Hollywood Babble On & On #883: Miscellaneous Monday Musings...

It's Monday, the weather's good, and the news is slow, so I'm going to drop a few random musings on you.

1. BULLY NOT SO BULLISH.

Well, after months of hype, controversy, grandstanding, and other nonsense the PG-13 cut of the anti-bullying documentary Bully was released, and promptly fizzled. 

2 reasons for this...

A)  All the talk show appearances, and interviews, and outright campaigning since this nonsense started made everyone sick of the movie before it was even released.

B)  No one needs to be told that bullying is wrong.  Even the bullies know that, that's one of the reasons why they love doing it.  Trust me I've dealt with enough of them in my childhood.  A documentary isn't going to change their behavior, aversion therapy in the form of a humiliating public ass kicking is the only thing that will change their behavior.

2. DID SARAH SINK HER SITCOM?

The folks at the Wrap are speculating that an abortion joke made on Twitter by comedian Sarah Silverman might scuttle her upcoming NBC sitcom.

I doubt it.  She's made her career by being "shocking" but in a way that Hollywood is totally comfortable with by never attacking their own precious shibboleths.

What will scuttle her NBC sitcom is the fact that the overwhelming majority of people living outside of New York or Los Angeles don't really care about Sarah Silverman, or even know who she is outside of being "That chick who was on that episode of Voyager where they went to the 1990s."

3. PARTICIPANT WANTS TO PARTICIPATE IN TV

Participant Media, the brainchild of E-Bay billionaire/cinematic dilettante Jeff Skoll is expanding into making "socially relevant" television.

Considering that it wasn't that long ago that even the mainstream press considered Participant as more of a billionaire's hobby than a serious movie company expect some show's that offer a lot of sincerity, that win all kinds of awards, and critical praise, and far too few viewers.

4.  IRON MAN TO BE MADE IN CHINA

Iron Man 3 is to be at least partially shot in China as a China/USA co-production.  This deal will help get the film around China's strict quota system on foreign movies, but a few changes will be made.

The biggest change will be that the long promised villain The Mandarin will be rewritten into The Bureaucrat, and will be played by Josh Brolin with a Texas drawl.

Hollywood Babble On & On #882: Is The Dream Of Dreamworks Over?

All is not well in the magical land of Dreamworks.

The upstart mini-major is suffering from lackluster box office, a tightening of the purse strings by major investor Reliance, and other money woes that have led to the resignation of one senior executive, and reports of a further 10% reduction in the company's overall staff on the horizon.

When the company first started it seemed like a perfect deal.  The three founding partners were considered the gold seal of guaranteed success in Hollywood.  

Stephen Spielberg pretty much defined the modern blockbuster, Jeffrey Katzenberg was one of the key players in the rebirth of Disney from struggling cartoon company to media juggernaut, and David Geffen who went from the mail-room at the William Morris Agency to becoming a music mogul, film producer, and billionaire investor.

These are very smart customers who know what they're doing.

So what went wrong?

Well, I suspect that some fundamental mistakes were made that have come back to haunt them.

1. DISTRIBUTION: When Dreamworks was founded it was set up with the ability to distribute its own productions.  It gave up that ability when it was sold to Paramount, and when the company, in partnership with Indian financial player Reliance ADA, bought its freedom a little more than two years later, it failed to restore a truly independent distribution capability.

Instead, they handed over distribution of their movies to Disney's Touchstone Pictures in a 30 picture deal.  

A big problem with that deal is that Disney doesn't really give a crap about Touchstone anymore.  They're not going to burn the same amount of calories that a distributor that belongs wholly to Dreamworks would.

Also, when you're a distributor you can make distribution deals with other production companies to fill the gaps in your own release schedule.  That gives you the income of distribution fees and/or box office share without the risk of being the guy who paid to make the movie.

2. UNDER EXPLOITATION:  Dreamworks has only been able to scratch the surface of the television market, producing only a handful of shows, and too many of them short lived.  

One of the reasons for this is the simple fact that unlike Paramount, Universal, Disney, Fox, or Warner Bros. they don't belong to a conglomerate that owns or co-owns a broadcast network like CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, and the CW. 

That means that they already have a strike against them. The networks will always give preferences to shows that they, or one of their sister companies, own, all others have to hit a homer at every swing, or go out the door as soon as the opportunity arises.

