Recently in The Biz Category

Barron's reports, "This Dying Medium Has Plenty of Life":

Recent hysteria over the imminent demise of daily newspapers is misplaced. As an economic matter, most newspapers still are far more profitable than other, higher-profile consumer media. As a policy matter, those calling for government subsidies or other protections ignore the true state of the marketplace of ideas: It has never been so vibrant.

Newspapers do face a genuine crisis, but the nature of this crisis is misunderstood. [...]

Doing worse doesn't mean doing badly. Until recently, many newspapers had profit margins exceeding 30%. By 2008, the industry's average margin had fallen to the mid-teens. The speed and magnitude of this decline have resulted in wrenching changes in the way these historically stable businesses must operate.

The continuing drama shouldn't distract from real earnings power. Many newspapers still have almost double the profitability of other media sectors, such as movies, music and books -- which have long struggled to achieve margins of even 10%.

One note: Does it seem peculiar to anyone that the word "even" is used to characterize a 10% profit? Since when is profit of any size something to sneeze at?

(tip: Daily Dish)

The magnificent Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, TX, has the right approach. Exhibitors: take it from here. Hire bouncers. Big ones. (Photos by Mark G. Power, who is working on a movie called "Sacred Cinema," about great places to watch movies all over the world. It sounds fantastic.)

Director Joe Dante ("Piranha," "The Howling," "Gremlins," "Matinee," "Homecoming") talks with Dennis Cozzalio about stories and effects at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, in one of the most enjoyable filmmaker interviews I've read in a long time:

... I'm not saying all these new techniques are better. Unfortunately, you can't go home again, and it is difficult to make films using the old technology. I've seen a couple of pictures in Europe when I've gone to festivals where they have carefully tried to use the old Rob Bottin-Rick Baker school of do-it-in-the-camera, and it's often very effective, but those movies often don't get released anywhere because they're not CGI, they're not what people expect. I mean, love it or hate it, CGI is here to stay -- the trick is to find a way to work it so that it doesn't look as sterile and mechanical as by definition it is.

OK, who's ready to see the new movie about a gastroenterologist named Joe?

One of my favorite tree-based movie critics, Ty Burr of the Boston Globe, explains why you won't be seeing many reviews of "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" before it opens (Paramount isn't pre-screening it for critics) and wonders who cares -- about the movie or what critics think of it?

Movie critics are put on earth first to alert you to good movies you might otherwise miss, then to cut through the PR fog and consider the actual worth of a given film (depending on what, exactly, it hopes to achieve). With certain types of movie -- typically smaller, more ambitious fare attended by people who regularly read reviews -- a critic can mean the difference between a successful run and an early DVD release. But blockbusters? In most cases, we're BBs bouncing off the hide of an elephant....

When people ask me why I don't particularly feel obligated to keep up with, say, the new "Transformers" movie or the latest Hanna Montana installment (really, they're the same thing aimed at slightly different constituencies), I don't change the subject. I just reply with a counter-challenge: "Which animated Barbie movie do you think is better-directed: 'Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus' (2004), 'Barbie Fairytopia: Mermaidia' (2006) or 'Barbie As the Island Princess' (2007)?" Or: "How often do you play with your Chia Pet these days? Does it satisfy your imagination, engage your interest, and provide hours of amusement?" Watching infantilized movies can be almost as exciting as watching a Chia Pet grow.

When you become an adult, sometimes you find that even products you loved as a child no longer provide the kind of stimulation they once did. You outgrow them, you move on to other toys. After all, these playthings were not designed with your adult self, your developed brain, in mind. Since most movies are made for the immature brain (inside the skulls of people with a maximum mental age of 14), there's no shame in finding them less than engaging or entertaining if you should happen to be so lucky as to live beyond that age. Because the simple fact is, these products were never intended to be consumed by persons over 30. Frankly, I don't play with Fisher-Price toys much anymore, either.

