According the indefatigable Nikki Finke the annual Camp Allen Big Money Confab is on again this year in Sun Valley, Idaho and that no studio or big media honchos were invited.
OUCH!
Now some folks are saying that it's inevitable, everything's going on the internet, and that for some reason the internet won't need professional quality entertainment content, but I beg to differ. I think it's the studios' own damn fault that they weren't invited.
This camp is where the uber-rich gather, plot world domination, realize that they alreadydominate the world, pat each other on back, have some beer and barbecue, and then talk about where they can put their money to work.
One of those places where their money doesn't work is Hollywood.
Hollywood had it good during the hedge fund/sub-prime boom of the last few years, investors literally had money to burn, and when you're trying to dodge America's convoluted tax system, there's no better place to burn it than in the convoluted money system of Hollywood.
We're talking about a system where a film can make hundreds of millions at the box office, sell hundreds of thousands of DVDs, exponentially beating the costs of making and marketing, and still lose money.
This is the self-fulfilling idiocy that I've been talking about since I started this blog.
For those unwilling to look in my archives for the definition of that little nugget of unwisdom, I'll restate it here.
A self-fulfilling idiocy is a plan devised to solve a perceived (but not necessarily real) problem, yet this plan is so stupid, that only a complete idiot cannot see that it will cause even more (and all too real) problems in the future.
It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy, only with more stupid.
Hollywood thought that they had a problem, namely that they weren't making enough money for themselves. So they created their convoluted accounting system that takes what should be a simple business and making it needlessly complicated.
The management tells the shareholders that it's to protect their interests and guard their profits, so the shareholders went along, at first.
Then the idiocy kicked in.
People who had profit participation in individual films started getting screwed out of their fair share, so they started demanding more money up front.
The studios then started spending more on "stars" causing costs to go up. To recoup the costs they started going after the unions. The unions started fighting back, getting more and more money up front, causing costs to rise even more.
All during this time the studio management started hiking their own salaries and perks to levels more befitting an 18th century French monarch than a mid-level business man.
Real profit margins began to shrink, but the investors stood by and let it happen, partially because of the tax write-offs, and partly because of the real money made by the occasional mega-blockbuster.
Costs keep going up, more in tune with the inflation rates of Zimbabwe than the real costs of making movies, and real margins continue to shrink. But they can continue to count on outside investment to keep them going because Wall Street was swimming in cash.
It basically went from being a business to a Ponzi Scheme, where instead of the first investors making the money, it's the management that scores the cash, through their salary and perks.
No one seemed to mind until the Wall Street money train came to a screeching halt. Suddenly investors started demanding actual returns on their investments, and the studios were gobsmacked, because they literally don't know how to do that.
So you get studios finding it hard to find financing, even though box-office numbers are strong, because who wants to toss their money into a black hole?
Which is why Hollywood was left out of Camp Allen, it's about opportunities, not idiocy. If Hollywood wants back in on the whole deal, they better get off their duffs and reform how everything is done in Hollywood, from the top down.
There's a report going around the interwebs that a major studio is planning to do a big screen movie based on the Viewmaster.
I hope that it's a joke, not unlike my attempt at a Hungry-Hungry Hippos movie rumour, but a lot of people seem to be taking this Viewmaster movie seriously. For those of you who don't predate Nintendo, the Viewmaster was a toy that looked like red plastic binoculars, but they didn't work like binoculars. You had to get a little cardboard circle, ringed with tiny photo-slides, shove it into the Viewmaster, hold it up to the light, look in, and you would see a 3D picture of the 1965 World's Fair.
Doesn't that just scream a big budget motion picture?
Which is why I hope it's a joke, because it's beyond ridiculous. Viewmasters may have pictures, but they certainly don't have any of the motion you need for a motion picture. They're the sort of toy that you use a little on Xmas day, toss in a box, and never think of again until years later and you're cleaning out your basement and say, "Hey, my old Viewmaster," look in it one more time, and then toss it back into the box until the scene repeats itself again when you're with your grandchildren and packing for you trip to the old folks home.
