May 5, 2004

The two biggest Hollywood stories of Tuesday came, oddly, not from Hollywood-based journalists, but from a New York Times reporter out of Washington and a two marketing beat guys at the Wall Street Journal.

The first story was the more serious. Everyone has kind of known for the last year or so that Miramax's decision to pick up Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 was going to cause trouble. Well, here we are, people heading out the door to Cannes where the film will premiere, and the whole thing has gone public.

From what I can figure, Miramax started floating the issue within the journalistic community a few weeks ago. Jeff Wells, after chatting with non-Miramax sources, got hot about the apparent title change from "Fahrenheit 9-11" to Fahrenheit 911. But he missed, probably to the irritation of the Moore and Miramax teams, the bigger point… Disney was as unwilling to let a division of their company release the film this summer as they were last summer.

Moore finally started his inevitably endless whine with a reporter on Tuesday, though it is unclear in the article whether that interview was the genesis of the story. In a classic act of Moore-ish onanism, the Oscar-winning documentarian took $6 million from Miramax, making Fahrenheit 911 one of the most expensive documentaries ever made. After feasting on this capital from the "independent" division of a multinational, he brays to the Times, "At some point the question has to be asked, `Should this be happening in a free and open society where the monied interests essentially call the shots regarding the information that the public is allowed to see?"

Well, if ya don't want those "monied interests" to make decisions, Mike… Don't Take Their Friggin' Six Million Dollars!!!!! Adding to the pathetic nature of this scam, please be aware that Moore probably has $6 million himself and could have self-financed or sold select foreign markets to get enough money to get well within range of his production budget. What was his salary on this $6 million doc? And how much of the budget was based on the speed of completion of the film so that Moore could feel he might influence this year's election. Perhaps he feels the federal government should give him matching funds.

The reps of both Disney and Miramax pretty much said what they would be expected to say… "no" and "we're hopeful they'll let us do what we want." The reality for Disney, in my opinion, is that this film is far more dangerous for them than Miramax releasing a quality NC-17 movie. Not only will this film become a source of boisterous debate in the middle of an election cycle - as Moore intends it to be - but Disney would have to contend with Moore shooting off his mouth, as he tends to do when promoting movies. And having experienced it personally I can tell you, his exaggerations have an occasional tendency to become outright manipulative lies.

Cannes is the reason why the parade of verbosity has started up. By the time the film premieres, it will be held up, especially in the foreign press, as some sort of referendum on freedom of the American media. Think about it… one of the greatest self-promoters of his generation teamed up with one of the greatest marketing minds of his generation with Michael Eisner as the mutual enemy, stuck in a no-win situation. If Eisner lets Miramax distribute the film, he will be attacked by the right (a group that just coughed up the majority of The Passion of The Christ's $365 million-plus domestic gross and represents a significant portion of Disney's theme park patronage) and there will be an absurd amount attention paid to the political leanings of Disney-owned ABC News and other subsidiaries. If he sticks to his long-held (pre-production) position that no Disney company will distribute the film, he will be attacked by Moore and others for months and months and months as the worst kind of right wing apologist and censor.

No matter how successful Bowling for Columbine was, no one else in the marketplace is about to take a documentary off Miramax and Disney's hands at a cost of $6 million. Ironically, the "O" solution - distribution through Lions Gate - is now being floated, along with the idea that Eisner will block such an idea. Forgotten, perhaps, is the fact that Miramax had to be sued for breach of their distribution contract with that film's producers in order to get Miramax to move the film to Lions Gate. Additionally, Miramax's "marketing control" was actually Miramax being contractually required to provide P&A money, a responsibility which Lions Gate was not willing to assume when the took on the successful ($16 million) distribution of the film.

Ari Emmanuel, Moore's agent and apparently an intentional combatant in this verbal war, also threw out the first pitch in the "dumping the film is financial irresponsibility on Eisner's part" derby. That was in Variety. In the New York Times, he goes the other way, accusing Eisner of greed and, dare I say it, corporate responsibility: "(Eisner) definitely indicated there were tax incentives he was getting for the Disney corporation and that's why he didn't want me to sell it to Miramax. He didn't want a Disney company involved."

