I’m about to get on the plane… and all hell breaks loose!!!

The truth is, it’s been a long time coming.  Warner Bros. publicists are claiming that Lorenzo di Bonaventura is leaving the studio of his own accord.  As one of the studio heads who has done an exceptionally good job positioning himself with the local movie press, that story may hold for, say… 24 hours. 

The first mistake will be to blame only Pluto Nash for Di Bonaventura’s demise.  Even had Pluto Nash not existed or not been part of this summer, Warner Bros. would still have been the second worst performer of this summer, perhaps a few million in the black when all was said and done.  With Nash, the studio lost tens of millions overall. 

But the screw-ups don’t end there.  Di Bonaventura should be held directly responsible for the studio’s inability to get a DC Comics superhero movie off the ground in the midst of a genre craze, managing somehow to assure that at least three supposedly near-greenlit or greenlit projects will not happen anytime in 2002 or 2003.  The spin of the last month is that there would be a Superman movie to save everyone’s bacon.   But I would be surprised if we don’t find out in a week or so that we’re going to be waiting on that film as well.

But there’s more!!!  People are suggesting that Wolfgang Petersen chose to do Troy instead of Batman vs Superman, but that is bull.  Warner Bros. controls both projects and a comic book movie is an infinitely bigger priority.  Something went terribly wrong.  Warner Bros. is not a studio that spreads blood in the water to see what fish will gather.  They intended to make that movie. 

And then, to add injury to insult, Brad Pitt backed out of Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, which has pretty much put that project out of its misery.  But that’s doubly problematic, because Aronofsky seems to have been given the go ahead for The Fountain ahead of Batman: Year One because other superhero projects were moving forward… and because he had Pitt.   But don’t expect that Aronofsky is suddenly going to fast-track Batman: Year One. 

I, obviously, do not know the whole deal.  But the bottom line is, the one real hit for the studio this summer was a CG dog who cost them $130 million to make and sell and will not gross $250 million worldwide.  Lorenzo hasn’t been able to get a comic franchise film in the pipeline in the last five years.  And while Harry Potter is Harry Potter, there’s noting more galling than making $300 million - $400 million in studio profits and watching them eaten away by the rest of the year’s line-up.

The biggest problem at Warner Bros. these days is one that Di Bonaventura really didn’t/doesn’t control… the massive number of movies being distributed by the company.  The reason that there are so many is that the studio has so many relationships with active producers, many of whom bring in outside funding on their pictures.  Besides Village Roadshow and Franchise Pictures, you have Joel Silver and Morgan Creek pumping out film after film.  Every studio has one producer/producing entity as active as one of these companies and other less active producers with deals.  But I don’t know of any other studio than WB that has more than one mega-producer.  Disney has Bruckheimer and Spyglass, but neither one delivers pictures in the double digits. 

In any case… there are also less specific reasons to be happy about Lorenzo’s exit.  His “quirky” sense of humor is behind the demise of the Batman franchise and the indecisive nature of Scooby Doo’s development, among other embarrassments.  The studio hasn’t had more than two hundred million dollar movies since 1999 and is unlikely to have more than two when this year ends.  Did you know that WB had nine movies last year that never hit $20 million domestic… nine! 

Jeff Robinov moves up into Lorenzo’s job… for now.  I have no reason to doubt him and the studio had few other places to go.  I would suggest that Di Bonaventura’s long tenure was a direct result of the lack of high profile successors available in the marketplace.  I wish Robinov the best of luck.  And I’m happy that the studio has some top-notch product, besides Potter, coming up this fall. 

SPEAKING OF WB:  By the time I’m writing the Friday column, I will have seen, hopefully, my first six films at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival.  City by the Sea will not be one of those, so…

Michael Caton-Jones hasn’t made a studio film since the car wreck that was The Jackal remake of 1997.  That brings no pleasure to me since I liked the director who made Doc Hollywood, This Boy’s Life and Rob Roy just before El Stinkerino.  Of course, the way Hollywood is, all people talk about now is the career killer.

