The Case of the Corpsed Up Career

The sound of Harvey Weinstein muttering something about "Ben Silverman's doodle," as he rooted through my trash looking for indie movie to not release wafted through my open office window, accompanied by Springtime air, and the exhaust of a hundred SUVs heading down Sunset Boulevard, on their way to a Global Warming Awareness rally.

Other than that, it was quiet in Hollywood.

Too quiet.

And quiet isn't good when you're a man like me. You see, I'm Furious D, and I'm a dick. A private dick to be exact, a shamus, a gumshoe, a peeper, a P.I., and about a dozen other names that don't cause people to giggle shamefully like when you say the word "dick."

It was not a good time for me. My back hurt from a recent business trip to Tijuana, not from anything to do with the case, but from having to give a donkey a decent burial in the desert. I knocked back a shot in honour of Senor Pepito, a true hero, and was just about to have a little afternoon nap, the crazed mutterings of Harvey Weinstein my lullaby, when my phone rang.

"This had better be good," I said to the phone, "I've been having a recurring dream about Zoey Deschannel and I don't like to miss an episode."

The phone rang again, making me think that answering the phone would be better than yelling at it.

"Furious D," I said in my most world-weary, yet still noble tone, "private dick."

"I got a case for you," growled the familiar voice of Lt. Gruff Cliche, who worked for the Hollywood Police. Not the LAPD that handled law enforcement, but the Hollywood PD, who handled the celebrities. They were a hand-picked elite, sworn to serve and protect the rich and famous from doing any serious time for their various and sundry crimes.

"I don't do celebrity cases anymore," I said. I gave up working the Fame Game, not out of any moral quandary, just because celebrities, and their sins, had become so damn boring.

"You haven't been doing any cases lately," said Gruff, "I thought you could use the business."

"Why can't you handle it?" I asked.

"We got our hands full," said Gruff, "too much fame, too much money--"

"--too few brains," I concluded, remembering the motto of Gruff's unit. "What's the case?"

"It's a homicide."

This was the moment the orchestra would do some sort of "dum-dum-duuuuummmmm" and cut to the next scene.

#

"What do you have Doc?" I asked as I strolled into the Hollywood Career Morgue. The place smelled of disinfectant and bitter failure. Vivaldi played on a CD player in the corner, how he managed to balance himself on a stereo while playing the violin was another mystery for another time.

"We have a dead career," said Doc Exposition, a tall, thin fellow in a white lab coat.

"All the careers here are dead," I said as one of Doc's assistants wheeled a dead career past me on a gurney, it's destination, a reality TV show on basic cable.

"This is a young one," said Doc Exposition, lifting the sheet like a celebutante's mini-skirt, revealing the remains of what was once a promising career. Of course the promise was long gone, replaced by what smelled like urine.

"Cause of death?" I asked.

"Pissed away," answered Doc.

"Then case closed," I said.

"Not quite," said Doc. "The problem is that we don't know whose career this is."

"Oh," I said. "I need to see everything you've got, and then I need to see the crime scene."

#

Doc Exposition showed me everything he had, which made me wish that I had said "everything you've got on the case" instead. I had forgotten that his nickname was "Doc Exhibition."

I left the Career Morgue and headed for where the HPD found the carcass. It was a back alley behind a fashionable nightclub called Shaggers. I had seen dozens of such scenes back when I worked celebrity cases. There was puddle of puke, reeking of booze and I didn't need to be a CSI to see that it contained no food matter, a used up tube of lipstick, something that looked like a receipt half in the vomit puddle, and a hair caught in the door. The hair was bottle blonde, and I couldn't tell the root's colour with a naked eye, or even a clothed eye, so I took samples of everything and went back to my lab.

#

By lab I mean basement. I woke up Chompy, my pet badger, tossed him a cheeseburger and broke out my Junior G-Man Crime-Lab Kit.

I was right about the vomit, no food at all. The lipstick was made by a fellow named Les Behan, a popular brand in Hollywood among starlets craving tabloid media attention. I then turned my attention to the receipt. I had the chemicals ready to restore the faded ink, so I opened the bottles, poured them into the pan, took a deep breath full of fumes..............

