Hollywood Babble On & On #1152: Random Nonsense

DOWNEY DOING REHAB…ON TV?

Reports say that Robert Downey jr. is taking a page from the "write what you know" school of thought and developing a TV series for Showtime set at a California rehab centre in the 1980s.

The idea does have potential for both serious gritty drama, comedy, and even sharp satire if the scripts are good, and I hope they are. 

SAY WHA?

Filmmaker Lexi Alexander wrote a blog post about Hollywood being the "real pirates." Now she makes some points. The majors are spending too much on movies that need to break records just to break even, while screwing over just about everyone they rely on to actually make the damn movies. Their anti-piracy operations are ham-handed and effective only at making things difficult and more costly for the law abiding.

However she lost me when she said: "Oh and PS: Hollywood is Republican now."

Does she work in Hollywood?

Has she ever talked to anyone from Hollywood?

Has she ever talked to a Republican? 

Her evidence to this drastic shift in allegiance is a link to a Wall Street Journal article that says the MPAA is trying harder to lobby Republicans since the Republicans have a shot of majorities in the House and Senate after the next midterms, as well as an even money crack at the White House in 2016.

However, she then shoots her whole argument down in the very next paragraph by mentioning that the head of the MPAA is a former Democratic Senator named Chris Dodd, the author of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law.

Now I've done a little research on this topic, and I've learned two things.

1. Republicans HATE Chris Dodd. This is because while in the Senate he was considered one of its most partisan members who many blame for creating the increasingly toxic relationship between parties in the formerly civil Senate.

2. Republicans HATE the Dodd-Frank law. Republicans consider Dodd-Frank a boondoggle that creates acres of needless regulations, promotes political cronyism, and enshrines government bailouts of politically connected corporations.

If "Hollywood is Republican now" then they're not doing it very well. Back when Jack Valenti was the head honcho of the MPAA the organization was a model of playing both sides of the political aisle like a fiddle.

Not so anymore.

By most accounts the MPAA is in a pickle. The Democrats take them and their support for granted, while the Republicans view the MPAA with disdain, and the head of the MPAA as their personal enemy.

And that's not even counting the movies and television shows that cast Republicans, Christians, and conservatives in a bad light. People write whole books about them, and I don't have enough time to put them on this blog.

So why would a smart person like Lexi Alexander make such a silly statement that essentially ruins what started out as a reasoned argument.

I suspect that she's trying to protect herself. Using martial arts strategy to use the opponent's attitudes to shield her own career.

The main thrust of her complaint is that Hollywood is lousy at doing the whole diversity thing it demands of others. Just about every major Hollywood job both on and off screen is dominated by white males. Now the last thing anyone in the Hollywood elite wants to be called is prejudiced, it's a career killer for them, nor does anyone want to openly call Hollywood's elite on their hypocrisy, which is a career killer for the whistleblower. Saying "Hollywood is Republican now" gives the accused elite a way out and protects her as the accuser. They can look at the post, look at their invitation to latest fashionable political fundraiser and say: "Phew, she's not talking about me, she's talking about those other guys, I won't have to destroy her career."

It hurts her case, but it protects her career.

PERILOUS DROPS

The LA Times is concerned that studio blockbusters are suffering precipitous box office drops of 50-75% between the opening weekend and their second weekend.

When I was a kid I noticed that the really big movies were ones that people paid to see it in the theatre more than once. Remember, when I was a kid and if you wanted to see Empire Strikes Back again, you either had to buy a ticket, or wait God-Knows-How-Long before it broadcast on network television.

Nowadays fans see a movie on the opening weekend, and once the thrill of being among the first to see it passes, they're done. If they like the movie, a lot of them figure they'll just buy the Blu-Ray, or see it on Netflix.

The only people these days who want to see something in the theatre more than once are little kids who put flicks like Frozen into the box office stratosphere.

Yet another argument for bringing a little fiscal probity to filmmaking budgets and studio management.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1151: Sequels Remakes & Other Nonsense

Hollywood loves being unoriginal.

This means remakes, reboots, sequels, remakes of reboots and reboots of remakes.

