Hollywood Babble On & On #302: Rosenberg, Weinstein, Zucker, & Silverman

No, that's not the name of my law firm, my lawyers are Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe for civil work, and Sofa, King, Hugg, Lee & Layme handle my numerous criminal charges. (I blame Canada's up-tight laws against building Doomsday Weapons and creating armies of genetically modified cyborg ninja chimps.)

Nope I'm talking about SAG president Alan Rosenberg, Harvey Weinstein, and Jeff Zucker. First up...

1. ALAN ROSENBERG

The Screen Actor's Guild voted to accept the AMPTA's last contract offer, after months of arguing, division, more division, and even duelling You-Tube videos.

Now it's president, character actor Alan Rosenberg, wants to run for a 3rd term.

My advice to Mr. Rosenberg: Don't.

Why?

Because at heart, Rosenberg is an idealist, and while ideals are lovely things, right now, SAG doesn't need an idealist.

It needs a bastard.

A bastard that can't be bribed, bullied, or bullshitted, and who can do at least two terms of two years each, and be able to the things that need to be done, by any means necessary.

Here's what needs to be done:

First Term:

1. End the divisions within SAG, and with the other unions, like AFTRA. Too many factions, too much undermining, it all has to be stopped, by hook or by crook. Do what the politicians call "opposition research" dig under rocks, do what needs to be done.

2. Build a war chest big enough to strike long enough to affect the bottom lines of the studios, and more importantly, executive bonuses. Shame the A-List, have bakes sales, I don't care how you get the money, just get the damn money, it is the ammunition needed to win.

3. Find allies. Show investors and financial backers that you are not the problem, but part of the solution. Labour and Capital need not be enemies in true capitalism, in fact, they can be strong allies when face with management that run businesses like medieval fiefdoms.

Second Term:

1. Prepare to negotiate hard for a new contract in a truly united front with the other unions, and the money people. No more undermining each other for personal advantage, that's what the AMPTP wants.

2. If the studios play hardball, have the resources to play hardball right back.

And I don't think that an idealist can do that.

2. HARVEY WEINSTEIN

Rumours are abounding about how The Weinstein Company is hording cash to cover the costs of releasing Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, and Halloween 2, in the vain hope that the 2 films will save the failing company.

Well, it's a real gamble.

Reviews on Basterds are mixed, at best, Tarantino has to trim 40 minutes of the film, and then there's the indulgence factor.

Sometimes Tarantino's self-indulgence, nurtured by chronic enabler Harvey, clicks with the audience. Kill Bill 1&2 is the classic example of his fetishes for lowbrow pop culture, and Uma Thurman's feet catching on with the zeitgeist.

Grindhouse though is a $100 million example, of when it doesn't.

Plus, there's the added factor of World War 2 itself, and how that may affect the film's performance.

Tarantino's main inspiration were the dark, nihilistic, and morally ambiguous war-exploitation films that came out of continental Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. That's because to most Europeans, who were either conquered, collaborators, or crushed by WW2, the whole thing was dark, nihilistic, and morally ambiguous.

Americans view the war as the great heroic crusade against Nazi genocide, and Japanese militarist imperialism. The war and its memory are held sacred by a large segment of the population, a segment that Hollywood neither understands, nor cares to know, even though it buys the bulk of the tickets. While they may go for the Nazi killing, they may not go for a story of American soldiers engaging in terror tactics while their sons and daughters fight terrorists overseas. They may consider an insult to veterans, past and present.

3. JEFF ZUCKER & BEN SILVERMAN

Poor NBC. It can't buy a hit.

Conan O'Brien's rating are slipping to the point where he's being beaten by Letterman, and Letterman hasn't figured out the 2008 election ended months ago.

The network doesn't seem to be bothered, thinking Conan's younger demographics will save the day. But I'm not so sure about that.

You see, Conan's core audience, stoned college kids, are busy getting stoned during the Tonight Show's time slot. The Tonight Show is the time when the stoned college kids' parents climb into bed to laugh at the monologue before going to sleep with the TV on.

