The Letter....

I've been a bit busy to come out with a new post today, so here's a nice little video that anyone who loves comedy and wordplay should enjoy...

Hollywood Babble On & On #1046: We'll Only Censor You A Little

The Chinese government has announced that they are going to loosen their censorship rules for film and television to help foster their growing relationship with Hollywood.

While most "experts" are touting this as a great advance, I fear it's not going to go far enough, and will probably not last as long as anyone outside the country's rulers would care for.

As I like to say, like a broken record if anyone can remember those, is that while China is a big economy, it's not a free economy.

That's important.

The rulers of China hold the final word on how everything is to be allowed to operate, and while they may allow some things through. Like loosening some censorship rules, and allowing some free markets, they won't allow things to get too free.

Because they know their history and they remember...

Augusto Pinochet and the Chilean Junta.

When they overthrew the Marxist Allende government the economy was in a shambles. All the industries had been taken over by the government, unemployment was skyrocketing, and inflation was out of control. At first the Junta tried to manage the economy themselves, but quickly learned that they were in way over their head.

Needing people with real economic knowledge they turned to a group nicknamed the "Chicago Boys" because they had studied at the University of Chicago under economics guru Milton Friedman.

Friedman preached total economic freedom as the key to creating prosperity and stability. Friedman predicted that after some initial chaos and distress on the road the now free markets would find their own equilibrium and spur ongoing growth.

Desperate the Pinochet regime opened up the economy creating a weird sort of schizophrenia. It was brutally oppressive politically, but economically was wide open.

How did that end?

Well, eventually Pinochet and the Junta were eased out of power, replaced by democratically elected governments, and Chile remains one of the strongest economies in South America.

That's because you can't have economic freedom without it leaking out into political freedom, and vice versa.

Friedman was heavily criticized at the time for advising Pinochet, but he set the wheels in motion for the dictator's ouster without firing a single shot.

China's ruling elite are smart people, who are, for the most part, not blinded by irrational ideology. They like being in power and they want to stay in power. That means they will free up bits and pieces of the economy, but they will only go so far and no further, because they don't want to be unemployed dictators. They may loosen the rules now, but can tighten or change them any time the whim hits them.

Which is why I will keep saying that Hollywood's belief that China is the cure for all their self-inflicted ills is, for now, a pipe dream.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1045: SnarkNado

It's hot.

I'm feeling cranky.

So it's time for a RANDOM SNARK ATTACK!

Jennifer Lopez is being criticized for earning around $10 million singing for various dictators and tyrants.

I must ask these critics: Where do you think she can go to get that kind of money?

She's got a lavish, fiscally irresponsible, lifestyle to maintain, and she can't expect to get it from album sales and movie deals.

Have you thought about her entourage?

They're people too!

Speaking of leftovers....

Aging bimbo Jenny McCarthy, queen of the anti-vaccination movement, has been named a co-host of The View.

"I have boobs I don't need facts!"

Producers said that this move is part of their ongoing plan to never be taken seriously or considered even remotely intelligent, plus they hope to tap into two demographics, ant-vaccine cranks and 13 year old boys from the 1990s.

They originally hoped to attract the children of anti-vaccine cranks, but they don't appear to live long enough to appeal to advertisers.

Speaking of nut sacks...

The Westboro Baptist Church has announced that they intend to protest at the funeral of Glee star Cory Monteith.

First, if the funeral's being held in his native Canada, the "Church" might have trouble getting in since they're on the Canadian government's shit-list and we don't have things like freedom of speech if that speech annoys or offends anyone.

However, I'm getting tired of people referring to them as a "Church" since their "Church" consists of the relatives of founder Fred Phelps, and about half a dozen others, and at least two of them are probably investigative reporters looking for a story.

That's not a church, that's a nutty bunch of relatives and friends.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1044: ShartNado

The SyFy Network is beating the drum that their latest low rent crap-o-rama SharkNado, about a tornado dropping sharks on people, was a huge success.

Their metric was that the movie generated over 5,000 tweets a minute about it during its premiere.

However, in the real world, their original movie was a ratings disaster, generating only a little more than 1.3 million views, which is pretty bad, even for cable.

So what happened?

Basically the whole thing had the air of a really bad joke right from the beginning. People were willing to joke about it, in fact lots of people were willing to joke about it, but very few people were willing to invest the time and mental/emotional/aesthetic punishment required to actually watch it.

And that's the root of the problem with SyFy's original movies.

They're bad jokes.