They're remaking 90s action movies Stargate and Cliffhanger, even though the odds are stacked against them, Nia Vardalos is reportedly working on a sequel to My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and James Cameron is not only doing 3 sequels to his megahit Dances With Wolves Avatar as well as a Dances With Wolves Avatar themed Cirque De Soleil live show.

It's not a new phenomena. Hollywood's done it since the dawn of the medium, and in the old days such things didn't cause people to sigh in exasperated frustration. 

A little known fact is that the version of The Maltese Falcon, by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor, which is considered a classic was the third adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's legendary novel. Another case is that Christian Nyby/Howard Hawks' The Thing and John Carpenter's The Thing, are both classics in their own way. 

Sequels are also nothing new, but were actually fairly rare outside of horror and science fiction, since audiences were invested in the romantic happy endings as being just that "happily ever after" endings. The mystery genre is a bit of an exception, because most were treated as stand-alone procedural stories with very little, if any, reference or mention of previous films. Usually because many were adapted from popular novels, and were made by not only different filmmakers, but often by different studios.

One thing that was popular in Hollywood were what I call "unrelated sequels." The classic examples were the comedy team films of the 1930s to the 1950s where the same actors played variations of the same characters going off on new adventures in every instalment. 

So why are we so exasperated by sequels and remakes now?

It all boils down to motive.

Sure money has always motivated the film industry. In fact, we wouldn't have a show business if people hadn't figured out ways to make money from entertaining people.

But in the old days Hollywood knew that they were in the business of selling stories, and that audiences wanted fresh stories and/or fresh ideas.

Remakes were motivated by either a desire to tell a story in a better way, like The Maltese Falcon, or to take advantage of new technology or resources. Lots of silent films were remade into talkies, black and white standard screens into colour and cinemascope.

Sequels were partially driven by money, but mostly because there was a new chapter in the story to tell.

However, nowadays those motives don't matter.

It doesn't matter if a filmmaker has a new take on old material, or if there's another tale to be told of a character's adventures. 

What matters to Hollywood these days is "brand awareness."

Hollywood's ivy league educated experts believe that if something has a familiar brand associated to it, you will buy it irregardless of quality.

This comes from our shopping habits. When you go shopping for laundry detergent the odds are pretty good that you don't just walk into the laundry aisle and grab a jug at random. You have a brand of detergent that you always use and it would take something pretty radical to make you change your habit.

Sure, novelty and originality is great, but it's risky. Brand awareness is a kind of snake oil, executives tell their masters that it's a safety net, and gives them license to be both frivolous and lazy at the same time.

That's what I think. Let me know what you think in the comments.

The Book Report: Amazon Wants To Put The Hatchet To Hachette.

The odds are pretty good that you're not all hep to what's going on in the book world and that in the hills of Seattle and the concrete valleys of Manhattan there's a feud a transpiring.

That feud is between online mega-retailer Amazon and international mega-publisher Hachette. Basically Amazon wants Hachette to give them deeper discounts so they can slash prices to levels no independent retailer can possibly compete with.

Hachette balked, so Amazon started making it harder and harder to get titles from Hachette's many imprints, including the latest JK Rowling mega-seller.

Amazon Corporate Executives getting ready for a meeting with Hachette's representatives.

Now normally I'd be giggling like a naughty schoolboy over two big corporate giants fighting, but this is a serious business. Livelihoods, mostly of authors is being threatened here, and it all comes down to margins.

The Wall Street Journal asked an official at the sister-company publisher Harper-Collins and he said that the profit margins on a book are usually around 75% for an ebook, 60% for a paperback, and about 40% for a hardcover.

Now those sound like huge margins, and the one on ebooks is particularly sweet since the only costs are hard-drives for storage and bandwidth for delivery which adds up to fractions of a penny per copy. So you might think that the publishers can afford to be a little more generous in the discount department.

Hmmm… It's probably a bit more complicated than that.