When I regained consciousness, Chompy was slapping my face and gesturing for me to get back to work. Thankfully he had opened the basement windows and aired the place out enough for me to breath again without hallucinating. By the time I staggered back to my worktable the ink had been restored. It was a summary by an accountant, listing fees paid to the actor with the dead career. There were movie salaries at first, small at first, then they got bigger, then smaller, and fewer and farther between. Then all that were left were "appearance" fees from nightclubs. At first they were big, then they too got smaller, and smaller, until all that was left was one free drink per night. Alongside these fees were the costs, hotel suites, houses, cars, car repairs, fines, legal fees, and rehab stints, all sucking down cash by the bushel.

I then put the hair under my microscope.

The hair wasn't definitely not a real blonde, in fact, the root was red.

I picked up my phone and dialled Gruff.

"Hey Gruff," I said, "I have an ID on your dead career. Yeah I could tell you who it is, but I want my readers to guess who it is and leave their answer in the comments. Yeah, I know I'm breaking the fourth wall in a way by getting them involved, but this is metafiction."

So, do you know who owns the career?

CASE CLOSED?

Hollywood Babble On & On #264: Miscellaneous Monday Musings

1. Stay Classy Harvey.

Harvey Weinstein, Captain of the indie film Lusitania known as The Weinstein Co. decided that nothing tops off a good meal of one's own ass on a plate, than a desert of sour grapes.

According to Defamer, the mostly moribund mini-movie-mogul appeared on Ryan Seacrest's radio show, and cracked that NBC only won all that money and humiliation because NBC head Ben Silverman beat him at "naked arm wrestling."

This just goes to show just how blinded by ego Harvey is. He thought it was funny, because it flopped out of his gaping maw, but doesn't see how it mostly embarrasses himself. As if losing all the court challenges, and burning his bridges with a troubled, but still major corporation weren't bad enough, he then makes a joke about getting beaten, while naked, by a scrawny weed like Ben Silverman.

Not only is it not funny to anyone whose income can't be threatened by Harvey, it's embarrassing, and also puts an image into people's mind that would inspire anyone to wash their eyes with bleach.

That's a wonderful way to promote your "tough guy" image Harvey.

2. Join the dark side of the gross.

David Prowse, who played the body of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy claims to have never recieved residuals from Return of the Jedi.

Think about that for a second.

With the hundreds of millions earned by the original trilogy in theatres, on television, on home video, and on weekly reruns on Spike TV, the film still claims to have failed to recouped its production costs.

And folks wonder why it's so hard to do business in Hollywood.

3. Yo-ho-ho & a big pink slip!

Roger Friedman, the Fox News movie reviewer, got shit-canned over downloading a pirated copy of Wolverine: Dead Horse Flogging, and then writing a piece about it.

Is it just me, or was this the sort of thing done when you want to get fired?

It's sort of like stealing a copier machine from the office, and then distributing photo-copies of a memoir of the theft around the office. It's not going to help your career.

Comic Book Confidential: Brightest Day Or Blackest Night...

Warner Bros. is still claiming to have a start date ready for a big screen Green Lantern movie, and someone's even made a fake movie trailer in tribute...





But I just can't break my cynicism over the upcoming project. And here's why:

1. THE SCRIPT: It should be simple: ACT1- Hal Jordan, dashing test pilot, meets a dying Abin Sur, gets the ring, meets Sinestro, Act 2- discover's Sinestro's evil, gets him banished to the Yellow Dimension intro the Weaponers of Qward, ACT 3- Sinestro returns with a yellow ring, battle royale, happy ending, set the groundwork for a sequel.

However, I keep getting the feeling that someone is going to really screw it up, especially by assigning someone with little interest or passion for the source material, and the meddling of executives who couldn't tell their arsehole from a hole in the ground telling the writer to make Hal Jordan a morally ambivalent bad-ass like Wolverine to sell more merchandise. Hal Jordan can never be ambivalent bad-ass, he's the ultimate square, a fearless, patriotic, square jawed hero who acts solely on the basis of moral absolutes, and it's the basis of his appeal.

2. CASTING: This is even trickier. When I heard of a movie version, for some reason I could only picture one actor in the role of Sinestro, and that's Daniel Day Lewis. I had the same gut feeling when I a few years ago I declared that Robert Downey Jr. was destined to play Iron Man, and everyone said I was nuts. Well, who is nuts now? Day Lewis may think the role is beneath him, and he doesn't strike me as easily tempted by cold cash. I say pitch him the concept that Sinestro views himself as the hero, and Hal Jordan as the villain, and has a big speech that justifies his actions "for the greater good through order" and they might get him.

