Hollywood Babble On & On #641: Weinstein Company Men

Welcome to the show folks...

Last Sundance festival marked the premiere of the film Company Men. The movie had a heavyweight cast in the form of a resurgent Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, and Chris Cooper, a director crossing over from a successful career in television, John Wells, and a relevant storyline considering the current economic climate. While no one was expecting the film to be a big blockbuster, some said it had the potential to find itself a niche, especially during awards season.

Then the film got picked up by the Weinstein Company.

When that happened I sort of joked that the Weinstein's release plan was to make a lot of promises, then in about 6 months come up with an excuse to bump the film back, and bump it back again, and then finally dump it in the DVD discount bin at a Wal-Mart in Flin-Flon Manitoba.

Well, it turns out that it wasn't a joke, but a pretty accurate prediction, only off by a couple of months.

Now they're promising an Oscar qualifying run in literally theaters, with a wider release in January.

"Sure," he said as the sarcastic irony dripped from his tongue as thick and smooth as tupelo honey, "I believe you."

Which makes me ask this question one more time:

WHY DO PEOPLE SELL THEIR FILMS TO THE WEINSTEINS IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Seriously, because unless it's going to make Bob a lot of cash, or get Harvey qualified for another Oscar, your film is going to get bent over and rogered with a stiff wire brush. It's going to be either re-cut into oblivion, then dumped, or just plain dumped.

Now I know that the indie film market is about as lively as a postmortem Perry Como concert, but it can't be so desperate that the only option is a buyer who buys movies pretty much solely to keep other people from doing anything worthwhile with it.

Sheesh. I'm not the only saying stuff like this, so why aren't these people listening?

Saturday Silliness Cinema: Merry Xmas Part 1

Welcome to the show folks...

Yesterday was my birthday and I took a day off from the blog, but I'm back today and I'm starting a new Christmas themed series of vids for Saturday Silliness Cinema. First up, my sincerest wishes that you all have the haziest, laziest, craziest, and Swayziest Christmas ever.

Hollywood Babble On & On #640: Thoughts On CBS Films By A Smug Know It All

Welcome to the show folks...

CBS Films is having some troubles. Its latest release Faster, is going kind of slow at the box office, and in response to yet another under-performer the company is having a management shake-up.

I've written before about the CBS TV network's latest attempt at getting into the theatrical feature film biz. The original concept behind the company is sound. That concept is to produce and distribute moderately budgeted genre films to fill the increasingly vacant middle ground left between the mega-budget blockbusters, and the award baiting art house fare.

Now that I have that out of the way I have to be blunt, and by blunt, I mean savagely brutal. While the concept behind the company is sound, the company itself isn't sound, and it goes beyond the current night of the Sicilian vespers going on at the head office.

Let's look at the company's two biggest problems...

THE NAME OF THE COMPANY

Now the folks at CBS, chiefly honcho Les Moonves, think that it's key that they slap the precious CBS "brand" on the company. Experts will tell you that it's an important selling point for the new business, but it's really mostly to get the CEO of the parent company a few pats on the back at the country club when the company with their "brand" does well.

However, sometimes a successful brand like the CBS TV network can harm a venture, especially a theatrical feature film venture.

Think about it, audience members see the CBS brand and they think television. They think of warm comfortable entertainment brought into their homes and enjoyed from the comfort of their couch. They do not think about theatrical feature films, and definitely don't think of anything with the CBS Eyeball stamped on it as worth getting off that couch, driving all the way out to the multiplex and dropping some serious coin to see.

CBS would have been much better off calling this new company a completely different name. Maybe start with what the letters CBS mean... Columbia Broadcasting System. They could call it COLUMBIA PICTURES!

What?

That name's already taken?

Dang it!

Okay, scratch that. There is still an entire universe of potential names for this new company that have a different branding than CBS. Someone, somewhere could have figured one out. Legend says that Universal Pictures got its name off a truck shipping plumbing supplies, and that Warner Brothers got its name from some guys who started the company. The point that I'm making is that this new company needed a new brand to get audiences to get off the couch.