But the smarter, gentler Caton-Jones is back with City by the Sea, a tough film that works better as a gripping character study than as a movie, but still is well worth the time.  DeNiro plays a regular guy who has just about found a rhythm he feels good about and without warning is forced out of his complacency and forced to face the demons of his past, present and future.  And while it’s hardly the showiest of his roles, he is as good here as he’s ever been.  It’s almost as if he’s grown past the point of trying to be a movie star, as he seemed to be doing in a role of a similar tone in Night & The City.  He just is this guy here and its quite touching. 

As his troubled son, James Franco gets to act on the big screen for the first time and he’s fine… this is an actor who still needs to find his way to his own persona.  His performance felt a bit chewed-over to me, but it was still fairly effective. 

The women in these two men’s lives are excellent.  Frances McDormand does so little in her role as “the girl downstairs” that you barely notice that she’s taken a throwaway role and made it something memorable.  Patti Lupone as Franco’s mother and DeNiro’s ex-wife is a letter-perfect shrew with a heart that’s been turned to stone by life… at least with anyone but her son.  And Eliza Dushku proves that she can play more than saucy brunettes in tiny bikinis.  She’s still saucy, alright, but she breaks out and brings more to her character than you would ever expect from her first-act scenes. 

In a way, Dushku and McDormand define the entirety of City by the Sea.  The entire movie is somehow unexpected.  Scene after scene, you know what’s coming next.  But you’re wrong most of the time.  Not because they are trying to trick you, but because life isn’t a movie.  Apparently, there is some controversy about some of the “facts” of the movie, particularly the wrong-place-wrong-time nature of the murder that kicks the whole thing off.  But unlike a movie such as A Beautiful Mind, which seemed to allow it’s lead character to keep one too many nuts in his can, those kinds of details didn’t bother me because this is a story about ambiguity.  Every answer is just another question… even in the coda at the very end of the film.

Caton-Jones and his casting directors Amanda Mackey Johnson & Cathy Sandrich also offer pleasant surprises with the choices they made in supporting roles.  William Forsythe hasn’t had this good a role in a studio movie in a long, long time.  And he doesn’t just walk through it, even if it is the most stereotypical role in the film. He brings it.  And he crackles in his scenes.  Brian Tarantina has been a caricature in the past.  But here, he takes a stereotype and brings it layers.  And who could not love a movie where both George Dzundza and Leo Burmester appear in the same scene.  (And you thought they were the same person!)

Like my favorite tv show of last year, Law & Order; Criminal Intent, City by the Sea is a murder mystery without a mystery.  But also like L&O:CI, this film tells a story of drugs and murder and decay, but manages to stay fresh, thanks to great performances by great actors who don’t sleepwalk for a second.  And while Caton-Jones doesn’t dazzle visually, he sets the groundwork for these actors to work… which is what he is best at. 

MEANWHILE AT ARTISAN:  I had one of the great concert experiences on Tuesday night on Hollywood Blvd… and it had nothing to do with American Idol.  Artisan’s Standing in the Shadows of Motown screened at the Hollywood Galaxy and then the Fun Bros., about whom the story is about, took the stage at The Knitting Factory to rock the world of a few hundred of their closest strangers.  I am thrilled to have been one of them.

Singing with the band were such stars as Mary Wilson, Gerald Levert, Rick James and others, including members of the Four Tops and The Temptations.   Wow!  They did an hour set and it was glorious.  The singing wasn’t always as good as the original, but the music was magically delicious.  I kept waiting for publicists Bebe Lerner and Sarah Greenberg to take the stage as back-up singers, but their bangled skirts must not have arrived in time.

The film premieres… again… at the Toronto Film Festival on September 11 and opens nationwide in October.  It’s not the greatest piece of documentary filmmaking ever, but you’ll rarely have more fu in a theater.

