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March 11, 2003
Remember News By The Numbers? I do…
WGA WINNERS COMPROMISED: Variety’s Dave McNary updated the trade’s story today to include a note about the premature release of the winners by Reuters on Saturday morning. But the update never turned up on Reuters, Variety’s wire partner, and that part of the story remained generally unwritten about, including in coverage by the Los Angeles Times. Gee, seems like a pretty significant story to me. As McNary pointed out, “many of the tables at the back of the Beverly Hilton ballroom had emptied long before the presentation of the two awards at the end of the three-hour ceremony.”
I personally know of at least three studios that were aware of the winners early on Saturday. Their talent still showed up, even knowing that they were going home unfeted.
The screw-up apparently came after the WGA hired a team to do video news releases, which required pre-taping. The premature release of the information led to a simple screw-up by Reuters, which kept the story up on its primary site, though it was quickly removed by Yahoo! News, among others, and did not show up on most of the news sites that run Reuters wire until the embargo time passed.
The issue of early access to winners also made the conversation pits after the SAG Awards, where many felt that Miramax had been tipped to their Chicago wins, based on what was seen as a unique degree of preparation. From Renee Zellweger’s beat of preparation before her scream to Richard Gere’s smooth leadership after the ensemble win, suspicious minds were aroused.
I don’t blame Miramax or any other studio if they were tipped. But it does seem like another indicator or an awards system that is deeply bent.
WEEKEND BOXOFFICE: It’s not that complicated… find the great hook and sell it over and over and over again. Disney realized that Eugene Levy talking street and hot for Queen Latifah was money in the bank. And money it was.
On the other hand, Tears of the Sun, which still beat its tracking figures, didn’t read much other than Bruce Willis, action, war and Monica Bellucci. Word of mouth should be moderate, not exceptional. But woe to the marketers, who had to sell a war film without seeming to exploit the very real tensions in the Middle East5.
MEL GIBSON STORY: The New York Times Magazine ran a story about Mel Gibson that was almost as hard to get a read on as Samantha Geimer’s appearances supporting Roman Polanski’s Oscar run. The idea that Mel Gibson is a true believer in Catholic traditionalism not only doesn’t bother me… I respect him for embracing his faith.
Frankly, the fact that the New York Times made the effort to report on a movie star’s religious convictions is a little disturbing. The story of Catholic traditionalism is interesting. But would they have made so much of the religious belief if there were no movie star attached? More to the point, would they run a story like this about a movie star who went to synagogue every Saturday morning and contributed a lot of money.
Equally disturbing is Rabbi Marvin Heir of the Wiesenthal Center here in L.A. assuming he knows that Gibson’s film will be bad for Jews without ever having seen a screenplay or a frame of film. First, I don’t believe in censorship, even if it might eliminate something that slanders my religion. Silencing speech is the first step towards fascism.
Which leads me to the most disturbing element, which is Mel Gibson’s father, Hutton’s, apparent belief that the Jewish Holocaust never happened in Europe. In Tuesday’s column, Roger Friedman is already burying Gibson and his career based on this article in a classically Friedmanesque act of media myopia. Mel Gibson’s career is not over because of the New York Times Magazine, though Gibson’s appearance on O’Reilly last week was an attempt to soften the expected blow.
Being branded an anti-semite in Hollywood can make life very difficult. Gary Oldman, fairly or not, was branded an anti-semite during the ugliness around the re-edit of The Contender. He hasn’t made a studio movie since. Would a depiction of Jews being party to the crucifixion of the Jewish Jesus Christ leave that kind of mark on Gibson? Well, I would say that it would depend on how he responds to questions on the issue. Personally, I don’t care. If this film has some historical foundation, I don’t mind taking the rap, so long as it is reasonable and doesn’t digress into baking bread with Christian baby’s blood.