MARKETING

Face it, I didn't even know that Faster was being released into theaters until after it started having underwhelming ticket sales.

That's bad, because I try to pay attention to those sorts of things. If you're not reaching me, then you are definitely not reaching the sort who actually have the disposable income to buy a ticket.

Their movies can't directly compete with the big blockbusters when it comes to advertising. That's a given. However, they shouldn't even try. They can't spend their way out of this jam, but they can think their way out of it. I'm talking about looking for ways to promote the films that don't require mega-bucks spent in ad-buys. This can be done, other filmmakers and companies do it all the time. Study the successes and the failures, determine what they did right and did wrong, and form your own plan from what you've learned. It's a lot of work, but in the end it should be worth it.

Then they might be able to make this thing work.

Hollywood Babble On & On #639: Walking Dead Writers Get Their Walking Papers

Welcome to the show folks...

Meanwhile another show isn't being exactly welcome to its writers. Frank Darabont, executive producer and showrunner of AMC's breakout zombie hit The Walking Dead has given the shows staff writers their walking papers. That's right, after the huge success of Season 1's six episodes, he's going into the 13 episode 2nd Season by himself, with planned contributions from the comic's creator Robert Kirkman, and some freelancers.

Really?

I can't say that I'm all that keen on this idea, now I could snark about it based on rumors that Mr. Darabont is hard to get along with, but I don't like to deal in rumors, because I'm not an insider with insider info, I'm as far out as you can get and still be on the same continent. So, in the interest of fairness, which I rarely practice, I will take a look at the Pros and Cons of the business/creative ramifications of this decision.

PROS:

1. I'm assuming that this is somehow going to save the show some money, and the original writers might still be rehired under some convoluted Hollywood style accounting scheme.

2. Darabont's defenders state that the series is following a more British style model. The British model is that the series has a limited number of episodes, and a limited number of writers. Many British TV series are written by a single writer as one big sort of 'novel for television.' The closest a more mainstream American series came to the "one writer" plan was J. Michael Straczynski and his sci-fi series Babylon 5, where he wrote entire seasons by himself for a total of 92 of the series 110 episodes.

3. Other defenders say that the series is pretty much already written inside the pages of Robert Kirkman's ongoing and long running comic book series.

Now let's look at the...

CONS

1. The odds that the original staff writer are going to be rehired as freelancers under some Hollywood accounting scheme are pretty slim. Resentment can come into Hollywood relationships, and other shows love to poach people with time on hits. Especially a come from nowhere, unexpected hit like Walking Dead.

2. While I do advocate the British model for certain types of TV series, and that some shows do better as a limited run miniseries than as an ongoing. These sorts of stories are small scale, and self-contained with an obvious beginning, middle, and end, and often years between each 'series.'

However, The Walking Dead, by the nature of its source material is a large, long, and ongoing sort of serial drama about survival in a world where civilization has ceased to exist.

Yes, Straczynski did it on Babylon 5, but it kind of showed. I was never a big fan of the show, mostly because of parts where plot-lines were stretched out when they should have been wrapped up quickly, and explanations denied when logic screamed for them because asking and answering questions didn't fit with the show's central plan. This could have been avoided if there was a bit more collaboration with fresh eyes and minds, instead of trying to go it pretty much alone.

3. Yes, the series is pretty much pre-written in comic book form. But that's not as easy a proposition as you think. Adapting a pre-existing work is a huge can of worms, requiring an understanding of the source story, the medium it was told in, and the best strategies for bringing the story, themes, and characters to the screen.

An ongoing story like The Walking Dead requires all these and probably then some, including a level of team work that might not be found with a bunch of insecure freelancers.

Now that I weighed the pros and cons I have to admit that I'm still a tad uneasy with this decision, and will have to wait and see how it's going to turn out.

