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.

YOU ASKED FOR IT!

You had questions, and I will now pretend to have answers...

soonertroll asked... Did George Lucas open his mouth and prove he is the fool we all thought he was, with his statement that blockbuster movie tickets would rise to $150?

Short answer: Yes and no.

While the claim does have a ring of the ridiculous on its face, there is precedent to his prognosticating.

You see for decades Broadway was, if not the centre of popular culture, it was the epicentre. 

What happened on Broadway rippled out from New York City and into the zeitgeist. Broadway shows produced most of the best selling songs on the hit parade, Broadway stars made national news, and the touring companies made sure to hit as many nooks and crannies in America as they could physically reach by planes, trains, or automobiles.

And, most importantly, the average working man or woman was able to afford to attend Broadway shows without having to get a mortgage.

Now Broadway was displaced as the epicentre of popular culture, first by movies, then television, and aside from putting on a very well done awards show, has become the entertainment of choice for rich New York elites, and tourists who saved up all year to see the big money musical extravaganza based on the movie they saw a few years earlier. For the average Joe and Jane they're going to have to shell out a couple of hundred bucks just to get into the cheap seats.

Now movies are different. You don't have to truck around an army of actors and crew and truckloads of props and costumes just to show a movie. Thanks to digital projection you don't even have to ship around big cans of film anymore.

The means of making a movie have never been cheaper either. Digital technology means that you can create professional looking material at amateur prices.

However, that doesn't mean the business is not heading for a meltdown, and that meltdown is being brought on by bad business practices, of which I growl about on a regular basis.

Now three questions from Maurice...

maurice asked...

1) What do you suppose the reason is for the rise of the toxic celebrity gossip/paparazzi culture in the last decade or so? it was always around but it seems to have grown to terrifying and absurd proportions. More specifically, supply arises to meet demand- why is the public eating all this stuff up? Is it related to reality TV? Andy Warhol's casting of pop-cultural icons as religious ones- that celebrity worship fills a hole in people they didn't know they had? What?

The reasons all have to do with money and demographics. It doesn't cost that much to set up a celebrity gossip web-site, TV show, or even a channel. But there is a guaranteed audience for it, chiefly young to middle aged women, who eat it up, and they have loads of the buying power and influence that advertisers love. So the profit margins for this toxic gossip culture are huge, and I don't see it fading away anytime soon.

2) Why doesn't some enterprising soul set up an independent accounting firm for film and TV production and distribution? To place the money outside the crooked accounting of the studios. The contractual arrangemetns of each project/film could be posted in, say, a password-protected spreadsheet that any party to the project could view. Radical transparency. Everyone would benefit (unions/guilds, actors, agents, financing entities, distributors and exhibitors, lawyers, etc.) except the studios. If all the affected parties who get paid insisted upon this, wouldn't the studios have to go along? From a systemic view, wouldn't transparent costing and pricing show the true drivers and drags on film economics and profitability, and allow producers to make better decisions accordingly? You could probably start such a company with a few lawyers and accountants- automating the rest with software. starting with the indie market and moving up the value chain from there. For the record, I think there's an obvious reason why this will never happen, which is likely to coincide with yours.

You could try, but the studios would never consent to it, even if the smaller indies who sign onto it succeed. Studio power lies almost entirely in the opacity of their financial practices. 

Sadly, many indies follow similar practices, and too few are even remotely interested in change.

The great irony is that something similar was done before. From the 1950s to the early 1970s the top studio in Hollywood was United Artists. 

Their business model was simplicity itself, and their accounting was just as simple. That meant that all the top producers, financiers, and stars who were looking for a piece of the profits went to UA first before anyone else.

Naturally, their success made them a target for a takeover, and they were bought out by Transamerica. Transamerica then decided that it should be run more like a traditional studio, because that was just how it has always been done. This drove away most of their partners to other studios, and it was eventually destroyed by Heaven's Gate by 1980.

You see, it's not just the accounting that's the problem, there's an entire culture of fiscal incompetence and greed that needs to be overcome first.

3) Why has digital production (made to be streamed over the Internet) not really taken off? I remember during the last writers strike, a bunch of A-list writers started their own digital production companies- to no obvious result- and there are a few fairly minor successes like College Humor and Funny or Die. But the high-profile ones started by Hollywood names (quarterlife, etc.) never went anywhere. You'd think in the Twitter/Vice/Vine/Smarphone/ADD era we live in, the creative forces-that-be would have stepped up and created memorable and popular content uniquey suited to the new technology. The established entertainment industry has always done this when new formats and technologies emerged in the past. Yet now all we get are cat videos and "the history of dance". Is that it? Can the creative types in greater Hollywood really not move into this space and beat user-generated content? Or are they choosing not to, because of the reluctance to swap analog dollars for digital pennies? You'd think there are enough smart, talented, or funny writers or performers who are penniless who could go this route, so not sure that applies. Guild rules maybe?

