 8 people at the theater for the cancelled show… which four weeks in and on Tuesday afternoon, isn’t really embarrassing.  But the writers go on to compare the turnout for Hollywood Ending to the turnout for the civil trial between Woody and his longtime best friend Jean Doumanian.  And then, in the oddest turn of all, they gave voice to the handful of people who were leaving the cancelled screening and who were in court, watching the proceedings. 

I don’t get it.  Is it news or is it a feature?   If it’s news, why are people who went to see a movie being treated as sources and why isn’t the box office for Hollywood Ending being given a serious look?  If it’s a feature, why bother with facts about the suit… why not just stick with the character study?

You should have your free NYT online registration by now.  If you do, click here to read the story. 

CYCLE KILLER?:  How does Hollywood know a genre cycle is dead, even though the greenlights tend to take another year to stop lighting?  They start making comedy movies about the genre.  Scream marked the end of the serious horror cycle.  Spaceballs marked the end of the space sagas.  Heathers killed off teen movies... for a while.  And when Saturday Night Live starts beating a genre up every week, you know that the end is near.  (John Belushi as a gassy Hulk at a superhero cocktail party all but ended super hero TV… The Greatest American Hero killed it off for good… for now.) 

So what to make of Shrink!, a great idea that has to walk an interesting line?  The film will be about a psychologist to the super heroes.   The lead is a retired super heroine who finally got her degree.  The  screenplay hasn’t even gone through a draft yet, so who knows how much intellect, how much super hero, but it will be a fine line. 

RUNAWAY:  Will California actually take off the gloves in the fight against runaway production.  Here’s an update from last week.

JUST WANNA SAY:  I dumped the $30 a month showbizdata.com a month or so ago because they just stopped doing the job.  Forced to use the web for info, I have found that boxofficemojo.com has stepped up as the clear leader in homegrown box office sites.  Brandon Gray, a USC grad with a love of the numbers, has done his homework, filled out a lot of the old box office info and has built his site in a way that make it unusually easy to navigate.  So, if you are looking for box office info, I believe that box officemojo.com is the first place you should stop.

ALSO:  I hear that Upcomingmovies.com is being absorbed by Yahoo! Movies.  Congratulations to Greg Dean Schmitz, who has worked his ass off in the cheese fields of the midwest for years and will now move to the coast.  Great for him and a smart movie for Yahoo!. which seems to have figured out one thing… how to build itself into a top destination site for movie information.  There’s this deal, which puts them in the movie geek business, the E! deal, which puts them in the celebrity business… if they acquire boxofficemojo or boxofficeguru, they will have the box office covered.  Smart.  They are finally getting into the one-stop-shopping business that built AOL in the pre-www days.  And if they can do it cheaply enough, they will bring the company back to life. 

REAR VIEW:  There has been so much Attack of the Clones talk recently that a fresh perspective is quite welcome.  And a passionate one came from one Roger Kaufman, who wrote into the Counterpunch section of the L.A. Times this week.  Kaufman embraces the political undertones of Lucas’ films and adds a gay perspective that makes one wonder…  Read the story here.

YOU’VE HEARD:  That Bernie Mac will be Bosley and that Jamie Foxx will not.  Mac was a highlight in Ocean’s Eleven and is a perfect choice to follow Murray.  He is the kind of performer who can be the foundation for a franchise.  The “Halo” screenplay from John August that was floating around last fall is having some reconstruction, mostly for budgetary reasons. 

As for McG and Superman, I was in a Miami fog when that story hit the fan.  Regardless of whose story they end up using, the idea of using McG gives you some idea of how Joel Schumacher was allowed to destroy the Batman franchise.  And of course, WB is now way, way behind the superhero curve and won’t be able to deliver a Batman or Superman movie before Spider-Man 2 comes and goes.   They can try to sneak in behind Episode III in early May 2005, but that’s along, long way away.

SHOUT OUT: While we are busy looking at Charlie’s Angels 2, let’s give a shout out to Spike Lee, who made The Original Kings of Comedy happen and should be given a lot of credit – just behind the talent of the men themselves – for turning on the careers of Bernie Mac and Cedric The Entertainer, who is also involved with a bevy of films this year.  Lee made that movie for almost no money and took two guys who were well-known only in the Black community and made Hollywood take notice.  It can happen.  It does happen.  Indie film lives.

