Hollywood Babble On & On #661: Staying Too Long At The Fair

Welcome to the show folks.

Regis Philbin is retiring from television at the end of this TV season. He's ending a career in television that seems to pre-date the invention of television, and he's doing it before complete fossilization.

If I was of the Don Rickles frame of mind I could say that he quit entertainment decades ago, but I won't, because I'm a nice guy.

However, Mr. Philbin is a rarity because it looks like he chose to retire at this time.

That's rare, because when it comes to appearing on television if you're in it, you are not leaving it, damn the low ratings and obvious senility. The most obvious example is Larry King who had to be dragged out of the studio by his ever present suspenders even though he himself had quit journalism some time in the 1980s. They forced him out to make room for a new show where a new talk show host appears to interview other talk show hosts, but I digress.

There are some people who linger on TV long past their prime, and refuse to leave, regardless of their age, health, and sometimes obvious senility. They just keep going on and on, turning off viewers, embarrassing themselves, and destroying whatever legacy they had.

Most refuse to let go and retire, regardless of their wealth, because they need something more than money. They need to be important, and to be important they need to be on television. It's like crack.

Now you're probably wondering how these people are allowed to linger for so long in such a harsh and money driven business like TV, well one reason is peer pressure.

You see, most of these gray eminences are based out of New York. New York's media high society is a very insular community and protective of those they think of as "their own." Guess who are the core of this little community: The same old farts clogging up the airways.

No network executive wants to be ostracized from all the best dinner parties and gala social events. That's where they get to show off their importance. Best to just eat the losses because it's other people's money anyway.

The second reason is nostalgia. These are the people that the executives grew up watching, and are still held with a certain amount of awe.

The third reason is a complete failure of imagination coupled with terror. These executives can't imagine bringing in anyone new because that would take effort to find the new talent, and terror at the possibility that the road might get bumpy. So they think it's best to stick with the devil they know and hope that things don't get worse.

That's why you don't see a lot of these old timers retire by choice, they don't want to give up their crack, and the networks are too scared to get rid of them. Usually TV personalities have to be forced out after doing something really embarrassing in public. Even then it's tough.

That's why you have to know that in life, as in comedy, you have to know when to get off the stage. Because eventually the audience is going to stop clapping, wonder why the hell they're there, and start leaving in droves.

Hollywood Babble On & On #660: These Are The Golden Globes We're Talking About Here!

Welcome to the show folks...

I broke one of my own rules last night and actually watched some of the Golden Globes.

I didn't watch the whole thing, mind you, my sanity couldn't have survived the full dose, but I did watch over an hour and a half of the annual boondoggle. Ample time to ogle Sofia Vergara's cleavage, whenever she was on camera, and post the occasional snark on Twitter, and to hear host Ricky Gervais lob a few torpedoes at the various sacred cows that circled him.

Now folks are all over complaining that Gervais "went too far," that he was "too mean" and his "cheap shots" hurt the integrity of the Golden Globes.

Holy freaking shit on a shingle, I'm surprised the whole internet didn't explode from the use of the words "integrity" and "Golden Globes" in the same sentence. Since most of you chose not to watch it, here's a taste of what he said during the show:

Oooh.... dangerous.

So freaking what.

The Golden Globes is supposed to be a social night out, where people would get drunk, pass out awards that don't mean anything, rag on each other, pass out themselves, and otherwise have a good time.

It wasn't meant to be taken seriously. How can you take an awards show where all the awards are selected by a tiny, secretive, clique of journalists for foreign newspapers who are easily swayed, convinced, and sometimes even bribed to vote for movies regardless of quality.

However, it's been around a long time, and like whores and politicians, awards shows, no matter how morally and artistically bankrupt, eventually become respectable with age. Then there's its status as a "predictor" of the Oscars. That status is very similar to the old cliche about a broken clock being right at least twice a day.

The Golden Globes are a joke, the fact that Gervais treated them as such has shocked self-important Hollywood to its core. They are so long used to mindless worship and unquestioning adoration, no matter how asinine they act, they can't seem to take it when someone calls them on it.

That also shows that not only is Hollywood smug and self-important, it's also nutless.