But the problem is casting Hal Jordan. Think about the crop of young actors (late 20s early 30s) currently working in Hollywood today, and then consider how many of them would you have watch your back in a brawl in a Tijuana brothel?*

I look at the crop and think that the moment the fists and bottles start flying they'll scream: "Not the face!" run away, and go snitch to your girlfriend that he last saw you in a brothel brawl, even though you had a perfectly good reason to be in the thick of it.**

The sort of true-blue action hero like Hal Jordan / Green Lantern would watch your back, and not give a whit about how the fight would affect the state of his hair. I just don't see many among Hollywood's young crop, and Christian Bale's already cast as Batman.

And then there's the character of Carol Ferris, who is beautiful, young, and capable of running a major aerospace company. Hollywood probably won't look far beyond "beautiful," and "young," and waste the part on someone who might sell an FHM photo-spread, but not sell the character.

Either way, I have some doubts about the film even getting finished, let alone being as worthwhile as the Nolan Batman movies.

But hope springs eternal.

*(The events leading up to the Tijuana Brothel Brawl are not important, though they do involve a poker game, a homemade rocket, a tequila worm, and a donkey named Pepito.)

** (The good reason involve the honour of the late heroic Pepito. Pepito, we salute you, your sacrifice, and will never forget either.)

Saturday Silliness Cinema: More Smith & Jones

Sorry about not having anything substantial yesterday. It was a combination of a slow news day meeting a sluggish writer with stuffy sinuses. Anyhoo, let's take a break from griping about the business of showbiz, and have a little laugh.

Well, last week's dose of Smith & Jones went down really well, so here's another dose for your watching pleasure. Enjoy.

Friday Fiction Feature...

... is on temporary hiatus, I have the beginnings of a cold, and a bit too much on my proverbial plate to keep up with this week's installment. I hope to have part four up next Friday, if possible.

So until then, re-read the first three installments, and revel in all my little blunders.

And on another note, a while ago, I participated in a project where 11 authors from all over the world each contributed a chapter in a big sprawling apocalyptic fantasy epic called Sha'Daa: Tales of the Apocalypse.

The idea was that each writer was each given a basic premise for their chapter, some background information, a title for their chapter, and told to go nuts. And we did, and the project has been picked up by a small-press publisher.

The first book in the 2-book project (the one containing my story) will be coming out May 1 and will be available via Amazon or through the publisher. I will let you know how to get the book and post the appropriate links as soon as I get them.

And here's a look at the cover....

Hopefully I'll shake this stuffy-headed feeling quickly, and might be able to get something business related up later.

Hollywood Babble On & On #263: It Begins

Hollywood is abuzz about a new trend that's rocking the industry.

Haggling over salaries. (h/t The Wrap)

Actors who would normally be paid in the high seven figures for major franchise films, are now getting around the mid to high six figures.

A recent case (& cheap excuse for a cheesecake pic) is actress Scarlett Johansson who is up for a part in Iron Man 2, and is getting around $400,000 for the picture when she'd normally land a few million. Even Julia Roberts is feeling the pinch, getting only $15 million for her next picture, after getting $20 million for her recent pic Duplicity, and the studio is feeling like they're paying too much and regrets making the deal. (Especially after seeing Duplicity's box-office take)

This has been a long time coming. Look at the math:

Bad studio business practices have made everything overly complicated, and forced actors with any track record to demand millions in up front salaries, and those with any serious clout to demand what are called "dollar one gross" deals. That means that they can get anywhere up to 10%-15% of the box-office take from the very first dollar that changes hands. This causes production costs to skyrocket, and in pictures with major stars, profit margins to shrink, and even disappear.

Add the fact that the majority of Hollywood's "movie stars" couldn't sell seats on lifeboats on the Lusitania, and you have all the ingredients for a major disaster that could sink the entire industry. Think about it for a minute. Scarlett's a beautiful woman, but while she may sell magazines, she can't really sell tickets. She's only been in 1 movie that came close to a $100 million gross, and even then she was a small part of a large ensemble. And most films starring her actually lost money, a lot of money, and some barely covered her normal salary.

Well, the studios aren't going to take it anymore. They are going to start paying stars what they believe they are worth.

Now I'm not one to toot my own horn, but I did compose a nifty little formula to measure star power. I'll accept a modest percentage of the money saved by using my formula, I'm not greedy.

But back to the main topic of this post. I don't see this trend in thriftiness ending anytime soon, so I have a few suggestions for stars to survive this crisis.

