Joe Morgenstern has got me in a funk this morning…

I don’t know Joe very well, but I like him very much.  Every indicator suggests that he is a decent, gentle man, who is sincere and smart in his work as film critic.  So why is he going on the attack against George Lucas in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal?  Did we need a one-month anniversary bash? 

I just don’t get it. 

I have absolutely no problem with any and every critic in America and across the globe ganging up and despising Attack of the Clones.  I think it is excessive criticism and an absolute lack of seeing the trees for the media-created forest, but fine.  A movie is a movie and opinions are free. 

I had a conversation the other night with some e-journs and we were talking about Windtalkers and they challenged me to name one good John Woo film.  Well, I would say that Windtalkers is the first John Woo film that I hated.  To me, it was Woo working out of his realm – hyper melodrama – and trying to do a serious war movie with some of his style.  The problem is, washed out melodrama is nothing but cold, disconnected plech.  (Say it.)   John Frankenheimer would have made a solid B+ film – maybe an A –of the Windtalkers story.  A guy like Chris Nolan or John Sayles might have made a small masterpiece.  But these guys are busy making fun of the doves in Mission:Impossible 2.  Fine, hate the doves.  But if you don’t understand them, you don’t know shit about Woo. 

But what has happened to Lucas on Star Wars is not about film criticism.  It’s become personal.  And it’s become speculative.  There is something of value in looking back at films that we care about and reflecting on their evolutions. 

Of course, there is always some revisionist history in how people remember their accomplishments and failures.  On Lucas, the phrase, “Gary Kutz says…” has become the bashers credo.  Because people like the original series and don’t like the new series nearly as much, they are happy to agree that Gary was a tough guy genius who kept George from making movies that would have been hideous without him.  And that Rick McCallum is a moron toady who massages his tongue so that it will feel softer when it inevitably licks George growing, sedate ass. 

But we don’t know.  We open ourselves to these theories because of the feelings of disappointment over Menace and Clones.  But we don’t really know.  And we in the media push these ideas out there in a hurry because reflection over time is no longer a part of the game.  That sucks.  It makes for bad journalism and in this case, unfair attacks.

George Lucas isn’t out walking red carpets, looking for more press.  He’s not placing calls to Liz Smith to discuss who he’s sleeping with in any given week.  He’s not a public figure, outside of making these hugely popular films and owning the company that has made the most progress in developing new filmmaking techniques in the last two decades.  Yet we feel free to judge his personal life because of how we feel about his artistic life. 

No one is doing stories saying that Pearl Harbor sucked because Michael Bay wasn’t attracted to Miss August and he was tired of Miss July while prepping Pearl Harbor.  No one is idiotic enough to do stories about Bad Company sucking all of the oxygen out of the theater because Joel Schumacher is gay and the characters in the movie are not.  And no one is going to write a story about Raja Gosnell destroying Scooby Doo because he was homesick in Australia instead of the fact that he doesn’t know how to shoot a chase scene.

This all reminds me of Nancy Grace, who goes on CNN and is 100 percent sure that Gary Condit somehow killed Chandra Levy.  She has no more evidence than anyone else.  But because Gary Condit is an idiot and had an affair with an intern and lied to protect his image, he is not only a lying jerk, he is a murderer.  And even though there is zero evidence really implicating the guy in her murder, beyond the “always look at the boyfriend” rule of homicide investigation, he’s already been convicted in her mind and in the mind of many others. 

But George Lucas didn’t kill anyone or even mislead the public.  He made a movie that many of us hoped to like better and did not.  And audiences showed up anyway.  And now we’re treating him like Frankenstein, chasing him through the streets of Marin with torches.  Forget about him for a minute.  What does this say about us?

Don’t write me and wonder why I am defending Attack of the Clones.  I am not.  I am defending George Lucas’ right to be judged for his work, not for his personal life… and have you noticed that none of us tough guys have taken on Lucas for having the temerity to adopt three children and to raise them on his own… what a jerk!  (I’m sure that the most bitter of you are now saying to yourselves, “He has so much money, raising kids is nothing to him… he should have adopted six kids… 10 kids… 50 kids!”)

Joe Morgenstern is about the last guy I expected to jump on the bandwagon. 

Hate the movie.  Leave the man alone. 

BAD AD WATCH:  What is Warner Bros. thinking when it comes to the Powerpuff Girls movie?  I noticed about a month ago that the bus posters, which constitute the majority of advertising so far, do not say “Warner Bros.” or “Only in Theaters” or have a release date.  What’s up with that?  My 12-year-old nephew actually asked me, “Is that movie coming out in theaters or on TV?”  This is the same 12-year-old who HAD to come to my apartment with his 11-year-old sister to see the “All Growed Up” Rugrats special the day it premiered… and then watched it on Tivo 3000 times.

WEIRD REPORT:  On BBC Liquid News yesterday, their entertainment babe reported that Scooby Doo had already pre-sold $30 million in tickets.  No one at Warner Bros. seems to know what she was talking about or where she got that figure.  Weird.