Remember publishers have to pay a chunk of their margin to the AUTHORS who actually write the damn books. Then comes the expenses producing hardcovers and paperbacks, returns of unsold books, the fact that a lot of books don't sell as much as they should to cover those costs, and let's not forget the millions spent each year on book deals to celebrities, politicians, and flash-in-the-pan news or scandal makers. Every deal seems made as if it's going to be the biggest bestseller in the world, and the majority of them fail to crack the bestseller lists or make back their advances and production costs.

That means that Hachette may not have the flexibility that Amazon is looking for.

Now I'm pretty sure that somebody at Amazon must know this, so why are they engaging in a territorial pissing match when some negotiation could have avoided all the hassle?

Well, the only reason I can think of is that Amazon sees itself as the BSD* of the book world. Everyone should just take its shit and call it ice cream.

That's bad, not just for publishers, authors, and readers, but for Amazon.

Arrogance is not a business plan, because what comes up must always come down.

There are alternative routes for ebooks, and thanks to technology both production and distribution of physical books can be done with one machine.

If all the big publishers got together and made sure those machines were in every bookstore, convenience store, Target, or Wal-Mart in the world next to a sign that says "IF IT'S NOT ON OUR SHELVES THEN IT'S IN THIS MACHINE" they could create some serious competition with Amazon.

Amazon has forgotten that one of the keys to its near monopoly of the book market is that it's always presented itself as the convenient choice. When it starts being the inconvenient choice for both suppliers and customers they will find someplace else.

It's the first rule of economics, if everyone doesn't walk away happy from a deal, that deal is bad, and isn't going to work for very long.

Time for Amazon to stop acting like it's a kingdom and start acting like a real business.

Santa Barbara: Causes & Excuses

Normally this is a frivolous blog about frivolous subjects, but today I think I have to be serious for a moment.

A 22 year old named Elliot Rodger murdered four men and two women, and injured 13 more in a stabbing and shooting spree across a student enclave called Isla Vista in the California City of Santa Barbara.

As usual people are trying to find the "causes" for his killing spree. They're blaming it on sexual frustration, misogyny, violent video games, mental illness, the National Rifle Association, etc…, etc…, but I think those are all just excuses, which are different than causes.

I've done some research about mass killings in recent years, and separating causes from excuses are hard, because most are not captured alive, and what evidence they leave behind concerning motives either only make sense to their twisted minds, or are self-serving and downright dishonest.

In my research, which is small, but unburdened by some preset agenda, I've determined that the overwhelming cause is narcissism.

Mass killers, from America's biggest Andrew Kehoe who slaughtered 43 (38 children) and wounded 58 with homemade bombs in the Bath Township massacre of 1927 to the recent events in Santa Barbara, all have one thing in common. All mass killers, to varying degrees of delusionality, believe that they're better than everyone else, but feel unfairly denied the power and fame that they think they deserve.

How can they get that power and fame?

Die while committing a terrible atrocity.

If they go down killing as many people as they can their picture will be plastered all over every media outlet, their every brain-fart will be pored over and studied word-for-word by experts, pundits, and know it alls, and laws will be written in their name that will most likely only succeed in punishing the law abiding while doing next to nothing to stop the next sociopathic piece of shit.

Why would these shitbags continue living as nobodies when they can become nightmarish bogeymen, burnt into the national psyche by the 24/7 media cycle. That same news cycle feeds into this cancerous narcissism by plastering their names and pictures everywhere, while trying to place the blame for their atrocities on everyone and everything else but the asshole pulling the trigger. Then come in the politicians and pundits on both sides, trying to use the crime to fit their own agendas, accomplishing nothing that might keep the next agent of chaos from thinking he can become their post-mortem puppet master.

What's also lost in all the breathless hype and blame-gaming is the fact that all violent crimes, including mass shootings are on the decline. All violent crime, murders, rapes, assaults, and even shootings, are down about 47% from where they were in 1990s, and they continue to decline.

THINGS ARE NOT GETTING WORSE! 

What we really need to do is find a way to cut off the real cause of such crimes at the root. These maniacs demand attention, infamy, and power, if we find a way to see past our own petty agendas and figure out a way to deny them what they really want, no matter their crime, they may just skip the middleman and kill themselves first, saving the world a lot of grief.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1150: Fall TV Preview FOX!