The cable market is a much wider field, with more independent players that they could do business with, but here again they failed to exploit a potential market to its fullest.  Most of their cable TV ventures have been in partnership with HBO and TNT, both of which are owned by Time Warner.  That means that they will always be the junior partner in any deal.

3. PLAYING THE MAJOR'S GAME: Dreamworks has always been ambitious, declaring their intention to make major Hollywood movies. Many times they succeeded, but unlike the real majors, they didn't have the cushion of distribution, and television to soften the blow when one or more of their big productions failed to turn a profit.

Dreamworks needed to create a more solid foundation for the company in television, in distribution, and in smaller budget "exploitation" genre films that don't get awards, but have a better risk/reward ratio than the usual big budget epic.

Then they might have avoided the problems that are plaguing them now.

Hollywood Babble On & On #881: Class, But Not Classy

This just in...  

BRITAIN IS OBSESSED WITH ITS OWN CLASS SYSTEM!

Okay, that's not exactly news, but what is considered news is a report that says that the class system determines who gets the best parts, and jobs in British film and television. 

According to the report, if you're working class, especially a woman or member of a minority, you're  going to have a hard go of it, regardless of your talents or merits.

It's probably true, but the reasons behind it are probably not what you think, in fact, I'll bet that the main cause of the dominance of the British "middle" and "upper classes" in British film and TV is completely counter intuitive.

You can make a pretty convincing case that this is caused by the simple fact that British film and television is wrapped up with the British government.

The biggest broadcaster in Britain is the government owned British Broadcasting Company. Channel 4 another major broadcaster and film investor, though commercially supported, is also state owned.  On the feature film side most film production and distribution companies in the UK profit from or are dependent on government grants, loans, tax credit schemes, and sales to state owned television networks to stay afloat.

That essentially means that if you want to get ahead in British film and TV, you better be willing to do business with, and occasionally kiss the asses of, bureaucratic flacks and political hacks at some time in your life.

Now take a moment to think about who makes up the majority of politicians and senior bureaucrats who run the film and television organizations in the UK.  Middle aged and older white males who predominantly grew up in the more fashionable neighborhoods, went to elite schools with names like Eton or Winchester, universities like Oxford and Cambridge, and drink at the most refined establishments. If women and ethnic minorities do crack the glass ceiling and reach this rarefied state it's usually because they show a combination of undeniable talent at what they do, coupled with a youth spent at the right schools and currently maintain memberships to the right clubs.

Bureaucracies are all about building fiefdoms.  This is especially true when it comes to bureaucracies that that manage the arts and film. 
 
Since they're protected from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune otherwise known as market forces by a steady stream of taxpayer's money, they can give short shrift to things like talent and star-power and show preference to their own kind.


Like attracts like and it very quickly expands, in varying degrees, through the rest of the profession.  


Now does this class snobbery happen in Hollywood?


In a way, yes.


Now I'm not saying that an actor will be denied work since he/she didn't go to Harvard.  The business is still a business, and when it comes to actors and directors they're at least trying to find someone who will put bums in seats.


But the executive suite is a different story.


The management structure of Hollywood is dominated by people chosen more for their "connections" than for their abilities.  Some are actually capable at their jobs, but then you have others who manage to rise to the top despite being an unmitigated disaster at everything they do, simply because they know the right people.


However, since they're not dealing with the constant flow of taxpayer money, but instead have to deal with boards and shareholders, there are limits to how inbred they can get, or how divorced they can get from reality.  Those limits are pretty damn far, and seem to be getting farther everyday, but eventually the market corrects itself.

Hollywood Babble On & On #880: Another Tainted Burrito...

Last week I wrote about how James Frey is like a tainted burrito, and by which I mean something unpleasant that keeps gurgling up again and again no matter what.

Another tainted burrito is bankrupt film financier David Bergstein.  I've written about him many times, and none of what I've written was remotely nice.  

Long story short he's a self-styled film financier who started about half a dozen or more independent film financing, production and distribution companies, with names like ThinkFilm and Capitol Media, all over Europe and North America. He then went on to drive all of them into bankruptcy and accumulated lawsuits the way a rich comic book geek accumulates action figures.

Well, fate has regurgitated Bergstein into the news again, it seems he's suing the current owners of Miramax Films over their purchase of the company from Disney.

