May 19, 2004

I really don't feel like writing today…

Honestly, the overall ugliness of this summer just hit me like a ton of bricks tonight.

But what I will say this… Variety's backward reporting on the year's box office - the backwards being the clear effort to tell a story that Peter Bart wants told (as he keeps repeating the themes) and then reported to match - has me pissed off enough to offer a few select thoughts.

I have been on a statistical rampage lately. But the old saw is still true… there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Variety is right in that this is not a great box office year and I have already gone on record stating that I see the summer that just started as a bit of a disaster in the making. But the trade focuses on two utterly absurd notions that simply fail under any intellectual weight.

First, the idea that you can remove any movie, in this case The Passion of The Christ, from the box office stats because it seems "unusual" or "unique." It's all well and good to hypothesize that The Passion brought a lot of people into movies theaters that were not frequent visitors. But they were not exclusively so. And that $370 million not only ate a large chunk of moviegoing dollars that might have otherwise been spread around, it ate multiplex screens and week after week of media attention that other films lost. Twisted and Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights certainly did suck. But there is little doubt that both films would have opened better without Christ in the way. Did you notice a cultural wave around Starsky & Hutch? Me neither. All of those retro 70s trend pieces that would have run were replaced by the counting and distribution of Mel's money.

The second notion is that you must justify the year based on the number of $100 million films that have been released. Last year, four films from the first four months of the year hit $100 million. This year, just two. But on the other hand, there were just thirteen films that grossed $50 million or over by this time last year and sixteen that have passed that mark this year. Which is the real important stat?

The two $100 million movies this year grossed $489 million while the four last year grossed $479 million total.

And the crack about quality? Is there someone out there who really wants to defend Daredevil or How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days as bastions of Hollywood quality?

What about this? The cost of this year's two $100 million films is just a little more than the cost of Daredevil alone.

The answer to what has "gone wrong" in the first four months of 2004 is in the Variety story, though it is not emphasized. Too much competition on too many consecutive weekends. Every year there is less and less opportunity to build an audience beyond opening weekend. Last year, this became a big issue as the summer progressed. This year, April looked very much like May last year… and it was every bit as busy as May is this year. When Walking Tall and Hellboy open the same weekend, something is just plain wrong. But both films wanted to stay away from The Passion and neither one wanted to spend "summer money" to launch their films. So they ran out of options, costing both studios millions.

And of course the Oscar shift eliminated the classic Miramax ploy of a late January/early February roll out for its Oscar contender… and I might add that is now gone forever.

As of now, there are only three real contenders to open in 2004 and make $100 million in 2005; Lemony Snicket, Meet The Fockers and, depending on when Miramax decides to release it, the Bridget Jones sequel. (Ocean's Twelve will have three full weeks to generate too much money for $100m in 2005.) There may be an acting nomination in this group, but none of the films are big money Oscar players. Closer and An Unfinished Life will and may turn up as high profile Oscar titles, but neither seems poised for a $100 million run in any year.

With due respect, "execs across the industry" - in this context, in Variety - are inevitably sour naysayers who don't care for this newfangled crap. "Movies were better when I was in charge!" and all that. I am not going to argue about how great this movie year has been. But I'll take Along Came Polly over Just Married, Kangaroo Jack and The Recruit combined… give me Man on Fire over Daredevil any day of any year… Dawn of the Dead, Mean Girls and Hellboy all worked for me.

Another phenomenon of this year was that there were more major sequels in the first four months of the year… and most of them failed outright. Scooby Doo 2, Barbershop 2, Agent Cody Banks 2, The Whole Ten Yards and Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights all underperformed the original significantly. Only MGM's tightly budgeted films can be expected to make any money. And Kill Bill, Vol 2 is the only one that came close to the first film's gross… but by Variety's standard, still doesn't count.

All of which does not change the real issue of this year… the summer has sucked, the budgets are out of control and the disappointments may not stop in a hurry. If Harold & Kumar Go To The White Castle does $50 million, it will surely be more profitable than either Van Helsing or Troy or perhaps both combined. There will be some surefire wins, including Shrek 2, Harry Potter 3, Soul Plane, The Terminal, The Village and Spider-Man 2. But those wins clearly do not guarantee across-the-board improvements.