Bad, lazily composed, jokes with even worse CGI.

Even I joked on Twitter that SharkNado got the green-light because they have two big wheels at SyFy HQ, each covered in random words. They spin the wheels and whatever words come out on top are combined and that's the premise of the next movie. They then reach into a barrel filled with the names of washed up or otherwise unemployable "stars," and voila, they gotta movie!

I now realize that such online japery is part of the problem. SyFy is now using it as a sign of victory, and while it's obvious that such strategies don't work, I've never met a media company that's found a bad idea they just couldn't give up.

And the saddest part is that it is possible to make watchable entertaining science fiction, horror, and fantasy, for television on a low or even micro-budget. Going for badness in the name of "campiness" is a cover for extreme laziness and unoriginality.

I know it's possible, because I've seen it done.

When I was a kid some of the scariest movies I saw weren't R-Rated slash-fests that were all over the theatres back then. They were TV movies, shot with low budgets and tight schedules, and made up for their limited resources with two little things called story, and creativity.

There's no reason why those can't be used today to make science fiction, fantasy, and horror films for television other than laziness and fear of originality.

It's what makes hits, and while it requires actual work, the results will be way more satisfying.

Damn, I'm sounding like a cranky old man.

Hey! 

You kids!

GET OFF MY LAWN!

Hollywood Babble On & On #1043: Being An Official Producer.

Disney, Warner Brothers, and Paramount have signed onto the Producer's Guild of America's guidelines, thus meaning all of Hollywood's major studios are now signed on.

Now you're probably sitting at your computer, furrowing your brow in a feeble attempt to understand what I'm talking about, so I'll do a little explaining.

The title "producer" is the most heavily abused bit of vocational nomenclature in the movie business. There are many different kinds of producer, and the definition of the title is vague enough to drop on people like confetti at a parade.

You see a director is traditionally thought of as the person who makes a film, however, it is the producer who gets the film made.

Kaspische?

You see while the director is off directing, it is the job of the producers to arrange the financing, they make sure that the budgets and schedules are kept to, and that all the resources needed to make a film are available and ready to use.

However, that's what a real producer does.

But not all producers are created equal because it's really easy to get a producer's credit whether you actually do any producing or not. 

Artist's conception of a Producer at work

A producer could be an investor, someone who introduced the studio to investors, a movie star's manager who gets a credit as part of the star's contract, or is the nephew of the studio boss because his sister's bugging him to help the kid get something on his resume other than "surfer dude."

Now this is a real hindrance when it comes to dispensing royalties, and awards. When a movie wins Best Picture at the Oscars you can see up to seventeen people all claiming to be the producer.

That's where these new guidelines come in.

Basically, if you're the real producer who did all the work, you will get a little "p.g.a." next to your name, whether you are a member of the guild or not. It just means that you meet their guidelines for being a real producer and not just a name in the credits.

Personally, I hope this works.

Clearing up the mishegaas over producers and producing might be the first baby step the industry needs to start acting like a real business.

I'm not saying that there isn't a way to screw it up, Hollywood is great at finding them, I'm just going to wish them lots of luck on making it work.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1042: Is It Really Fair After All?

It seems these days that there isn't a genre character that people aren't calling for a change of gender, race, and sexual orientation, in the name of "fairness." Folks are also fond of saying that anyone who disagrees with that idea is a racist sexist homophobe who is totally and completely unfair.

While some of the opposition to these seemingly weekly brainstorms can be called racist, sexist, and homophobic, those noxious trolls, who are in the minority, are being used as a cudgel to stop any serious critical discussion of the issue.

Chief among the undiscussed is: Just how fair would this be?

Let's look at the facts.

We live in an incredibly diverse society. Actually, we've always lived in an incredibly diverse society, but that level of diversity has increased and popular culture has started to notice.

However, I am a little leery of just taking an already existing character and changing the character's ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation to fit someone's notion of fairness.

I think it's a form of tokenism.

You see, fictional characters are reflections of their creators that the core audience can relate too. They encapsulate their creator's hopes, fears, attitudes, as well as their own ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Even alien characters, like Superman, is really founded as an illustration of the Jewish-American immigrant experience of his creators and how it connected to others on a human level.

I also find it interesting that the people demanding changes to popular characters never ask that their own creations be changed. It's usually a character where the creator is either dead, or has no direct control over anything. It's also usually done in a situation where the "fairer" version of the character can easily be tucked away in an alternate universe,  recast, or completely dropped without explanation the moment it becomes inconvenient or unprofitable for the owners of the character. 