It reminds me about the time Chris Rock hosted the Oscars, and made a rather weak joke about Jude Law being in everything. Sean Penn came out to present an award, and promptly went into an angry righteous defense of Jude Law. It only succeeded in making Penn look like a humorless self-righteous asshole who can't recognize that comedians tell jokes and that the best way to get back at what you think of as a mean zinger, is to zing back.

All Penn had to do was remark that Rock, as the man responsible for the classic Pootie Tang, really shouldn't criticize anyone's movie work.

In reaction to Gervais Hollywood has turned into Sean Penn.

Why didn't some people zing back beyond the tepid little "stop hurting our feelings" shot made by Tom Hanks and Tim Allen?

They could have talked about how he's been coasting off The Office for the last 10 years, how his movie career has dropped bigger bombs than Curtis LeMay, and how his box office record is so bad he doesn't even rate his own Box Office Mojo page.

That's what old Hollywood would have done. Someone would have fired back, big time, and if the show degenerated into a zing-flinging war, then maybe the goddamn thing would have been worth watching all the way through.

But Hollywood didn't. Instead, they whined, and got their pet poodles in the media to cry along with them.

Gervais showed actual courage. Hollywood is his biggest fan right now, and his appeal within the Hollywood community is the only reason he's still making and starring in his own films instead of scrabbling for supporting roles, or to get another sitcom on the air. If they decide to backlash against him, with his weak performance at the box office, his career could take a hit.

But then again, maybe he's got enough from licensing the remake rights to The Office to every country from Albania to Zambia to not worry about what Hollywood could do to his career.

Anyway Hollywood needs to grow a pair and learn to take it as well as they can dish it out.

Hollywood Babble On & On #659: Miscellaneous Musings

Welcome to the show folks...

Still sick, but slowly feeling better. So here are some more short pieces to tide you over.

ROCKFORD REDUX WRECKED

NBC has finally officially passed on the rebooting of the legendary PI drama The Rockford Files. The excuse being given was that David Shore had to return to the reigns of House MD and was unable to complete the script.

Yeah, right, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the idea was doomed from the start. Why? Because it was a show that was literally custom tailored to the talents and charisma of original star James Garner. Any attempt to do it with someone else saddles the project with a level of animosity that any show, regardless of quality, can overcome.

Now the ironic thing is, if NBC had asked Shore to develop a new and original private eye show in the spirit of The Rockford Files, with a charismatic star, and pitched it as coming from the "Creator of House" and it might have actually sold.

IS HE REALLY WORTH IT?

18 year old Twilight star Taylor Lautner is making seven figures a picture, is the highest paid star in his age bracket and is going to produce and star in some major tent pole films.

Yet nobody actually knows if he can carry a non-Twilight film because he has yet to have one of these mega-projects released. Personally, I don't think the Twilight hysteria is worth such a huge investment before he's proven himself as a solo act at the box office.

Do you remember the non-Twilight movies released by his cast mates?

Neither do they!

Now he might break this hex and be a tremendous success, however, the odds are against him. Twilight fever is running too hot not to cool down and congeal into something gross and oozy, the fans of that franchise don't go to their non-Twilight movies. There's also been no "test case" of a smaller film where he can prove his appeal outside of playing the dog-faced boy who can't keep a shirt.

Instead, millions upon millions are being placed upon him in the hope that this time it will be different.

I hope he holds onto the $7.5 million a picture they're paying him now, because if he doesn't come out bigger than Gabby Hayes and Van Johnson combined, he might never work again.

TWO IDEAS ONE RESPONSE

ABC is green-lighting a Charlie's Angels remake.

Producers are developing a Pac-Man themed reality show.

Here is my response.

NO!

NO! NO!

NO! NO! NO!

BAD HOLLYWOOD!

BAD BAD HOLLYWOOD!

DON'T MAKE ME RUB YOUR NOSE IN IT!

I think I've made myself clear on these issues.

Hollywood Babble On & On #658: Furious D's Fast & Furious Sick Day Post

Welcome to the show folks...

I'm sick as a dog that's currently not feeling very well, so I won't be doing the sort of in-depth analysis that you crave like the salivating dogs that you are. What I can do are some quick notes.

BOND 23 HAS A DATE

And it's not with a saucy femme fatale. I mean a release date, November 2012. The film will star Daniel Craig, and will be directed by Sam Mendes. Mendes, the man behind American Beauty will mark a change of direction for the franchise, moving away from its spy thriller roots into a domestic drama about the soul crushing conformity of suburbia.