AN ENGLISHMAN IN THE HOOD:  Nick Broomfield is one of my favorite directors.  I really became aware of Broomfield with his Aileen Wournos documentary.   But I had already seen and enjoyed his Lily Tomlin and Chicken Ranch docs.  Broomfield is one of the best investigative reporters as documentarian.  While other great doc directors take you deep into people’s lives or take you through history with grace, Broomfield is the irritating kid who asks, “Why?” every time you tell him anything.  Even when he gets the answers, he’s just dying to wave his discovery on the face of his interviewees who weren’t as forthcoming as they might have been.  His camera watches them sweat.  And there is always that little sense of threat, floating somewhere in the immediate background. 

But Broomfield has never faced a threat, it seems to me, as distinct as the one posed by The Bloods, The Crips, Death Row Records, Suge Knight, the LAPD, etc, etc, etc.   These are the folks whose space he is operating in with his new documentary, Biggie & Tupac, which is coming out later this month.   The question of Broomfield’s doc is, “Who was behind the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls and what was the motivation?”  It goes without saying that Broomfield has already assumed from the beginning that the murders were connected.

The difference between this and all other Nick Broomfield docs is that all the major players are dead or incarcerated.  Even while the specter of Suge Knight floats behind Broomfield on every interview, much as Courtney Love hovered over the proceedings of Kurt & Courtney, Suge lives behind bars.  And when he does agree to an interview it is fairly benign.  And, unlike Courtney, no one really wants to make an enemy of Suge.  Courtney may be a bitch, but Suge could be a murderer… not just a guy who drove someone to suicide, but a button-pushing, no-doubt, bang-bang gangster. 

All that said, Biggie & Tupac does come together as Broomfield gets person after person to agree about why these two men were murdered and very specifically, by whom.  I would cut about 15 minutes out of the first hour of the film, but Broomfield continues to prove himself absolutely committed and absolutely fearless in his work. 

RATE THIS!:  There was an excellent column by the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein regarding the ratings system and just how screwed up it still is, despite The Little General’s rhetorical claims of success.  (That would be Jack Valenti, for those keep score.) 

In the end, I have yet to see an example of a movie that would have done more business as an NC-17 that could be shown (an oxymoron, but take my point) than as a chopped up R.  On the other hand, artistic qualities could surely be improved by a better ratings program.  More importantly, there are films that are self-censoring in important ways all the time.  We who rage against the failure of NC-17 are in the unfortunate position of fighting for product like Showgirls and The Rules of Attraction far more often than we are a Henry & June or A Clockwork Orange.  But fight we must.

Patrick’s story is here.

READER OF THE DAY:  SAM HE AM writes:  “I too thought Salon got Lane dead to rights, although the article then paradoxically lets him off too easy. "Wits," as she calls them, shouldn't be reviewing movies, certainly not for a publication as supposedly exacting as the New Yorker. You can tell from Lane's extended pieces on "Hamlet" and Max Ophuls (not sure if either of these are in the collection) that he's capable of first-rate writing when he takes his subject seriously, but apparently it takes a focus on established master (Shakespeare in the first case) to get him to do more than make funny cracks. It drives me nuts when Lane-lovers say "Oh, he's so funny!" as if it were supposed to be a comedy act. I don't think it's naive to think that someone who reviews movies for a living ought to take the medium -- if not every movie -- seriously.

And don't get me started on David Denby.”

And this came from MY BIG FAT GREEK READER:  “Any critic who spends more than a single paragraph on a plot synopsis for a film, is doing it for the same reasons most high school students put a lot of adjectives in their essay assignments. They're trying to get to the requisite amount of words they have been assigned by their teacher.

I remember when i was in school, that I fudged essays all the time to get the word count i needed. Now i may like to think that if a had a 2000 word essay written for an assignment that required 3000 words, it was because i was such a brilliant writer that i was able to state my case as clearly and succinctly with only 2000 words. Damn, i'm good!  Unfortunately, that was never the case.

 What was the real reason you ask?

I was a LAZY, LAZY, LAZY IDIOT!!

And that's probably the reason critics spend more than one paragraph on a synopsis. Now, although i think some critics are lazy, i also believe there is another reason for this. It's the editors' fault. They need to fill space in their publications, so they demand a certain amount of words for any given review. Well, if a critic has written a review, but doesn't meet the word count criteria, then he can't help but put a useless plot synopsis somewhere in his/her review.

