Hollywood Babble On & On #1064: 50 Shades Of Careers?

Dakota Johnson

The internet is abuzz over words that they have cast the leads in the movie version of the "Mommy Porn" best-seller 50 Shades of Grey. Actress Dakota Johnson will play the female lead Anastasia Steele and Charlie Hunnam will play kinky young billionaire Christian Grey that taught a generation of young women that abusive relationships are okay, as long as the man is rich and good looking.

I've written about this project before, first about the overall wrongness of the whole thing, and when they were trying to recruit Harry Potter star Emma Watson for the female lead. If you're too lazy to click the links I'll explain, and might even make some new points.

The first problem is the whole issue of that the film is not really based on a book, but a fad. 50 Shades sold truckloads of books, spawned more than a few imitators, but almost as quickly as it appeared, the whole "mommy porn" genre went from the being the future of all literature to something that readers either claimed to appreciate its poorly written lewdness ironically, or a source of mild embarrassment.

Then there's the psychological aspect. The book sold well because women traditional prefer erotic text, while men prefer erotic images. Movies are by definition images, which means that the film, regardless of its literary pedigree will essentially be a soft-core porn film. 

There lies the problem inherent in selling blatantly "erotic" material that offers little more than its own eroticism...

Women may be turned off by the medium, as well as the potential of sharing the theatre with assorted creepy men in dirty raincoats, and men will stay home and get more graphic material on the internet for free and in private. (Remember, Universal has a small fortune invested in this film, they will not let it get an NC-17 rating.)

So called "experts" like to say that "sex sells" but are loathe to admit that it doesn't really sell as well as it used to. When Hollywood pushes the "sexy angle" the audience sees that and sees through all that sexy nonsense. They know that when they're selling sex they're certainly not selling stories, which is the main reason for investing the time and money required to go to see a movie in a theatre.

Sex is basically a special effect these days.

Then there is the casting.

Dakota Johnson, the daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, is at the beginning of her career. This movie could be the beginning and the end of it.

Lest we forget...

Remember Elizabeth Berkeley? She went from the kids show Saved By The Bell to do Showgirls. Showgirls was a relatively big budget production with an "A-List" director and writer, and it was going to make her a big movie star.

The movie tanked, and Berkeley spent years trying to get past being a product of novelty stunt-casting to becoming a working actress again doing guest spots on television.

It could be even worse for Johnson if the movie's successful. Then she'll be pigeon-holed as the "girl who gets nikked," and Hollywood can be brutal keeping an actress from getting away from that. She could end up doing Cinemax and straight to DVD productions and wondering how much cosmetic surgery will she need to keep getting the work that pays for the surgery that keeps getting her work.

And no matter who was cast they will not match the image the readers have in their minds, and each mind sees a different person. Which is not healthy for the movie.

Whether the film will do well or not remains to be seen. I'm not holding my breath about it.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1063: Think Before You Donate...

German director/writer/and producer Uwe Boll wants your money.

You shouldn't give him any money.

You need more details?

Fine.

If you're not familiar with his oeuvre Uwe Boll is nicknamed the "Auteur of Awful." His films are generally reviled by critics, and mostly avoided by audiences outside of a handful of brain-dead soulless cinemasochists.

Now you're probably wondering how a filmmaker can pump out dreck and lose money but keep on making films.  Well the answer is fairly complicated because it involves investors deliberately losing money. During his peak filmmaking period of the late 1990s and early 2000s Germany had a loophole in its tax laws that made losing money a winning proposition for investors.

Here's how it goes. The German government said that an investor didn't have to pay any taxes on any money invested in film production, and only have to pay taxes on any profits. So investors would borrow the money they would invest in Boll's films at a low interest rate, make a really shitty movie, then when it tanks at the box office, claim the money it lost as a deduction on their taxes.

With a good accountant and a tax lawyer an investor could pay off the loan and make a little extra on top just from their tax refunds and deductions.

Now the law changed in 2005 because it had done more harm to the German film industry than good. Boll's output in quantity and budget (but not quality) has dropped considerable since then, which is why he's now going to Kickstarter.

Boll is looking for donors to pay for him to make a sequel to his failed lowbrow comedy Postal, which itself was based, like many of Boll's films, on a video game.

Now there are many independent film projects on Kickstarter that are infinitely more deserving than Boll doing Postal 2. 

Boll had his chance, at his peak he was working with budgets well over $50-$60 million, and he still put out inane unwatchable dreck. Money is no substitute for talent. So why give someone with a track record of having only one talent, and that's punching critics, money better spent helping get something potentially worthwhile off the ground.

Some might give him money out of masochistic irony, others might give him money because they're profoundly stupid, all I can say is DON'T BE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE.