Good luck MGM, hope it makes a fortune, because you can use it.

HISTORY CANCELS HISTORY?

The History Channel has canceled their mini-series about The Kennedys before it even aired, leaving this slice of American history to air on the Canadian History Channel. Their excuse is that it somehow wasn't "historic" enough for a channel that airs shows speculating that Nostradamus shoving Crystals Skulls containing the ghosts of dead aliens up his backside to tell us that the world will end in 2012.

The biggest problem they had with the Canadian produced miniseries was not the script, that had been carefully analyzed and pre-approved, it was with political and social pressure.

The mini-series was written by Joel Surnow, the man who created the TV series 24. Surnow is a rarity, a political conservative openly living and working in Hollywood. The knee-jerk reaction among Hollywood people is that as liberals they must idolize Kennedy, and that Surnow would treat Kennedy the same way they would treat a historic figure or character who is politically conservative. Basically, they were worried that Surnow would pull a right wing Oliver Stone.

The ironic thing is that most conservatives actually respect most of what Kennedy did and stood for policy wise. He stood up to the Soviets, promoted national defense, cut taxes, and did many other things that many American conservatives supported.

Of course that's not what the Kennedy family and their friends are worried about. If Surnow did a real "warts and all" biography, then there would some discussion of JFK's philandering, Joseph P. Kennedy's shady business dealings, RFK's crusade against only mobsters who voted Republican, the mysteries over the Chicago vote count, and other things.

That's biography, and the Kennedys and their allies only want hagiography. So they bring down all the political and social pressure they can bear on the project, and the History Channel's parent company AETN.

POLITICAL: AETN is part owned by Disney/ABC and NBC/Universal. Both are being carefully watched by federal regulators, especially NBC/U which is currently trying to be sold to cable giant Comcast. Suddenly questions start being asked about your company by Senate and House committees, and important business suddenly can't get done.

SOCIAL: AETN executives have to live in the small world of Hollywood. A world where influential can get you bounced from the list of the next $2,500 a plate fundraiser that all your Hollywood friends are going to. Or you could find the tires on your sports-car slashed by the razor-sharp cheekbones of Maria Shriver.

This is far more powerful than the public complaints that compelled CBS to dump a controversial mini-series about Ronald & Nancy Reagan, onto their Showtime cable channel.

So you tell me: Is this editing? And by that a purely business/creative decision. Or: Is this censorship? Where the decision was based solely on political/social pressure.

Sorry folks.

Welcome to the show folks.

Sorry, but there's no blog today. I won't bore you with the details, but it's a combination of slow news, and a stuffy head/scratchy throat.

Hopefully, thing will be better tomorrow, until then, I'm going to hunker in my bunker.

Saturday Silliness Cinema: Hey, Let's Make Fun Of Nazis

Welcome to the show folks...

If you're like me, you like to mock Nazis wherever you can, so today's Saturday Silliness Cinema features Brit comedians Smith and Jones and a gathering of Stereotypical Nazi Generals. Really a must if you're a war movie buff.

Hollywood Babble On & On #657: Another Case of Too Big To Deny

Welcome to the show folks....

Barbara Streisand has inked a deal to play the scene stealing role of "Mama Rose" in a new big budget movie adaptation of the musical Gypsy with producer Joe Silver at Warner Bros.

I'm having one of my psychic visions about this film. I see a bomb, a really big bomb, sitting in the bottom of a discount DVD bin at a Wal-Mart.... gathering dust.

For those who don't know much about musicals, Gypsy is based on the early life of Gypsy Rose Lee. Gypsy Rose Lee was the first burlesque performer, or stripper, to become nationally famous. Her style emphasized the tease element of striptease, and incorporated elements of sly humor like performing an intellectual lecture or recitation while her clothes seemed to fall off. She parlayed that success and notoriety as a ecdysiast (a word she coined) into work as an actress, playwright, mystery author, and her autobiography was soon adapted into the musical play that's the center of this story.

Now the real meaty part in Gypsy is of Lee's mother Rose Hovick, aka Mama Rose. Mama Rose is the archetypal stage mother, demanding, ambitious, swinging wildly between seductive charm and ruthless cruelty. It's the perfect role for someone who wants to show off that she can act, sing, and dance.

So let me get to why this film will fail, but why the studio is doing it.