It also creates a sense that somehow original creations that are women, gay, or members of an ethnic minority are somehow not good enough to make it. So they should just accept the occasional token gesture and be happy for it.

That's not really very fair for anyone.

In fact, it strikes me as kind of insulting.

What would be fair, would be opening the door for the creation of new, more diverse characters by a crowd of new, more diverse creators.

The market does need a more diverse range of fictional characters, and a lot of catching up is needed. But it's not impossible. Many will fail, but then again most new characters fail anyway. The ones that truly connect with people on a human level, the level that exists beyond concepts of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity, will be the ones that survive.

However, I just can't bring myself to believe that changing a pre-existing character is the way to go. In fact, it strikes me as more of a hindrance than a help.

How can it be a hindrance?

Because the most such changes generate are some brief flurries of media hype, but not much when it comes to increasing the audience. Then the companies look at those numbers, then look at the writer or artist trying to sell them a new character from an underrepresented demographic, and say: "Sorry, the market just doesn't exist for it." And you can't question their decision because they made a token gesture and that's supposed to be good enough.

Well it isn't.

We need to go beyond all this posturing and then maybe me might reach a level where it just doesn't matter, because everyone has characters they can relate to.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1041: Rivers, Writers, Legendary's New Home, & A League

JOAN RIVERS & THE WRITERS

The WGAE is mad at Joan Rivers over the treatment of the writers for her show Fashion Police on the E! Network. The non-union writers are claiming that they're owed over a million in back pay by the show, get no benefits, and are otherwise denied any decent treatment on a show that has a profit margin thicker than a castle wall.

Joan Rivers, as the chief show-runner, and grimace gargoylesque face of the show is getting a lot of the blame for the problems, and rightfully so. She started her career as a joke writer for talk shows and game shows, and should remember how hard it was for her then, and for her employees now, but she's acting like she doesn't.

This can mean one of two things. 

1. Either she's completely clueless about the causes of the dispute.

2. She's just pretending to be clueless, but is in fact a rather heartless hypocrite.

The WGAE is right to do whatever it takes to fix this dispute. She's deliberately warping the market and enriching herself by literally taking from her employees. She knows better and should act better.

LEGENDARY FINDS A NEW HOME

Legendary Pictures has inked a new deal to co-produce movies with Universal Pictures starting in 2014.

Forbes explains what Legendary will be bringing to the revivified Universal. Which is basically its very deep pockets, its founder Thomas Tull, his good instincts for pairing projects and filmmakers, and his good relations with some of the top money-making talent out there.

Anyway, it looks like a good deal for Universal.

Let's hope they don't blow it.

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY TELEVISION?

The Fox Network has commissioned a "put pilot" based on Alan Moore's comic book The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

A "put pilot" is a TV pilot where the network has to pay the producers and stakeholders a cash penalty if it doesn't go to series. It's the sort of deal a network gives if they're pretty sure that the show has a lot of potential.

Now a lot of people may disagree after the disastrous 2003 maladaption that Fox plopped onto movie screens. A failure so bad that its star Sean Connery literally quit acting after it.

Will this proposed TV series be any better?

It can't be any worse. Any better, well that's a very tall order.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1040: The Lone Ranger Autopsy.

First an apology.

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. Long story short, I was busy last Thursday, then I got sick on Friday, and really didn't start recovering until early Monday.

However, my absence didn't cause anyone to lose a projected $150,000,000+ so my July 4th Weekend so I guess I'm doing a hell of a lot better than the folks at Disney.

It looks like Disney's The Lone Ranger has suffered a fate similar to ITC/Universal's Legend Of The Lone Ranger in 1981 except on an exponentially bigger scale. In fact, the whole thing seems to be a case of history repeating.

Let's look at the facts of the case.

1. The Source Material: If you're not familiar with the story behind the story, The Lone Ranger started as a radio show in the 1930s, then moved into movie serials, comics, until it reached its peak in the 1950s with a popular television series. Up until the end of the TV series it was probably one of the most popular western franchises in pop culture.

In the case of Legend the last instalment of the franchise had been the 1950s TV series and the two spin-off feature films that ended by 1958. Both the TV series and the films had played in syndicated reruns in the ensuing 23 years. In fact, Clayton Moore, the star of the TV series was still making a living making personal appearances as the Lone Ranger at public events.

The 2013 Ranger was made 31 years after Legend, which was a terrible commercial/critical bomb, long after the reruns faded from syndication, and 10 years after the WB network made a Lone Ranger pilot that was seen by so few, most don't even know it even exists.