If you have the money to give to film, find someone new, who has the benefit of the doubt at least because movies won't get any better if you keep knowingly supporting crap.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1062: More Little Thoughts From My Massive Brain

First A Question?

This is for any British readers I might have.

I watch an inordinate amount of British TV shows and I've noticed a bit of a mystery. How come every British show with a lead character that's a single driven career woman have an unwanted pregnancy storyline? Is it laziness on the part of the writer looking for drama with little creative effort? Some sort of BBC mandate? Or are British women really bad at birth control?

Twerk It Don't Work It!

Everybody's talking about former Disney starlet Miley Cyrus shaking her bony, tramp-stamped ass to the tune of Robin Thicke's "Is That My Roofie In Your Martini" at the Video Music Awards on a channel that doesn't show music videos.

The ratings were okay, but they didn't set any records, but that's not stopping people from the MTV Publicity Department Parent's Television Council to MSNBC to declare that civilization is coming to an end unless heads roll. It doesn't matter that Thicke was singing the new anthem for the Bob Filner's of the world, an ex-child star was next to nikked.

This isn't the end of civilization. It's more like Hollywood announcing they're doing a remake of a really crappy movie, with the same crappy script, the same crappy director, same crappy editor, same crappy cinematographer who can't keep the boom mikes out of the shot, but this time they have a different star, so it can't possibly be crappy this time.

Miley's merely doing what other teen starlets try when their careers hit the skids after tasting mega-fame thanks to the stupidity of tween girls. They try to go "adult" by getting tramp stamps, wearing skanky clothes and doing skanky stuff on things like the MTV VMAs.

Her attempt at a movie career is pretty much over. Even at her peak the only film to crack that precious $100 million "can be a real movie star" line was an animated family film.  I could do a voice in an animated family film and crack $100 million and it wouldn't make me a movie star. And let's not forget her last movie:

Which was judged so bad by the producers they literally sat on it for over a year, and only gave it the bare minimum release they were contractually obligated to do. They preferred to lose their entire budget rather than be publicly associated with that big steaming pile.

What does she have left?

Shameless publicity whoring on the VMAs which exists solely for shameless publicity whoring for MTV.

It won't work. Her album won't sell, and her future movies won't sell, so all she's got left to do is take up drugs, mental illness, and get a gig as a judge on a reality talent show after her parents put her through rehab and under a conservatorship.

Double Feature Follies!

Paramount is rereleasing their really expensive hits World War Z and Star Trek Into Darkness as a double feature.

It'll be called the "We Spent Too Much On Them Night At The Movies."

NBC Has A Fever, & Instead Of More Cowbell It Wants More Germs!

NBC has made a deal with ex-ER executive producer John Wells to develop a pilot based on the 1990s disease thriller Outbreak. If you don't remember, Outbreak was about an outbreak of an ebola type disease in a small town thanks to an evil monkey, and while Dustin Hoffman and his team struggle to save the day, an Army General played by Dustin Hoffman keeps trying to blow it up because that's what Army Generals do when they're bored.

Now Outbreak was a hit when it came out, 18 years ago, and NBC had tried doing something similar in 2005 with a show called Medical Investigation, which lasted one truncated season.

But I'm sure it'll work this time.

What do you think about this Nineteenth Century English Gentleman?

I thought so.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1061: Little Thoughts From A Big Brain

NEW WAY TO DO TV?

Lionsgate and European TV production company Tandem have inked a deal to co-produce projects based on their relatively new business model.

That model is to pre-sell the show to markets all over the world before trying to get it on an American network like they recently did by selling the show Crossing Lines to NBC.

Now the plus side of this model is that it sort of takes the creation of television shows out of the hands of network executives. Since many network executives don't really understand things like storytelling, character development, and common sense.

On the downside their next project is supposedly a sexy crime series about handwriting analysis.

Not too sure about that one.

WHO GETS NO JACKSON

Peter Jackson will not be directing an episode of Doctor Who in the foreseeable future.

Officially they're saying he doesn't have enough time.

Unofficially it's because he wanted to expand the script for 1 episode into nine hours by including scenes from old scripts from Blake's 7.

BATFLECK

Ben Affleck's been named the new Batman.

The internet promptly shit its pants.

Personally, I think he's a little old, but since they're deliberately going for an older Batman, and seems to have grown beyond the whole Bennifer debacle that defined his early career to be reborn as a serious director and actor I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Just don't let Matt Damon in it. He's starting to annoy me.

SPEAKING OF AFFLECK

To do Batman he's dropping out of directing a feature film version of Stephen King's first epic tome The Stand.

Probably a smart move. The complete version of King's book about a deadly plague and a battle between good and evil is over 1,000 pages long and has a massive cast of characters, plots, and subplots. Any feature film version would be just a cheat notes version of the novel, which had already been done as a miniseries over a decade ago.