Because watching something on television, even streamed via Netflix or Amazon, takes up most of the audience's attention. There's not much else you can do on a television other than watch what you're watching.

However, a web-video is usually watched on a device like a computer, an iPad, or a smart-phone that has a dozen different apps and functions vying for your attention. So most people aren't going to invest more than a few minutes of time, and only a smidgen of brain-power to most web-video content. So the brilliant comedy video will usually get beaten by a cat chasing a laser pointer.

That's not saying that web-shows can't find an audience, it's just really hard to be found among all the other "viral" offerings.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1037: Will The Terminator Terminate Another Company?

It's official, Paramount Pictures will distribute and co-produce a fifth Terminator film for a 2015 release, and it will somehow involve original star Arnold Schwarzenegger, be a "reboot" of the franchise and mark the beginning of a stand-alone trilogy.

It'll be co-produced by the billionaire Ellison kids, each putting up 1/3 of the costs which will probably run in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now I've made my thoughts on rebooting the Terminator franchise before, but no one has listened. That has forced my hand to look at the PROS AND CONS!!

PROS:

1. BOX OFFICE HISTORY.

The Terminator franchise made $1,402,938,658 at the box-office which is officially a shit-load of money.

2. POTENTIAL CONTINUITY FIX.

Maybe it's just me, or actually keeps track of continuity in stories, but the movies and the TV series turned what was a nice, tidy little time-travel-paradox in the first two movies, into an incoherent mush. A reboot, unless it's being done by DC comics, could wipe that slate clean.

CONS:

1. DIMINISHING FINANCIAL RETURNS.

The budget of the first Terminator movie was $6.5 million and earned over $78 million worldwide, which was good money in 1984. The budget on the last one, Terminator: Salvation, was about $200 million, twice the budget of the epic sized Terminator 2: Judgement Day, but made about $150 million less, despite higher ticket prices.

This fifth film will probably cost somewhere between $200-$250 million just to make.

2. DIMINISHING RECEPTIONS.

The first movie scores about 100% at Rotten Tomatoes, T2 got 98%, T3 got 70%, and Terminator: Salvation got 33%. Audiences were about the same with the first two movies, but were much harsher than the critics with the rest. 

The excited hoots you might expect has become an exasperated sigh of resignation.

3. DIMINISHED STAR POWER.

When the first movie came out its "star" Arnold Schwarzenegger was barely known, and what he was known for was for being a bodybuilder and for starring in the modestly successful Conan The Barbarian two years earlier. He just exploded in the role of the unstoppable killing machine and it made him a major box office star overnight.

However, that was almost 30 years ago.

Now Schwarzenegger is very well known, and it's to the film's detriment. He's now known as a politically impotent and personally oversexed failed Governor of California. Plus, he qualifies as a pensioner who needed extensive special effects work to be appear capable in the third movie ten years ago, and even more digital magic just to appear functional in the last one.

He's not an unstoppable action machine anymore, he's a punchline.

Plus, he knows a thing or two about contracts, and his contract for Terminator 3 is considered a classic example of how a movie star can drain pretty much all the profits before the studio has a chance to hide them.

4. THE CURSE OF THE TERMINATOR.

Let's take a moment to look at the companies that have made Terminator movies.

Hemdale produced the first one, and it was the company that got off easy because it went out of business by choice of its owners. The owners and management decided to shutter the company and sold off the company and its assets.

Carolco picked up the Terminator franchise from Hemdale. They made T2, which was a huge success but were bankrupt within a decade. The producers of T2 then formed...

C2 Pictures to make Terminator 3, and started the Sara Conner TV series, but even they started having money troubles, so they sold out to...

Halcyon Pictures which made Terminator: Salvation that sold a lot of tickets, but not enough to save them from their own bankruptcy.

Which brings us to the situation we're in now.

Will their be more bankruptcies?

I don't know, but if you don't feel a twee bit superstitious after seeing all that, you just aren't paying attention.

_________________

You will CLICK HERE and leave me your pop culture and business questions.

Why?

Because...

Hollywood Babble On & On #1036: Is Spexism Sexism Or Something We're Not Seeing?

Folks are fuming over two recent developments about women in Hollywood. Sales of spec scripts by women are at an all time low, and there is only one movie coming out this summer with female leads, and that's The Heat with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy. However even that has fallen victim to some really bizarre photoshopping by the advertising agency.

What's wrong with her neck & head?