WHY THIS FILM WILL FAIL:

1. Barbra Streisand isn't the box office big deal she was in the 1970s and 1980s. Even then she really wasn't that big when viewed in the context of the age of $100 million blockbusters. Yes, she's appeared in the two Fockers movies that sold a lot of tickets, but she's not the "star" or the main attraction of the film. Then there's the other problem...

2. Barbra Streisand is expensive. Little Fockers will probably lose a fortune because it cost $100 million to make, and at least half that to market. The main reason a family comedy cost so much is because everyone in the cast was being paid the moon and a half to appear in the film. How much do you think she and Joe Silver, a producer who isn't known for his parsimony are going to spend on this movie? They'll make the $55 million spent on Burlesque look like pocket change.

3. Barbra Streisand is old. I hate to be ageist, and the success of films like Red, show that seniors can still kick but, but you have to remember that Mama Rose is supposed to be somewhere in her 30s-40s during the time covered in the story. Babs will be somewhere between 69-70 when shooting starts. That will make the back-story of her being a teenage bride and mother a bit too much of a stretch unless they cast a 50 year old actress in the title role of Gypsy.

WHY THE STUDIO AGREED TO MAKE THIS FILM:

Okay, with so many glaring reasons to red-light this movie you have to ask yourself "Why would these allegedly intelligent people green-light something guaranteed to tank?" Well here's why, they aren't as smart as they want you to think they are and have to go along with certain conventions that dictate their decisions.

1. It's a remake. Studios love remakes, and any excuse they can come up with for a remake is a good excuse.

2. Didn't someone do this recently? You see if someone did a movie on a similar subject and got a lot of attention for it, then you must do it as well. In this case, it's Burlesque, it was a musical about burlesque dancers, and it got a truckload of hype before its release. It disappeared from the box-office in a weekend and lost half a ton of money, but they don't remember that, all they remember is the hype, so it had to have been big.

3. You never say no to Barbra. Hollywood is a very small town. Actually, like I always say, it's more like a small town high school with money. Babs is the equivalent of one of the "popular" girl. She's not "popular" because people like her all that much, she's "popular" because if you don't give her what she wants, she can make your life in this tiny little inbred high school very, very difficult. To executives it's better for the company to take a financial bath with other people's money than to risk getting uninvited from the hottest fashionable fundraiser and lose your shot at getting George Clooney to think you're one of the cool kids.

So here we go again, tens of millions of dollars flushed down the drain, because Hollywood is neither an art or a business, it's a playground for the already rich and famous and investor's money are the toys.

Hollywood Babble On & On #656: Stupidity Doesn't Sell Anymore?

Welcome to the show folks...

A tip of my jaunty sombrero to reader Gary T. Burnaska for this piece by the New York Times about the apparent collapse of the middlebrow movie market.

"What's the middlebrow movie market?" you ask, furrowing your own brow in a desperate attempt to understand.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary Middlebrow is: demanding, involving, or having only a moderate degree of intellectual application.

Translation of the translation:

Anything that doesn't make you think too much.

Basically it means that movies that don't make audiences think too much, like Gulliver's Travels with Jack Black, were outperformed by more challenging and mind-bending films like Christopher Nolan's Inception, and the artsy but not quite fartsy version of Alice In Wonderland by Tim Burton.

Let's look at the reasons for this phenomenon:

1. Inconvenience/Convenience.

2. Low Bullshit Tolerance.

Now let me explain those reasons.

1. INCONVENIENCE/CONVENIENCE: Going to the movies these days are a hassle. You have to get to the theater, and to do that you have to either pay for a cab, public transit, or gas and parking for your car. Then you have to buy the ticket, and pay more if the studio decided to do the movie in 3D. (And if you have kids, just double everything and add 30.)

Meanwhile, these very same people can go to the neighborhood mall to buy a DVD, or get NetFlix, Pay Per View, downloads, or just plain better made television without getting off their ample backsides.

Going to a first run movie = Inconvenient.

Waiting a month or two and getting it at home for a cheaper price = Convenient.

That means that if someone is going to go to the effort of seeing a movie in a theater, it better be worth their time. At first mindless spectacle over originality worked, look at Avatar. But the novelty wore off soon, especially after the same people bought the DVDs and suddenly realized they were watching Dances With Wolves in blue-face and stiff wooden dialogue.