"I just think that the young filmmakers today should take advantage of the opportunities and technology that they have now, that I didn't have, or the generations before me. 'Cause now you have no excuse.... If you want to be a filmmaker, there it is."
-- Spike Lee, interview with Digital Camera Magazine

The means of production and promotion are in the hands of filmmakers in ways they have never been in the medium's history. As Spike Lee, director and tube-sock salesman (anybody remember the campaign for "She's Gotta Have It"?) has said, there are no excuses anymore. If you want to make a movie and get it seen, the tools are right there at your disposal. You don't need massive studio resources and hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars; all you need is a video camera, a computer, some software and access to the Internet and you've got a whole vertically-integrated world at your disposal: production, marketing, exhibition. A few well-targeted e-mails, some YouTube clips, a Facebook or MySpace page -- even an old-fashioned web site -- and suddenly thousands of people know about you and your film. A service like Withoutabox allows you to enter film festivals all over the world in a jiffy, right from your keyboard -- without so much as a trip to the post office until you know if you've been accepted or invited.

Over many years of interviewing filmmakers I've often asked them how they have the energy to make a film once they've managed to raise enough money to go into production. And I've wondered how they have enough stamina to work on getting their films seen once they're finished. Specialized film publicist extraordinaire Reid Rosefelt is amazed by the power of new technologies, but asks: "What Happens to the Filmmakers Who Can't Market Themselves?" At his blog, Shake Your Windows, he writes:

I admit that I am also ambivalent about marketing, because I am someone who loves movies first and promotes them second. I don't want a director to tell me what a movie means. I don't want to be saddled with the director's insistence that the reason they made the film defines what the movie is. In a lot of ways, the reason that a director thinks he or she made a film is irrelevant. They may not fully understand themselves as human beings, let alone understand their movie. Mysterious things come into play that they don't understand. That's the miracle of it, really.

Some filmmakers are very skilled about how to play the game of talking to the media. They have a natural facility for giving great quotes without giving away the store. Some, like Jarmusch, have a strong image that works into the way you perceive their movies, expanding and not contracting your reactions. Some are a hoot, like Almodovar, and draw you in with their high spirits. Some invent their own myth out of whole cloth, like Herzog. Many of the people who last the longest in pop culture are shape-shifters, like Dylan, Madonna and Robert Redford--they are omnipresent, hiding in plain sight, and the more you think you know about them, the less you do.

I work for a newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times. As you may know, the Sun-Times recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection -- mainly because of the money embezzled by its former owner, Conrad Black, who is now in prison. The Sun-Times is also contractually obligated to pay his legal bills, believe it or not. Anyway, everybody I know on the editorial side has been told to take a mandatory one-week unpaid furlough, during which time we are not allowed to work. Mine is now. I'll be back the day after Labor Memorial Day (May 27).

In the meantime, please keep commenting. I can't respond, but somebody will continue to approve comments in my absence. See ya soon!

Psychologists say that depression is rage turned inward. Stand-up comedy, on the other hand, is rage turned back outward again. (I believe George Carlin had a routine about the use of violent metaphors directed at the audience in comedy: "Knock 'em dead!" "I killed!") In the documentary "Heckler" (now on Showtime and DVD) comedian Jamie Kennedy, as himself, plays both roles with ferocious intensity. The movie is his revenge fantasy against anyone who has ever heckled him on stage, or written a negative review... or, perhaps, slighted him in on the playground or at a party or over the phone or online.

"Heckler" (I accidentally called it "Harangue" just now) is an 80-minute howl of fury and anguish in which Kennedy and a host of other well-known and not-well-known showbiz people tell oft-told tales of triumphant comebacks and humiliating disasters, freely venting their spleens at those who have spoken unkindly of them. At first the bile is aimed at hecklers in club audiences (with some particularly nasty invective for loudmouthed drunken women), then it shifts to "critics" -- broadly defined as anybody who says something negative about a figure whose work appears before a paying public. Some of the critics are actually interested in analysis; some are just insult comics who are using the Internet as their open mic. It gets pretty ugly, but it's fascinating -- because the comics, the critics and the hecklers are so much alike that it's no wonder each finds the others so infuriating.

I speak, of course, of the Muriels, the most glamorous and prestigious movie of awards named after Paul Clark's guinea pig. (You can put a comma in the previous sentence if you like. Anywhere you like.) More than thirty movie bloggers (including yours truly) cast their point-weighted ballots in umpteen fabulous categories. The winners, the runners-up, and the voters' comments about them have been announced every day since February 6. And now, they're all here. Nibble Feast away.

Other big winners: "Rachel Getting Married," "In Bruges," "Man on Wire"...

Meanwhile, live from Istanbul: Ali Arikan liveblogs the Oscars!

