March 17, 2003

Just when you think it can’t get any uglier...

On Saturday, John Horn of the Los Angeles Times reported that Murray Weissman, a Miramax Oscar consultant and member of the Academy's public relations branch executive committee, wrote the controversial article signed by Robert Wise in support of the Martin Scorsese Oscar effort.  Wise, who was on Friday reported to have said that “the piece originally was written by an assistant, Mike Thomas, and that he then revised Thomas' draft,” refused comment for the Saturday story.  In that story, Wise’s wife, Millicent said, “that her husband did not alter "one word" of Weissman's text. "It's exactly the same as what they wrote," she said.

One of the primary reasons that this story became so hot so fast was that Academy members who know Mr. Wise are aware that he is not in the best of health and sensed the legacy of an unwell legend might be being abused.  The revelation, which some are saying is not really all that surprising, takes the issue to yet another level.

Movie City News’ Leonard Klady reported on Sunday that The Academy’s punishment for Miramax’s only officially investigated infraction is probably going to be six tickets.  Klady later pointed out, in a phone conversation, that the penalty of fewer tickets is not insignificant, given the real problems with availability for even some nominees in minor categories. 

My first instinct was to write a column calling for some sort of serious penalty for Miramax.  But it is a futile thought.  As I mentioned in last week’s Oscar column for MCN, no one wants to rock the boat in any real way. 

Every year, the infractions get more and more overt and the rules get stretched further and further.  This year’s vogue was private parties.  But when people write about these parties, they still focus on a party for poor little IFC’s Y tu Mama Tambien, at which an exhausted Alfonso Cuaron showed up for about 30 minutes of a 3-hour gathering.  The fact that Frank Pierson was listed as one of the inviters made it stand out, but it was no different – probably more subtle - than parties arranged by the three films backed by bigger studios this season.  But they keep writing about that one event as though it was somehow unique. 

Why? 

Because people prefer easier targets.  The Academy is moving a month earlier next year and there is a general hope that it will cut back on some of the insanity.  A hard look at what is wrong with the process, as it exists, is not something anyone wants to start.  As one Academy player commented, once you start looking through the dirt, lots of changes that no one is talking about publicly now go up for grabs.  Change can be good.  But change is dangerous.  The ABC show had record ad sales this year.  No one outside the coastal corridors, outside of hardcore fans, could care less whether studios cheat. At least, not right now.  The Academy has to be concerned about their legitimacy being decayed beyond the board on which the game is currently played. 

Honestly, the whole thing is tiresome.  The constant refrain in response to any wrongdoing is that it is some sort of conspiracy spinning.  And who can blame them?  It is a strategy that works.  The “vast right wing conspiracy” long outlasted the acknowledgement that the victim of the conspiracy was, in fact, lying.  I don’t think this is an issue of your political position on Bill Clinton… it’s not the point.  It doesn’t even matter if there was a vast right wing conspiracy.  The point is that the spin was intended to cover a specific lie.  And it did.  Because people wanted to believe the legend and thought the fact was an insignificant truth.

The greatest irony of all is that none of us have printed the most heinous infractions, which can be sourced by a number of people, yet still seem too smarmy to mention unless the Academy members involved want to go on the record.  They never do. 

WEEKEND REVIEW:  The story of 2003 so far is the return of the romantic comedy in a big way.  The only $100 million film before April last year – and the only one before May that wasn’t My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which passed $100 million in Week 21 – was Ice Age.  A kid’s movie.  In 2001, it was Hannibal...not a kid’s movie.  Spy Kids also opening in the spring, though like Greek Wedding, it was a leggy surprise.  In 2000, the only spring movie to hit $100 million was Erin Brockovich.

This year, two films, How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days and Bringing Down The House will both hit $100 million in seven weeks or less.  How likely was this feat?  Well, this will be the first $100 million movie with Kate Hudson, Matthew McConaughey or Queen Latifah in a lead role.  And it will be Steve Martin’s first $100 million movie since Parenthood in 1989. 

The most excited people about this should be Fox, which has Down With Love due in May.  I’m a bit suspect of the date… counter-programming that slot (they are up against The Matrix Reloaded) has been an iffy proposition without a major name (like Julia Roberts) in recent years.  Oscar or not, Renee Zellweger is not that level of opener.  Nor is Ewan McGregor.  But the appetite, which may be spoiled by the impending war, seems to be healthy right now. 