He claims that he was instrumental in bringing billionaire Ron Tutor into the fray to buy Miramax by doing all the legwork and due diligence for him.  Bergstein then claims that other partners like Colony Capital moved in by kicking in some money of their own, and promptly began squeezing him out.  He saw his stake in the affair dwindle down and now he's suing to get back what he thinks is rightfully his.

I have to admit, if I was in Colony Capital's position, I'd probably do the exact same thing.

Hell, anyone with half a brain cell would want to distance the company from Bergstein and his decidedly colorful business history.

I'm not saying that Bergstein is a crook. He may be as pure as the driven snow, and just a victim of bad luck, poor decisions, and tragic misunderstandings.  However, his overly-complicated corporate structure, involving dozens of shell corporations, high flying casino-rocking lifestyle, and tendency to attract litigation like flies to shit, sure as hell makes him look like the last person you want to be in business with.

He has only himself to blame for that.

Does his case have merit?

That's for the court to decide, and then be appealed repeatedly until no one knows what the hell is going on anymore.

That's how independent film operates these days, and why it's so hard to get anything done.

Hollywood Babble On & On #879: Sometimes Success Can Hurt

Everyone knows that a flop can ruin your career in the movie business, but not everyone realizes that a smash hit can be almost as destructive.  I had written before about how success can hurt you if it causes your ego to go too far, today I'll take a look at how success can cripple your ego, and with it your career.

A classic example is Producer David O Selznick.  He had been a successful studio executive in the late 1920s & early 1930s with various studios, and had even given the green-light to the original King Kong when he was running production for RKO.  

However, he always wanted to be an independent producer without answering to a board and shareholders, and started his own film production company Selznick International Pictures, whose films were released through United Artists.

The company was a success, putting out hit films, winning multiple Academy Awards, and building up a stable of bankable star.  

Then came a little movie called Gone With The Wind.

Gone With The Wind was a massive undertaking, stretching Selznick's resources beyond their limits.  To get the film made he partnered with his old employer MGM, and its boss, his father-in-law Louis B. Mayer.

The film was a monster success becoming a record setting blockbuster, dominated the Academy Awards, and Selznick got most of the credit, since it was his vision and skill as a producer that prevented the movie from becoming an incoherent mess as it went through writers and directors like tissues during allergy season.

Selznick released one more movie, Alfred Hitchcock's Oscar winning American debut Rebecca, which had been green-lit during Gone With The Wind's production, and then he disappeared from the scene for four years.  During that time his only contribution to the movie business was profitably renting out the stars he had under contract to other studios.

After that hiatus he returned to producing movies, releasing some hits, and even a few classics, but Gone With The Wind hung over him like a cloud.  Everything he did, no matter how well it did, was unfavorably compared to Gone With The Wind.  By the late 1950s, despite some experimental television specials, he had completely and permanently dropped out of the business after his last film 1957's A Farewell To Arms had bombed.

Alfred Hitchcock did a sort of left-handed salute to the producer who brought him to Hollywood by making Raymond Burr's character of the murderer in Rear Window resemble an older Selznick.

Now how do I know that Selznick's career was hurt by the success of Gone With The Wind?  Well, the symptoms are all there...

1. THE EXTENDED BREAK:  Now it was reasonable to assume that Selznick was dealing with profound physical and emotional exhaustion after the ordeal of getting Gone With The Wind made and released.  However, that could have all been dealt with within a few months, or a year at the max.  The four years spent out of the business, just renting out his stars, and only coming back when their contracts were coming up for renewal, shows a bad case of creative paralysis.

You see it often happens when people have such explosively massive success they end up asking themselves and the Universe "Now what?"

Too many don't know the answer to that question, and they freeze up. They start making excuses for staying out, or doing other things, because  taking that big step into doing something new is a step into the unknown.

2. THE ATTEMPTS TO MAKE LIGHTNING STRIKE TWICE: When Selznick started producing movies again you got the feeling that he was, outside of two Alfred Hitchcock films, trying to hit Gone With The Wind style gold by making big budget romantic dramas.


Of course this naturally led to...

3. THE INABILITY TO SHAKE THE CONSTANT COMPARISONS:  Even though many of the films he produced were commercially successful, and some even considered influential classics, people still said: "But they weren't as big as Gone With The Wind."


