August 4, 2003

Traction.

I was having a private conversation with some very smart people last week about marketing. We batted a lot of stuff around, but the conversation eventually got down to one thing… traction. There are a lot of great ideas out there. But no matter how good the idea, you never really know whether it is going to get traction. It is the publicist’s great luck and the publicist’s ultimate nightmare.

Traction is one of the reasons why I often write about a singular vision in the sell of a film. Tracking is how studios tend to estimate what kind of traction their film has. But that information – which is often pretty iffy since entertainment research tends to stop far short of the actual box office – is sometimes a mirage that tempts either ambition or panic.

The reason I find myself thinking about traction tonight is the opening of Gigli, which is laughable or horrible, depending on your point of view. (“Finally, a summer movie that delivers on its promise!!!”) The question that will never be answered accurately is, “Did Columbia get in their own way by changing the tone of the ad campaign in the last 10 days or would it have been even worse?”

The bottom line is, they blinked. When a campaign changes drastically that close to release, it is always a sure sign of disaster. But is it the chicken or the egg? Does the new campaign undermine the old one or was the disaster inevitable and the distraction a help? Remember, Gigli also changed release dates just weeks before release. Another bad sign.

As I say, we’ll never know. No one will. Everyone assumed that LXG was a disaster in the making and instead, it is just an ugly blight on the face of Hollywood. The Bruce Almighty campaign offered the same three jokes without variation for weeks and weeks… and got a massive opening. They had traction.

The American Pie series has traction. The brand has an audience and amazingly, Universal becomes for summer comedy what Disney has been for water-based films. There have only been four “straight” comedies this summer and it looks like three of the four will pass $100 million. The one miss looks to be Legally Blonde 2. Right now, Garfield is the only comedy scheduled for next summer… and that may not qualify as a “straight” comedy, just as Shrek 2 doesn’t. Deuce Bigalow 2 is also expected to turn up. But expect those ranks to grow. This year, while everyone was focused on their CG and sequels, they forgot to be funny. That will change..

Seabiscuit is reporting a 16 percent estimated hold. Even if that changes by as much as 10 percent, it is a nice hold, improving on its 2002 doppelganger, Road to Perdition. Last year, Perdition added another 91 screens in weekend three. Will Seabiscuit follow suit? We’ll know later this week.

Bend It Like Beckham jumped an estimated 743 percent as it went wide this weekend, but that still only took it to $1.9 million. It’s not unimpressive. But the message that Keira Knightly was in another great, fun film this summer besides Pirates of the Cash Machine… no traction. Now, if only Keira had a speech about her vagina…

BEN: I caught some of Ben Affleck’s appearance on Inside The Actor’s Studio, which was taped last spring, it seemed. And I was surprised. Because what I saw was a guy who was a little desperate to be liked. He still had all the bravado, but there was a lot of vulnerability there. And I don’t think it was b.s.

Most of that has disappeared lately… and his good guy image with it. But I felt a bit more sympathy for the man who has everything.

CORRECTIONS: There were two errors in Friday’s column. One was a recitation of a report that Anything Else would feature Woody Allen making a play for and bedding Christina Ricci. Yick. But it’s not true. The only romance there is between Ricci and Jason Biggs.

I finally caught the trailer for Anything Else and found it even more shocking than the idea that Allen would write himself a February/December romance.

It turns out that not only has DreamWorks created a poster that barely indicates that this is a Woody Allen movie, now they’ve created a trailer that barely indicates that this is a Woody Allen movie. In fact, Allen does not appear in the trailer and the only mention he gets is a “From Woody Allen” at the back end of the clip. On top of that, the pace of the trailer is not in any way reminiscent of Allen’s previous work.

One always hates to agree with Jeffrey Wells on anything, including the color of the sky, but this does seem to indicate that DreamWorks has determined that the value of Woody Allen is less than the value of Christina Ricci and/or Jason Biggs. Saving Silverman may only have made $19 million domestic, but Hollywood Endings didn’t even get to $5 million. Sad.