I think NBC management rushed O'Brien into this, without giving him the time to prepare his act for the Tonight Show's older audience, who preferred Leno's un-hip, but likable persona. But someone sold NBC's honchos some demographic snake-oil, they rushed to screw Leno as quickly as possible, and a boondoggle that could hurt a lot of people was born.

Which is a shame, when I was in college I watched Conan O'Brien a lot, and liked him, but I just don't think he can sell to the over 50s, who view him as silly, and failing here can seriously screw his career. I hope he saved his money, like Leno.

But I wasn't stoned.

I was up late studying for my World Domination finals.

Hollywood Babble On & On #301: Land of the Lost Money

Universal Pictures did not have a good time this weekend. Their tent-pole weekend release Land of the Lost, starring SNL alumni Will Ferrel underwhelmed at the box office. Despite heavy marketing it was beaten by a no-stars, low budget comedy called The Hangover, and the Disney/Pixar holdover Up.

Some think the failure of this film reflects badly on Will Ferrell's star-power, and while I think it may be involved, there is a bit more to the story.

Here's why I think the film failed...

1. The Source Material: The original Land of the Lost tv series ran from around 1974-1976. That means that the bulk of moviegoers who watched it back during its original run are at least in their 40s, and those who watched it in reruns, now mostly in their 30s, mostly watched it as campy 70s nostalgia with cheezy special effects.

This means that the core audience skews a lot older than the executives who greenlit the project figured. Also, the original show really doesn't have the pop-culture icon status of a Star Trek, to really justify the $100+ budget.

2. The Adaptation: The original series was about a father and his two kids being tossed into an alternate, dinosaur-alien-monkeyman riddled dimension. The adaptation changes that to eccentric failed scientist, love interest, and white trash buddy. It's connection to that original source material, and the driving force behind it (the family & its survival), is gone.

Plus, the film was done as a half-assed parody of the original film, which could be construed as a mistake all on its own. This is because when you do a parody, you have to do it with your whole ass.

3. Marketing & Rating: The film was sold as the heir to Night at the Museum redux, a family friendly film with a comedy star that could appeal to adults. But they ended up appealing to neither.

This is because Will Ferrell fans will see him in an alleged "family film" and think it will lack the broad, raunchy, humour he's known for, and avoid it. Parents will look at the PG-13 rating and reports of semi-mature subject matter, and star Will Ferrell and think: "I can't take the kids to that." Meanwhile, the kids will ask: "Who is Will Ferrell, and what's the Land of the Lost."

This brings me back to the half-assed/whole assed argument. The film may have been better off completely forgetting about being the next Night At The Museum, and going for a balls to the wall "R" rated farce, and forget about the family audience, because they obviously aren't coming.

4. The Budget: From the ads, I just can't see where they spent the $100+ million. There doesn't appear to be anything radical, or new in the FX. The cast is relatively small, with only one "A-Lister," and I don't really see the spectacle that could justify the enormous budget.

Maybe they'd have been better off, as an R-Rated farce, by going the old claymation & puppets route, and toss in a few jokes about how all the creatures in this dimension look fake. Mind you, you can't milk a joke like that too much, but it is at least a joke.

Anyway, that's what I think. What do you think?

And if you think it's the fault of the rich people, go start your own blog.

Hollywood Babble On & On #300: Miscellaneous Money-Movie Musings...

1. TINTIN NEEDS SIZZLE NOT FIZZLE.

Stephen Spielberg and Peter Jackson have announced that they will be releasing their live action movie version of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn internationally before they open it in the USA.

Now some folks are shocked and appalled by this news, taking it as some sort of slap in the face to either America, American moviegoers, or both.

Well, it isn't, it's just sensible business sense.

And here's the reason...

Tintin is about a young reporter who treks around the world having adventures, solving mysteries and encountering a variety of ethnic stereotypes. He was created by the Belgian cartoonist Herge and is really big in Europe, but is really not very well known in America. I mean mention the name Tintin to anyone who isn't already a big international comics fan and the reaction will be: "Wasn't he the one in the Wizard of Oz that got rusty?"