This meant that good films were often forgotten, becoming mere footnotes to the Gone With The Wind legacy in the cinema history books.  That inevitably crushed his spirit as his output began to decline in both quantity and quality until he finally just gave up at the age of 52.


But how can this be avoided?

Let's have a little thought experiment to explain this process: You just made a movie that was very exhausting, but it became a mega-blockbuster that set records all over the world and made movie history. Amid the accolades and applause you're asking yourself and the Universe:

"Now what?"

 

The answer: these four simple steps...

1. MOVE ON AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. First, make sure you're healthy. Second, get back on that horse and start riding, even if it scares the royal hell out of you, but don't just go to the same place you did last time. This time you must...


2. DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.  If your mega-hit was an epic drama with a big budget, then do something the complete opposite. Perhaps a small scale comedy or thriller.  Whatever, just do something so different from your mega-hit that it breaks people of the habit of constantly comparing your future output to your mega-hit.  


If they don't then you must...


3. FUCK THE TROLLS. When some smart-ass says: "It wasn't as big a hit as your last movie," you say: "It wasn't supposed to be."  You can't let those kinds of people define you. Hollywood loves to pigeonhole, because it helps them define you into terms their feeble brains can understand.  Once they have you defined they will do everything in their power to keep you there until you believe it yourself, and once that happens you're screwed.


Don't let them get a chance to do that.

Once that's done, you must...

4. ACCEPT THAT IT MAY NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. You may never have another mega-smash again, but if you continue to do your best work, you might be able to one day stand outside of its shadow and be appreciated for the whole of your accomplishments, and not just one.

Hollywood Babble On & On #878: James Frey Is Like A Tainted Burrito

There's nothing I hate more than things I don't like, and things that I don't like just keeps popping up like  tainted burritos...

My biggest tainted burrito is James Frey.

I admit it, I don't like the guy.  

He's an admitted liar with his whole A Million Little Pieces faux autobiography scam, and his Full Fathom Five "packaging" business is one big bend -the -writer- over -&- ream- them- with- a- stiff-wire- brush operation where authors are paid the steam off James Frey's pee to do all the work for him with no rights, and all the liabilities.  Even at their most controlling and penny pinching worst the major studios at least made sure the writers were at least well paid.

So far the company has plopped a bunch of mostly forgotten YA books onto the market, one movie, I Am Number Four, which didn't even break even at the domestic box office and got a "rotten" rating from critics, and one TV pilot they sold to CBS about a former President who becomes a street level lawyer called Legacy, which in itself was a pretty blatant rip-off of the failed NBC former Supreme Court Justice becomes a lawyer drama Outlaw.  On his own, Frey was only able to plop out something that wasn't so much a novel, but a cry for attention & the sympathy of the literary elite by penning a deliberately offensive and ultimately pointless modern dress retelling of the New Testament.

Now he's expanding his reach into film and television with the hiring of former Reveille executive Todd Cohen to run things for him.  Knowing Frey's style of contracts any idea he comes up with becomes Frey's property, but if they lead to a lawsuit Cohen will be on his own.

Which leads me to a mystery that I may never solve.

Why on Earth would anyone do business with this guy?

Seriously.

You can't even say that it's the money. So far he's got a movie that came and went like a popcorn fart, some YA books that have been overshadowed by the mega-phenomenons of Twilight and the Hunger Games, and a TV pilot that eerily resembles the premise of a failed series for another network that I don't think has even become a series yet, because like its predecessor is doomed to crash and burn.

I can't even find anyone who has anything nice to say about him.

He must be one hell of a salesman.

The Case Of The Dwindling Dollars

It was hot enough in Hollywood to fry an egg on the hood of a Mercedes.  Not that anyone was actually doing that around here, the Atkins diet was out of fashion, and a car hood egg wasn't fashionably vegan.

I had the air conditioner on full, my feet on my desk, and my head in the clouds.  It was at that moment that I realized my air conditioner was on fire.

Thankfully, all I had to do was shove the burning piece of machinery out the window, and I was in the clear.

The Honda parked 6 stories under my window wasn't so clear, but I didn't have time to listen to the screaming and the yelling from below, someone was knocking at my door.

"Come in," I said, masculine machismo dripping from my every word.  "The door's open."

I wasn't ready for the circus that came in.  There was a fox dressed in a natty double breasted suit, a mouse dressed in red shorts, a guy with a globe on his head, a guy dressed like a mountain, and the two Warner Brothers, Willy and Wally.