It's such a lame idea I'm certain that a studio is probably going to drop a few million on it.
AEG, the concert promoter and host of this event, has refused to pay for these extras, even though they are trying to use this event to suck some cash out of Jackson's legacy.
Now any other state would have said: "Whoa there pardner, no moolah, no memorial."
But this isn't any other state, this is California, otherwise known as fame's doormat.
A state that's paying vendors and suppliers with IOU's because it HAS NO MONEY, is taking a $2.5 million hit that it can't afford because it involves someone famous.
If AEG refused to put up the money for the police, fire, and ambulance services that have to oversee such an event, I'd have given them a big fat no. They could do it in another city, I wouldn't care. And don't talk about tourists will somehow pay for it by spending money in LA, and boost the economy, but I can't see it having that much of an effect. The state's economy, tax system, and government has become a massive black hole, where if you don't get your money up front, you're probably not going to get it at all once it's been picked apart. It's like studio bookkeeping, but writ large, and as a philosophy of governance.
Also, it's the principle of the thing. The state of California has to stop being a doormat for anyone and anything that can rouse some media attention, and get down to business.
I'd have billed AEG, and then billed the major media outlets like CNN, Fox News, and the networks for the right to cover the event. If they complain, tell them to sue, and remind them who the judges work for, and that by the time they get it to court, the event will be long over.
Sure, it's extortion, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
1. AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON Reason for disgust- The film was done right the first time, and the fact that it's sort-of sequel American Werewolf in Paris was so quickly forgotten, shows that CG werewolves aren't all they're cracked up to be.
Reason for hope- Dimension is part of The Weinstein Company, which is broke, so this cinematic abomination getting made highly unlikely, and even if it does, Harvey's better at finding excuses to not release films than release them, it could still fail to see the light of a full moon.
2. RED DAWN Reason for disgust- Red Dawn was extremely 80s. With the media telling us that nuclear annihilation was right around the corner, a film showing the conventional invasion of America by communist forces was a refreshing change of pace. Sadly, the Soviet Union obviously skipped the MGM story conference, because they collapsed about 20 years ago, which mean that it ceased to exist before the movie's lead characters were born.
Reason for hope- I can't see one. This is going to waste a lot of money for the already cash strapped MGM, unless they decide to turn it into a comedy and hire the South Park guys, America, fuck yeah.
3. CONAN THE BARBARIAN Reason for disgust- I have a sneaking suspicion that they're going to draw their inspiration from neither the first film, or it's audaciously sword swinging source material, but will probably just rehash that cinematic abortion called Conan The Destroyer.
Reason for hope- At least Brett Ratner is reportedly not on the project anymore. Hopefully someone who appreciates the blood and guts nature of the source material, and didn't make X3
4. ROBOCOP Reason for disgust- Robocop was a film about the 1980s, a very different time than the 2010's. It doesn't really age well, and slick special effects are not going to update it, especially after the bitter aftertaste left by the awful sequels, and the cheapo Canuck TV series.
Reason for hope- I can't see one.
5. CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON Reason for disgust- The film was great for its time, its creature suit was revolutionary, and created some scary and impressive imagery. Nowadays there is nothing impressive about special fx, audience see CG, and yawn, because it required no craftsmanship or artistry.
Reason for hope- At least Universal won't have to pay for the franchise. Other than that, I got nothing.
6. LOGAN'S RUN Reason for disgust- Another film that was for and about its time. I can't really appreciate the film out of the context of the 1970s. Plus, the original was truly made by Jenny Agutter in that flimsy little outfit.
Reason for hope- A smart director and screenwriter could make it a brutal satire of Hollywood's obsession with youth and unbelievable standards of physical perfection, but that's highly unlikely. It'll probably turn into some sort of Matrix rehash.
7. FAHRENHEIT 451 Reason for disgust- While it was a brilliant novel, the concept of burning all books to control information, seems quaint in the age of the internet.