To make the movie play in Peoria, they need to build some sizzle around the character, and to get that sizzle, they need Tintin's popularity in Europe and parts of Asia to work for the film. What they do not want to do is to have the film open in America, fizzle from lack of knowledge, and take that fizzle internationally.

So remember, sizzle's better than fizzle, or your sales will be shizzle.

2. THE HOLE GETS EVEN DEEPER.

If Harvey Weinstein had a different reputation, I'd be feeling sorry for him right now. His company is up to Harvey's original chin in debt, Inglorious Basterds, TWC's comeback film is reportedly way too long, and now Universal is considering re-negotiating their deal to distribute Basterds, possibly swooping in to take over the domestic release as well.

Also the rest of the company's slate is being delayed, as TWC amasses as much money as they can scrape to get Basterds into theaters. Which may be a good thing, because I don't see much promise in their other productions.

Nine did well on broadway, but it's a musical inspired by Italian cinema with a cast more known for winning awards than audiences. Plus it has Nicole Kidman in the cast, and while I have nothing against her personally, she is the black hole of cinema, sucking in tens of millions of dollars that are never seen again.

Reports also have people saying that Shanghai, a $50+ million thriller set in 1940s China, is "unreleasable." I looked it up on IMDB, and perused the plot summary. It's about an American (John Cusack) who goes to Shanghai on the eve of the Pearl Harbour attack and finds that a friend has been killed. But here's the kicker: "While he unravels the mysteries of the death, he falls in love and discovers a much larger secret that his own government is hiding."

People are going to look at that and assume it's going to start out as a thriller, and turn into a Pearl Harbour Truther screed. "Roosevelt lied! Hiroshima died!"

What other secret could the US government of 1941 be hiding to make it worth a $50+ million movie? That the Japanese didn't like the US oil embargo that was imposed to protest their invasion of China?

That's got "bomb" written all over it in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin.

TWC will most likely be picked apart by creditors and vulture capitalists, and the saddest irony will be that the office furniture will probably go for more money than the film library.

An Editorial Response...

I recently got this comment, it didn't have much to do with the post in question, so here it is....

Anonymous said...

Big surprise. Another TV show has been produced with an agenda. MORE CALCULATED PR CRAP FOR THE RICH. 'The Philanthropist' hasn't even premiered yet. But I know what to expect. More brainwash plots: 'The rich are good'. 'The rich are smart'. 'The rich are sexy'. 'The rich create jobs'. 'The rich pay more taxes'. 'The rich give back'. 'The rich want to make the world a better place'. Of course, they will villianize the occasional rich 'outlaw' or 'scumbag'. But the group as a whole will be shown in a positive light. More caring, more compassionate, more generous, ect. At least those who take up 'philanthropy' or 'good will'. Which in the real world, as they know, as they plan, as they deliberately publicize, includes ALL OF THEM. What a sham. Its already quite evident that the lead character will be another filthy rich 'good guy'. Of course, the same old plugs for medical testing, pharmaceuticals, universities, credit cards, and world travel will be thrown in. EVERY SINGLE EPISODE. Afterall, NBC has greedy coorporate sponsors and a juggernaut parent company to cater to. Go ahead and watch. But don't be their little puppet. DON'T FALL FOR THE CALCULATED PR CRAP. REMEMBER: EVERY SINGLE TOP EXECUTIVE ON THE PLANET HAS TAKEN UP 'PHILANTHROPY' OR 'GOOD WILL'. INCLUDING THOSE WHO WORK IN THE ENERGY, FINANCE, AND PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRIES. ITS A SHAM. NOTHING BUT TAX DEDUCTIBLE PR CRAP. THE RICH DO NOT WANT TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. THEY WANT TO APPEAR AS IF THEY DO. OTHERWISE, THEY WOULDN'T CONCENTRATE THE WORLD'S WEALTH AND RESOURCES TO BEGIN WITH. THIS TV SHOW IS JUST ANOTHER CALCULATED TRICK TO SHOW THEM IN A MORE POSITIVE LIGHT. DON'T FALL FOR IT. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE HUMANITARIAN. EXTREME WEALTH MAKES WORLD PROSPERITY ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE. WITHOUT WORLD PROSPERITY, THERE WILL NEVER BE WORLD PEACE OR ANYTHING EVEN CLOSE. GREED KILLS. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL.