Also, I got an e-mail from someone at Variety about the inferences about Amy Dawes’ second review of the summer, both for crappy movie by Columbia, both positive. Specifically, he complained that I assumed that Variety holding its review until the release date was extremely rare.

As it turns out, there were four day-of-release reviews in Variety this summer. Bruce Almighty, reviewed by Bob Koehler, 2 Fast 2 Furious, reviewed by McCarthy, Tomb Raider 2, reviewed by David Rooney and Gigli, reviewed by Ms. Dawes.

Still, it remains a fact that Dawes has reviewed fewer films than any other the other critics in this group and the only film other than Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and Gigli she reviewed was an obscure documentary from the Latino Film Festival. And by the way, Dawes' review was the very only positive review of Gigli in the “Cream of the Crop” category on RottenTomatoes.com.

TRAILERS: I saw a load of trailers this weekend. Very interesting. But it will wait for tomorrow…. except to say that Disney/Touchstone has made me a true believer in both Calendar Girls and even more so, Under The Tuscan Sun, which looks like a $100 million-plus Julia Roberts film, but starring the significantly more sexy Ms. Diane Lane.

Tomorrow, more on those two trailers, plus The Rundown, The Whole Ten Yards and a deeper look at the trailer for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, from New Line and master Trailer Park editor Bill Neil.

ALSO TOMORROW: The Mel Gibson mailbag has heated up again. We’ll go back in…

READER OF THE DAY: GD BOY writes: “Peter Vain said: "That being said, theory certainly shouldn't be emphasized at the expense of history, which is apparently what's been happening at the major film schools. People just aren't being taught to love movies. They're learning how to read a film, but not about the films themselves. They may understand what the Terminatrix represents as a signifier in T3, but they've probably never heard of Preston Sturges. They understand that there was once a raging debate over whether film should represent reality or fiction, but have they ever seen a Howard Hawks film?"

I'm a critical studies graduate from USC. And I can say without a doubt this is not the case at USC. In my critical studies experience, we were taught to love movies. We were taught cinema history. We watched a lot of Sturges and Hawks. I also took amazing classes on Hitchcock, Spielberg, Lucas, Levinson, Scorsese. Amazing classes on Science Fiction and Fantasy in movies. Film comedies (with Sturges, Harry Langdon and Harold Loyd and Chaplin and the others), Black cinema, gay and lesbian cinema, violence in film. Film history, and foreign film history. I've seen amazing prints from Truffaut, Fellini, Antonioni, Goddard and many others. I've seen romantic comedies from the classical Hollywood era to the Post classical, Modern and Postmodern era (along with films in every other genre). I had one small class my senior year at USC as a critical studies major that dealt with all this political theory crap. The thing that bothered me the most about Weddle's article was the quote from Chris Scotten:

"The great thing about UCSB is, I could have gone to USC and sat around holding a microphone boom pole, but then I wouldn't understand the theory behind filmmaking, to understand how film exists in relation to our lives. We learn how film psychologically manipulates us, and the power inherent in the language of cinema."

But that's exactly what I learned at USC. What I learned was how camera, framing, lighting, sound, editing, performance, production and art design can affect your audience emotionally. The difference between an episodic or linear narrative. How to create suspense with story, camera and editing. I also learned cinematography, screenwriting, acting, television production, sound design and many other of the hands on tools to make films. Though I never did stand around holding a boom mike.

The most important thing I learned as a USC critical studies major was that yes, anyone can learn to operate a camera. But that isn't going to show you how to make a good movie (ask Michael Bay). What I learned is a visual literacy. How all those components (camera, lighting, framing, sound, editing, performance, pace, narrative, story) affect the audience EMOTIONALLY. How they create subtext. How to make a good movie. And we were encouraged to love movies. ALL movies. No doubt in part to critical studies instructors like Dr. Drew Casper (quoted in Weddle's article) and Dr. Todd Boyd. So, personally, my film school experience couldn't be farther from the truth of Weddle's article, or the view of the UCSB students about USC or anyone else.

If there's any doubts, ask Manhola Dargis. She was teaching Film Criticism when I was there.

E ME: It’s going to be a long, long week. What will get you through?

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