ALBA MACARONI:  They just signed Jessica Alba to do a movie called Honey, described by The Hollywood Reporter as: “a music-driven coming-of-age drama about a sexy, tough inner-city woman (Alba) who hopes to start a neighborhood dance studio and subsequently is discovered by a music mogul. After she finds success as a hot new video choreographer, her dream is threatened when her mentor blackballs her for not sleeping with him.

Shouldn’t they call it “Flashdance Meets Mahogony?”

READER OF THE DAY:  Auntie MAE offers his list of why Clones is performing worse that Phantom Menace:  “1.  The wonder is gone.  Lucas created an immersive world in his first trilogy, it may not have been high art, but it sucked you in.  The Phantom Menace popped that warm bubble of fantasy.  (I don't need, I'm sure, to delineate all the specifics of how, race track announcers, midiclorians, etc...)  Although the last third of Clones IS very engrossing, the first 2/3rds is not.

2.  There will be little repeat viewing.  Oh I know this movie will sell mucho DVD's.  Hell, I'll pre-order my copy as soon as humanly possible.  But very few people want to sit through Anakin's whine-fest or the horrible clunky romance sub-plot more than once.  (which was about as convincing as the romance in Saving Silverman, by the way)  Sure the ending is slam-bang (literally), but getting there is a labor.

3.  There's better stuff out there.  Star Wars blazed a fiery trail when it first came out, it proved Sci-fi and Fantasy could be lucrative.  But the level of quality was not sustained from the first trilogy to the second.  It suffers in comparison with the characters of Spider Man or the epic sweep of Lord of The Rings.  It's just not the only game in town anymore.

4.Watching teenagers is usually a waste of time.  Teens are sulky, and moody and think WAY to highly of themselves for the most part.  Even other teenagers only embrace 'movie teens' if they can identify with them in some way.  Who can identify with a psycho stalker jedi or a 26 year-old princess/senator or whatever the hell Padme Amidala supposed to be?  Hell, they can't even get her name straight.”

Jackie Chen adds:  “No matter what, the audiences have lost their trust with him (G.L.), literally broken with THE PHANTOM MENACE, that pretty much damaged their relations (and will be tough to fix it even if EPISODE 3 turns out to be much superior to ATTACK OF THE CLONES)...

The apparent fact is that THE PHANTOM MENACE was such a god-awful movie that absurdly made nearly ONE BILLION DOLLARS worldwide (without ANY merit to deserve that amount of dough) because of overhype and too high expectations, and even that Lucas played the arrogant type in all media interviews stating that:

•  EPISODE ONE WAS NOT A MISTAKE AT ALL,  plus
• ALL OF YOU ARE WRONG AND RIDICULOUS REGARDING THE JAR JAR BINKS PREJUDICE, and
• STAR WARS is MY property so I CAN DO WHATEVER WHAT I DO, and
• IF YOU DON' T LIKE  THIS NEW TRILOGY JUST DON'T GO TO SEE, THEN....

So, this is our "message reply" to Mr. Lucas (from the heart of the ol' fans who made him rich and 'powerful'):

We simply are not going to watch it, then... and you can consider EPISODE 3 already D.O.A., (sorry for that, dude...but what comes around goes around...) It will be an Eye for an Eye thing from now on..

Plus, like he said before (and should eat his own words) during post-PHANTOM MENACE debacle:  " It's a just a movie, damnit... who cares? People should get a life, gee..."

OK... Therefore, this is exactly what the fans are doing right now in response to the Lucasfilm reply:  Now the fans decided to "obey" him and REALLY  get a life and  NOT WATCHING HIS FILMS, for the simple lack of respect and humbleness no longer existent in his person, for those folks who made him into a billionaire (by watching the original trilogy gazillion times and every merchadising related to the SW universe)...

For a chump who thinks that he's the Second Coming of Christ telling people what to do and being "evalengical" on stop shooting in Film and starting buying HD gear and dump all the 35 mm Film Projectors because my film will look better with digital projection (?!), I guess he should take a hike, and wake up that he is flawed human being like all of us, with a couple of skeletons in the closet yet to get fixed...”