Hollywood Babble On & On #638: Host This!

Welcome to the show folks....

Folks are buzzing about the Academy Awards quite a lot this week. Not because of any of the films, stars, or filmmakers, that might be nominated, but because of the choice of hosts. Actors James Franco and Anne Hathaway will co-host the venerable show hoping to provide some youth and looks to the usually borderline geriatric and overly botoxed program.

You know what, I'm not going to bad mouth the decision.

I know, a lot of you are expecting a smug know-it-all bastard like me to snark on them hiring two young good looking people, probably because they are young and good looking.

But I won't.

Why?

Two reasons.

Reason #1. They have signed up to do a really shitty job. I'll get back to that in a minute.

Reason #2. Who else are you going to give the job too?

Think about it, from the moment they got the job, to about a day or two after the end of the show their lives will not be their own. They have sessions with the writers, producers, rehearsals, having Bruce Vilanch crash on your couch griping at you about how "Whoopi would have made it work!" and let's not forget the costume changes.

If Miss Hathaway is one scintilla less than some bitchy internet commentator's vision of glam-perfection, and have a fresh gown after every commercial break, she'll never hear the end of it. Plus, if the slightest bead of sweat appears on James Franco's collar, then he's on the same boat. I remember when someone asked Roger Moore what was the hardest part of filming the Bond movies, and his answer didn't involve stunts, fights, or pitching woo to an actress with a taste for onions. No, he said the toughest part was filming the tuxedo scenes. If the jacket had a wrinkle, then it was a complete change over, Bond must always appear perfect, and so must the hosts of the Oscars.

Then there are the reviews. Face it, it's not an easy job. In the 1990s everyone wanted Letterman to do the job, then he did the job, and after that even Letterman thought Letterman should never do it again.

Both Franco and Hathaway are taking a huge risk by taking on this job. If they blow it, their careers could take a severe shellacking.

Now we come to the question of who do you hire to host such an event. First thought is to hire a comedian and / or television talk show host. However that's not always the best idea.

I mentioned Letterman, who tried to turn the Oscar telecast into a super-sized version of his Late Show. Chris Rock was snippy and hostile. trying to be edgy in an edgeless event, and proving to the world that Sean Penn can't get a joke if his life depended on it. Whoopi Goldberg and Ellen Degeneres were ultimately forgettable. John Stewart came off as smug and stand-offish.

They forgot the key rules to hosting the Oscars, rules established by the people who set the gold standard for the job, I'm talking about Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, and Billy Crystal.

The rules are:

1. THE SHOW IS ABOUT THE MOVIES NOT ABOUT YOU!

Bob Hope only intruded into the show with the quick line: "It's time for the Academy Awards, or as we call it at my house: Passover" and then pretty much stuck to the movies and the nominees.

Billy Crystal, during his heyday as host, had a very specific method to his hosting. He acted as if he was a huge movie-fan who somehow stumbled his way into the center of the movie universe. He became the goofy figure of self deprecating fun getting to play among the beautiful celebrities. He made himself into the viewer at home, he was the embodiment of Rule #2:

2. YOU MUST PLAY TO THE AUDIENCE AT HOME NOT IN THE THEATER!

The people in the theater are there on business, not to be entertained. The audience at home are the ones who need to be entertained because without them, there is no industry to support the Oscars. The people in the theater are there to get their mugs on TV, win awards, hold it over the losers, or make the sort of business connections needed to keep their jobs.

3. YOU HAVE TO KEEP IT MOVING!

The show is, at best, 3-4 hours long. Every winner is going to want to speak as long as Fidel Castro on a caffeine bender, and use the podium as a soap-box to let the world know about the plight of the Saskatchewan seal population. When their mike is cut off and the orchestra kicks in it's the job of the host, to move in, make their segue, and move the hell out.

