March 10, 2004

I spent some time with a major Hollywood screenwriter yesterday…

He was shopping at the new Target in West Hollywood.

Welcome to The Lull.

I wish I had something worth writing about. I do not.

The only story I really feel I need to be doing is one about certain people I like screwing up massively and, in my opinion, in every bit as much danger of losing their jobs in the next year as Michael Eisner.

But I don’t really want to point fingers and stir the pot.

DreamWorks has a movie that has, once again, lost its director at nearly the last minute. The film is The Ring 2. Ironically, the studio’s go-to director for films that needed last minute replacements was – taa dah! – GoreVerbinski, DreamWorks in-house director who finally turned major leaguer with The Ring (and of course, The Pirates of The Caribbean.)

Are you sleeping yet?

I saw yet another major disappointment yesterday that isn’t really bad, but isn’t really good and will really get a lot of excessive praise from film critics soon. Oy.

Just wondering... could Peter Bart be any further up Mel Gibson’s ass?

Retro is in again. Disney is moving forward with Judy Blume movies (“Cramps have never been so fun!”). Fox is finally moving forward with Fat Albert, now that they know that Garfield won’t have to be advertised as “Starring The Voice Of Academy Award Winner Bill Murray” so they can go back to selling it as a Jennifer Love Hew-Took-Her-Career-And-Killed-It movie. And the courts are keeping a ridiculous lawsuit over “David Manning” going, much to the consternation of one of the three judges on the appeals court.

And I still have another week to go before I leave for Bermuda. Agony.

READER OF THE DAY: MOTHER OF YERTLE writes: “I've got a topic worth exploring sometime soon . There's already a campaign brewing with some American film craft union people about runaway film productions. The current target seems to be Cinderella Man, which will begin filming in Toronto in April. It's ironic that they target Imagine, since almost all of Ron Howard's films have been exclusively filmed in the USA. For Cinderella Man, however, the production needed an old time arena from the depression era. None were available in the USA, I understand, so the film couldn't be made on budget in the USA if one had to be constructed. Toronto has a perfect old one, closed and shuttered, which is being spiffed up superficially to serve as a film substitute for the old NYC Garden.

Currently, there are about 4 Hollywood productions working in Toronto, and many more throughout Canada. No protest campaigns that I've heard of. It's ironic that Ron Howard, who is by all accounts a mild mannered and responsible director, is the target of a noisy single minded smear campaign. Do the people protesting think that he, the studio, and all involved can just stop production, say Mea Culpa, and move to the USA? Of course not... this is all symbolic hogwash.

Strange thing is, I consider myself pro-union. I support many of the labor movement's achievements. But I hate it when the rhetoric and reasoning is illogical and misguided. The reasons for runaway film productions are myriad and complex. Targeting an inappropriate film situation wins no points from me.”

E ME: Anything you are interested in?