And for the record, Gibson’s father comment about how long it takes to burn a body making the Jewish Holocaust a mathematical unlikelihood does not hold up. Historians put the number of Jews killed and cremated in the six exterminations camps at about 2.7 million. Using the senior Gibson’s own math, 2.7 million bodies requiring 20 minutes apiece to burn would require 900,000 man-hours if each body was individually burned. Over five years, working just 40-hour weeks for only 50 weeks, 15 ovens in each of those six camps would do the job.
With due respect… fuck you, Hutton Gibson, and anyone else who wants to pretend that the Jewish Holocaust never happened. I will fight to the end for your son’s right to make and distribute his movie, whatever it says. But people who deny the horrible cost of events like the Jewish Holocaust, the American conquest of the west, slavery, Cambodian massacres, etc, etc, etc are beneath contempt.
CASHING OSCAR: attempting to analyze the real financial benefits of being in the Oscar race. It’s a really good piece, except…
$400 million of the $643.5 million total that the guys attribute to Oscar is box office benefits. And the number is specious, at best. Paul Dergarabedian is “comfortable” putting the amount of the domestic box office bump at $100 million. Paul may be comfortable, but it’s a load of dookie.
Last year’s Oscar nominee for Best Picture grossed a total of $134 million between their nominations and the weekend after the Oscars. I would say that about $70 of that amount could – could – be attributed to Oscar. $99 million of it is from A Beautiful Mind and Fellowship Of The Ring, both of which were going strong before Oscar. $35 million came from Gosford Park and In The Bedroom, every dime of which I would attribute to Oscar.
Cieply and Peltz use the regular old math that suggests that domestic box office represents a third of overall revenue. But the question of domestic box office driven by Oscar does not necessarily translate. I doubt that Fellowship of the Ring did a single dollar overseas or on video because of Oscar. A Beautiful Mind may have gotten a 10 percent bump from Oscar in foreign and ancillaries, but not a 300% bump. Gosford Park had a mostly British cast already. The only great beneficiary might have been In The bedroom.
The argument that some films would not have gotten traction without Oscar is less realistic this year than even last year. Neither Chicago nor The Hours went wide before their nominations… strategy, not Kismet. The Pianist still hasn’t gone wide, doubling box office since being nominated… for a $16 million total. Gangs of New York has added about $5 million in box office since being nominated. And The Two Towers has added about $12 million, maybe $5 million of it generated by Oscar buzz.
It’s hard to really know any of this… but I would put the figure at about half of what the L.A Times has… Oscar is worth about $200 million in revenue from the box office and ancillaries. And then, start reducing that number by the costs associated with marketing these films. Then, subtract the dollars that wannabe contenders left on the table by chasing Oscar instead of going after a straight release, including the additional marketing costs.
I guarantee you that Miramax has spent a lot more than $3 million to get the roughly $3 million that Gangs of New York has generated at the domestic box office rental since its nomination. The irony is that Miramax deserves a big pat on the back for getting the film to the $70 million mark it hit before it got a single Oscar nomination.
The bottom line is that Miramax has the only “right” marketing tactic for Oscar in the game. They sell their movies as movies and as Oscar movies. It’s the only way. Chasing Oscar is simply bad business. The idea of dropping what is now a lowball $20 million on an Oscar campaign is only going to be recouped by one of the five nominees each year by dint of its efforts. Remember, $20 million in marketing requires a bump of at least $15 million in domestic gross to be recovered.
This reality is what will face Fox with Master & Commander, which opens early next November and will require a second wave of marketing if it is going to be a serious Oscar movie. Warner Bros. will face the issue with both The Matrix sequels and The Last Samurai, both of which are likely to be over the $150 million box office mark by the end of the New Year’s Day weekend… is it worth spending more? Will Disney remember The Alamo? Will Sony be spending heavily so that the women of Mona Lisa Smile can get their nods?
Hmmmm….
READER OF THE DAY: TRICOLOR writes: “Somewhere in the Fig's comments (Friday’s THB) are some tasty morsels of truth about Hollywood and race.