Okay, Anonymous, if that is your real name, why don't you tell us what you really feel about rich people?

So this show The Philanthropist is the same as all the "pro-wealthy" shows on TV where millionaires and billionaires kill their wives/mistresses/business partners, screw investors, and burn down the widows and orphans homes on an almost daily basis. I mean when I watch a crime show where the rich guy isn't the killer, it's usually done either as a wild plot twist, or he's just gone broke.

Now while I'm no fan of the uber-rich, I find those who indulge, and not invest, a waste of time, money, and oxygen, I'm different from you where I'm not going to post pre-fab comments on random blogs screaming for forced wealth redistribution in ALL CAPS.

The rich are not all good, evil, smart, dumb, whatever, they are all of those things because they are people. People do good things, bad things, and all things in between. The generalization of Balzac that behind every great fortune lies a crime, just means that Balzac probably owed money to someone better off than him.

Yeah, some are bastards, probably the majority are bastards, but to deny even a scintilla of humanity is the class-version of racism.

Now I come to the issue of uber-rich philanthropy.

I'm actually sort of iffy on the issue of the super-rich and charity. Sure, it's good to feed and clothe the poor for a day, but I would prefer that they follow the model of building industries, jobs, and spreading wealth by actually creating new wealth instead of just giving it away.

Because, if you're a rich person who invests wisely, in concrete things that create goods and services with real value, then not only will you do better, but the people below you will enjoy an increased standard of living.

You see the problem with Anonymous' theory is that there is only one proverbial pie, and that if you don't force even pieces at gun-point then only the super-rich will get anything. The problem with forced redistribution is that you do not get WORLD PROSPERITY, instead: everyone gets nothing but crumbs, and even then it's only if they're lucky and the government officials who run the redistribution programs want to buy their support.

The secret to real capitalism is to use investment capital to make new, fresher, and bigger pies. Workers get better pay, benefits, and can afford to buy their own homes, send their kids to good schools, who then go on to either work for, or build other new businesses, which then make their own pies.

Now you can go on about the "exploitation of the 3rd world" and such, but remember something about those 3rd world countries. All the real basket cases are run on the premise of forced redistribution of wealth. They make all the right noises about socialism and spreading the wealth, but they are all nothing more than scams to provide for their own politically connected inner clique. They take, they do not create, which is feudalism, not capitalism.

Real capitalists want everyone to walk away happy. Because people who make good livings, spend money, and real capitalists like that because it also makes them richer.

Now we're actually coming up to some things where Anonymous and me might agree, although for different reasons.

The Wall Street crash of recent days was brought on because a lot of wealthy people got conned into putting their money into devices designed to create a bubble, then burst, destroying wealth, not creating it. Sub-prime securities, hedge-funds, derivatives, are not about putting money in to create a specific and concrete good or service that makes money, they are instead putting their money on overly complex mathematical theorems that no one outside of a select few truly understand. And the sub-prime market was rife with confusion, corruption, and political interference, which is a recipe for trouble.

As I always say, things are better done simply, and those who put their money on things they couldn't comprehend, that didn't create, were only asking for trouble, because that's all you're going to get in the end.

They, and everyone else, would have been better off investing in manufacturing, new services, new products, and new modes of production. Something simple and concrete, but instead they fell for the promise of easy money, guaranteed by science and state fiat, and it burned them and everyone else.

Now back to where we agree on philanthropy.