There are still plenty of very expensive movies that are just rarin' to underperform and maybe even get some people fired!

Paramount is willing to roll the dice on The Stepford Wives and get a prestige win with The Manchurian Candidate, but they aren't real interested in another The Core and, magically, Sky Captain is taking off in the fall, where the upside is less, but the press pressure is also a lot less.

Anyway… 15 Weeks isn't until tomorrow… and I don't feel like writing…

But before I go, if you come across My Flesh & Blood on Cinemax…. Watch it! If you get a chance to see the original sub-titled Godzilla that's in a few theaters around the country… Pay to watch it! Super Size Me, The Agronomist, Valentin… yes, yes, yes!

READER OF THE DAY: SOAP OPERA NAME writes: "Why are movies so expensive these days?

I look back at one of my favorite movies from my youth: Raiders of the Lost Ark. Jaws and Star Wars may have ushered in the blockbuster, but Raiders was, to me, the first modern blockbuster because it was made after Lucas and Speilberg had established themselves and gotten the proverbial "blank check" from the studio. Star Wars and Jaws were "low-budget" affairs with low expectations of success. Raiders was made to be a hit movie (one could argue that The Empire Strikes Back is a better analogy since it predates Raiders and was also meant to be a hit from the get-go, AND it was a sequel, which is so much the rage in Hollywood. But I'm going with Raiders).

Depending on which report you take to heart, Raiders had a budget between $18 million and $20 million. Add in inflation, and you're still not looking at a budget anywhere near what it cost to make something like Van Helsing. A 1981/82 would be worth about 50 cents in 2003 dollars, so the Raiders budget would be the equivilent of $36 million to $40 million. And they don't let you make American Pie 3 for that amount today, let alone a period action movie with the set pieces Raiders had.

Even something like Jurassic Park, with its effects-driven story, was a relative bargain in 1993. The $60 million budget would not be completely out of line when compared to a Raiders of the Lost Ark. But Van Helsing cost upwards of three times what Jurassic Park cost.

It just seems like we're getting bigger and bigger budgets without the attendant rise in box office (adjusted for inflation, Raiders did the equivalent of over $530 million in 2003 dollars. Quite a profit for Paramount). The blockbusters were once the cash cows that allowed the studio to end up in the black when the prestige pictures underperformed. Now, it seems that breaking even on the blockbusters is the dream of the studio exec while most of their HUGE money bets are not even expected to do that well. And with the theater chains getting ready to flex their muscles on the box office split, we could see even smaller revenues for the studios.

And despite all this extra money floating into movies these days, the movies aren't getting any better. That's not to say that there aren't many very good movies being made these days, but it sure seems that when one of these hugely expensive movies comes out, you can tell that the additional money wasn't spent shoring up the script.

But even if the movies are as good as ever, the huge cost increases don't make any sense to me (and I personally believe in the adage that unlimited money can stifle creativity), and the risk these studios are taking (even though they are part of huge media conglomerates) seems ridiculous. And the high costs seem to be across the board. Fifty-five million dollars for American Wedding seems a bit high, for example (especially after jettisoning Chris Klein, Mena Suvari, Tara Reid, Shannon Elizabeth, Natasha Lyonne, etc).

I guess it shouldn't matter to me how much movies cost since whether a movie cost $200 million or $5 million, I pay the same price at the theater or at the video rental store. But I suspect the current state of moviemaking leads to more disappointing movies than it otherwise would (I assume the more expensive the movie, the more studio suits who have to meddle) and quite probably leads to a lot of movies I might enjoy not being made at all.

Or not. Like William Goldman says (a lot), 'Nobody knows anything' "

E ME: My simple answer is "nature abhors a vacuum." The notion of "better movies" Is impossible to quantify. However, the simple reality remains that bigger does not mean better. And this may be remembered as "The Summer That CG Destroyed." What is your take?