Reason for hope- I can't see much hope here, there are just too many temptations for Hollywood to screw it up.
8. T.J. HOOKER Reason for disgust- The original show was an unremarkable cop show made a cult favourite by the off kilter charisma of William Shatner as the middle aged patrol sergeant teaching his rookie partner the ropes.
Reason for hope- Outside of Adrian Zmed getting work in a cameo role, the only real reason is an updated version of this scene on the big screen.
I understand that Charlize Theron's new agent Ari Emmanuel is negotiating for her to get the part.
Sorry for not posting yesterday. Slow news day combined with this lingering flu, and my ongoing agent hunt kept me from posting.
Since today is the American 4th of July holiday, I found what can only be described as the ultimately American comedy clip, it's Don Rickles at the Roast for the quintessentially American comedian Bob Hope (who was an immigrant), and in it the Viceroy of Venom takes shots at Hope, then Governor and future president Ronald Reagan, evangelist Billy Graham, WW2 General Omar Bradley, Dean Martin, and a whole truckload of others.
For those of you under 35 who don't remember Asteroids, you basically control a little trial, that flies around the screen, blasting strangely geometric "asteroids" with you mighty pixel cannon. Take a look at this picture to bask in its amazing eye-popping graphics.
Now I am not the type to think video game adaptations are all that great an idea, even when the games have a story, but I'm positively gobsmacked that someone thinks they can make a movie from the video game with even less narrative content than Pac-Man.
In fact, I think Universal got conned.
Face it, if you want to make a sci-fi action adventure with asteroids, slap together a script about rivalry among outer space miners, toss in a love interest, a disaster, and some pirates, aliens, or alien-pirates, after their booty, and call it Asteroids. It's just that easy.
There was no reason for them to go to Atari and spend good money to buy the movie rights to a game that's been mostly forgotten by even the people who made the high score screen. Asteroids is a common word, used all the time, and unless you're going to cast a bunch of geometric shapes, any story would be different from the complete non-story of the video game. But someone must have made one hell of a sales pitch, using terms like synergy, and paradigms, and other shit, and Universal fell for it like country rubes chugging snake oil.
I salute the people who sold Universal Asteroids as a movie, you truly are magnificent bastards.
2. HARVEY WEINSTEIN, CRITIC AT LARGE
Harvey Weinstein, the founder and destroyer of flailing failing indie TWC, recently posted his first official movie review at web-site The Daily Beast. Now if Harvey decides to keep doing movie reviews for a living, because he's certainly not making anything as a producer, he's going to need the sort of blurbs that will get his name onto movie posters again. So here are a few for him, gratis, because I know he's broke:
-"A brilliant independent movie, I could sit on it for years."
-"This film sucked so hard, I was looking for my name in the credits."
-"This is the sort of praiseworthy film I would crush with one of my multi-million dollar Oscar campaigns."
-"I passed on this script, so you know it must be good."
I hope you can find a use for them Harvey.
3. IN DEFENSE OF GWYNETH
Poor Gwyneth Paltrow, she's being attacked again for unfavorably comparing the USA, the nation of her birth, and the cradle of her career, to another country, this time Spain.
Well, I've decided to not attack Gwyneth for these statements. In fact, I think she has a good reason for making them.
This is a woman who has spent her life surrounded by rich people, and rich show-biz people. She has no idea what it's like for the people who live with incomes under seven figures, and it shows.
Her upbringing is the wealthy equivalent of being raised in the woods by inbred hillbillies who ain't got no knowing of dem dere folks who live in dem dere towns and cities and ain't got no hankerin' to learn about dem either. Except instead of a shack in a holler, it's a house in the Hamptons, or Beverly Hills, and the only Americans she knew who aren't rich are usually the servants, and they're only allowed to speak when spoken to, and even then it's strictly "Yes Mistress."
She's not a pretentious twat who hates her country, she only knows rich America. Blame them for the bad impression, not her for her ignorance.