If you go only by the breathless headlines of these stories you'd be inclined to form a mental picture of the men who run Hollywood meeting in a smoke-filled back room of an upscale eatery and the chairman of this penile cabal declaring:

Artist's conception of the group who decide the fate of women in Hollywood

"There are just too many chicks writing movies and buying tickets to movies, so let's stop buying scripts written by women, and make sure that only one summer movie this year has women in the lead roles. That'll teach the women folk to get out of the kitchen and wear shoes!"

However, reality says something much more complicated. 

The first point is that there is too much greed and stupidity in Hollywood for the men, and yes, it is disproportionately men, who run Hollywood to conspire about anything.

However, that same greed and stupidity does play a role in the position of women in Hollywood, though not in the way that you might think. Which I will get to in a bit.

These developments remind of another point that is constantly cited as evidence of sexist conspiracies and that's the whole "A woman only makes only 75¢ for every dollar made by a man." 

People love to point at that and say: "See, proof! There's a de-facto 25% penis bonus in every man's paycheque. That's why you must vote for me or be a sexist pig!" 

However, those who like to cite that stat, don't wonder why greedy businessmen don't just hire more women to get out of paying 25% more for penises, and they also don't go into the factors that went into coming up with that number. These are the things you don't see...

Women are more likely than men to leave the workforce for extended periods of time to have families. Women are more likely than men to take jobs that have lower pay in exchange for what they, as individuals, believe is a better quality of life for themselves. 

Women are also less likely than men to take jobs as sandhogs digging tunnels or as oil rig roughnecks. Those are jobs that pay a lot of money, but usually involve extremely harsh working conditions as well as serious risk of life and limb, and many say that most women have too much common sense to want those kinds of jobs. Those factors skew salary statistics so much that the dream of a dollar for dollar parity may be a mathematical impossibility without a single act of oppression involved.

Actually, it's very complex you liar.

So now that we know that, we must realize that this issue is a lot more complicated than the simple Good Woman oppressed by Evil Man paradigm that people want you to believe.

As for spec scripts and female leads we are running on certain assumptions.

Women are more than 50% of the population so by that logic over 50% of spec-scripts should be written by women, and over 50% of the finished films should have female leads.

That sounds fine and would be true if everything follows simple patterns, but there is nothing simple in the real world.

Yes spec screenplays by women are down. That's happened, to just say that sexism is the cause is an over simplification because it doesn't acknowledge these questions from economics and history.

Why leave out or offend over 50% of the audience especially when demographic research shows that women have disproportionately greater purchasing power and influence than men as evidenced by trends in advertising?

How come during exponentially more sexist times like the 1930s the movies and the box office were dominated by female stars and female-themed movies?

Hmmm.... makes you think doesn't it?

Then there are the other factors...

1. The studios are becoming more and more dependent on big budget, bombastic blockbuster franchises with toy and merchandise potential. That means the whole spec script market is down unless it's related to some pre-existing sequel generating franchise or has the potential to become one. That means science-fiction and comic book style action scripts and occasional smaller scale gross out comedies over everything.

2. The genres that are traditionally seen as "female" like dramas, suspense thrillers, and romantic comedies just aren't getting made as much as they used to be because they don't really bode well for sequels and, outside of certain kinds of product placement, they don't move merchandise. Which is greedy and stupid on the part of the studios because they traditionally cost less than big franchise blockbusters, and can often have wider profit margins and improve bottom lines over-all if you find the balance of releasing enough volume without saturating the market.

3. While the studios are cutting down on movies that appeal to women, the market for books for women is exploding. Women writers who would have written a spec script 10 years ago, are now writing novels instead. In novel writing they're not bound by budget, MPAA ratings, subject matter, or the notes of people who only got their job because they joined the right fraternity at Harvard.

4. Then there's television which is undergoing a golden age in both quantity and quality. There are not only shows that appeal to women, are written by women, produced by women, and star women, there are whole television channels geared towards women. Many women who would have been trying to shill spec scripts for features are now working the less glamorous but potentially more fertile fields of television.

Now these are just the factors I'm rhyming off the top of my head. There are probably dozens more that I didn't think of, and while sexism may be a factor somewhere, it's probably not the driving force behind it.

_________________________

GOTTA QUESTION? CLICK HERE AND ASK AWAY!

ASK ME ANYTHING!

It's been a while, so I would like you, my readers, to give me your questions for me to answer right here on this blog.

What do you think about that actress Zooey Deschanel?

Well, while it's true, it's a little off topic.

Anyway, the rest of you can click on the comments and get asking!

Richard Matheson R.I.P.

Richard Matheson, writer of novels, short stories, screenplays, and teleplays in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror, war, and even western passed away at the age of 87.