4. YOU HAVE TO BE QUICK ON YOUR FEET!

Never forget that the Oscars are a live telecast. That means that despite how professional and skilled the crew are, things are going to go wrong. A presenter is going to have a drug overdose in the bathroom, there's going to be a fight in the swag room, and the tape for the memorial reel will get scrambled in the control room and reach out to strangle a switch operator.

When these events happen, it falls on the host to cover, to do emergency award presentations, make a self deprecating joke to cover the crash of a falling light, and whatever it takes to keep the audience from discovering what a chaotic disaster the show is backstage.

This requires a quick mind, a sharp sense of humor, and grace under pressure. That's a rare quality to find in Hollywood these days when many stars have total meltdowns when they can't find their favorite comb.

The classic example was David Niven, who was hosting when a streaker came running across the stage as naked as the day he was born. Niven, didn't miss a beat and said something like: "This is a night for awards, not to display one's shortcomings."

So one has to ask oneself: "Who in Hollywood can do all that, and put up with all the crap?" There aren't many, and I'm going to hope that the producers made the right decision.

I'm going to wish the two of them good luck with this job. They are going to need it.

And by the way, a message to James Franco, SHAVE BEFORE THE SHOW!

And if you people think I wrote this piece as a cheap excuse to post pictures of Anne Hathaway, you are very wrong!

I have my integrity.

There isn't much of it, but it's there.

The Rule Of Three Strikes Again...

Welcome to the show folks...

I originally planned to take American Thanksgiving day off, because it's usually a slow time for the sort of news I rant and rave about, but then I got sick, and have been wallowing in my own misery since. I'm not fully recovered but I'm well enough to take on the sad duty that fallen on me this evening.

I'm talking about that all encompassing rule of threes where celebrities die in packs of three within a few days of each other, and it's happened again.

INGRID PITT

Became the queen of Hammer Films in the early 1970s, giving new meaning to the term femme fatale, but she was also a holocaust survivor, an escapee from communist East Germany, and a writer.

I remember first seeing her when I caught her first Hammer movie The Vampire Lovers on a pirated pay-TV signal when I was 13. I believe my reaction at the time was "Wow!" However, she was more than just a sex symbol, proving herself a talented actress capable of breathing life in her sometimes undead characters, and the movies she starred in.

She was also the first celebrity I ever communicated with on line. I sort of bumped into her cybernetically back during the glory days of MySpace, and exchanged some polite pleasantries. Very gracious, and classy to fans and, according to reports, colleagues alike.

LESLIE NIELSEN

Spent the first couple of decades of his career playing straight dramatic parts, then at the age of 54 reinventing his image and career as a comedic performer.

He grew up, the son of a Mountie in Western Canada, studied drama, worked in movies like Forbidden Planet, and ended up doing the guest-star rounds in television, playing police detectives, district attorneys, and doctors. No one really considered a comedian.

Then came the film Airplane. It was a wild surrealist comedy, that the filmmakers populated with mostly straight dramatic actors from television. The casting was a joke in itself, presenting these people who usually played somber, sober authority figures acting crazy.

Nielsen and the Airplane crew then went on to do Police Squad, that tried to bring that surrealistic style to television. The show died on the small screen, but went to big-screen heaven with the Naked Gun movie trilogy.

Nielsen was reborn as the king of goofball comedy and a box office star, and even though he had been elevated to the 'A-List,' and had an output that outstripped stars that were decades younger, he still kept working in smaller projects in his native Canada, knowing that his name could help a filmmaker get his film or TV show made.

He will always be remembered as a funny, talented and versatile actor, and will be greatly missed.

IRVIN KERSHNER

I will confess, I used to resent Irvin Kershner. Not for anything he did, but because his most famous film, The Empire Strikes Back, was such a downer.

Spoiler alert for those who have lived in a cave for the last 30 years, the film ended with Han Solo frozen in carbonite, Luke Skywalker getting his hand cut off and finding out his Daddy's an armor plated half-robot sociopath, and the rebellion's on the run after being chased off the froze backwater they had called home.