It was the major studios, come down to see little old me.

"What's up boys?" I asked.

"Did he say 'What's up doc?'" asked Willy Warner.

"We own that phrase, we can sue you!" added Wally.

"I said 'boys,'" I replied, "now stow the jibber-jabber and tell me what's the rumpus."

"What?" asked the mouse in the red shorts.

"Why are you all here?" 

"Oh," said Hugh Niversal, the guy with the globe on his head.  "We got a report from a Morgan Stanley analyst named Benjamin Swinburne.  It says that the feature film part of our businesses is worth, and this is all of us combined, a little over $19 billion this year."

"That's not so bad."

"It was over $40.2 billion five years ago," added the 20th Century Fox as he flicked some lint from his natty suit.

"Ouch," I said.

"If it wasn't for television," said Parry Mount from the depth of his mountain shaped suit, "we'd be in deep doo-doo."

"Ticket sales are down over all," added the Warner Brothers, in that creepy-twin unison way, "there are occasional hits, but far too many misses.  Plus, profits from DVD sales and rentals are down."

"Plus our costs keep going up," added the Mouse.  "We can't go on like this."

"We need you to find out who is responsible this mess!" demanded Hugh Niversal.

"All right," I said, "it won't be cheap."

"How much?"

"I'm talking Johnny Depp doing a family movie kind of money."

They grumbled for a bit, but then they handed over the sack of cash.  I was now on the case.

***

The first suspect on my list were the scummy scurvy pirates of Online Bay.  

I gave the basement door a sharp rap, but it didn't respond to my rendition of the greatest hits of Kurtis Blow, so I knocked.

"What do ye want ye scurvy dog?" asked a voice from the bowels of the basement.

"It's Furious D, Private Dick," I said, "open up."

The door opened and out popped the head of big time movie pirate Leonard Snotbag.  He tried baring his teeth to intimidate me, but the retainer kind of ruined the threat.

"The big studios are down in the dumps," I said, "and they blame you for it."

"Please," lisped Leonard, "my bit torrenting is small potatoes, and don't fall for that whole 'piracy costs show biz $58 billion' nonsense, we only cost the industry $8 billion."

"That's still a lot of money."

"True," replied Leonard, "however, while you've made up a stereotypical basement dwelling computer nerd to represent movie pirates, everyone knows that most piracy comes out of Asia and Eastern Europe.  The collapse in ticket/video sales in North America far outweighs the piracy we commit."

"Hey," I said, "they pay the piper, I call their tune."

So I let Leonard off with a beating and headed off to my next suspect.

***

The next suspect was cheap rental services like Netflix and those little red machines that popped up in stores all over the place.

They gave me a whole load of hooey about how their pricing wasn't dictated by the studios, but by what the customers are willing to pay.  They also scolded me for being a lazy writer and not making up some sort of symbolic character to represent them.

Maybe it's all the fault of the customers.  That could be a big scoop.  So I got my surveillance gear and decided put a typical movie consuming family under my unblinking eye.

***

They were the typical North American family.  Herb and Judy Typical had two and a half kids, a dog, a cat, and an octopus named Inky who lived in the garage.

I had them and their their home completely wired from the ground to the roof. They couldn't fart without me smelling it.  Which was a feature I came to regret installing, because they ate a lot of beans.

Soon I had a lead.

"Let's go to the video and buy a movie," said Herb Typical, getting a cheer from his family.

It wasn't long before they were at a shelf just teeming with new releases at their local Big Box Store.

"See anything you like?" asked Judy Typical.

The family scanned the titles that lay before them, and then they let out a collective "Feh."

"Let's see what's coming to the theaters!" declared Herb, getting another cheer from his family.

Then they were standing at the entrance of the multiplex, looking over the titles that were playing.

"How about the kid's movie that's full of noise, color and catchphrases?" asked Herb.

"Feh," replied the family.

"How about the remake of the movie they made last year?"

"Feh."

"What about the George Clooney movie, it's won some kind of award?"

"Feh."

"What about the really noisy action movie with the shaky camera work?"

"Feh," replied the family.

This process repeated itself with all 376 screens playing movies at this megaplex. Finally the family just let out a sigh and said...

"Let's go home," said Herb, "we got books, TV and the internet to entertain us there."

"YEAH!" cheered the family as they left the mall.