There was a time when Hollywood did very well with adult movies. I'm not talking about those "adult movies," I'm talking about movies for adults. The sort of films that don't rely on big explosions, and big special effects, including big cleavage, but instead were centered more on plot, dialogue, character, and often dealt with mature and intelligent themes and subject matter.
Nowadays it looks like most major studios avoid such films like the plague, preferring to have big robots smash each other to pieces for big bucks.
I think the blame can be divided two ways, 40% belongs to the audience, and 60% to Hollywood.
WHY IT'S THE AUDIENCE'S FAULT:
1. Demographics 20%: During the first "youthquake" that hit Hollywood in the 1950s independent producer Samuel Z. Arkoff estimated that the ideal target was the 19 year old American male, because he was the bellwether taste-maker at the time. Since then that has skewed younger and younger, and included the new phenom of "tweens."
These are the demographics that dominate audience buying habits. They either buy their own tickets, or decide the films that their parents can see, because they have a lock on the family's disposable income. Plus the younger viewers will go to see the same film again and again, putting a merely popular film into the realm of the blockbuster.
The problem is that if you want the true definition of an idiot with the attention span of a over-caffeinated gnat, it's a teenager. It's not a personal attack against them, all teens are idiots, I was an idiot when I was a teenager, so was you, and everyone you know. It's a scientific fact.
2. POOR URBAN PLANNING 10% & LAZINESS 10%: The days when you could walk down the street to your local neighbourhood theatre to see a flicker show do not exist for the average person. The bulk of people live in suburbs where it's just not easy to get anywhere, so going to a movie is no longer a casual thing, it's an event requiring a lot of logistical work. You have decide on a movie, find a theatre that's showing it, load up the car, find a parking space, which you probably have to pay for, stand in line at the Cineplex with a bunch of pimply little teenyboppers who are buying tickets to the PG film so they can sneak into the R rated movie next to yours, buy your ticket, buy your snacks, find a seat, etc...etc...
Most older folks think about all that and say: "Fuck it, I'll rent it from Netflix in a few months."
But they're not the only ones to blame....
WHY IT'S HOLLYWOOD'S FAULT:
1. SKYROCKETING COSTS 20%: The costs of making a film have been affected by an inflation unseen outside Zimbabwe. When you include the costs of distribution and marketing you could spend a minimum of $60-$100 million to release a "low budget" film.
Now this inflation is not a natural inflation, caused by the laws of supply and demand. It's an artificial inflation caused by poor business practices, but it's still making it extremely risky to make a film that doesn't have the potential to be a blockbuster.
2. OSCAR WHORING 20%: One of the worst things to have affected the Academy Awards was when Oscar movies became a genre onto themselves. At one time those films were called "prestige pics" and their purpose was to not only put bums in seats, but to win prizes and critical praise.
At some time in the 1990s, when Miramax began to dominate the Oscars, the shift started where putting bums in seats came in after the prizes and critical praise, and in many cases way after. After a while, lack of commercial success became a sign of Oscar worthiness, and you had films being made not to be enjoyed by the general audience, but by the narrow audience of Academy voters, who ironically, usually don't pay to see such films, preferring screeners given to them by producers.
I guess the best way to sum it up, is that Oscar films don't have to be good, because they're not being judged on if they're well made or not, but on whether they're important, and sincere enough to be worthy of an Oscar.
3. INABILITY TO ARGUE 20%: In places where everyone thinks alike people rapidly lose the ability to argue. In a social circle that includes a variety of opinions people say: "I disagree, and these are my points," which then get some counter points in return, and vice versa, until either one side wins, or they at least agree to disagree. However, toss disagreement into a milieu where the overwhelming majority agrees on just about everything, and suddenly things shift. The argument then goes: "I disagree, I may have points, but I'd rather impugn you and your motives as the main thrust of my case."
There is no place more wrapped up in group-think and conformity than Hollywood. Just do a survey of how they vote, and they tend to come overwhelming on one side of any issue.