1. Live within your means. That means renting an Airbus 380 to fly 200 of your closest friends to a private party on an island you've rented every weekend, is probably not a good idea. Try living in the real world, and not one of excessive fantasy.

2. Save your money. Yep, nothing beats a good old fashioned savings account, maybe a nice Roth IRA, and a diversified stock portfolio to prevent you from spending your old age doing auditions for porn, and not getting the part.

3. Do at least some movies people want to see. Oscar whoring won't put the ducats in the buckets, so you're going to have to buckle down, and work for a living.

4. Embrace the audience. Do something to increase your appeal to the general audience, it could be something as simple as doing a charity event that doesn't involve giving yourself an award, and possibly for something that affects real people, like raising money for curing a disease. And you could also avoid doing things like calling people who don't vote the way you vote "Nazis" while you're hugging a dictator that hangs people for being gay.

You see, I do more than complain here, I try to be helpful.

Hollywood Babble On & On #262: Alpha Stomps Beta

Just when I think that Hollywood's got nothing for me to gripe about, the powers that be deliver a bounty to me, and this time their vessel of plenty is Harvey Weinstein, the head of the Weinstein Co. and producer of cable show Project Runway.

If you don't recall Project Runway was the flagship show on NBC-Universal's Bravo channel. And last year they were negotiating renewing the show's contract, and Weinstein told NBC-U's CEO Jeff Zucker seven shades of shit about trust, and friendship, while selling the show to rival Lifetime behind Zucker's back.

Well NBC-U sued, and according to reports, they not only won, they gave old Harvey the litigation equivalent of a heavy sack beating, forcing Harvey to issue a statement congratulating Zucker on his victory.

When I've written about this case in the past, (click here for all Weinstein posts) I mentioned that in the Hollywood wolf pack, Jeff Zucker is an Alpha Wolf, and Harvey Weinstein as an independent producer is a Beta Wolf. And I read somewhere that when an Beta Wolf challenges an Alpha Wolf, the Alpha can't just defeat the Beta in battle. The Alpha must pin the rebellious Beta down and piss on his head as the ultimate symbol of domination. And judging from the statements released about the case, the head-pissing has begun in earnest.

Now I want you to take a moment though, and think about what just happened.

....

...

..

.

Okay, did you think about it?

Good.

Harvey Weinstein just had his ass handed to him on a plate by Jeff Zucker.

Jeff Zucker.

Of all the people in Hollywood, it had to be him.

Now I'm sure that most of the heavy lifting was done by NBC-U's legal department, but still Harvey Weinstein put himself into a position where he loses millions of dollars in settlements and legal fees, and become Jeff Zucker's proverbial bitch.

How can Harvey Weinstein still call himself a player in showbiz if he let that happen?

How can Harvey Weinstein still look in the mirror if he let that happen?

How can Weinstein Co. investors still allow him to continue pissing away their money in easily avoidable litigation, bad movies, and opportunities lost because of even worse relations with just about everyone they've dealt with.

And here's a little personal note, a friendly word of warning for Harvey, just to show that I'm not all about griping, I try to help.

Harvey-

No one is afraid of you anymore. Sorry, but you did to yourself.

-Sincerely Furious D

It'll be a shame to see you go Harvey, because you're antics are a great source of material for me.

Hollywood Babble On & On #261: Is The CBS Eye on the Ball Anymore?

According to Nikki Finke, the grand poobahs at the CBS Network are planning to cut back on the money they're putting out to make television shows, all the while expanding the money they're putting into making and releasing feature films. And remember that all this is happening as the network's stock takes a tumble despite having half the shows in the Nielsen Top 10.

Now I don't know what Les Moonves is planning, but I'm starting to have some doubts about his management.

Right now CBS is the top TV network, beating ABC, Fox, and flattening NBC. Their crime-show alphabet soup (CSI, CSI: M, CSI: NY, NCIS) dominate their time slots, and they also have The Mentalist, the most successful new show of the TV season on their roster. Things should be coming up rosy.

Well, they're not completely rosy. Their share in the CW network is just a money pit, their parent company National Amusements and its chief Sumner Redstone is in debt up to their wattles, sister company Paramount has money troubles, and no one seems too keen on going into business with any of them.

And yet Moonves is still pushing his dream of a feature film division.

Now this is a case of someone taking their eye off the ball. CBS is very successful at making television shows that sell, but that doesn't translate so easily into making feature films that sell. Also feature films are a hell of a lot more costly, and riskier than just maintaining a healthy status quo with their network.

