May 9, 2005

News Still Waiting To Happen:
1. Miramax Details
2. WeinsteinCo. Details
3. War Of The Worlds
4. More Paramount Movement
5. Peter Rice Contract Renewal

And so...

Though some thought that the Mother's Day screening of Mad Hot Ballroom at Paramount yesterday would be an underattended affair because of the holiday, the overflow crowd from Paramount's main studio theater had to be accommodated in the Sherry Lansing Theater and the part went on for hours... even if the Cuisine d' Maison was hot dogs, hamburgers, mac-n-cheese and Haagen Daaz, vanilla or chocolate only.

The screening in the big theater, loaded with folks from 7 to 70, was a raging success. I have to admit, it was a little odd at first to see this digital camera doc on a giant screen. And I'm still not sure that the print didn't need to be brought down a stop. But as my ramblings have repeated over and over and over again... film love knows no limitations of form. Stick figures or scores of millions spend on CG, a good story well told is a good story well told. Once you have butts in the seats, audiences are willing to overlook almost any visual limitation if the material connects emotionally. And though I have not seen The Longest Yard, I think it's safe to say that Mad Hot Ballroom is the most audience pleasing film of this summer... at least through the month of May.

The film - whose only questionable audience demo is teen boys - is kind of a double edged sword for Paramount Classics. The flip side of that has already played out for Kung Fu Hustle at Sony Classics, with Big Sony taking an aggressive interest and investing a higher-than-Classics-level-of-P&A. That film was pretty much made for teen boys, albeit Chinese teenage boys, and $15 million at the box office later, voila!... what would be a big number for any other Sony Classics film is a bit of a disappointment. It isn't that the number wasn't quite good for a foreign language film. And it's not that it was fair for anyone to expect Crouching Tiger numbers. It is SPC's second highest grossing foreign language film of all time and in the Top Ten of foreign language films in America all time. But the potential seemed endless.

Mad Hot Ballroom doesn't have the language barrier to overcome. But this is still a documentary and without Michael Moore and the President of the United States promoting it, it's a tough road. Only four docs have ever grossed more than $10 million in the domestic marketplace. (On a truly irrelevant note, Morgan Spurlock was in attendance at the premiere yesterday... didn't see him with a burger.) Two were Michael Moore films, one was Super Size Me and the other was Winged Migration. Of the group, I would say that only Winged Migration was a word-of-mouth phenomenon... and we have Sony Classics to thank for that, in this tiny circular world of the movie business.

How do you get a movie about pre-teens learning to ballroom dance and then competing for a big trophy?

It's time to break out the Malcolm Gladwell, because advertising, in this case, is not the answer. The new standard for high-profile, but non-phenom docs is around $3 million or $4 million. The Fog of War did about $4.2 million... The Corporation did about $3.5 million... Born Into Brothels did about $3.3 million. Also between $3 million and $5 million are such recent high-profile docs as Capturing the Friedmans, Step Into Liquid and Touching The Void.

Now if you are reading this, you know I adore Born Into Brothels. But Mad Hot Ballroom is infinitely more accessible to a much wider group of people. You sit in this movie and audiences go absolutely wild, laughing, crying and breaking out in spontaneous applause. This has happened in Los Angeles and, not surprisingly, in New York at the Tribeca Film Festival. But more importantly, I witnessed this phenomenon in Bermuda and the film has played like crazy at a few other fests.

So you know you have something that audiences love. You don't have the foreign language excuse that people make for themselves. You don't have the "it's too heavy" excuse, where people love it but aren't sure that everyone they know will be as enlightened, that keeps a film like Born Into Brothels down in theatrical... though not at the Oscars. And that brings to mind the traditional approach to a doc like this... hold it until next year... give it a chance to win the Academy Award first. But Paramount Classics has bolder things in mind.

They're partnering with Nickolodeon in the promotion. Given that I don't really watch Nick, I'm not sure how high the heat is there. And they are going out right into the gaping maw of the summer season.

But how to get it over... really over. Because as readers know, I get excited about certain films and watch the marketing flop and then take heat for being "wrong" about those films. That is what is so complex about the film business... it's not just about having a good film... it may not be about having a good film at all. All the pieces, from casting to production to publicity to marketing have to work. That's why studios overspend on superstars... they at least guarantee a little success... usually.

So, PC can't count on Michael Moore or George Bush. They don't have McDonald's to throw spitballs (or to projectile vomit) at. And this is not a unique look at a natural phenomenon that just seemed to capture the imagination of a lot of people.