I have to say, it is odd to find myself defending Michael Eisner and Disney for the second time in just a few short weeks. But demagoguery is not attractive, regardless of what your role in the industry or your personal politics. And neither Michael Moore nor Harvey Weinstein, who has remained silent so far, has any position from which to claim status as a victim.

There is a huge difference between Michael Moore's six million polemic and some documentarian having his or her film bought and squashed by the distributor for political reasons. In fact, Oliver Stone has a much more reasonable beef with Time-Warner for forcing him to rethink his HBO-financed point-of-view doc about Castro than Moore has with Disney. I didn't like the shallow perception of Castro in Stone's original doc, but HBO didn't tell him that he had to make a balanced film… until the political heat revved up after people saw it. On the other hand, Disney made it clear to Miramax and Moore that this film would never see the light of day under any Disney banner back before the Miramax financing deal closed.

Could this film become the straw that breaks the backs of both Eisner and Bush? Perhaps. Eisner has no great option here. If I were strategizing with him, I would be trying to figure out a way to force Roy Disney and Stanley Gold into taking a position before things went too much further. I suspect that Roy would not really want Disney distributing Moore's attack on George Bush. According to various sources, he is a right-winger (unlike his sidekick, Stanley Gold). But his behavior in the last year would suggest that he might be willing to back any effort that is bad for Eisner. On the other hand, if Eisner decides to encourage distribution of this point-of-view doc and commits the company to eating the costs of production if the film is not highly profitable, Roy Disney might come out and say he is being fiscally irresponsible that way. (This idea, by the way, is my suggested course. Come out for freedom of speech, acknowledge that - as with The Passion - deeply emotional films are problematic for major corporations to distribute, and encourage Miramax publicly to find an alternate distributor without penalizing Miramax for having made the deal… perhaps set up the deal so that Dinsey gets paid back and gives all profits to a non-partisan not-for-profit.)

THE SECOND STORY, delivered by two Wall Street Journal marketing reporters, and about which I have a lot less to say about, is Sony's deal with Major League Baseball to put spider web Spider-Man 2 logos on first, second and third base at a bunch of big league ball games next month.

Very clever, but yick.

I thought we had reached the low point of every damned thing being logo'd when men started writing the names of gambling websites on their bodies during boxing matches. But what in God's name prompted Major League Baseball to sell space on the base paths of their ballparks?

Perhaps they can sell PG films first base, PG-13 films second base and R rated films third base. Home base, of course, is sacred and can only be sold to Bernardo Bertolucci. Surely, Disney will never end up there.

Maybe Will Smith could pitch a game for the Yankees on I. Robot Day. Bases could disappear and reappear at random on M. Night Shyamalan Day. The Queer Eye For The Straight Guy guys could redesign uniforms. Maybe Ronald McDonald could ump a game so that fans who scream that the ump is a clown could be right for a change.

And when football season comes around, what team would refuse the chance to let Angelina Jolie play center in a promotion for Alexander? Not only would there be a lot of really long counts as quarterbacks worked their hands under Ms. Jolie's behind in anticipation, but just imagine what entertaining things she could do with the ball!!!

READER OF THE DAY: Ssssssssss writes: "My number 1 anticipated movie of the Summer is without a doubt............

Collateral. Could it be because Michael Mann may be my favorite director working today. I often wonder where Mann will fall in the Director's Pantheon. I think he is one of the best American Directors of the past 20 years. I've always liked Cruise and Mark Ruffalo is a huge talent who I would watch walking his dog. The fact that much of the movie seems to be Tom Cruise riding around in a cab would seem like NYC is more of a natural locale and I read that was the case in the original script. Well, I guess LA has cabs too.

I'm also looking forward to another Ruffalo movie We Don't Live Here
Anymore.

Also,
-Troy
-The Village
-Before Sunset
-The Bourne Supremacy (I haven't seen Bloody Sunday, I need to rent that).

I'll have to balance the maleness of the Summer with a Douglas Sirk film or two.

E ME: Is there a way out for Mike? Are you ready for the summer onslaught to begin?