If they're so adamant of remaking the damn thing, they should probably do it as a "event" series, let's say where the second flog-the-dead-horse season of Under The Dome is planned to go.

But that would be logical.

SPEAKING OF BOOKS

A new documentary on the life of reclusive author JD Salinger says that some previously unpublished works will be released soon.

The weird part of the story is that it's all Knight Rider fan fiction.

Comic Book Confidential: Oh, Canada, Oh, Comics

The Justice League of America from DC Comics will soon be no more, and in its place will arise...

Yep.

The Justice League is going Canuck.

Should you care?

Probably not, even if you're a comics fan.

It's yet another one of the never-ending series of "events" that comics publishers grind out to spur brief upticks in sales so they can say that they're still in the comics business and not in the business of feeding the more lucrative movie and TV franchises with characters.

If you're just a casual comics fan who has been out of the loop for a while and think that this event is your way back in, you probably shouldn't care either.

Like every other event storyline it will probably require detailed knowledge of every other event going back to Crisis On Infinite Earth in the mid-1980s, even though DC promised to have rebooted everything back to their roots with their New 52 event.

Plus, it shouldn't last too long anyway because they probably have five more events in the hopper for 2014.

Which brings me to the fundamental problems with comics.

They're too hard to get. You either have to order them online or go to any of the dwindling number of specialty shops to get them. The days of casually browsing and buying them at the corner store are deader than a dodo. Chain retailers don't even want them anymore because their size and profit margins make them more hassle than they're worth.

They're too hard to get into. If you're a kid who like superheroes forget trying to get into superhero comics, because too many require specialist knowledge of story-lines and characters that occurred before your birth. If you want to get into an A-List character you better be ready to pay, because the really popular ones can appear in over a dozen separate titles, and if you can't keep up with all of them, you're going to be shit out of luck knowing what the hell is going on when the next event occurs.  

Even if you do wade through all the tons of material you need to fully get a character you like, then POW, they have an "event" kill off, change, or replace the character you like for cheap publicity that rarely interpret into increased sales.

Then there's the whole "we don't need kids" attitude found in the comics industry.

Where do you think new readers come from?

Right now comics are targeted at 30-40 somethings and the younger people needed to replace them aren't coming. Kids crave stories of good versus evil, the more outlandish the better, it goes back to all that Joseph Campbell "Hero's Journey" stuff which is probably hardwired into our brains.

What do comic books offer kids?

Usually ridiculously over-sexualized characters and situations that will make the kid's parents toss the comics in the trash for being trashy.

I have nothing wrong with a something being sexy. My family's latin motto translates to "Hooray for Boobies" but there's a line where you go from being sexy to sleazy. Not only that the exaggerated anatomies and ridiculous poses are insulting to women and to the intelligence of readers. Plus it makes the people who do buy comics look like perverts who are unable to use the internet to find pictures of real nikked ladies.

Comics are in the business of selling stories, preferably fast-paced stories of excitement and adventure with fantastical characters and settings. They are the gateway drug for readers, especially the genres of science fiction and fantasy.

Lose the young readers, and eventually you'll end up with a lot of dead franchises no one really cares about that you can't revive no matter how much money you throw at them.

Like The Lone Ranger.

No one wants to repeat that mistake.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1060: The Return Of Rambo?

Sylvester Stallone is considering doing a television series.

Not just any television series, but a RAMBO TELEVISION SERIES.

Now I'm not going to run around screaming "Oh, for the love of Xenu, no!" Instead I'm going to take a look at the PROS & CONS!

PROS:

1. STALLONE: Stallone is still considered a big movie star, especially in Europe and Asia, and signing him to a television series is a big get. 

2. RAMBO: The Rambo franchise is still considered viable, the last instalment made over $100 million worldwide.

CONS:

1. STALLONE: Stallone's movies don't do as well as they used to and they haven't for a very long time. Even movies like the Expendables franchise which features him and just about every other actor who has ever thrown a punch on-screen have a hard time cracking the $100 million mark domestically. In fact most need the combined North American and International box office to hit that vital benchmark. Which means the actual rentals and profits are a lot smaller than Stallone and the makers want you to think.

Then there's his image, which went from underdog makes good (Rocky) to action star (Rambo: First Blood Part 2) to cartoon (Rambo 3) to failed clown (Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot) back to cartoon (Demolition Man) to the aging, bulging steroid addled bulging veined freak he is today (Expendables +) peppered sparsely with attempts to be a serious actor again (Cop Land).

People may be willing to look at him once or twice a year on the big screen, but I doubt enough will want to see him week after week.

2. THE GENRE: I want you folks to name a truly great action-adventure TV series. One that operates along the shoot-em-up punch-em-out lines of the Rambo franchise, and remember, no irony.

I'll wait.