If they're going to go for stupid to middlebrow, they'll do it at home. However, if the film promises something really original and challenging, they might be willing to part with their hard earned bucks.

2. Low Bullshit Tolerance: In the age of Facebook, twitter, blogs, and unprecedented interconnectedness Hollywood can't scam people into seeing something stupid. Word will get out, and people will set their keyboards aflame to, well, flame something that they think is dumb and not worth the inconvenience I just discussed. It doesn't matter how slick your commercial is, if someone's leaked the fact that your characters are annoying and your plot is insulting, folks are going to find out, and stay away.

This means that if word gets out that your movie doesn't deliver the goods, no amount of advertising will save you.

Will this mean a new wave of intelligent movies coming out of Hollywood?

Probably not. They have too much invested in stupid, and it will be tough to get them to let go, and let's not forget that middlebrow still sells pretty well overseas. That's Hollywood's golden excuse for avoiding doing any actual effort.

Hollywood Babble On & On #655: Random Drippings From My Brain Pan

Welcome to the show folks....

Wasted too much time playing Angry Birds today, so instead of anything deep, here are a few little business/show-biz related bits to assuage your hunger for my particular brand of crankiness.

WHY DO I HEAR A BANJO PLAYING?

The 10th Doctor, David Tennant, is engaged to marry Georgia Moffett, the daughter of the 5th Doctor, Peter Davison, who played his clone "daughter" in an episode of Doctor Who.

Now I know that they are not really related, and I wish them both the best, but I just can't shake the vision of a British version of the kid from Deliverance playing the banjo on the front step of BBC headquarters in London.

NOW THIS IS INDECENT

An appeals court has tossed out a 2008 $1.4 million fine from the FCC over a 2003 episode of NYPD Blue where the backside of actress Charlotte Ross was apparently exposed for all the world to see.

Think about for a second.

The butt baring occurred in 2003, the FCC finally decided to get around to acting against this crime against all that is pure in the world and used their vaguely worded rules and regulations to fine ABC and its affiliates $1.4 million, only to have it tossed in this, the year 2011.

Almost 8 years, and Xenu knows how many millions of dollars paying lawyers, judges, and bureaucrats were wasted on this case. The FCC seems to exist solely to be a nuisance that never actually accomplishes anything except give a mail drop to the small cluster of people who actually write letters of complaint about fleeting glimpses of buttocks or suspicions that certain cartoon characters might be homosexual.

Now Dennis Franz's bare ass, that's a prison offense, Charlotte Ross, not even a fine.

The FCC's rules are too vague, and reach too far. Fears that broadcast television would be overrun with hardcore pornography without it are deeply unfounded, because guess what, NYPD Blue is gone, long gone, and who else on broadcast television drops trow the way that show used to do?

People can get nudity on the FCC free cable channels if they want it, and can get whatever fetish gets their freak-on on the internet. And even there, shows that feature nudity, foul language and violence don't get as many viewers as most mainstream network shows that don't. Market forces are way better enforcer than the FCC or the MPAA could ever be.

Now that I think about it, Charlotte Ross' backside isn't the only ass in this story.

GET READY

The Weinstein Company have bought a 25% stake in Starz Media, the home of Anchor Bay Home Video and a cluster of cable channels.

Let's look at the pros and cons...

PROS:

1. The Weinstein Co. gets cable TV/home video outlets for their movies.

2. Starz gets a company supplying their cable TV/home video outlets with content.

CONS:

1. Having sold the TWC library to save the company from collapsing the content they provide consists of The King's Speech and ....

2. Most relationships with the Weinsteins tend to end in anger, litigation, and lots of money going to lawyers.

Will this relationship be any different? We have to wait and see.

Pete Postlethwaite R.I.P.

I hope it's not the sign of a coming trend that my first post of 2011 is to bring this sad news. Actor Pete Postlethwaite passed away at the age of 64 after a long battle with cancer.

He was nominated for an Oscar for his role in the movie In The Name Of The Father where he played an innocent man imprisoned for terrorism by British authorities, and as the enigmatic lawyer Kobayashi in The Usual Suspects. However he really shone as a character actor when he played the villainous, lecherous, and sadistic Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill, opposite Sean Bean in the popular Sharpe series.

He was one of the best actors of his generation, and he and his talent will be greatly missed.