Plus, cutting the budgets of hit TV shows usually means cutting back on the writers first, and when your network's success are on selling shows with entertaining, and occassionally crazy plots, that could hurt the network badly in the long run. And if the cuts continue, it could hurt the slick production values that make the shows stand out.

Now I'm wondering why Moonves is insisting on pursuing the idea of a feature film studio instead of just hunkering down, riding out the storm, and doing everything he can to keep his network number 1.

The only answer I can think of is ego.

Moonves must still dwell in that past era when TV network bosses were considered second class citizens, mere dukes, to the grand royalty of movie studio bosses, and I think he believes that he must become a movie studio boss to somehow give his life some meaning.

Gee, as if the millions of dollars he makes every year in salary and bonuses aren't enough.

Anyway, while I think the CBS Movie Studio idea is a bad one, at least for now, at least CBS is still better run than NBC.

Of course, just about any network is better run than NBC.

Hollywood Babble On & On #260: How To Speak CEO

A lot of CEO's are in the news, and a lot of the time nobody has a clue what they're talking about. So I've decided to take segments from a recently released memo by Time-Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, and tell you what he is really trying to say.

"Now we're focused on Time Warner's future as a global leader in media and entertainment that creates, packages and delivers high-quality content worldwide through multiple distribution platforms."

TRANSLATION: Now we're going to buy up some of the smaller companies so we can get even bigger while pray that our Abu Dhabi investment partners don't realize that investing with Hollywood is less safe than investing with Bernie Madoff. Then we're going to make the same old bland crap, and make download versions available with so much DRM on them they will be unplayable on any machine until a twelve year old hacker in Beijing cracks the code.

"We're committed to investing more money than last year in the top-notch content that defines our brands -- while we run our businesses more efficiently than ever,"

TRANSLATION: We're going to spend millions more on special effects and actors who can't deliver at the box office, while we lay off a whole bunch of people we're going to have to replace in a few months.

"I'm confident that our businesses will come out of the current economic crisis stronger and well positioned for success,"

TRANSLATION: My bonus will be secure.

I hope you found this educational.

Hollywood Babble On & On #259: Monsters vs Aliens vs Watchmen

Dreamworks Animation's movie Monsters vs Aliens is being touted as a "monster hit" for making around $56-$58 million dollars this weekend. Now I want you to think back a couple of weeks, or the lifetime of a Hollywood assistant, to think about the opening weekend of The Watchmen.

Watchmen cost about the same as Monsters vs Aliens, had similar critical response, and post-viewing word of mouth, (some liked it/some hated it/some didn't care) made a very similar amount of money on its opening weekend, and was branded a failure from the word go. This branding caused a wave of bad buzz to overtake the film, and eventually snuff it's potential to make serious money.

So what's the big difference.

The difference is the estimates and how they sold them.

Dreamworks Animation undersold the estimates, while outsiders were expecting around $60 million, Dreamworks declared that they were only expecting $50 million. Remember that this film opened in almost 500 more theatres than Watchmen, and was a G-Rated kid pleaser with a popular cast and a funny-sunny image, as opposed to a grim, nihilistic R-Rated movie that had no broad comedy, a very narrow audience base, and was adapted from a comic-book known for its intellectual density, its bleak outlook, and that its writer disowned any movie version decades before it was even made.

And yet Warner Bros. oversold the estimates, claiming that it would hit over $70 million, and beat director Zack Snyder's last hit, the rabble rousing military adventure 300, at the box-office. Knowing full well that it probably wouldn't do that well, and that failing to meet that estimate will brand it a failure, and most likely hurt its chances at selling tickets after the opening weekend.

Why?

Well, my theory is that sometimes in the convoluted logic of Hollywood studio management, it pays to periodically have a bomb. Especially when you have its costs shared with another studio (Paramount) and owe a percentage to yet another studio (Fox) because your own company couldn't keep track of who actually owned the damn movie rights.

So, you get an estimate of how well it could do, then you slap on another $20 million, knowing full well that it could create enough bad buzz to sink the picture.

Dreamworks on the other hand needs to not only have a hit movie, but to appear to have a hit movie. They need to do everything they can to make MvA a hit, and that includes putting out a low-ball estimate, so when it exceeds that estimate, they can tout it as the second coming of Shrek, and all will be right in their happy little kingdom.

Now you see why I don't trust box-office estimates and the reactions to them, there are just too many agendas hiding behind them.