2014-15 Fox Schedule

(New programs in UPPER CASE & BOLD; all times ET/PT)

MONDAY

8-9 PM – GOTHAM - A show about DC's most infamous fictional city during Batman's adolescence. All I can say is that Ben MacKenzie who stars as the young detective Jim Gordon better start rocking the stache, and soon.

9-10 PM – Sleepy Hollow

TUESDAY

8-9 PM – UTOPIA - Some sort of reality show about people trying to create a utopia. Like all other utopias it will fail miserably, but provide lots of cheap melodrama for television.

9-9:30 PM – New Girl

9:30-10 PM – The Mindy Project

WEDNESDAY

8-9 PM – Hell’s Kitchen

9-10 PM – RED BAND SOCIETY - New drama about a bunch of good looking teens bonded by terminal illness. Expect them to start dropping like flies when it comes time to renegotiate their contracts.

THURSDAY

8-9 PM – Bones

9-10 PM – GRACEPOINT - An American adaptation of the British smash Broadchurch about a seaside town rocked by the murder of a young boy that promises to go in new directions from the original. It stars David Tennant, who starred in the British original which is also getting a second season. That means that he's playing the same character on two shows in two countries more or less simultaneously. That's some serious time-lord shit.

FRIDAY

8-9 PM – Masterchef Junior

9-10 PM – UTOPIA - More Utopia falling apart.

SATURDAY

7-10:30 PM – Fox Sports Saturday

SUNDAY

7-7:30 PM – NFL Game

7-8 PM – Bob’s Burgers

8-8:30 PM – The Simpsons

8:30-9 PM – Brooklyn Nine-Nine

9-9:30 PM – Family Guy

9:30-10 PM – MULANEY - A sitcom about a comedian's off stage life. It's like the 90s have returned!

MIDSEASON/WAITING IN THE WINGS

BACKSTROM - Americanization of a Swedish book series about a hard living overweight and "politically incorrect" detective named Everett Backstrom. Not sure how "politically incorrect" he will be.

EMPIRE - Drama about the music industry, because network television wants the world to know about an industry more dysfunctional than their own. Much is being made about how Lee Daniels, who made The Butler, was behind its creation, but I don't really see him giving up his movie career to become a showrunner.

HIEROGLYPH - Sexy show about sexy ancient Egyptians doing sexy things. A big sexy Feh from me.

WAYWARD PINES - A Twin Peaks rip-off tribute from M. Night Shyamalan starring Matt Dillon. Expect a really lame, heavily telegraphed twist for the ending, and that twist will be early cancellation.

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH - Will Forte is the only star as the only person left alive on Earth. Everybody else is dead and he will die alone, slowly, and in agony when a small cut turns septic. It's a sitcom.

WEIRD LONERS - A bunch of modern misanthropes are forced to socialize, hilarity ensues.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1149: Fall TV Preview NBC!

2014-15 NBC Schedule

(New programs in UPPER CASE & BOLD; all times ET)

MONDAY

8-10 PM – The Voice

10-11 PM - The Blacklist / STATE OF AFFAIRS (beginning Nov. 17) State of Affairs stars ex-Grey's Anatomy co-star and failed movie star Katherine Heigl as the president's top CIA analyst. Premise sounds ripe for lots of self-important speeches being made by a star that's more well known for making lots of flops, and for being hard to work with than for appealing to the audience.

TUESDAY

8-9 PM - The Voice

9-9:30 PM - MARRY ME - From what I've been able to gather, the premise is about an overly cutesy couple constantly looking for the right moment for a marriage proposal, and having that moment ruined. They should just break up.

9:30-10 PM - About a Boy

10-11 PM - Chicago Fire

WEDNESDAY

8-9 PM - THE MYSTERIES OF LAURA - Debra Messing's a divorced mom who has to balance her job as a detective, under her ex-husband, and her annoying children. The writing better snap-crackle-and-pop if this is going to stand out among all the other procedurals.

9-10 PM - Law & Order: SVU

10-11 PM - Chicago P.D.

