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October 18, 2006

This is one of these deals where I want to get it right and my travels this week are making it very hard to get complete focus. The item in question is Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker piece on Dick Copaken, Nick Meaney, Sean Verity, "Mr. Pink" and "Mr. Brown" and their allegedly viable computer program that puts value on many specific parts of a movie and alleges to be able to predict box office success based on screenplays.

I don't know if he is Mr. Pink, Mr. Brown, or Mr. Made Up Name, but a little over a year ago, The Hot Blog was engaged by a guy who went by Michael Daviyd, who referred to a company called Michael Adam & Associates. They claimed they could, almost exactly as described in the Gladwell article, predict the box office future and using their system, enhance commercial viability based on reading and analyzing scripts.

They were pretty much laughed off the blog.

Gladwell's piece is a bit of promotion for these guys (again, assuming they are the same guys) that borders on journalistic malfeasance, because the fact that The New Yorker is allowing this stuff to be printed in the magazine gives it credence, even if one gets no clear idea that Gladwell believes any of it. The same lack of any significant proof to their claims remains the issue. And in the Gladwell article, they are still swimming in the same shallow The Interpreter pool they were swimming in last year. When that is the example they are still trying to dine on a year later, red flares should be close enough to burn you for looking so close.

At that time, the blog entries were linked to Michael Adams & Associates, for which there is still a website, though it seems to be malfunctioning. They also had a page at maaforecast.com that was updated now and again with their projections. But, oddly, they never maintained a history that could be gone through and analyzed. And when I requested such a list after they solicited the support of me and my readers, they never coughed one up.

The new company name for what is apparently the old company idea, is Epagogix.

(Their quote: "EPAGOGUE is the path that leads from experience to knowledge. Examples are particular experiences. Aristotle's 'epagogic' pedagogy is a form of teaching which proceeds from examples to an understanding of causes, as in science, which is always a knowledge of the universal" - Charles Hummel's: "Aristotle (384-322 B.C.).")

Of course, most people object the idea that movies and their success can be turned into a mathematical formula in principle. The world is already filled with people who are anguished about how cookie-cutter studio filmmaking already is. So, suggestions that it should be even more formulaic are fighting words.

My personal sense of it is not that it's a crime against art. But I do think it foolhardy. And after reading Gladwell's piece, even more so.

What is inherent in this situation is that with all the claim of objectivity, the "machine" analyzing the data is based exclusively on subjective information. You start with the points of distinction that the programmers, such as hair color. Maybe silly, maybe not.

There is no question that blondes and actors with blue eyes dominate the film world. Happy endings seem to be more popular than unhappy endings. Dogs jumping out of the way of fireballs in disaster movies always get a reaction.

But can you really put a price on it? Of course not.

However, if you reverse engineer a hundred movies or so, you can claim to do so. And that is where my problem with this is. Anyone who really pays attention to movies and box office and celebrity can tell you that while there are some baseline similarities over the decades, things change.

Start with the script analysis system not necessarily having accurate info to work with (scripts change constantly in production) and then add that the reverse analysis is about what worked or failed last year (or in years before) with no insight into marketing, the market, or the films themselves. It's much like saying that you could predict how cards would fall in a casino based on how they fell last year. Of course, you can. Statistically, you can predict a success rate at various casino games based on history. But you can't know whether any of that history will be in play when you are the one sitting at the table with your money in the game.

Gladwell is quite glib about the whole thing, almost mocking the claims much of the time, and never actually affirming that it works.

"The Interpreter" had a complicated history, having gone through countless revisions, and there was a feeling that it could have done much better at the box office. If ever there was an ideal case study for the alleged wizardry of Epagogix, this was it.

A hard smack on Mr. Gladwell's hand for suggesting that a film is an ideal film for a case study because it was a mess in pre-production and production. If the system really works, it would make sense with any film with any production history. But I digress...

But if you look on the Epagogix website, you will get, if you pay close attention, an immediate sense that they are still running a scam. They pull a quote from "Josh Berger, a senior executive at Warner Bros. in Europe" that is connected to the phrase "What if you could build a machine to predict hit movies." But the exec and the comment is about television predictions, not movies. Pull quotes are often lies... and no more than this one.

Gladwell offers this specific look at their track record with films: "He was given nine unreleased movies to analyze.... On three of the films-two of which were low-budget-the Epagogix estimates were way off. On the remaining six-including two of the studio's biggest-budget productions-they correctly identified whether the film would make or lose money."

Okay... show of hands... is there anyone who watches box office who couldn't do that well? One-third dead wrong. And on the other two-thirds, an accurate guess about making or losing money.

"They were basically within a few million," a senior executive at the studio said. "It was shocking. It was kind of weird." But there is no indication that they were that close on many films.