I believe it's a combination of these 2 reasons that accounts for so many useless paragraphs being wasted on plot synopsis.

Why do i feel that a 'detailed' plot synopsis is useless?

Well, because it is. The sun rises in the east, the sky is blue, e=mc2 and a detailed plot synopsis is useless. Anyone disagree with this? Then you're either 1:an idiot, 2:you're reading film reviews for the wrong reason, or 3:both.

A simple couple of sentences on the plot of a film is fine, but if i want the whole plot of a film, i usually do something weird & wacky, I GO SEE THE FILM!  I  don't judge a film until I'VE SEEN IT WITH MY OWN 2 EYES. But, i will read reviews to see what kind of impression it has left on the writer. There are so many aspects to consider when reviewing a film, that the plot is probably the least important. A reviewer may judge the plot (good, bad, holes in it big enough to fill the Grand Canyon, whatever), but NO DETAILS PLEASE!

Tell me it's a spy thriller about someone who loses his memory. Tell me it's a romantic comedy about a greek girl marrying a non-greek guy. Give me examples of scenes that work, don't work, disgust you, enlighten you, whatever. But NOT THE ENTIRE DAMN PLOT!

When i go see a film, i'd rather not know too much about it. One of the joys of the film going experience is being surprised by a film you knew nothing about before going into it. More often than not, I'm usually left ambivalent towards many films. But every once in a while, I walk out of a theater so enthralled by what i just watched, that i have a hard time getting out of the mind-set that a film has put me in.

I hate detailed plot-synopsis as much as i hate 99% of all trailers. You have to leave a film-goer some room for discovery. Unfortunately, most people these days want to know what they're getting into, before they shell out $ 8-15 for a ticket. They don't want to RISK wasting that money. And the studios don't want them to risk it either, so they show them the whole film, in a 2 minute cliff-notes version, that way everyone is safe from the fear that you may not like a film after having watched it. The studios make sure you know what you're getting into before you go into the theater.

You cannot blame the patrons for this. It's the responsible thing to do, to make sure you're not wasting $8-15 per ticket before you walk into the theater. It doesn't change the fact that it is still very sad to see that this is not only what we have become, but what the studios have turned us into. If box-office prices were cheaper, perhaps people would be willing to risk a few dollars for the chance that they may find a diamond in the rough, but not in the current state that we're in. No friggin way....

I guess i can rant on what angers me about trailers for a very long time, but i'll just leave at that....for now...”

And ALMOST A POLAND writes:  “Yes I admit it.  I shelled out cash for FearDotCom.  I offer words of warning to anyone who thinks they might do the same.  Please, heed my advice and avoid this disjointed, half-assed, derivative, shlocky, mindless piece of dreck.  I had intended to catch two or three movies yesterday, as I had the whole day off.  But after catching this disaster of a film, I was deflated to the point where I just went home and watched a rerun of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. 

William Malone has seen that some films can be evocative and creepy with low light, odd angles and a mélange of filters used to change the look of each scene.  What he hasn't figured out is how, or why.  The film is dark constantly, even during daylight.  The offices of what was supposed to be the Department of Health looked like the back-alley eye surgery in Minority Report. 

And the story!  What can you expect, I suppose, when the film was written by the guy who produced Timecop, and directed by the guy who wrote Supernova.  (The only reason I know either of those facts is because I looked them up on IMDb, trying to figure out who in god's name made this waste of celluloid.)  The detectives draw conclusions based on nothing, the mystery is not mysterious, the characters undergo no development, go on no journeys and learn nothing from one scene to the next.

Sigh.  It's a tired old line, I know, but that really is two hours of my life I'll never get back.

So listen up, please.  Don't spend the cash.  Take your wallet to the video store, rent American Psycho II, and think to yourself 'Yes, even this is better than FearDotCom'.”

E ME:  You know, I hate when I don’t get a lot of mail, but I really don’t do a very good job reading and responding to mail when I am at festivals… so please write and please forgive me…