A lot of charities run by the uber-rich are bullshit, and many are used as cover for for-profit operations. Global warming and environmental lobby groups were heavily funded by Enron during its peak in the 1990s. Why? Because these charities pressure the governments to pour billions in subsidies for business that Enron, and others, created just to collect these subsidies.

But that's a story all on its own.

An easy way to tell if a plutocrat or celebrity charity is bullshit is to look for these two magic words: "PROMOTE AWARENESS."

Promote awareness is code for: "Make you give them money to pay for them to travel first class, and collect big speaking fees for them to tell you to give them more money."

It's just that simple. Nobody gets fed, clothed, or immunised, but at least people feel better because they gave $50 to Bono to make them aware that there are hungry, naked, and sick people in the world.

These "awareness" groups inspire governments to give billions in aid to poor countries, which is then stolen by the feudalist governments of the poor countries, usually in the name of socialism, and then distributed among their inner circle, and to hell with the actual poor people. Which perpetuates the problem, which calls for more awareness, more aid, more corruption, and hence the need for more awareness.

Not all charities are like that...

Some charities completely circumvent the governments and go directly to the people, helping them start small businesses, make their farms profitable, and other ventures to promote self-sufficiency, free from the state, are the ones that I support and think might actually succeed.

Now back to the TV show in question. Personally, I won't be watching The Philanthropist, and since it's on NBC, it's highly unlikely if anyone will actually watch the show. So the fear of it brainwashing the unwashed masses into falling at the feet of Bill Gates is highly unlikely.

Ironically, in the Gilded Age, before the Great Society, the New Deal, or even income tax, when America was under the sway of demonised robber barons, the country saw an exponential rise in the standard of living, as well as an unprecedented, and as yet unmatched giving to charity, through the founding of hospitals, schools, and other socially uplifting organisations. All paid for by the same robber barons who were considered devils because they could also be pricks when it came to business.

So please, no more broad generalisations, conspiracy theories, or ALL CAPS in your comments. Especially the ALL CAPS part, they make my eyes bleed.

Hollywood Babble On & On #299: Miscellaneous Money/Movie Related Musings

1. TWC- THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY, OR TOTALLY WASTED CASH?

The flailing, ailing, and most likely failing indie The Weinstein Company has reportedly hired a financial consulting firm to help restructure the company.

Apparently the old business model of suckering hundreds of millions in Wall Street and Hedge Fund investor cash to produce movies, and buy indie films only to sit on them, sometimes for years, until all hope or chance for profitability is long gone just isn't working anymore. Then there's the millions spent on Oscar campaigns for films that hardly anyone, Academy voters included, have seen, and I bet those Wall Street and Hedge Fund folks aren't as forgiving as they used to be.

Personally, this is not a good sign for the company. Considering that it is founded on the alleged skills, personality, and business acumen of two men: Harvey & Bob Weinstein, restructuring TWC with them still at the helm is basically rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Expect a fire sale of the few TWC assets that still have any value, and the Weinsteins either getting out of the business, or becoming just producers working for another studio.

2. THE SIEGE OF LIONSGATE IS ON AGAIN

Despite setbacks in his attempts to buy up Lionsgate's debt, billionaire investor Carl Icahn has revved up his takeover tanks again, buying up even more of the company's stock. I predicted this might happen when news of Lionsgate's losses came out.

Icahn's most likely buying up everything he can, and talking to the shareholders that were iffy on the deal and using those losses to show what being iffy got them. So where it looked like Icahn had been successfully blocked by Lionsgate management, the war is back on, big time.

3. NBC: NO BAD COVERAGE?

In an exclusive scoop by Nikki Finke NBC-Universal and its parent company GE are being accused of using their bulk to suppress coverage of unhappy shareholders.

To sum it all up, NBC is accused of turning off the microphones of unhappy shareholders asking tough question about bias, political pressure, self-censorship, and overall piss-poor performance at their annual meeting in Orlando, and then banning all GE/NBC-Universal advertising with Nielsen Media as punishment for trade magazine The Hollywood Reporter covering the story.