THURSDAY

8-9 PM - The Biggest Loser

9-9:30 PM - BAD JUDGE  A sitcom about a hard-living, opinionated judge who ends up taking care of an 8 year old whose parents she imprisoned. Pack your insulin because it's gonna get sweet.

9:30-10 PM - A TO Z - Another cutesy relationship comedy about mismatched lovebirds. Feh.

10-11 PM - Parenthood / ALLEGIANCE - A bright young CIA analyst learns that his parents are Russian sleep agents that the Putin regime has reactivated. If they don't have some sort of narrative master plan this premise could easily become a repetitive mess. 

FRIDAY

8-9 PM - Dateline NBC

9-10 PM - Grimm

10-11 PM - CONSTANTINE - Based on the DC/Vertigo comic book about John Constantine, a sorcerer and con-artist battling demons and trying to avoid damnation. The trailer looks good, which means there's a chance the show could be good, and NBC will cancel it quickly.

SATURDAY

8-11 PM - Encore programming

SUNDAY

7-8:20 PM - Football Night in America

8:20-11:30 PM – NBC Sunday Night Football

MID-SEASON/WAITING IN THE WINGS

MISSION CONTROL - It's basically Anchorman set during the time of Mad Men at the location of The Right Stuff. Feh.

MR. ROBINSON - Comedian Craig Robinson plays a hip musician who takes a job as a hip music teacher. If the show fails to capitalize on Robinson's charm and style it will flop.

ONE BIG HAPPY - A guy gets engaged to another woman after artificially inseminating his lesbian best friend. Hilarity ensues.

UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT - A girl raised by an isolated cult heads to make her name in the big city of New York. Lotta fish out of water gags.

A.D. - The sequel to The History Channel's miniseries of The Bible. Because we all know Hollywood handles religion so well.

EMERALD CITY - A modern dress retelling of the Wizard of Oz. Feh.

HEROES REBORN 

ODYSSEY - A lot of characters, a lot of plot twists, and somewhere around the middle of the season the plot will start flailing because they don't know what to do next.

Personally, I'm not exactly thrilled by these new shows. With the cancellation of Community the only show I watch on NBC is Hannibal, and I'm not expecting that to change any time soon.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1148: Fall TV Preview: ABC!

2014-15 ABC Schedule

(New programs in UPPER CASE & BOLD)

MONDAY

8 PM – Dancing With The Stars

10 PM – Castle

TUESDAY

8 PM – SELFIE - Karen Gillan plays a vacuous web-famous single gal who decides to pursue real life.

While I'm a big fan of Karen Gillan in particular, and long legged redheads in general, I just can't get myself into this premise. I think she needs a better vehicle.

8:30 PM – MANHATTAN LOVE STORY - Oh boy, New Yorkers, romance, I'll be seeing what else is on.

9 PM – Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - I just realized that this is the only ABC series I currently watch with any consistency. Had a weak beginning, but definitely improved, and hopefully they keep to the lessons learned for season 2.

10 PM – FOREVER - Ioan Gruffud (pronounced "Throatwobbler Mangrove") plays a crime solving medical examiner with a secret, he's at least a couple of centuries old and cannot die.

Liked it when it was called New Amsterdam, but I'm uncertain on how it's going to be done this time around.

WEDNESDAY

8 PM – The Middle

8:30 PM – The Goldbergs

9 PM – Modern Family

9:30 PM – BLACK-ISH - A sitcom about a successful upper class black man seeking some sort of black identity. I'm expecting lots of stereotype humour. Not a fan of stereotype humour.

10 PM – Nashville

THURSDAY

8 PM – Grey’s Anatomy

9 PM – Scandal

10 PM – HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER - A sexy suspense thriller about sexy students in a sexy law class run by a sexy teacher getting involved in sexy situations with other sexy people in sexy places.

Sorry, it's just that the blurb describing the show made so much about the "sexy" my parody isn't that far off. I think they're trying too hard with their pitch and it's a bit of a turn off.

FRIDAY

8 PM – Last Man Standing

8:30 PM – CRISTELA - An old fashioned ethnic sitcom about a Mexican American girl beginning a career as a lawyer and her whacky traditional family.