Now I can appreciate Kershner's courage. He knew the film was going to be hard going for the audience, being the second downbeat part of a trilogy, and fans of the first film would be hyper critical since he was not George Lucas, but he still put together a finely crafted adventure film. He burned real calories making that film the best he could, and give it the dramatic weight it needed when any someone who treated the project as just a hired gun would have just piled on the special effects.

All three made their own unique contributions to popular culture, and all three will be missed.

Hollywood Babble On & On #637: Amazon Is Full Of Piranhas!

Welcome to the show folks...

Amazon, the good folks who put your local indie bookstore out of business, are looking to get into the movie business. They are holding a screenplay contest with the promise of all kinds of great prizes and an open door to Hollywood and a bright future.

Except some writers are a little disgusted concerned about the terms of this contest.

Here are some of the things that concern them, and me:

Amazon Studios invites filmmakers and screenwriters from all over the world to submit full-length movies and scripts, which will then get feedback from Amazon readers, who will be free to rewrite and amend. Based on reaction (“rate and review”) to stories, scripts and rough “test” films, a panel of judges will award monthly prizes... You agree to be automatically entered into any future contests for which your work is eligible. The specific contest rules for future contests will be posted on this page when they are announced.

What do you see wrong in that little picture?

First: The fact that this contest is run by Amazon is kind of fitting, because this contest is essentially tossing a hunk of raw bloody meat (AKA your screenplay) into a pool of hungry piranhas (your new "writing partners").

Literally hundreds, if not thousands of people are going to be "revising" and "rewriting" your script, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it, because you essentially forfeit all rights and control over said script as soon as you enter.

Amazon says it's okay in their FAQ:

Can I make it so that no one else can revise my original work?

No. But if someone makes changes that are bad, their version is not likely to get a lot of attention. And if someone comes along and makes your work better, you’re more likely to win a prize and get your project made. Sometimes other people can bring a different viewpoint or a different set of skills that take the story in a new direction or add new elements that make it even more compelling.

Of course, if your script is particularly heavily nibbled, the judges, and their infinite wisdom may never get around to seeing your original work, because your script is in the midst of blood and thrashing carnage in the dark, murky, and muddy water of the Amazon.

Now the folks at Amazon think they're doing some wonderful new and novel "crowd-sourced" creative endeavor that will make everything beautiful, unicorns will prance down Sunset Boulevard and Zooey Deschanel will show up at my door and declare--- anyway I digress.

What this project does is take the worst habit of the major studios: Taking scripts and passing them around to multiple writers like a doobie at a Phish concert for rewrites, and not only multiplying it at an exponential level, but also my second point--

Second: There are none of the protection for credits, residuals and anything else that might make joining this contest worthwhile for the guy who actually wrote the winning screenplay. If it gets sold to a studio, someone else could do a rewrite, and completely eliminate the original writer from the credits.

The studios have to follow strict guidelines for credits and payment because of decades of legal wrangling and labor disputes forged those rules. They aren't perfect, but they're the best the extremely flawed system can get at this time. Amazon's contest doesn't even offer you that.

And what this about entering your script into future contests where the rules haven't even been decided on?

I mean that's disturbingly vague, wide open for future abuse of writers by Amazon. Whose to say that future contest doesn't involve just taking the winning screenplay and giving the winning writer a flaming bag of dog-shit and a swift kick in the nuts as their grand prize?

And like the unsolicited rewrites by strangers, there doesn't appear to be an opt out feature.

That's not good, not good at all.

Why did Amazon go all James Frey on this contest?

The answer is simple, they got too clever.

I'm sure they sat around the conference room, looking for ideas to justify their continued employment, and someone piped up with the screenplay contest idea.