So where Legend had fond childhood memories of the franchise going for it, and it still failed, 2013's Ranger had either nothing, or the sour memory of a huge bomb.

2. The Genre: The Western was dead, but on life support in 1981 when Legend was released, but even that life support had been pulled by the time the 2013 Ranger was released. The Western had been crushed to death by the weight of imposing the weight of an overly simplified but horribly complex history onto what was essentially a simple genre.

3. Bad Buzz: 1981's Legend was afflicted by bad buzz from day one. First was the brilliant idea the producers had of getting a court order to ban Clayton Moore, the TV Lone Ranger, from continuing his sideline of doing live appearances in costume.

This made the producers look like greedy bullies picking on an old man trying to eke out a living from his past glories.

That's not a good image to have.

Then came the actors...

The lead actor, Klinton Spilsbury, was a complete unknown, then came word of bad on-set behaviour and that all of his dialogue had to be dubbed by another actor. By the time the film was released, Spilsbury was a complete unknown again.

Thankfully, at least for Armie Hammer, there haven't been any reports of bad behaviour on his part, nor was he needed to be overdubbed. Plus, unlike his predecessor, he's worked before and will probably work again.

However, the same cannot be said for Johnny Depp. Not that he was behaving badly, just that the whole project, and especially Depp's performance reeked of movie-star over-indulgence. Too many quirks, too many affectations, and the return of the insulting "Tonto-talk" that annoys Native Americans that at least 1981's Legend had dropped. One critic called it a cross between Depp's Jack Sparrow character and Jar-Jar Binks.

And that's not including the controversy of Depp's casting. Despite what the actor may believe about his genealogy he's considered a "white" actor, and by adapting the most offensive mannerisms of the old TV stereotype heavily ladled with Depp's own love for playing dress-up only made things worse.

Ironically doing the exact opposite of another film Depp starred in, Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, which fought to break such stereotyping. Including the casting of actual native actors in the role. There are talented Native American actors out there, Canada alone has loads of them.

Then came the budgets.

Everyone at the time thought the budget for Legend of the Lone Ranger was too high at $18 million. Disney wishes that their version had only 10X the cost, because then they might have had a chance of breaking even. Instead they spent somewhere between $215 million to $250 million to make the film, and probably over $100 million in prints and advertising costs.

The whole project reeked of over-indulgence by all involved, star, director, and producer, and of a studio powerless to stop them.

Now there are those will say that such business talk doesn't affect a film's box office. Not enough people pay attention to the sort of backstage nonsense you read about in this blog.

While it's true that the percentage of people who pay attention to business news is small, it's not true that such talk has no effect.

The zeitgeist of our popular culture is like a big bowl of very loose gelatine. A small smack on a relatively obscure corner can ripple right across. The average moviegoer may not know the details, but they do get a feeling from a project, and if it's not a good feeling, they will stay home.

That's what I think, feel free to tell me what you think in the comments.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1039: Battle Over The Butler?

HAHAHAHAHA!

Sorry, it's just that I can't help but laugh when big important Hollywood people get into a really immature pissing contest. It warms my little flint heart.

The latest involves Lee Daniels' follow-up to his movie Precious: Based On The Novel "Push" By Sapphire that was supposed to be called The Butler, and tell the heavily fictionalized story of a White House butler through the last half of the 20th Century and eight presidents. 

Before this kerfuffle The Butler was mostly known for the stunt casting of actors known for their loathing of Republicans as Republican historical figures like John Cusack as Richard Nixon and Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan. A move guaranteed to generate conservative media outrage and up the film's chances for some politically motivated Oscar nominations.

However, all that may change because The Butler may not be The Butler if Warner Brothers get their way.

You see a few weeks ago the Weinstein Company, which is releasing The Butler, asked Warner Brothers to change the name of their upcoming film The Good Lie because they said it was too close to their upcoming title The Good Life. TWC eventually backed down on their claim, but Warner Brothers decided to get some payback.

They filed a complaint with the MPAA saying that TWC's The Butler was too similar to a 1917 short film called The Butler, and demanded that TWC change it.

Now Warner Brothers won the first round, but the Weinsteins are getting riled up for a fight, and are going to take it to court.

Now films with similar titles pop up all the time. Anyone remember these two films...

David Cronenberg's Crash was released in 1996 and was about an underground group that sexualizes car crashes. Paul Haggis' Crash from 2004 was about liberal guilt. They were very different films, but with exactly the same title and no one appeared to have raised a stink about it.