AND:  Daredevil and How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days will both pass the $100 million mark sometime next week.  And the stories of the two films could not be more dissimilar.  Daredevil was almost twice as expensive to make and market and was an expected blockbuster.  How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days was an underdog with two actors who have performed below expectations repeatedly.  I don’t actually expect Fox to proceed with a Daredevil sequel with Ben Affleck, given that his involvement would make it impossible to do the film for less than $80 million or so unless they gave up a lot of back end.  The Elektra sequel with Jennifer Garner is likely to be budgeted in the $60 million range, which would probably put the film in profit with a domestic gross of less than $60 million.  (We won’t know how Elektra is likely to play overseas before we get a better grasp of how Daredevil will play overseas.) 

READER OF THE DAY:  David Poland writes:  “I had an exchange with a NY-based columnist on Sunday night.  It started with a simple effort to confirm a story I had heard regarding one of his jobs and, as always with him, it turned into bile.   Last week, I spoke to a number of people in the Oscar game who were so disgusted that they were considering whether it was worth playing anymore.  Tonight, I felt that way about this job when exchanging information with him. 

The thing that was so ugly about the exchange was not the stupid putdowns that I have come to expect from this weak sister of the journalistic family.  It was the lack of humanity shown when discussing others.  Even when faced with a story he had no knowledge of, his response was high-handed, derisive, and dismissive of the ability for another human being (not me) to have an emotion that he didn’t find typical. 

I’m not quite sure why I am writing this for public consumption.  I suppose that my philosophy that the truth is endangered when the light shines only on others is in play.  The community of journalists is an odd one.  The range of style, skill and intent is wide.  While I will fight and holler and cuss about things I read, I try to remember to judge the ideas and not about the people who have them. 

I guess that is the reason, right there.  In this situation, I want to expose my own feelings, lest they fester into the subtext of my work.  Please excuse the indulgence.  I guess you are used to that by now.”

NOT THE YANKEE writes:  “I just got back from four days is Sarasota, Florida.  I had Friday afternoon free, so I decided to go to the first showing on the first day of "City of God."  There was a nice crowd.  About 20 minutes into it, the print started showing upside down and backwards.  It took about four minutes of people out in the lobby yelling for a projectionist to stop the film.

After about six more minutes, we got the word that they couldn't rewind it and re-splice it. It would take them hours to play the thing in real time, start it all over, find the bad splice, stop it, re-splice it, continue to the end, and then start all over.  This put everyone in a bad mood.

The locals got rain tickets.  We out-of-towners got our money back.

All of this brings up the old subject of Quality Control.  Call me old-fashioned, but I really thought managers or assistant managers of small Art Houses played a new movie through for themselves around 9 or 10 a.m. on Fridays to make sure the print was okay.  Obviously not.  And I don't guess there is any way for the processing place to check their finished prints to see if they're okay.”

MAN NUMBER ONE writes:  “Let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of Gangs of New York, I thought it was the best film of last year and always try to defend it when my friends knock on it.  But I don't want to write a review here, I want to say that the whole Robert Wise article/advertisement just makes me sad.  Now, if Scorsese wins the Oscar that I think he deserves, it will always have an asterisk next to it because of all of this nonsense.  If he loses, which I actually think he will, to Rob Marshall, this will go down in history as the reason.  Honestly, as much as I respect and adore the man, this movie, and all of his movies, I want Martin Scorsese to lose this year.  Let him stay in the company of Kubrick, Hitchcock, and Altman where he has been for years instead of being "Academy Award Winning Director Martin Scorsese!"

But honestly, what is really bothering me is this whole thing about Academy members wanting their ballots back so they can change their votes and not give Scorsese their vote.  Of course, Frank Pierson said he would not send ballots back, but the whole idea that some members want it back just puts the final nail in the coffin of my illusion that this whole process is even remotely about the movies themselves.  So these Academy members are therefore admitting that they voted for Scorsese for some other reason, not that they are fans of Gangs of New York, and now that they are enraged and embarrassed by this Robert Wise thing, they want to vote for somebody who had a more respectable campaign (the idiots would probably vote for Rob Marshall not realizing that they are feeding the same fire).

I think that those Academy members, and I wish they would tell us who they are, should be more embarrassed then people claim Martin Scorsese should be for the way he has handled himself this year in regards to campaigning.  I love the Academy Awards and follow them year round like a religion, and these Academy members bring me down and depress me more then any of the other issues from the last two years.  If only they would all just vote for which they believed was the best from the beginning, but I suppose that will never happen.

Am I the only one who was struck by the notion that these people wanted to vote again because of an add that they found distasteful?”

E ME:  Well, is he?  And do any of you exhibitors have any insight for the inverted City of God?