What is it? It's a movie about kids who live with the potential of going wrong going right. It's a movie about the passions of competition. It's about the conflict of today's tuned out world and the classic idea of polite social intercourse... a form of socializing that can also be great fun and sexy. It is a film made up of great characters, both the kind who populated Spellbound ($6 million) and the kind we rarely see in any popular films.

There is an interesting phenomenon - at least, for me - in the third act of this doc, when one of our "home team" competitors turns out to be lead by an all-white staff. Even though the kids in that group are just as multicultural (in the least P.C., most literal way) as in our "home team", the white, older teacher and her white crew becomes a natural opposition. "Our" group is the scrappy underdog... less advantaged, more ethnic. It is odd, but it's real.

And, of course, as anyone who's gone to their high school dances knows, the girls like to dance in public a lot more than the boys.

So that's the grid.

When Paris Is Burning came out in 1991, it became the second highest grossing doc of all time at that time, right after Roger & Me. The film, about drag queens in Manhattan and the competitions they had, is really the paternal... uh, maternal... uh, paternal grandparent of Mad Hot Ballroom. Sylvester's unbelievably sticky "Mighty Real" was its catch tune, Jennie Livingstone's filmmaking was gritty, but intimate and the characters stayed with you. But the film was about drag queens and the drugs and the sex, so there was a natural limit to the business the film could do outside of the urban centers that didn't have large liberal-minded and openly gay populations.

Mad Hot Ballroom is very much like the now-terribly-underseen Paris Is Burning. But without the "distractions." Lots of people have a hard time feeling pain for a drugged-up gay man in drag staring death in the eye. But kids dancing... overcoming their limitations... with even the one character whose possible homosexuality is a minor plot point talking about the girl he is into... much easier to see in Wyoming (even if they don't see many black or latino/hispanic people there).

In any case... my primary answer about how to get this phenomenon rolling so MHB is more than "just" a success is to show it. Show it a lot. Show it to community influencers... in this case, meaning parents and young girls. I would say that PC should try to target having no fewer than 1000 parents and kids see the film early in every market they are going into and at least 2000 in the major markets. Spread it out between four or five schools. But the word of mouth coming out of those screenings is critical... even more so than great reviews and expensive ads. This is a movie that people will see multiple times.

And of course, getting the kids from the film on Letterman and Leno and even TRL on MTV are key. Find out where J-Lo is going to be on air and fight the movie talent onto the same shows. One dance with J-Lo and the great 8-year-old dance hope from this film would potentially be worth millions.

Of course, the movie is opening New York on Friday and eight other major cities a week later, so it might be too late for a lot of this stuff...

There is a lot of action in the movie world this month. But there is no film that has a wider appeal than this little doc that can.

And to be completely on point... jobs may be at stake. I'm not sure what Tom Freston and Brad Grey think will be a "good enough," "good." or "great" performance for this film. I don't know how helpful the synergistic relationship with Nickelodeon will be. There is a lot that I don't know. But what I do know is, it's a great movie... Paramount Classics is leading with its heart... and having a film that could tip from successful to being a doc phenomenon is wonderful... and dangerous. In fact, it's mad hot.

READER OF THE DAY: PETA DAVE writes (in, esentially, a press release): "Dear Mr. Poland,

In the episode of Pamela Anderson’s new Fox series “Stacked” that airs on May 11, Christopher Lloyd, who plays retired scientist Harold, has a recurring nightmare about the chimps he used to send into space at NASA (experiments that PETA has stopped in real life). Pam was fine about portraying the tests as frightening, but she drew the line at using a real chimp on the show. Pam says, “I asked them to lose the chimp. We’ve replaced him with a robot! The scenes are much funnier with the robot anyway – it’s a very sci fi vibe.” Pam has personally seen what becomes of chimps used in TV and movies. And she’s visited sanctuaries where chimps discarded from Hollywood productions because they’ve outlived their “usefulness” go to live the rest of their lives in peace.

“Chimpanzees used on TV and in movies are all babies,” says Pam. “They’re snatched from their mothers by trainers when they’re infants so that they’ll be reliant on humans for food and be manageable in front of the cameras. But by the time they are 7 they’re stronger than Vin Diesel and can pull your head off, so many trainers sell them to laboratories or breeders, who churn out more chimp babies for people to ‘entertain’ with.”

Looks like the only wildlife on this show is gonna be Pam."

E-ME. Mad hot monkeys! What movies have you thought should have been a slam dunk, but didn't work out that way? What films were publciiszed into success beyond reason?