Also kind of weird... I randomly picked nine numbers, 1- 30 and then pulled the related estimates from my 20 Weeks Of Summer predictions on May 4, before any grosses were registered. I, of course, didn't have the benefit of any scripts, any screenings, or any computer assistance in making my guesses. The results -

Rank - Film - Est Gross - Real Gross
4 - Click - $190m - $137m
8 - The Da Vinci Code - $160m - $218m
9 - The Break Up - $156m - $119m
11 - Miami Vice - $110m - $63m
14 - You, Me & Dupree - $86m - $76m
18 - Nacho Libre - $66m - $80m
21 - Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift - $63m - $62m
24 - Snakes On A Plane - $48m - $34m
28 - Clerks II: The Passion Of The Clerks - $28m - $24m

If only they had hired a blonde to play Sandler's wife in Click or if Vaughn's sidekick in The Break Up had been thinner, they could have averted disaster!

It could be argued that the only movie I was really capital-W Wrong on was Monster House. And you'd have a hard time finding any group of people who would argue that I was off by $100 million because of the details of the film, as opposed to a release date that combined being the third major animated movie of the summer with a Halloween themed movie running in mid-summer.

Moreover, with two movies within $5 million, another three within $15 million and two films that I predicted profitability for that were profitable and just one more that I predicted a number for that would put it in profit that did not make it to profit... well, by the standards of the Epagogix test, I think I beat Epagogix. And again, I did it with no scripts or films and in five or six of the cases, not having seen any marketing at all.

The point is not that I am a genius. The point is, bullshit on Epagogix.

Of course, if you read the Gladwell piece carefully, they call bullshit on themselves quite often. These guys claim to have some sense of objectivity. It's about the machine, not about them, right?

"Mr. Brown couldn't remember a single script he'd read where he thought there wasn't room for improvement, and Mr. Pink, when asked the same question, could come up with just one: 'Lethal Weapon.'"

Uh... who cares? Do you have an objective system or are you just another hustler trying to get someone to listen to their opinion?

"Mr. Pink started with the original script. "My pure reaction? I found it very difficult to read. I got confused. I had to reread bits. We do this a lot. If a project takes more than an hour to read, then there's something going on that I'm not terribly keen on."

"It didn't feel to me like a mass-appeal movie," Mr. Brown added. "It seemed more niche."

Again... who cares? What does their opinion of the film or their ability to understand a screenplay have to any objective analysis?

"Everyone agreed, though, that Pollack could have done much better. There was, first of all, the matter of the United Nations. "They had a unique opportunity to get inside the building," Mr. Pink said. "But I came away thinking that it could have been set in any boxy office tower in Manhattan. An opportunity was missed. That's when we get irritated-when there are opportunities that could very easily be turned into something that would actually have had an impact."

Uh... again... what does this have to do with the screenplay, which is what they claim is the basis for their objective insight? Answer? NOTHING! These two computer geniuses are suddenly just a couple of jerks in the bar telling Sydney Pollack how he should have made his film.

Are you ready to really laugh?

"Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown ticked off the movies and television shows that they thought understood the importance of locale: "Crimson Tide," "Lawrence of Arabia," "Lost," "Survivor," "Castaway," "Deliverance."

A movie on a sub, a movie in the desert, a TV show on an island, a TV show in an exotic locale, a movie on an island and a movie about a white water rafting trip gone wrong. Could you really pick six examples where the location was any less a screenwriting option that these? I guess you could have Survivor: Manhattan, but I am pretty sure it's already called The Apprentice.

Hey... you know what movie really understands the value of selecting a popular sport? The Longest Yard... and The Waterboy... and Remember The Titans.... and Gridiron Gang. Hmm... wonder if Titans would have done more business is they had a psychotic, borderline retarded place kicker. Hmmm...

How about this bit of egomania?

"With Mel Gibson's 'The Passion,' people always say, 'Who could have predicted that?' And the answer is, we could have."

But they didn't. And if they had, they wouldn't still be spinning The Interpreter as a great moment of clarity.

Or this ego parade coming from guys who have never made any claim to predicting foreign markets at all and base their "profitability" guesses on domestic grosses only...

"The assumption is that, say, Japan is different from us-that there has to be something else going on there. But, basically, they're just like us. It's the consistency of these reappearing things that I find amazing."

Yes, I find it amazing too. Amazing that Japan likes many of our big movies more than we do and barely see many others at all. Amazing that Brad Pitt movies of any kind do better overseas than they do here. Amazing that these guys aren't laughed out of every office... including Gladwell's.

I read this piece in the New Yorker, remembered these jokers, didn't see the link on their web site, so I was willing to wait on it. But then I started getting e-mails from people who were considering working with these guys based on the publicity of that New Yorker piece... and so I write...

I appreciate anyone's idea of scamming the industry into thinking they know some crazy magic formula for making movies. And if they can make a buck, suckers get what they deserve.

But if they really wanted to prove anything, it would be real simple. Tell us what the Nov/Dec box office will be for the films that are being released in that period. And beat me at guessing. Beat the guys at Box Office Mojo or Guru or anywhere else. Just put up or shut up.

But they tried that. And no one listened. So they went private. They played The Big Con, complete with aliases. And they conned Malcolm Gladwell into putting them on the map. Not dumb. Not dumb at all.

But once and forever... bullshit.

E Me.

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