Then they started coming up with great ideas to "improve" on just having a screenplay contest. They looted the latest hot buzzwords like "crowd-sourcing," and then passed it all over to their lawyers, who then had to justify their employment, by tossing in all sorts of what I call legalistic bend-overs.

Basically, they decided to do something "different" from the Hollywood studios, by then taking all that is bad about doing business with the studios, and amplifying them into the realm of the ridiculous, while dumping all that's good, namely money, credit, and career advancement.

It's a shame, because they could have done something good with this, but instead, they screwed it up royally.

Hollywood Babble On & On #636: Cautionary Tales For Stupid Children

Welcome to the show folks...

I normally avoid doing celebrity gossip, but this piece of news contains a nugget of wisdom nestled deep within the stupidity inherent within it. "Actress," "pop singer," and overall slutty dresser Taylor Momsen is being phased out of Gossip Girl, a series she's been a regular on since it started on the CW Network.

Now if you're like me, and the majority of the population of the planet, you probably haven't seen Gossip Girl, and the odds are pretty good that you haven't heard of Senorita Momsen. I hadn't heard of her until Movieline ran this story about Project Runway host Tim Gunn giving the barely dressed raccoon eyed 17 year old a dressing down for being a "pathetic diva."

If you're too lazy to click the link, Gunn was brought on for a cameo on Gossip Girl, Momsen showed up late, didn't know her lines, didn't hit her marks and appeared to find gainful employment as a star of a TV show a bit fat boring inconvenience.

Now they've phased her out, effectively dropping her from the show.

Brilliant move.

You see it all boils down to this.

Time = Money.

The main thing that a production budget for a feature film buys you is time. The time to make the film the way you think it should be made. The more money you have, the more time you have to do the job.

TV is different. When you're doing a weekly hour long drama series and have to grind out anywhere between 20-25 episodes each season it doesn't matter how much money you have, your time is limited, extremely limited. You have to essentially produce half a feature film in the sort time usually spent deciding what color tie Richard Gere should wear in the courtroom scene.

When it comes to TV you must be efficient and you must be fast. You have to get the episode done, and be onto the next one before the ink dries on the script.

If you're an actor on such a show the same formula holds true. You are paid for your time, in the hope that your efforts would make their investment in buying your time profitable. When you show up late, chat on you cell phone, miss your marks, and don't know your lines, you are going beyond being an investment to being a liability.

A certain level of forgiveness can be earned if your show gets great ratings. Because then you're still an investment, even if you eat into their profit margin a little, but act like that on a show like Gossip Girl, whose ratings never matched the hype that it got, and you're on a one way track to Nowheresville, population 2, you and Mischa Barton.

As a TV actor the only thing you can do to your career that's worse than being considered a liability on set is cutting off your mother's head with a samurai sword, and even then it's because your time in prison and mental hospitals will eat into your production time.

Now I don't think Fraulein Momsen will be decapitating anyone soon, that would require effort and hand-eye coordination that goes beyond applying eye-makeup with a paint-roller. However, I do think that she's pretty much ruined her acting career.

Expect things to get worse when she turns 18 and word gets out that she was fired from her sex tape for showing up late and not remembering her lines. Then a contestant spot on House-painting With The Stars, from which she'll get fired for huffing paint fumes and getting into a fight with a second tier cable reality TV star because the cable star got recognized more often.

So take in this cautionary tale kiddies, especially those of you who want to be a actor. Because while it's a great job to be a highly paid TV star, it's still a job, and to keep that job you have to act like a professional.

Hollywood Babble On & On #635: Buffy The Originality Slayer

Welcome to the show folks....

The internet is probably already burning up with this news, but who am I to spurn a trip on a bandwagon, but in case you haven't heard already Warner Bros. is going to do a remake of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but without creator Joss Whedon, and with the original movie's weakest links.

Now most of you are probably remembering that cult-classic TV series created and executive produced by Joss Whedon, but this deal is all about the original movie. The original movie was made by the husband and wife producing/directing team of Fran and Kaz Kuzui from a script by Whedon. The original film has its moments, but it's an uneven film at best, mostly due to the Kuzui's desire to make it more of a broad slapstick farce over Whedon's original blend of horror and sly humor.

