March 4, 2003

I would have been a lot better off RSVPing on time for Bringing Down The House….

I ended up experiencing the horror of Fox’s Married By America.  Gross out TV is one thing… this show was the fifth sign of the Apocalypse.  It was just horrifying.  Can people really be this delusional? 

The only truly interesting part of the show was the two 2 minute ads for movies; Fox’s Phone Booth and Revolution/Columbia’s Anger Management.  Were these make-goods from the Super Bowl?  Could be.  For sure, Fox had a hard time selling out the first hour of this show.  (God strikes back!)

Self-delusion has been a theme in the last week or so.  It seems to be recurring, day after day, in area after area.  The illusion of the film business can be overwhelming sometimes.  You realize suddenly, although it’s long been under your nose, that not only is the film business a real business beneath the massive façade that is created daily, but that there is an entire support system in maintaining the façade that includes people who take themselves very seriously indeed.

How do they look in the mirror each morning?

There is a point at which one has to wonder whether the effort to expose the man behind the curtain is a sane one.  But unlike Don Quixote, I can find plenty of people who see that the windmills are, in fact, giants.  Some of those people helped build the illusory windmills. 

Finding the truth behind any one film is complex enough to fill a book, much less a few thousand measly column words each week.  I can rage against a bit of box office spin that most people assume is gospel truth.  But there is no such thing.  Box office is reported by organizations with vested interests to organizations with vested interests to be reported upon by organizations with vested interests.  No one wants to rock the boat.  The truth is deep, deep, deep under cover.  You think that the accounting statements of publicly held companies are “truth.”  Tee-hee.  Grow up!  A company doesn’t have to be Enron to be spinning the numbers.  Recent changes in the accounting laws have forced studio quarterlies to be more accurate.  But you’ve never seen a news report on a quarterly that details the profits and losses film-by-film.  Why?  Because no one really wants to know… except for the people who are being paid based on those figures.  And they don’t want the press to know what’s going in their pockets either.

You want to talk about film censorship?  You ever wonder why the studios don’t bitch and moan about the lack of an adult rating that works?  You ever wonder why they aren’t breaking away from the MPAA and putting out unrated movies?  Because they ARE the MPAA.  It’s not only not a mystery, but everyone in the game understands that the studios are regulating the studios with a ratings system.  But the intuitive logic gets skewed because we don’t want to think about it too much.

Amidst a long discussion about the situation with CleanPlay, I kept pointing out to a group of colleagues that the studios were eerily silent.  Why?  Because CleanPlay is good business for the studios, so long as they play by the rules they claim.  A couple of months and a couple of guild lawsuits into the debate, the studios finally filed a copyright suit against CleanPlay.  There is only one good reason why… if they didn’t assert their legal rights, they might lose position on other issues of digital reproduction.  It’s not about “droit morale” or the right of the artist.  It’s about business. 

Monday’s story in the Wall Street Journal about Academy DVD screeners and their vulnerability to piracy was slightly silly.  Why?  Because there have always been Academy screeners and there has always been piracy and DVD doesn’t change that.  What had changed dramatically is the breath and width of distribution of DVDs and, with it, the perception of piracy.  As reported on Movie City News, there was a website selling DVDs of The Hours in October.  There were no Academy screeners back then.  But it didn’t keep the film from turning up, in poor quality at that time, on the web.  (The site has since been shut down thanks to MCN and the hot spotlight of The New York Post.)

Wanna talk about the Oscars?  Why should Miramax’s awards tactics disgust me?  Why do I care about whether Gangs of New York is actually profitable or not?  Should I care whether box office is being padded?  What does it matter to me if Harvey Weinstein wants to blame Disney for not financing Lord of the Rings even though he never expressed any interest in making the films as a trilogy.  If no one else gives a damn, why should I?  More to the point, am I insane to even be talking about this stuff when Weinstein has muffled most opposing voices in major papers (and allegedly independent internet sites) across America? 

Why is Dimension Films being described by Variety as “Bob Weinstein's Dimension Films” in a story about four co-production deals that have been locked in by the Miramax division in recent weeks?  Do you think that this is just an effort to get some equal time for the underappreciated Miramax brother… you know , the one who makes profits?  Or is the division’s $30 million investment in foreign distribution rights to Starsky & Hutch, which any sane person will tell you is unlikely to be a big hit outside of the domestic market (which also makes the $60 million price tag an ugly abuse) a balancing act to make up for Miramax’s inability to pony up any cash for its share of Scorsese’s film, The Aviator, for which Miramax will handle the domestic/Oscar marketing for WB?  Why is Mira… uh, Dimension getting back in bed with MGM after the studio bailed on the second most expensive Miramax film ever (after Gangs of New York), Cold Mountain?  Has anyone ever heard of a studio “taking a one-third stake for a share of the gross” with no distribution rights at all, as Dimension is doing with Universal on Wimbledon?    That doesn’t sound like bookkeeping?  And does Dimension’s “co-producer” status on Touchstone/Spyglass’s Mr. 3000 have to do with anything other than Dimension’s “hold” deal with director Charles Stone? 

Does it matter when the press drools over annual market share without ever considering the profit picture?  Does it matter that “runaway production” could be stopped dead if only anyone with money wanted it to?  Should we care about the illusion that unions are run by the rank & file and not by the highest earning 5 percent?  Does it matter when lies become mythological fact? 

I’m an entertainment journalist… Get Me Out Of Here!!!

READER OF THE DAY:   HOT DIGGITY DOG writes:  “I was as shocked as you when I heard that Rob Marshall won the DGA award. Of course the "news" caster pointed out the fact that winning the DGA almost always means the Oscar, etc. Now regardless of what you may think of Gangs of New York, or the Scent of a Woman quality of the such an Oscar win, I would hate to see the directing Oscar go to yet another first timer over Scorsese. Maybe the fact that Scorsese won a lifetime achievement award at the same ceremony made the difference in the Guild’s mind, but still. On the brighter side, if Marshall does indeed win the Oscar, at least Scorsese will not have lost out to another actor- turned- first-time-director, which the Academy almost always views as some kind of artistic triumph, Mr. Costner.

Oh well, I think I will just go see a movie and be satisfied with that.”

JOHNNIE BRIT writes:  “I think the deck is stacked for Martin Scorsese to win.  I haven't seen The Pianist or Talk to Her, but Scorsese's work is more noticeable and above par than what Rob Marshall or Stephen Daldry did.  I think Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg and Joe Carnahan and Paul Thomas Anderson and Philip Noyce and maybe even Marc Romanek did better directing jobs than what is on display in Chicago or The Hours.

I read Harvey Weinstein's interview in Entertainment Weekly, and he makes Martin Scorsese sound pathetic.  I mean, he makes it sound like Marty will stump in your town and kiss your babies and hold his heart while singing the praises of the red, white and blue if you'll just give him one of those Golden guys so he doesn't fall into the same class as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Betty Thomas and Raja Gosnell, directors who've never won Best Director.  As if not winning one makes him as similar to the latter two as the first two.”

E ME:  Would you lie to me?  If so, what about?