Then it hit me.

When I regained consciousness I came to two important revelations.  The first one is that the people really shouldn't be throwing footballs around inside a mall.  The second is that the major studios have seen the enemy that costs them so much money before, many times. In fact, they saw the enemy every time they looked in the mirror.

CASE CLOSED

Hollywood Babble On & On #877: Raise A Little TV Hell

Sonar Entertainment (formerly RHI Productions) has announced that they have begun development of a TV series based on the Hellraiser franchise.

Now if you're not familiar with the Hellraiser movies it all started out as a short story by Clive Barker called The Hellbound Heart.  Barker wrote and directed the movie version and it was a simple story of a puzzle box that opens doors to other dimensions, pretty much all of them unpleasant.  One door lets in the Cenobites, horribly scarred denizens of an S&M themed hell dimension, led by a being the fans quickly dubbed Pinhead.  

When the Cenobites show up, the real fun begins.

The film became a cult hit, spawning 3 theatrically released sequels and 5 direct to video sequels that creator Barker had nothing to do with.  The theatrical releases earned somewhere around $48,526,609 at the box office all together, no one outside the companies know exactly what the direct to video sequels earned.

The question that faces us now is: Will this franchise work as a television series?

To answer that question we need to look at the PROS & CONS!

PROS:

1. FAMILIARITY:  The franchise does have a small but dedicated cult of fans, and Pinhead is a member of the lower ranks of the pantheon of instantly recognizable movie monsters.  So there is something to work with there.

CONS:

1. FAMILIARITY:  That small but dedicated cult of fans have become familiar with the Hellraiser related projects getting worse and worse as they go along.  When the Weinstein's Dimension Films controlled the franchise they became notorious for just slapping Pinhead into pre-existing movies just so they could call it a Hellraiser movie.  Their last attempt was such a creative abortion that author Clive Barker posted these tweets about it:

In fact, the last sequel was done by the Weinsteins pretty much as a way to hold onto the rights to the franchise and keep Clive Barker and his allies from doing a long planned remake of the first film.

So a lot of the fans of the original movie, actively resent the franchise, and assume that any continuation will be its own kind of hell.

2. STORY:  The key to a successful franchise is a premise that is open to multiple stories, and characters that are interesting enough to maintain the audience's affection.

The one character at the center of the franchise is Pinhead.  In the beginning he was terrifying because he was extremely enigmatic.  As the franchise went on, they felt that they needed to bring up more back story for him, and the more they made him a "character" the less scary he became.  Another factor was that since there was no central creative voice behind the franchise, and the people producing it didn't give a tinker's cuss about its quality, the nature of that character went in different directions in every film.

That leaves them with two potential premises:

 

A) Making Pinhead some sort of supernatural super-villain that has to be foiled by the show's heroes each and every week. 

B) Making the show some sort of semi-anthology format that follows different characters and their encounters with Pinhead and the magic puzzle box.

Both premises have the potential for extreme repetition.  The first looks like it would always end with Pinhead's apparent defeat, but knowing full well he'll be back in the next episode.  The second would always have the "surprise, you're in hell" ending as if it was some sort of twist.

Neither look like they have legs for any sort of long running series.

So if you want my opinion, when someone asks about Hellraiser, I'd have to say "Hell no."

Hollywood Babble On & On #876: Miramax Goes For The Gold(wyn)

Miramax continues its transformation from being a major player in independent film to being a manager of film libraries by inking a deal to manage the library of the Samuel Goldwyn Company.

Now this deal involves a good chunk of Hollywood history, and this history is kind of convoluted, so I'll try to explain it as briefly as I can.

The story begins with producer Samuel Goldwyn (nee Goldfisch) who had just been ousted from Goldwyn Pictures which he had founded with a partner named Anthony Selwyn. Goldwyn Pictures went on to form part of the MGM mega-studio, and Sammy went independent.

He formed Samuel Goldwyn Productions, struck distribution deals with United Artists, and later RKO Pictures,  and made films with the philosophy of "make fewer, but make them better."  He knew he couldn't compete with the majors like Paramount and MGM when it comes to quantity, so he pursued quality, hiring the best writers, directors, and actors to make his films.

Samuel Goldwyn Productions put out a hell of a lot of Academy Award winners during an over 30 year run.  But a company built around the skills and energy of one man can only last as long as that one man.  Eventually the founder and the company just ran out of steam.