It wasn't always like this. Hollywood was one big floating argument, especially during the early 1970s, the golden age of the mature political film. You had a more conservative "old guard" in a debate with the young whippersnappers who were coming out of New York television and later the first film schools. And these films took the form of a debate. Both sides would be presented in an intelligent and mature way. If the filmmaker had a political axe to grind, they at least tried to convince you, the viewer, that Nixon was evil, or that nuclear power was going to kill us all, with arguments.
Sadly, without the intellectual rigor that's born from constant debate, you see one side being passed on as angelic, and the other demonic, with no gray areas. If the villain, makes what could be construed as a valid political point, there is always included a "gotcha" moment where it's shown that he doesn't really believe any of it, he's just a posturing hypocrite. Because they believe that the audience is too stupid for a real debate with well rounded characters on both sides, and has to be spoon-fed that the filmmaker's side is good, and any other side is pure evil.
Of course such a stance is not going to win over the folks in flyover country who make films profitable, because they don't vote the way Hollywood does, and are considered part of the problem by Hollywood, and treated accordingly on screen.
These factors create what I call the Perfect Storm of Stupid. So called smart films get dumber, there's no profit in making dumb films smarter, because the target demographic isn't going to get it anyway, and audiences start to avoid the "smart" films because they come across as cliched as the "dumb" films, tedious in their self-righteousness, with an added soupcon of being insulting, not only to their intelligence, but also to their existence.
How can Hollywood pull itself out of the stupid spiral and start making films that make money without being dumber than dishwater?
Well, I may be a smug know it all, but even I have my limits, because it would take a complete shake-up of not only how Hollywood does business, but it's internal culture, as well, to make any sort of progress.
Oscar winning character actor Karl Malden passed away at the age of 97. He was born Mladen Sekulovich in Chicago, and started out as a theatre actor on Broadway, with some work in radio, and serving as a non-commissioned officer in the US Army Air Force in WW2. He resumed his acting career after the war, and thank to his connection to director Elia Kazan, he got the role of Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire, which landed him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
He worked steady in film and on stage, throughout the 50s and 60s, but made the leap to TV with The Streets of San Francisco, and became one of the definitive images of the 70s with his "don't leave home without it," ads for American Express.
He was always underrated as an actor, mostly avoiding the melodramatic "look at me" moments, and just being the character he was hired to play.
Malden managed to have a successful career, a long marriage (70 years), and a beloved public image, untainted by scandal, all by avoiding the traps of fame, and treating his work as work, and not some sort of entitlement. He was a class act, and had a good long run that every actor could learn from.
Happy ordinary day to all the rest, and by that I mean both of you.
Today I'm sick, sneezing, wheezing, and geezing, but I still managed to spit out some of the money and movie related musings that you crave like the salivating dogs that you are.
1. PARAMOUNT POPS THE PINK SLIPS
While Paramount's Transformers 2 raked in hundreds of millions of dollars at the box-office Adam Goodman, the studio's recently installed honcho decided to unceremoniously shit-can 31 people. I'm not going to condemn Goodman for this action. He's relatively new at his post, most of the decisions that are starting to make Paramount a functioning commercial entity again, like Star Trek & Transformers 2, were made before he got the top spot, and he has to make some sort of impression if he is going to justify his bonus.
And nothing justifies a bonus than layoffs, whether the company needs it or not. He can make a lot of noise about all the money they're going to save, create a 1 day, 0.02% uptick on the stock price, and establish an identity for himself as a decisive man of action.
Now I have to take a moment to wonder what glue they're huffing at Sony.
Clooney's good looking, charming, has won an Oscar, appears on a lot of magazine covers, and practically lives on the set of Entertainment Tonight, so you'd think that he'd be the biggest star in the world.
Not really.
If Clooney doesn't have a minimum of 10 other major actors with him, he couldn't sell tickets to the last lifeboat on the Titanic, and even then you can't really rely on it. Ocean's 13 made a little over $311,000,000 worldwide, but cost so much to make and promote, it probably only barely broke even.