More about the Muriels later, but first...

It's the "Number One Movie in America!" Again. Who wrote it? The "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" screenplay is credited to its star Kevin James and Nick Bakay, who also wrote and co-starred in some episodes of James' TV series, "King of Queens." Meanwhile, an anonymous tipster ("Nomen Nescio") who claims to have worked on the film has sent me a link to an award-winning, undated (but pre-2004) script named "Mall Cop" by a self-described ghostwriter named Alfred Thomas Catalfo, whose IMDb credits include the shorts "The Norman Rockwell Code" (2006) and "The Stag Hunt" (2008).

So, would you believe that "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" is based on an award-winning screenplay by an uncredited writer? What's the story? Or is there one? Surely more than two scripts have been written involving mall cops in "Die Hard" parodies. And maybe it's a coincidence that the movie was shot in New England, where Catalfo is also based....

UPDATE (2/5/09): Catalfo now tells The Boston Herald that he got a rejection letter from Adam Sandler's Happy Madison productions saying they prefer to develop their projects "in house."

To the shock of God and everybody, Michael Bay and company will not be bringing up "Rosemary's Baby." Plans for a rebirth reconceptualization remake of Roman Polanski's 1968 horror masterwork, based on Ira Levin's best-selling novel in which the bambino of Beelzebub receives evil prenatal care at the Dakota building at 72nd and Central Park West, have been abandoned because the producers couldn't conceive a way to make it viable for today's post-Cheney audiences. Taking a break from their elocution lessons in Wasilla, Brad Fuller of Bay's Platinum Dunes company tells Collider.com:

"Rosemary's Baby" was announced and it's like a little bit like we're taking about with Freddy [Kreuger]. We went down that road and we even talked to the best writers in town and it feels like it might not be do-able. We couldn't come up with something where it felt like it was relevant and we could add something to it other than what it was so we're now not going to be doing that film.

Instead, the remakers of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "The Amityville Horror" and "The Hitcher" are proceeding with their remakes of "A Nightmare on Elm Street," "Friday the 13th" and Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds."

God, whose 1966 TIME magazine cover story made a cameo appearance as an old doctor's office copy in Polanski's film, was not available for comment.

That's what I wrote, semi-earnestly, in a June 2006 post about the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" I led up to it with this:

Had GM committed to the electric car, it might be on top of the world today. Instead, GM's boneheaded short-term business decisions have nearly bankrupted the company. And now, why in the world would anyone want to buy an GM vehicle, when you know they're passing off inferior, antiquated merchandise? Unless it can compete, and catch up technologically to where it already was ten years ago, GM deserves a quick and merciless death.

Two and a half years later, my feelings are a lot more ambivalent -- mainly because I don't want to see more people out of work in this freezing economic climate, unless they're the CEOs who steadily ran the American automobile industry into the ground over the last, oh, thirty years. (They learned nothing from the 1970s, when they found themselves making cars Americans didn't want and handed the market to Toyota, Honda, Mazda...?) As Thomas Friedman put it:

First but least, as always, it's time for the National Board of Review selections. Their top pick: Danny Boyle's "Slumdog Millionaire," which was also the fave in Toronto in September. No, I still haven't figured out who these people are, either, but they've been doing this sort of thing for 99 years and describe themselves on their web site as "the oldest organization devoted to motion pictures as art and entertainment." OK.

The NBR top ten (in alphabetical order):

"Burn After Reading"
"Changeling"
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
"The Dark Knight"
"Defiance"
"Frost/Nixon"
"Gran Torino"
"Milk"
"WALL-E"
"The Wrestler"

Clint Eastwood gets best actor for "Gran Torino" and "Doubt" snags best ensemble cast, even though it didn't make the top ten. David Fincher wins best director for "Benjamin Button."

... and then...

Ever since 1977, George Lucas has been talking about making those "small, personal" movies he's always dreamed of making. You know, like "Revenge of the Sith." He did direct a small, personal movie in 1973, it was called "American Graffiti," and it is his most impressive directorial achievement. Since then, it's been nothing but "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" (with the occasional executive producing jobs on fantasies and friends' movies, just to lend his name to them).