If this report is true, then NBC-U is in deeper crap than I had earlier believed....

NBC-UNIVERSAL is ushering a new golden age in entertainment. All show produced by NBC-UNIVERSAL and shown on the NBC NETWORK are the most popular in the country, and adored by critics and audiences alike. UNIVERSAL movies like LAND OF THE LOST starring sure-fire Oscar nominee WILL FERRELL is the BIGGEST HIT MOVIE OF ALL TIME, as well as being the most critically praised film ever made!

NBC-UNIVERSAL is the greatest entertainment conglomerate in the world, and is in no way pressuring their news staff in exchange for political favors, cutting off shareholders, because all NBC-UNIVERSAL shareholders are happy, and is in no way hacking into people's Blogger accounts and rewriting their blogs to make them appear to favor NBC-UNIVERSAL!

-Furious Z

Saturday Silliness Cinema: Literal Music Videos

I know these are all over the internet, but I can't resist hopping on a bandwagon and flogging a dead horse. Here are a couple of music videos from the 1980s, that have been "literalized" to where they are about what's going on in the videos.

Enjoy....





I'll be back to griping about business a little later. So check back.

Hollywood Babble On & On #298: Dear Jay

AN OPEN LETTER TO JAY LENO

Dear Jay.

According to the always indefatigable Nikki Finke, you're getting the royal run-a-round by your bosses at NBC. NBC doesn't want you stealing the Conan O'Brien and The Tonight Show's thunder, so they're allegedly slapping all sorts of rules about who you can and can't book, and other such nonsense. Now Nikki offered some advice in her column and I'm going to offer some of my own.

1. DITCH THE INSECURITY: Jay, your 17 year run on The Tonight Show, and the commensurate boost in live show fees, have left you rich and capable of easily living the life of a 17th century French monarch for the rest of your life.

According to one urban legend you haven't even cashed your paychecks from the Tonight Show in 15 years, you are that loaded. You don't have to be afraid of being replaced, because it's already happened, and you're still alive. Quit listening to that little imp on your shoulder, and get on with your life.

2. FOR NBC MANAGEMENT FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION, IT'S A WAY OF LIFE: Jeff Zucker owes his position to two things:

A) A growth found on the colon of GE's CEO turned out to be Jeff Zucker's head. Get the hint.

B) The only person with the positioning to possibly replace Zucker is Ben Silverman, who needs an instruction manual to organise a shag in a brothel. The only way he could replace Zucker is if GE gets taken over by an orangutan with a head injury and a taste for the chronic.

They don't need to be successful to still cash their fat paychecks, and won't do anything that might pull NBC from it's current state as the Must Not See TV network, because it might reflect poorly on the fact that they've screwed everything up so far. They are not your ally in this fight, they are your main enemy.

3. YOU NEED A HARVEY KORMAN, IN FACT YOU NEED A TROUPE OF THEM: When pop singer Tony Orlando was hosting his own variety show in the 70s he asked Carol Burnett how she managed to do her show for so long with so little stress. She answered: "Get yourself a Harvey Korman." The secret to Carol Burnett's longevity as the last of the great prime time variety shows is that she surrounded herself with a cast that she trusted and enjoyed working with, led by Harvey Korman. She didn't have to be in every sketch, and even in the ones she appeared in, she didn't need to star in all of them. Don't let that imp of insecurity make you paranoid that anyone funny is going to replace you. So what if they do, cash all those uncashed checks and bankrupt NBC, that'll show them.

Nikki Finke says you should poach every bit of talent you can get your hands on, and I agree. You're going to need all hands on deck, and probably set them up on some sort of rotation because...

4. YOU SHOULD HAVE AVOIDED THE NIGHTLY SCHEDULE: A prime time talk show just isn't going to work, especially if it's just going to be a rehash of the late night shows. Late night audiences are half asleep, or stoned, and can be a little more forgiving, because there's still the mindset that anything on after 11 PM as an extra bonus. Prime time audiences view prime time programming as if they're paying for it. They can be harsh, and downright brutal if they don't think they're getting what they think their attention is worth.