Clooney's prime reason for existence is to make Hollywood feel good about itself. He's constantly praising Hollywood as a community for its charity, it's social activism, and how they're all better than the people who actually buy the tickets to movies. Hollywood then repays him in kind, praising him as the brightest star in the heavens, and praising his films as "intelligent" "mature" and to a certain extent above the heads of the average moviegoer.
Now the average moviegoer doesn't avoid his films because they're above their limited intellectual capacity, it's because Hollywood mistakes condescension for intelligence, and Clooney's non-Ocean's work are the definition of condescension.
His movies even follow a formula. He takes some play/article/book/life story about espionage/political/corporate intrigue, and a lot of self righteous posturing that tells the audience that they're evil for voting for someone, or buying a product he doesn't endorse, and then demands another Oscar.
So let's take a gander at the press release that announced the slate of films that Clooney's Smokehouse will be bringing to Sony, I'll put my personal notes in between:
THE CHALLENGE Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin. An adaptation of Jonathan Mahler’s nonfiction book chronicling the historic Supreme Court case in which two lawyers sued the Bush administration on behalf of accused terrorist Salim Hamdan.
Hmmmm.... after all those anti-Iraq War movies vanished at the box-office, does Clooney honestly believe that American audiences will pay to see this film? No, not really, he just wants to have his Atticus Finch style Oscar clip, speaking "truth to power" against those who are out of power, and who probably wouldn't have done anything against him anyway.
At least with Aaron Sorkin on script duty there'll be plenty of people talking very quickly as they walk up and down hallways.
OUR BRAND IS CRISIS A satirical comedy about American spin doctors competing in the same Presidential election in Bolivia. Based on the documentary by Rachel Boynton, with a script by Peter Straughan (MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS).
Their brand is crisis, but their product is failure, because Americans don't exactly flock to satirical movies about elections, and especially Third World elections.
FARRAGUT NORTH An adaptation of Beau Willimon’s critically acclaimed play, set during the Iowa primary of a presidential race.
Yet another election story. As if two years of pre-election speculations and postulations isn't enough, he really thinks American moviegoers will pay money for even more pre-election postulations.
ESCAPE FROM TEHRAN The true story of how the CIA used a fake movie project to smuggle hostages out of 1979 Tehran. Chris Terrio is writing the screenplay.
He's probably going to cut out the fact that the Canadian Embassy made the whole thing possible because the CIA didn't even believe the Ayatollah Khomeinei would cause America any trouble until it was too late, and needed the Canucks to do all the work in the field.
THE TOURIST A contemporary spy thriller about a spy who risks everything to reveal a conspiracy after he's accused of a murder he didn't commit. Based on the bestselling book by Olen Steinhauer. Tony Peckham is writing the screenplay.
It's like the Bourne movies, only with Clooney, and without the excitement.
THE INNOCENT MAN Based on the bestselling nonfiction book by John Grisham, the true story of murder and injustice in a small town in Oklahoma. Adapted by David Gordon Green.
This film will be found guilty. Clooney trumps Grisham in the box-office game.
There was a time when such "serious" films could have connected with the audience, but that was a time when filmmakers actually made such films for a wide audience. Just look at the political films and thrillers of the 1970s, even when you didn't agree with the fundamental political stance of the filmmaker, they at least tried to make the film entertaining.
Nowadays "serious" films aren't about tackling controversial themes and subject matter in an entertaining way. They are all about Hollywood making itself feel morally and intellectually superior to the people who actually pay for their lavish, and often hypocritical lifestyles.
Michael Bay here, or, Michael Fucking Bay, if you're a critic. I've taken some time off from rolling in a giant bin of Transformer's money to hack into this insignificant little blog to tell you TEN AMAZING FACTS about the most amazing force of nature in the universe: Me.
All during this time the studio management started hiking their own salaries and perks to levels more befitting an 18th century French monarch than a mid-level business man.
All during this time the studio management started hiking their own salaries and perks to levels more befitting an 18th century French monarch than a mid-level business man.