Having trouble thinking of one outside of 24, which was more of a suspense/thriller/mystery procedural?

That's because most attempts at translating the action/adventure genre to the small screen tend to compress all the worst elements of the genre while losing the character development and clever plotting that would make a show stand out in this hyper-competitive era.

That's what I think, what do you think?

RIP Elmore Leonard.

Elmore Leonard passed away this morning, marking the end of an era in both literature and movies.

He started writing Westerns stories for pulp magazines and then expanded into Western novels and screenplays before expanding into crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many set in and around his hometown of Detroit, Michigan.

He was a master storyteller and most writers seek to come close to his skill with dialogue.

He will be missed, but his work will be enjoyed for generations.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1059: Bombs, Brazilians, & Bad Ideas

BOMBS

Relativity Media's release Paranoia has officially tanked at the box office, sparking some firings and hirings in the marketing department, that some have compared to shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. 

Relativity's box office record is not very good for a wannabe studio. Per film domestic box-office revenues haven't cracked the $100 million mark yet, and while they may toot the horn of the film's raking in bigger money overseas, that's a bit of an illusion because Relativity doesn't have the international distribution ability of a major studio with branches in every country.

That means that they have to license their films out to other distributors, who need to take their cut out of rentals that, while different in almost every territory, are usually much smaller than the rentals they get in the domestic box office. That only counts if they get rentals at all since most indie producers will "pre-sell" their pictures for money up-front to make the movie.

No matter what, Relativity needs to make money at the domestic box office, or they won't make any money at all.

Maybe "mediocrity at best" is their business plan, but it doesn't strike me as much of one.

BRAZILIANS

The Mayor of Rio De Janeiro is offering to have the city pay for 100% of the budget if Woody Allen shoots his next movie there.

Now targeting is probably a smart move on Rio's part since his films aren't known for their lavish budgets. However, I don't think cities, or governments, should be in the business of financing movies, something I've written about before.

BAD IDEAS

Timur Bekmambetov needs a new agent.

After Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter tanked at the box-office he's got two potential projects lined up, and both look like pretty bad ideas.

One is a horror film called Squirrels, about, naturally, squirrels, who become man-eating terrors.

The second is a remake of Ben-Hur, which I also think is a really bad idea.

Let's look at the facts.

The premise of Squirrels says that it's supposed to be some sort of  horror/comedy hybrid, something that isn't one of Timur's strength if you go by the reviews for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Then there's the alleged cause for the squirrels becoming homicidal flesh-feasting maniacs. Apparently an evil energy company is drilling for gas, and that's put the environment out of whack and the squirrels respond by developing a taste for human flesh.

That just reeks of filmmakers trying to be "relevant" and "important" and elevate their gory little fright film to the realm of Swiftian satire.

It never works.

When Hollywood attempts satire it the usual result is a ham-fisted failure that bores half the audience and annoys the other half.

Real satire requires a singular vision that isn't afraid to tackle their own shibboleths as well as those of their peers. Hollywood never does that. Hollywood's idea of satire is to look at what people outside of Hollywood do and then paint them as cartoonish freaks.

Hollywood is too isolated and too heavily invested in  the group-think of their own superiority to do it. 

Then there's Ben-Hur.

We all remember the big William Wyler version starring Charlton Heston, but even that was a remake of a silent film starring Ramon Navarro.

Both were monster hits, and the folks running MGM think history is due for a 3-peat.

I beg to differ.

The average American in flyover country doesn't trust mainstream Hollywood to handle religious themes, usually because the people making movies these days view religion as an evil oppressor, and religious people as a variety of mental defective.

So even if a Hollywood filmmaker does a religious themed film with all sincerity, the audience will probably steer clear expecting another hatchet job.

MGM should save their money and make a good idea for a change.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1058: The Check From China Is In The Mail.

The MPAA is hooting victory, the studios who were denied their profits from China have been "paid in full" by the state owned national distributor, and everything is going to be all flowers, puppies, and unicorns.

Is it time to strike up the band and hold a parade to announce the dawn of a new golden age of cinema?

Nope.

China is paying the money only because the apparatchiks who run the country see it is in their personal best interests to pay the money.

Remember, we're talking about state run monopolies in the Chinese movie business. They don't have to worry about judges saying that the law of contracts dictate when, where, how, and to whom, payments should be made. They appoint the judges and make the laws whenever they want and however they want them.

This will happen again, repeatedly. It may take many different forms but when you boil it down, it will all be the same people doing the same thing.

I'm not saying that Hollywood shouldn't do business with China. It's a big market with a vibrant cinema-going culture. However, Hollywood thinks that China's billion+ ticket buyers will heal all of their self-inflicted injuries, and that's just a pipe dream.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1057: The Tale Of The Per Screen Average

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