At MSN Movies I have a small, personal essay that should win me lots of friends. My thesis is that, after the 22-year gap between "Star Wars" and "The Phantom Menace," Lucas has shown that the "Star Wars" universe is his most personal project. And yet he's still talking about directing those "little movies." I say: Don't bother:

Dark as night and nearly as long, Christopher Nolan's new Batman movie feels like a beginning and something of an end. Pitched at the divide between art and industry, poetry and entertainment, it goes darker and deeper than any Hollywood movie of its comic-book kind...
-- Manohla Dargis, New York Times

If [Director Christopher Nolan] occasionally stumbles upon an indelible image (aside from... a scene where the two-wheeled Batpod does a wall-assisted 180-degree turnaround gave me giddy shivers) it's quickly subsumed by his more frequent tendency toward Cusinarted spectacle. The human drama in "Batman Begins" held my attentions, so I wasn't so much bothered by the fact that its action scenes were murky, bordering on incoherent (this seemed intentional to some degree, even though I think it was, ultimately, a failed artistic choice).
-- Keith Uhlich, The House Next Door

Nolan's direction is so relentless that the climaxes never feel climactic. At the same time, I realize that relentlessness has been the formula for blockbusters since "Star Wars," or at least "Raiders of the Lost Ark," and these blockbusters keep speeding up. They've probably just sped past me. In other words, relentlessness won't be a problem for 99.9 percent of the audience. It is, in fact, what they came for.
-- Erik Lundegaard, MSN.com

If "The Dark Knight" felt too long to you, or even if it didn't, is it possible that it might have felt shorter if it were longer?

Among my friends and neighbors the most-discussed movie of the summer has been "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired." I've heard tell that some other movies have opened, too, and I saw some of them. I saw "Speed Racer," but only because I was reviewing it. And I saw "Iron Man" and "Pineapple Express" and last week I saw "The Dark Knight." Just saw "Tropic Thunder," too. I pretty much liked all of them except "Speed Racer," which was at least stimulating to write about and discuss. But I'd say only "Pineapple Express" is a work of true genius. Meanwhile, the most ambitious and accomplished movie of the year so far (and I'm only 4/7ths of the way into it) is HBO's "Generation Kill." Next on the list of movies I really want to see is "Man On Wire," the documentary about the guy who walked a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers. And "Wall-E." I'm excited.

But the way Stephanie Zacharek at Salon.com sees it, millions of moviegoers may be suffering from a malaise. She asks: "Are you suffering from blockbuster fatigue?"

I will not give away any jokes here (though too many reviews will), just one small concept: In "Tropic Thunder," Ben Stiller plays a not-very-talented actor who has made a widely loathed movie called "Simple Jack" (explicitly a parody of Sean Penn's "I Am Sam") that flopped ignominiously, failing to earn him the Oscar nomination he so desperately, transparently (and cynically) expected. Both Penn and "I Am Sam" are mentioned by name -- as are the Oscar-winning performances by Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man" and Tom Hanks in "Forrest Gump." They should have thrown in Robin Williams in "Patch Adams." (Look for the glimpse of Penn and some other well-known actors in award-seeking stunt-roles near the end.)

From start to finish, the target of the satire here is Hollywood. As Roger Ebert describes it: "The movie is a send-up of Hollywood, actors, acting, agents, directors, writers, rappers, trailers and egos..." There's even a funny moment with a key grip that's even funnier if you know what a key grip is.

And yet, according to an article in Monday's New York Times: "A coalition of disabilities groups is expected as early as Monday to call for a national boycott of the film 'Tropic Thunder' because of what the groups consider the movie's open ridicule of the intellectually disabled."

This has got to be a joke.

... what? Not "Star Wars"? Not even "The Dark Knight"? (Wait -- that's the 21st.)

See? Cinephiles and music collectors aren't the only ones who feel the compulsive need to make lists. Though, usually, we flaunt the subjectivity of the exercise (and try not to figure box-office popularity into the equation). But not this University of Chicago economist profiled in Monday's New York Times:

Ask David Galenson to name the single greatest work of art from the 20th century, and he unhesitatingly answers "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," a 1907 painting by Picasso.

He can then tell you with certainty Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on, as well. [...]