You should have aimed for a weekly variety show with a locked in time-slot, that the network can't move around on a whim. (Anything but Thursday, because everyone seems to putting their top shows on Thursday) Then you could have made that night your night, and turned your show into appointment television like Ed Sullivan in his glory days.

Doing a nightly show is a trap set by NBC. They know the imp of insecurity will scream in your ear to take the deal, because you obviously still feel you need to prove to the world that you're still capable of hosting the Tonight Show. But you're not hosting the Tonight Show, you got ousted, it's over, it's done and dusted. Instead you allowed your insecurity to provide 5 hours a week of relatively cheap prime time programming for NBC, and its inevitable failure, if you stick with the talk-show, as a good excuse to cut you loose permanently.

Well Jay, I hope you find this advice helpful.

Sincerely--

Furious D

David Carradine RIP

Actor David Carradine, whose 200+ credits ranged from television, B-movies, to work with Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman, and Quentin Tarantino, was found dead in his hotel room in Bangkok, Thailand of what appears to be a suicide.

Truly a sad end to an always interesting an eccentric life.

Hollywood Babble On & On #297: Bruno's Bogus Butt Bruhaha

Ye gods some people are stupid.

I try not to be harsh and judgmental on this blog, but oy gevalt, the stupid flies fast and furious these days.

During the recent MTV Awards comedian Sascha Baron Cohen did a stunt as his latest stereotype Bruno, and landed ass first on rapper Eminem.

Within nanoseconds of this people were on the internet debating if the stunt was a real accident or staged.

My word for the people who thought it was real:

YOU ARE A WASTE OF GROCERIES.

Look at the most important piece of evidence: It happened on MTV.

Nothing gets on the air on MTV without the approval of 20 executives, 17 marketing focus groups, and a simple majority vote among Sumner Redstone's liver spots, and that includes the so-called "accidents."

Remember Britney Spears' disastrous performance in 2007?

I do, in fact, it was the subject of my very first Hollywood Babble On & On post.

The people producing the show knew she was going to blow it, and blow it big, and they let her on anyway.

Why?

Because her public humiliation would get the clips, complete with MTV logo in the corner on every entertainment news show and website on the planet.

It's called shameless attention whoring, and with Cohen desperate to prove that he's more than a one trick Borat, and Eminem needing publicity for his comeback, were perfectly willing to participate.

Remember, anything that gets on MTV is canned, corporate approved, and as spontaneous as a Milli Vanilli jam session.

Hollywood Babble On & On #296: Lionsgate Losses

Lionsgate's management may have been able to fight off Carl Icahn & Co.'s takeover bid for a while, but I think their side has been dealt a pretty harsh blow by cold unfeeling numbers.

The mini-major's losses for the last fiscal year topped $163 million ($1.40 a share) which is more than double the $74 million (62 cents a share) which they lost last fiscal year.

This development maybe just what Icahn needs to resuscitate his siege of the company, by bringing up these losses to the very shareholders that gave management a second chance via their sale of a share of their TV Guide Channel and other deals. He can say: "Look what that second chance got you, more losses!" and go on from there.

Lionsgate management is trying to spin this story by tooting how much their revenue went up, beyond even the predictions of so-called Wall Street experts.

And while upward revenue is a wonderful thing, it's not going to do you much good when you have more money going out.

The biggest problem with Lionsgate is that the folks running it don't appear happy running a successful independent film company. They appear to want to be like Universal, Warner Bros. or Paramount and become a massive media conglomerate, humming with buzzwords like "synergy" and "multi-platform."

They appear to have forgotten that when you have a company with a successful business model, you don't fix what ain't broken. Sure growth is nice, but it has to be natural growth, born from success, not from having the corporate ego write checks the corporate body can't cash.

I'm rooting for whoever can take Lionsgate and return it to its roots, as a company that made money by filling in the gaps left by those big conglomerates.

Because if making money can't make a businessman happy, then they're in the wrong business.