I can't tell you how much of an idol Matheson was to me. When I was a kid I started to pay attention to the names of writers on TV shows and movies, and when I saw Matheson's name pop up on an episode of Star Trek and The Twilight Zone, or in a movie, I knew I was probably going to like it.

He was part of that small group of writers, nicknamed the Southern California Sorcerers, that included Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, William F. Nolan, Charles Beaumont, Jerry Sohl, George Clayton Johnson, and Rod Serling who proved to the world that writing science fiction, fantasy, and horror for television could be art.

Later on I got into his books and short stories, and my admiration for him grew exponentially. He could do it all, and do it extremely well if you look at the sheer volume of classics he created for print and screen.

Goodbye Richard, you will be missed.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1035: Violence, Cynicism, & Money.

Today I took notice of two stories involving guys who became big movie stars in the 1990s and how their careers, and Hollywood, have changed over the years.

VIOLENCE

The first one was about Jim Carrey who made an announcement, perfectly timed for maximum publicity, that he won't be doing any publicity for the upcoming movie Kick-Ass 2, because, in the aftermath of the Newtown Massacre, he can no longer condone "that level of violence."

Now that sounds all noble, but is he really concerned about the effect of cinematic violence, or is just trying to shield himself from the charges of hypocrisy the conservative media's been lobbing at him since his attempt to reinvent himself as the voice of gun control.

There are two possible motives for his actions. One is sort-of-noble, the other is very cynical.

The sort-of-noble theory is that he really believes that, despite the nearly 40% drop in violent crime since 1990, that gun violence is a civilizational apocalypse that's due to happen the day after tomorrow, a little after two in the afternoon. He's as passionate against guns as he is against vaccines, and will not only denounce a violent movie he made before his epiphany, but will make some other gesture like return his paycheque and profit participation. It runs the risk of making him seem unemployable in the light of many recent under-performers and outright flops, but if he's truly willing to make that sacrifice he'll think it's worth it.

Now this is where I put on my cynical hat and offer an extremely cynical theory.

My theory is that Carrey's antics maybe just that, antics. Not to promote the movie, but to save his flagging career.

He hasn't carried a straightforward live action hit in a very long time, and the audience already looks at him as a bit of a flake after his anti-vaccine crusade, so why not go all in and become what I call a "Media Appealer."

You see a Media Appealer is a star who helps get big roles and paycheques not by appealing to the general audience, which is hard work, but to the media circles in which they live, which is much easier. How easy? Simply subscribe to all the right beliefs, shibboleths, and prejudices of that circle, while demonizing those who don't as unintelligent, possibly insane, and most definitely evil.

Being a media appealer gets you the kind of glowing coverage that convinces the people running studios that you must be relevant and the audience will flock to your movies. If those movies fail, then it's the fault of the audience, then you get a pat on the back for your courage, and another deal to make another movie for another big paycheque. George Clooney's and Sean Penn's career are built on being more appealing to the media than to the audience.

By being a media appealer Carrey may have adroitly given his career some insurance against the possibility of yet another box-office under-achiever. Thus his tirade against his own movie goes from being the action of a washed up entertainer on the road to unemployability, to the rather cynical move of a sharp Hollywood player trying to save his private jet and armed bodyguards.

MONEY

Roland Emmerich, the bombastic master of disaster, has announced that he's making not one, but two sequels to his 90s hit Independence Day. They will be called Independence Forever Parts I & II, but they will not involve Will Smith who broke into mega-stardom with the first one.

Personally, I wasn't a fan of the first one, but I find it interesting that they're dropping Will Smith's once important character, and the reason why they're dropping it: Money.

Will Smith is just too damn expensive to have around. Outside of his home movie gone epic After Earth, most of his films are still capable of making a couple of hundred million bucks at the box office. 

The trouble is that they usually cost somewhere around the GDP of a South American country to get made, and a lot of those costs, including salary, mega-sized trailers, entourage, and other assorted expenses, can be laid right at Mr. Smith's feet. Then you add on his usual "Dollar One" gross participation deal and any profit margin is usually as thin as paper or completely destroyed unless they break box office records.

After Earth may be the straw that broke the camel's back when it comes to just signing Smith for the sake of signing Smith. Economics explain that everything, including the star-power of actors, has an inherent value that go up and down over time depending on the constantly shifting and changing forces of the market.

The key to a long career is to offer your star power at a rate commensurate with those market forces that still enables you and the movies you're in to make a profit.

The nature of the current movie business, which is as a relatively small cog in a massive media conglomeration, gives a movie star a certain cushioning against real market forces as long as they are at least seen as a force within their community.

But, and this is a big but, there is a line. A line where it's just no longer feasible to hire you, even if you can rake in the bucks, because the odds of profit over loss might be better without having to pay you than with you bringing in your fans.

Boy, I'm being Mister Cynical today.