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" screened all over the world yesterday -- on a Sunday afternoon, roughly in synch with the gala unveiling of the picture at the Cannes Film Festival. The usual film-festival and press-screening review embargoes were promptly ignored, so although the movie opens May 22, many outlets ran full reviews on their websites immediately. Because... well, because they could, I suppose. Variety even posted a preview of the review that its reviewer was about to write, in case, after 19 years of anticipating the next "Indiana Jones" movie, you couldn't stand waiting one more minute while he took the time necessary to process and record his thoughts about the film he'd just seen. Not because he believed it was great or a disaster or even because he had anything in particular he wanted to say about it right away, but because... well, Daily Variety knew its readership simply could not do without knowing instantly that the movie "begins with an actual big bang, then gradually slides toward a ho-hum midsection before literally taking off for an uplifting finish." OK! Doesn't that just whet your appetite for the full-course review?

As Roger Ebert noted on his blog Monday, he saw the film in Chicago and loved it, but at the time he filed his review he suspected he might be going against the critical tide, if there was one:

The first time I interviewed Martin Short (one of my "SCTV" idols) in 1987, he told me an anecdote about his experiences in Hollywood. A typical encounter with studio executives would begin with something like, "Wow! We love you! You did this and you did that and we think you're great!" Followed, almost immediately, by, "And now that we've hired you, don't do that stuff anymore because that's not what we want from you. Just do it our way."

Here's director Kimberly Peirce on why nearly ten years elapsed between her last feature, "Boys Don't Cry," and her latest one, "Stop Loss":

... After "Boys Don't Cry," Hollywood came and offered me some very expensive projects, some very good stuff.... I had one project that I got almost to fruition, "Silent Star," about the unsolved murder of [the silent movie director] William Desmond Taylor in the 1920s. It was wonderful - the story of how Hollywood was built on an unsolved murder and a cover-up. We had it cast and ready to go, and the studio ran the numbers and they said, "We want to make it for x amount of money." And I said, Uh, all right. But then they said, "We don't want to spend that much, we want to spend 10 million dollars less." I said, Well, I don't know if that's a good idea, but I'll go ahead and make the adjustments I can. And they said, "Well, we don't want to see the version of the movie that we're prepared to pay for. We want to see the version we're not willing to pay for."

Perfectly circular bureaucratic logic -- so beautiful in its impeccable shape that Franz Kafka and Joseph Heller must be laughing so hard they're crying....

Yesterday, Nathan Lee sent out an e-mail to colleagues in which he announced:

In great Village Voice tradition, I was abruptly laid off today for "economic reasons." My employment at the paper ends immediately: someone else, alas, will be tasked with specifying the precise shade of periwinkle frosting atop the cupcakes in "My Blueberry Nights."

And so I am, as they say, "looking for work," though presumably not as a staff film critic as such jobs no longer appear to exist.

In the last 24 hours, Lee's lamentable departure and the whole moribund notion of "the professional movie critic" have been passionately discussed (at The House Next Door, The Reeler, and elsewhere). But before we get to the latter: Nathan Lee, a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, is a perfervid cinephile (I hope he'll appreciate that phrase), a writer whose insights and observations are penetrating, often pointed and even more often hilarious. A few highlights:

On certain homophobic but ostensibly (and patronizingly) pro-gay reactions to "Brokeback Mountain": "If I hear one more straight critic complain that 'Brokeback Mountain' isn't particularly gay, I'm gonna spit on my hand, lube up my c---, and f--- him in the b---."

On "Transformers": "Director Michael Bay never met a rhetorical apocalypse he didn't love. Dude could film a round of Jenga with greater shock and awe than the collapse of the World Trade Center. There are mini-robots hiding inside his mega-robots. His lens flares have lens flares. He evidently controls the magic hour at a flick of a switch, and flips it willy-nilly for 'poetic effect.' In what may constitute the zaniest authorial signature in contemporary cinema, he has a habit of arresting an action set piece in order to indulge outlandishly backlit, monumentally pointless romantic interludes."

On "Zodiac: "... 'Zodiac' is the most information-packed procedural since 'JFK,' though far more restrained when it comes to theorizing.... The result is an orgy of empiricism, a monumental geek fest of fact-checking, speculation, deduction, code breaking, note taking, forensics, graphology, fingerprint analysis, warrant wrangling, witness testimony, phone calls, news reports. 'I felt like I was stuck in a filing cabinet for three hours,' complained one viewer. Exactly!"