As a black freelancer who writes film features for an alternative weekly, I occasionally worry that my readers will come to view me as simply an angry black man channeling my rage at Hollywood. There are problems with race in the Industry. There are problems concerning race in the way we report on the Industry. There are race problems in America.
As I try to sift through all the issues in pursuit of stories worth telling, I'm starting to realize it does no real service to anyone to bash black performers in somewhat questionable roles. In actuality, we're not even really bashing the performers themselves, but indirectly commenting on quality vs. quantity issues. It's one thing for mainstream critics and fans to disparage the performance of Freddie Prinze, Jr. or the juvenile humor of a film like Old School because the work is not being held up as a representational standard for a people. Although, audiences can always be comforted by the fact that for every film like Just Married, there will be better mainstreams available to entertain and higher profile prestige pieces to offer some enlightenment.
That's more difficult for black audiences. While there are certainly black stars and, I suppose, a growing number of black releases, the gap between black and white film in the Industry doesn't feel like its shrinking.
There's more than enough blame to pass around for the sorry situation. The studios largely stick to segmentation by producing "urban" pictures (action, uni-raced rom coms, generic mixed-race buddy coms). Mainstream writers see these films a mile off and some are content to take a pass on them, not actually attending the screenings and thus casually dismissing them or present only token comments or reviews. Those devaluations of the performances keep actors looking for a break in a struggling underclass that is likely impossible to break out of for those of us on the lower frequencies to quote Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. The audience shoulders a bit of blame as well. White audiences will generally flock to inane, gross out comedies or seek out high-minded, independent films, but are assumed by studio heads to avoid films that don't have people that look like them or stories they can relate to. The sad fact is that I tend to agree with the studio heads. It seems that the box office numbers prove that white audiences do tend to avoid black films, whether they be Ice Cube's comedies (the Friday series or Barbershop) or Spike Lee films or Denzel Washington's Antoine Fisher. The relative success of black films rests largely in the dollars of black audiences and, even we are less than forthcoming in our desire to see different types of films. Some of the problems are business-related. Some are just plain old people (black and white) problems.
The downside is that when certain types of black films don't do well, our opportunities to continue in the business are hurt. Whereas the lack of sterling box office for Edward Norton's Keeping the Faith didn't truly damage his ability to garner additional work. Or better yet, someone like Colin Farrell can sit back and choose from a healthy stream of projects while Terrence Howard or Larenz Tate end up taking time off because they aren't being considered for anything other than the most stereotypical roles.
As a writer and, more importantly, as a film fan, I'm constantly frustrated by the fact that I don't get to see actors like Howard and Tate more. I read the entertainment features in newspapers, online and in magazines and wonder why the white-hot Hollywood constellation is so full with the likes of the Toms (Cruise and Hanks), Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, and Bruce Willis down to any number of up-and-comers like Josh Hartnett, Paul Walker, Kieran Culkin, Jake Gyllenhaal with middle men like Adrien Brody and Norton, Matt and Ben. Women, both black and white, profess to love Taye Diggs or Will Smith (who is seemingly forgotten in any and all talk of last year's Oscars), why not cast them more? Or how about choosing Don Cheadle or Jeffrey Wright for those roles written for actor's actors? Why can't the Industry show some moxie and figure out how to use underappreciated talents like Viola Davis and Angela Bassett who is slipping so far off the radar, we may be close to mourning her?
Black writers talk about these issues all the time. Black entertainment coverage buzzes away on these topics, but I do believe more critics and media examination is necessary. Mainstream stories on these issues only occur around Oscar time or when someone, usually black, makes a public stink of it. Black History Month used to be a time when a little more lip service could be expected, but now it seems even that short bit of press is no longer guaranteed.
Last year there were probably less than 30 lead acting performances of note in major releases by black artists (male and female). This year doesn't appear to offer the possibility of a significant increase. Until that happens, it is everyone's responsibility to raise their voice and lay their dollars down in an effort to bring about some real change.”
E ME: Controversies abound… grab a line…