Didn't I see this in the 1970s?

9 PM – Shark Tank

10 PM – 20/20

SATURDAY

8 PM – Saturday Night Football

SUNDAY

7 PM – America’s Funniest Home Videos

8 PM – Once Upon A Time

9 PM – Resurrection

10 PM – Revenge

MID SEASON SHOWS:

SECRETS AND LIES - One of those "mystery box" series based around a central crime that has to be solved. I hope they're selling it as a miniseries, because the moment they're tempted to do a Season 2 you can forget getting it solved… ever.

AMERICAN CRIME - Another central-mystery show, but with an added taste of racial tension in the plot-line. Might be too grim to catch on.

THE WHISPERS - Aliens are invading, using Earth's children as their weapon. I guess they hope to annoy Earth into submission.

MARVEL’S AGENT CARTER - Agent Peggy Carter, played by Hayley Atwell, faces post-war ennui, the loss of her true love Captain America, while doing missions in the early days of SSR/SHIELD.

I will be interesting to see if Marvel manages to build successful TV franchises around non-superhero characters.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1147: Fall TV Sneak Peak! CBS!

CBS FALL 2014-2015 SCHEDULE

(New programs in BOLD and UPPER CASE with some added snark, all times ET/PT)

MONDAY

8 PM – The Big Bang Theory/2 Broke Girls

8:30 PM – Mom

9 PM – SCORPION - Premise: A gang of misfit geniuses work with a grizzled FBI agent to solve the nation's crises. 

I'm a tad uncertain of this, since handling crisis events like international terrorism or espionage could potentially offend someone whose opinion matters to CBS management, so it has the potential to become a "domestic militia or Christian religious nut of the week" show very quickly. Then it will slip into the Offend/Bore matrix, and could be canned by mid-season.

10 PM – NCIS: Los Angeles

TUESDAY

8 PM – NCIS

9 PM – NCIS: NEW ORLEANS According to CBS the US Navy is a hotbed of homicide. On the upside it ensures that Scott Bakula will be on television somewhere, which is an FCC licensing requirement.

10 PM – Person Of Interest

WEDNESDAY

8 PM – Survivor

9 PM – Criminal Minds

10 PM – STALKER - 2 sexy cops handle cases of sex-obsessed stalkers who are stalking sexy people. Feh.

THURSDAY

8-11 PM ET – NFL THURSDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL (Sept 11-Oct 23) - "Are you ready for some football!?!" 

No.

Beginning Oct 30:

8 PM – The Big Bang Theory

8:30 PM – The Millers

9 PM – Two And A Half Men - Is starting its 12th and final season. While the show was crap, it was nice to see Jon Cryer make some decent money.

9:30 PM – THE MCCARTHYS - Premise  They're Irish, they're loud, they're sports obsessed. I can't bring myself to care.

10 PM – Elementary

FRIDAY

8 PM – The Amazing Race

9 PM – Hawaii Five-0

10 PM – Blue Bloods

SATURDAY

8 PM – Crimetime Saturday - reruns.

9:00 PM – Crimetime Saturday - reruns.

10 PM – 48 Hours

SUNDAY

7 PM – 60 Minutes - Yes, it's still on.

8 PM – MADAM SECRETARY Premise- A feisty, sexy female secretary of state solves the world's problems on a weekly basis.

Conservatives will shit on it as an overly-idealized campaign ad for Hillary Clinton, and liberals will be bored out of their skulls. Good shot of cancellation by mid-season.

9 PM – The Good Wife

10 PM – CSI/CSI: CYBER - Premise: Patricia Arquette plays the head of an elite team of cyber-crime busters chasing pornographers, identity thieves, and bloggers who say nasty things about the CBS network.

Uh-oh.

MID-SEASON: BATTLE CREEK - Premise: A rough cop in the woe-fully underfunded, under appreciated police department of Battle Creek Michigan is partnered with a slick agent from the well-funded FBI.

The biggest problem I can identify with this show is that it's Vince Gilligan's follow-up to Breaking Bad, and that is an extremely tough act to follow.

Let me know what you folks think in the comments.