But that wasn't the end.

Samuel Goldwyn's son, Samuel Goldwyn jr. started his own company, The Samuel Goldwyn Company in 1979. During the company's run the company went from being an importer of art-house and foreign films, to regaining control of Sam sr.'s film library.

Now a series of takeovers, buyouts, mergers, The Samuel Goldwyn Company ended up yet another moribund piece of the MGM/UA/Orion/Polygram film company heap. 

Sam jr. then went on to start Samuel Goldwyn Films, keep control of the family's film library, and now make this deal with Miramax, now owned by Ron Tudor and Colony Capital, to manage said library.

Now let's look at the PROS & CONS of this deal:

PROS:

1. FRESHNESS:  When you manage film libraries there will come a time when you go to the people running the TV/home video outlets and they sigh, and go "What else you got?" So making a deal with a company that has several hundred movies in their library is a great deal.

2. QUALITY:  The Samuel Goldwyn library has a lot of Oscar winners, and acknowledged classics that don't get the exposure in the marketplace that a lot of the big studio movies of the golden age get.  That means they're still relatively fresh to large swathes of the audience.

CONS:

1. FRESHNESS:  While it's great to make a deal with a company with a good sized library of classic movies, eventually you're going to run out of companies with film libraries in need of management.  

When your company doesn't make new product, just shuffles around the old stuff, it's inevitable, no matter how large your stable is, they're going to say "What else you got?"  Even classics can fall out of fashion for periods of time, and if you're not consistently restocking your shelves with new content, you're going to go stale.

2. WILL TO SHILL:  There is a question that has to be asked by anyone with a library that needs managing and it is: "Will they shill the movies I own with the same verve that they shill the movies they own?"

Shilling their own productions involve fewer hands in the till when it comes time to share the profits, so there's going to be a tendency towards favoritism.  That means the owners of the library are going to have to watch Miramax like a hawk.  Relationships can get strained, and eventually break with this worry in the way.

Anyway, I stand by my case that a film company has to do more than just manage libraries if it's going to be viable in the long term.

Hollywood Babble On & On #875: I Hope This Is Someone's Idea Of A Joke

I am sincerely hoping that this is all an elaborate April Fool's Joke.  Really I am, because if it isn't then Hollywood in general and Universal Pictures have just filed for complete Creative Bankruptcy.

What I'm talking about are reports that Universal Pictures and Montecito Productions are developing a sequel to the 1988 comedy Twins.  Now since 24 years have passed since the original movie was made I'll give you a quick recap.  It was a buddy comedy starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito as Jules & Vincent, twin brothers created by a genetic experiment who are reunited and go on a road trip to find their birth mother, and wackiness ensues.

It was a cute inconsequential confection of a movie that had some laughs, especially with the novelty of Schwarzenegger and DeVito going around telling people that they're twins.

But I don't really think it's worthy of a sequel, at least not after the early 1990s when people still remembered it.

But that doesn't seem to be stopping Universal, because their plan is to add another brother to the experiment that created Jules and Vincent.  The part of the extra sibling is being tailored for Eddie Murphy.

That's right, Universal wants to spend huge money to reunite the stars of a movie that will be at least 25 years old by the time shooting starts with a notoriously overpriced and difficult actor who is actually a negative with audiences.

The best box office performance Eddie Murphy has had in years was with Tower Heist, and that only a modest moneymaker and he was co-starring with a big ensemble cast including Ben Stiller and Matthew Broderick.  Hell, co-star Alan Alda had a more positive contribution to that film's box office than Murphy.  His last starring effort A Thousand Words did so poorly most theaters pulled it before the opening credits were finished.

And if this is an early April Fool's joke, then it's a cruel one, because right now poor Eddie Murphy's getting his hopes up that he's still a huge movie star that can do whatever he wants and have the studios cater to the every whim of himself and the members of his entourage.

If Eddie Murphy is going to salvage his career as a comic actor, he needs to have the studio rug pulled out from under him. He needs to hit bottom so he can learn that he has to climb his way back up bare-handed.  He can't just coast on his golden days anymore, he has to work his ass off, because his golden days are getting farther away each day.

If it isn't a joke, then the people running Universal should gather all the staff together, tell them that the company is officially out of ideas, send everyone home, and lock the gates.

Sheesh.