DBE:  I meant to define Domestic Breakeven Estimate in yesterday’s column since I hope to coin this as a new standard for box office coverage.   It’s pretty simple, but it never seems to come out the same in all the different stories about the business.  DBE varies for a number of reasons.  Genre matters, as comedies don’t travel as well as action films, as a rule, so the percentage of revenue coming from domestic box office is higher for comedies.  Marketing budgets can make a huge difference.  Some talent is bigger overseas than they are here… etc, etc, etc.

This weekend, the DBE on Windtalkers is $100 million (the foreign sell-off), the DBE on Scooby Doo is about $75 million (low foreign, huge video) and the DBE on The Bourne Identity is somewhere around $60 million (slightly better foreign numbers, average video). 

ONE MAN’S CANDY:  In Liz Smith’s Thursday column, she takes Fox to task for the Minority Report uber-disc cover that I raved about in this column on Tuesday.  Let’s overlook the fact that she couldn’t figure out that the “CDs” were actually CD-Roms.  She is unhappy that the promotional item was sent out because the cost of them “could have fed 20 kids for Save the Children USA or taught a person to read at Literacy Partners,” adding, “It is useless and un-biodegradable.”  She goes on to call it an “atrocity” and “conspicuous consumption.”

Point taken… in the real world.  But this is LIZ SMITH!!!!  Her column lead is the three millionth analysis of whose penis is grazing Jennifer Lopez famous ass!   What part of what she does is NOT conspicuous consumption?  No matter how pricey those discs were, there were less than one percent of the advertising and promotional budget for Minority Report… less than the cost of a single ad during the NBA playoffs.  Is there no perspective left in this stupid business of ours?!?!

MORE CRANKINESS:  Matt Drudge is beating the drum about Minority Report’s idea of “pre-crime” crime prevention and the anti-terrorist activities of the Bush Administration.  I don’t disagree with anyone who is worried that we are now considering changing laws that are at the core of our freedom as Americans.  The problem I have is that many of those same people are complaining about the FBI and CIA not doing enough in advance of various terrorist activities.  As Drudge quotes Spielberg’s interview in the upcoming Sunday NY Times, “The question is, ‘Where do you draw the line?’”  Agreed.

Drudge quotes another DreamWorks exec as watching a John Ashcroft news conference about pushing for prevention over post-crime enforcement, saying, “Is this really happening? This is our movie!!!”  Drudge then tries to spin the comment as horror, claiming the exec also said, “Mr. Ashcroft is scary as s*%t!”  (I’m sure that he has been saying that since Bush hired Ashcroft.)  But the truth of the first comment comes out in the follow-up comment, “Please let him (Ashcroft) say he is creating a Department of Precrime!”

Sometimes, marketing is more important to Hollywood execs than politics… duh!

The Drudge story is here.

TOMORROW:  The reviews of Scooby Doo and Windtalkers.

READER OF THE DAY:  Raj’s Tag Line writes:  “It comes at no surprise that you hated Scooby-Doo as has almost everyone so far.  What I find interesting is that Entertainment Weekly has not posted their review on their web site, as they have been consistent in posting their reviews of the big summer films online a few days before the issue comes out, if the review is indeed in the issue coming out Friday (or even more than a week in the case of AOTC).

Now, of course, I am not at all surprised by this because the film is owned by EW's parent company. Owen G. and Lisa S. are not company puppets that LOVE all their master's product, but I always seem to notice that their negative reviews of WB films always get buried in the back of the section or, in some cases, held up until the next issue, after the opening weekend has gone by. The instance I remember most is with Space Jam in '96. Owen G. killed it in his review, but his piece did not end up in EW until the picture's 3rd weekend.

This, to me, is ethically wrong. Disney doesn't do this to Ebert (and, ironically, he kills Disney product more than anybody). If a conglomerate puts a magazine out and finds itself sheltering negative reviews of their own product while sending out negative reviews of other films at the same time (EW's neg reviews of Bourne and Windtalkers are up), shame on them.

But then again, this is Hollywood.”

The Pear Shaped One counters:  “Jeez Dave, I think you're being a little harsh on the Scoobster. Caught a screening last night and while can't say overly nice things, it's far from the worst movie of the year. (You must have missed Slackers.) If it's guilty of anything, it's that it's just sort of there, purposeless. I thought they did a great job with Scooby Doo himself. CGI animals never look right in daylight, but they got it just right I thought. It wasn't especially funny, but it's better than The Flintstones. For my money, the best cartoon-to-live-action-movie remains Josie & the Pussycats, which almost everyone seemed to hate but me. It skewered 15 minutes of TRL fame and rampant commercialism with dead aim. And to think the original Josie cartoon was just Scooby Doo with instruments anyway.

It's not so good a week. Windtalkers feels like it could have starred John Wayne (apart from revisionist take on things) and any movie where the main character, upon witnessing someone dying, holds his arms out, looks skyward and bellows "NOOOOOO!" has some problems.

Bourne Identity i liked, but was really let down by the car chase. it should have been great, but was edited within an inch of its life. i wanted to see that mini shoot down a long lane of traffic. i guess either stunt drivers aren't what they used to be or Liman felt that sort of editing is what people like. but is does enough right to recommend it.”

E ME:  What will you pay to see this weekend?  And how much control of your life are you willing to give up for safety?