And Not So Little takes George’s side:  “There are a few reasons why "The Phantom Menace" was a bigger hit domestically than "Attack of the Clones" will be... 

#1 TPM didn't face nearly as much competition as AOTC.
#2 TPM had 16 years of anticipation working for it.
#3 TPM appealed to a wider audience.

AOTC is essentially a fanboy movie while TPM appealed mostly to the family crowd.  The die-hard fans of the Original Trilogy, for the most part, have praised AOTC as one of the best films of the entire series, yet casual fans seem to miss a lot of the nods to the OT (such as Obi-Wan telling Anakin that he'll be the "death" of him). 

You have to have seen all 3 of the original films to truly enjoy AOTC.  With TPM, you really didn't have to see the OT to enjoy it.  One of the biggest complaints about TPM (other than Jar Jar) was how it appealed mostly to casual fans and virtually ignored the more serious fans of the series.  AOTC basically flips that card and appeals mostly to the serious fans and alienates a lot of the casual moviegoers. 

In the end, it's hard to say that a movie "only" making $285 to $300 million is a "disappointment".  Plus, the movie will more than likely end up bigger than TPM was overseas.  Internationally, the reviews have been a lot kinder and AOTC is looking at possibly having a $500 million run overseas before it's all said and done.

(DAVID NOTE:  This week’s foreign numbers suggest otherwise, but…)

I think some people in the media should just really back off from all the Lucas bashing.  Despite what they say, AOTC will still make a lot of coin, as well as selling a lot of videos and DVDs at the end of the year.  Lucas is still going to make more millions, and cats like Jeff Wells should really just get over it.  With all the trash said about the movie, it's still going to end up being one of the top 20 grossing films in history.

AOTC is a movie for the fans, not the critics.  As a whole the Star Wars movies are supposed to be modern day versions of the Flash Gordon serials.  The acting and dialogue is supposed to be hokey at times, that's the fun of it.  This isn't "Citizen Kane", it's Star Wars.  These movies are supposed to be fun rides and that's exactly what I, and a lot of other fans, got out of AOTC.  What's so bad about that?

Resident Jeffy writes:  “I wouldn't give a single actor/actress/director/producer/etc.. any kind of back-end/profit participation/front-end/gross profits/whatever/deal...and I'd cut the highest salary at $10 million.

I would hold a huge press conference announcing my studio's new policy and I'd tell the world it's time Hollywood got it's act together.  I'd announce that from the "hopeful" savings my studio would see from this...we're going to donate 1% of every box office gross from every movie to charities/organizations around the world that fight poverty, educating children, curing cancer, etc...

In making all of this very public, I'm hoping that some of the bigger box office draws decide they don't need to make $20 mil+ simply because they can...and they would love to associate themselves with my studio.  If not, that's fine...

That's my dream for Hollywood.”

ER Season Finale writes:  “Nice column on Lew Wasserman. I have a cool little story involving the man. Back in the mid-90s, the Neon Movies here in Dayton, Ohio held a mini-festival of Janet Leigh movies: The Manchurian Candidate, Touch of Evil and Psycho. Leigh was there to introduce the movies and sign copies of her book on the making of Psycho.

When the theater manager was trying to book the prints, he was only able to get a 16 millimeter copy of Psycho, and although he lobbied hard, the distributor told him 35 millimeter prints weren't available at the time. The manager didn't want to involve Leigh, but he felt he owed her an explanation that she would be introducing a 16-millimeter print of her most famous movie.

"Is that right?" she said. "Let me see if I can't talk to someone about that."

Turns out that someone was Lew Wasserman. Leigh put in a call to him, and he convinced the folks at Universal to send us the master 35-millimeter print of Psycho---the one the president gets if he wants it; the one used to make other prints!  So thanks to Leigh and Wasserman, we got to see a practically spotless print of Psycho. Wasserman was cool even in the small ways he pulled the strings.”

And this kinda confirmation from Not MSNBC:  “Nice piece, but you overlooked the key reason why Ovitz fell short:  Wasserman was a gentleman. Ovitz is an asshole.  And people do hold grudges.

E ME:  Do you hold grudges?  Is Episode 3 going to be D.O.A.?  And are you ready for the rest of the summer to begin?