Whedon was able to get his vision done more or less his way on the small screen, but since the Kuzui's had control of the title, they became the show's co-executive producers.

Now the Kuzui's are hoping to cash in on the goodwill earned by the show by taking that venerable title they own and slapping it onto a whole new script to be made by Warner Bros.

Let's look at the pros and cons of this decision:

PROS:

1. While the original movie was more or less forgotten, a lot of people have fond memories of the TV show's original run, and its reach has expanded through re-runs, DVDs, and a vibrant fan culture on the internet.

2. Since it's the type of movie that won't have any big name stars, it will probably be cheaply produced.

3. There's a chance that the writer doing the script might have a fresh take that no one sees coming.

CONS:

1. The core Buffy fans are at heart core Joss Whedon fans. Most of those fans don't like the Kuzui's original movie, and think of it as an aberration at best, abomination at worst.

2. Those core Buffy fans look at this news and are repulsed. They don't see the characters and carefully detailed universe from the series they love getting a new lease on life, they see this as a blatant cash grab exploiting the major studio's love of remakes of anything and everything they can get.

3. For the film to succeed the makers are going to need those core fans on their side. So far, all I've seen coming from those fans is some pretty harsh negativity. Something that could have been avoided if there was at least token Whedon involvement, or endorsement of the project. This means that these fans are going to actively work against the "remake" and that's really bad.

Why?

Because outside of the show's core fans, most people either don't know the name Buffy, don't care, or actively don't want to know or care. To make a feature film work they need the core fan community spreading a lot of goodwill around via the internet. That's probably not going to happen barring some sort of miraculous event.

4. The odds of there being a fresh and original take on this material are pretty slim. Remember, this is going to be a major studio movie. That means they're going to do rewrites by new writers, most of them knowing or caring nothing about the source material, and anything else they can think of to justify the expense accounts existence of the studio executives overseeing the movie. My money's on the film coming out as a ditzy PG rated farce about a Paris Hilton type socialite staking vampires in between some low-end fart and wiener jokes and high-end shopping montages.

So you can see that I don't have much hope for this movie.

Leave what you think in the comments.

Hollywood Babble On & On #634: Selling Out Or Just Doing What You Do?

Welcome to the show folks....

Indie auteur Darren Aronofsky caused some heads to turn when word came out that he was going to direct The Wolverine, a comic book franchise film. Some said that he had sold out, while his response was that he was just hired to "do what I do."

I think he's right. Sure it's a dramatic change from his early work like the math related thriller Pi, the somber drama of The Wrestler, or the supernatural / psycho-drama of Natalie Portman making out with Mila Kunis in the upcoming Black Swan.

I can see why he'd do it. He's worked with star Hugh Jackman before in the ill-fated The Fountain, and I assume that they must have gotten along well and see this as a good opportunity to work together again. It gives him a chance to connect to a wider audience that normally wouldn't see his films, and let's not forget the greatly improved paycheck.

So I don't think he's selling out. He's only selling out if he just coasts and ends up making a lazy and lousy movie.

As Orson Welles once said a poet needs a pen, a painter needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army. Armies need money to run and complete their mission. While it's nice to think that one could have a career catering solely to the art house crowd, it's not really possible in the cold harsh light of reality.

To expand on what I said in my earlier piece on the necessity of making horror films it's really a question of attitude and openness. The art film scene can be even more narrow minded and insular as the field of Hollywood blockbuster film-making. It's not healthy to just lock yourself into a particular genre or mindset, and breaking free from that mindset should be applauded. We cheer directors who leave the Hollywood mainstream to make smaller "more personal" films, well why not those who try the other way. Both are merely looking to expand their personal repertoire, and if they do a good job, then good luck to them.