So why is Warner Brothers sticking it to The Butler?

My theory is that it is all about the personality of TWC head Harvey Weinstein. Harvey is not known for his diplomacy. In fact, Harvey has a gift for rubbing people the wrong way. And after he rubs them the wrong way, he does it again, with sandpaper, and then calls you a rude name.

I think when TWC made a little noise over the whole Good Lie/Good Life thing, it was the straw that broke the camel's back for someone high up at Warner Brothers. They looked at what Weinstein had coming out, ordered their minions to look for a similar title in their own library and the rest is history.

This is a win-win situation for Warner Brothers if their motive is just to piss off Harvey Weinstein. Remember, the costs of fighting this case in and out of court is relatively negligible to a mega-corp like Warner Bros. However, The Weinstein Company has a much thinner capital cushion in comparison, so even if Harvey wins the case, he would have lost a mint, and it's unlikely he could easily afford to lose a mint.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1038: On Bombs, Spin Offs, & Hedge Fund Thinking.

BOMB ONE

Sony Pictures has dropped two huge bombs this summer, After Earth and White House Down, and one modest hit with the sleeper This Is The End. That means the company has lost a couple of hundred million bucks pretty much overnight, and the shareholders are getting restless.

BOMB TWO

Hedge fund billionaire Daniel Loeb controls 6.9 percent of the shares and is calling for what they call a "partial spin-off" of about 20% of the company.

"What are they talking about?" you ask as you furrow your heavy brow in a feeble attempt to understand.

Well, it's going to involve some business talk, so sit back and I will try to explain.

SLEEPER HIT

Spinning off is when a large multi-faceted conglomerate sells off one or more of its facets for quick cash and that facet continues to run as their new owners see fit.

So what can Sony Entertainment sell off? 

Let's take a look.

COLUMBIA PICTURES

Status: Unlikely. Despite the recent bombs it's still the core of Sony's movie business. Too pricey for be considered a good buy.

TRI-STAR PICTURES

Status: Likely. Tri-Star Pictures was started in the 1980s as a partnership between Columbia Pictures, HBO, and the CBS TV network. It's original mandate was to make and distribute modestly budgeted movies that HBO has first dibs for cable, CBS for network broadcast rights. During the merger madness of the 1980s the partnership ended leaving Columbia and henceforth Sony, the sole owner of what is effectively a pretty much separate movie producer and distributor. It was briefly folded by Sony, but was then revived as a marketing, acquisition and distribution company specializing in low to mid-range budget "genre" films, only recently getting back into the big-budget game with the upcoming science-fiction action film  & poor economics lesson called Elysium.

Since Sony/Columbia doesn't need Tri-Star to function as a major studio, they could structure the company into a fully independent distributor. They could then sell it as a distributor for a pretty good price and have some wiggle room in the price depending on how much of the library or other assets will go with it. A financier with deep pockets might want to buy it so they can be master of their own fate distribution and box office profits wise.

SCREEN GEMS

Status: Likely, but maybe not successfully. It started out as Columbia Pictures' animation department, then it was their television division, and now, under Sony Pictures, is a producer of low budget "genre" fare.

It doesn't have its own distribution, most of the big titles in the library, like the Underworld and Resident Evil franchises will probably be kept by Sony. It would be like Relativity Media's acquisition of Universal's Rogue Pictures, spending a lot of money for a label and not much else.

SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

Status: Unlikely. This is Sony's prestige label for distributing foreign and independent Oscar bait. It's a relatively small player in this whole kerfuffle, and what it lacks in revenue it attempts to make up for in corporate prestige.

 

LITTLE SPECIALTY LABELS

Status: Likely, but not successfully. Triumph and Destination Films were started to sell films either direct to video, or to small theatrical releases.

They have no distribution of their own to think of and their libraries are comparatively negligible and don't have the weight of a "brand" with at least some record of success in the zeitgeist. Not only that, even Sony Pictures isn't quite sure if these companies are still functioning or functional.

Not going to get much money, and even then they probably wouldn't be a good buy.

But spinning off one or two divisions is not the magic bullet that will solve all of their problems. Sony and Columbia must reform their business practises. They tend to pile on heaps of money on stars and filmmakers that they have a previous relationship with, even when they're long past their "sell by" date. Remember this is the company that pissed away $120 million on a romantic comedy.

A little frugality could go a long way to keep them from being battered by their own bombs.