May 4, 2004

It's one of those days with little to say…

I've seen a few major summer movies… but I can't write about any of them yet.

Lions Gate is going about making The Tribeca Film Festival their own version of Miramax and Sundance… but we'll have to wait and see whether David Duchovney's movie is really good or just a cheap way to get Robin Williams and Tia Leoni in a movie for release.

I'm working on a rather complex set of numbers, trying to create a methodology for predicting the summer box office. So far, so interesting… especially the notion that perhaps the problem with Paramount in recent years may not be bad movies or a lack of $100 million-plus movies, but rather too few movies in the summer derby. I know… sounds crazy… but I'm still working numbers are they first glimpse will come on Thursday in an MCN summer column.

The inspiration for this analysis, by the way, is "Moneyball", the book about the Oakland A's reconsideration of baseball statistics and how it has effected their player acquisitions. I loved the book and I love the notion of reconsidering some long-assumed ideas of how the business works. As it turns out, I had a one-sentence chat with one studio head who is a fan of the book, but who is not ready to consider such a change. I'll see what I can come up with.

Another early tidbit - Columbia, Universal, Disney and Fox are a lot closer bunched un terms of summer success in recent years than you might expect, by a number of calculations.

Air travel offered me two insights into films, one old and one new. Watching Along Came Polly for the first time on the place today, the main thing that occurred to me is that it is an Adam Sandler movie that just happens to have Ben Stiller in the Adam Sandler role. Of course, Sandler doesn't play the uptight neurotics that Stiller does. But the movie, unlike the advertising, is not really about Ben Stiller being neurotic. It's about a guy who loses something major in his life and then overcomes the odds to find something even better. Every Sandler movie is, essentially, about the amiable guy who finally finds the answers.

The other film I watched - just part of, in this case - was MGM's Soul Plane, which I picked up on Canal Street over the weekend. And I have to say, much to my shock, I laughed through every bit I watched. It was ironic in light of the column about Mean Girls the other day, since what is really fun about the film is that it manages to be relentless about the truth without - so far, at least - being mean to anyone. The film, about a guy who has a really, really, really bad experience on an airplane, wins $100 million in the lawsuit over the trouble, and starts his own airline, NWA… an airline as black as any neighborhood joint, complete with a Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles in their concourse.

Should I be laughing at Tom Arnold being distracted by some well-rounded black booty or having to put a quarter in an overhead locker in order to out his bags away in the "low class" section of the plane? I don't know if I should, but I did. There's the music video instructing passengers about seat belts, etc. Even the appearance of Sofia Vergara, a Hispanic woman so hot that she is accepted as a woman of color in the NWA family, made me smile at the notion of the filmmakers thinking out of the box. And Snoop Dogg as ganja-nated pilot… .

This one is a sleeper… and with that, I will be going to sleep too. See you tomorrow with more meat to chew on.

E ME: What is of interest to you as we head into the summer movie season…