On ""I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry": "Tremendously savvy in its stupid way, 'I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry' is as eloquent as 'Brokeback Mountain,' and even more radical. 'The gay cowboy movie' liberated desires latent in the classic western, and made them palpable (and palatable) by channeling them into the strictures of another genre, romantic tragedy. Progressive values were advanced by a retreat to a traditional mode of storytelling, the love that dare not speak its name rendered intelligible through the universal language of the upscale weepy. [...]

IFC Entertainment has made a two-year agreement with Blockbuster® Video, giving the moribund sales and rental mega-chain "an exclusive 60-day rental window, including both the physical and digital rental distribution channels, for each title as it becomes available. During this period no title will be available on a retail basis in any format."

According to a joint press release, "After the 60-day period, the IFC titles will be available on a non-exclusive basis both for retail and digital distribution. However, Blockbuster will retain the exclusive physical rental distribution rights for IFC titles for three years after each street date." (You read that right: It's a two-year agreement with a three-year exclusive.)

Currently, some IFC Films, released on their First Take label ("Paranoid Park," "4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 days," "Hannah Takes the Stairs," "The Wind That Shakes the Barley"), have been available via Comcast's On Demand service the same day they arrive in theaters. Will that still be the case?

The Weinstein Company made an "exclusive" four-year deal with Blockbuster that went into effect in 2007, although that hasn't prevented NetFlix or other competitors from renting or selling Weinstein movies under the "first sale doctrine." As the Dallas Morning News reported at the time of the Weinstein-Blockbuster agreement: "Under federal statute, companies such as Blockbuster and Netflix are able to rent out the movies they purchase without getting permission from anyone."

I know, I'm sorry, that's two Entertainment Weekly covers in a row, but how was I supposed to avoid mentioning this? Where's the YouTube mash-up? I'd make it myself, but I don't really want to. I never thought of Anton Chigurh or Daniel Plainview as "Bad Boys," but...

From "Three Kinds of Violence: Zodiac, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood" (January 25, 2008):

Like the chess-playing avatar of Death in Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal," to whom he has been compared, Chigurh exhibits the occasional glimmers of personality -- pride, arrogance, annoyance, determination -- as do Zodiac and Plainview, but he never succumbs to the latter's fits of dudgeon. He kills not from anger, or even for money, but because it is his nature. Plainview is a petty bully, his unmanageable fury a sign of weakness that Chigurh would consider frivolous and self-indulgent. (That said, let no one suggest a "Chigurh vs. Plainview" sequel, please.)

The "Alien" and "Predator" franchises are owned by Fox. Both "NCFOM" and "TWBB" are Miramax/Paramount Vantage releases (and they were both shot in Marfa, TX!). Will Javier Bardem's and Daniel Day-Lewis's people return the studio execs' phone calls?

UPDATED (below): There's Ellen Page on the cover of Entertainment Weekly next to the headline: "Juno: The Little Movie That Did." Subhead: "How a Teen Rebel Delivered Oscar's 100 Million Dollar Baby." This is when I feel a little sorry for people who didn't see the movie back when they could still at least feel like they were discovering it for themselves -- even if the "Little Movie That Could" was just a Fox Searchlight marketing ploy all along. Anyway, it turned out to be a great way to sell the movie: 4 big-time Oscar nominations (Best Picture, Actress, Director, Original Screenplay) and triple-digit milliones in theaters. (And that's a digit that can't be undid.)

Game blogger Surfer Girl even started a hilarious rumor that "Juno: The Video Game" was in development, "the most realistic teenage pregnancy simulation to date, for Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC, and Wii. Crave could not get Ellen Page for the game, so in her place will be Jamie-Lynn Spears. For portable fans, a track-and-field title set in the Junoverse will hit DS and PSP."

(Just imagine wielding a Wii pork sword. Can you impregnate Juno -- and win?)

The post was labeled "joke," but that didn't stop Gamespot News from reporting it as a really maybe sorta true story, straight outta DICE Summit. (BTW, just above the "Juno" item, Surfer Girl offered this: "For the Blu-Ray release of 'There Will Be Blood,' Backbone Entertainment is working on 'an epic milkshake drinking adventure' that will feature the likeness of Daniel Day-Lewis, it will take up an estimated 5GB and feature at least twenty hours of slurping action, plus multiplayer.")

"I drink your milkshake!" is the golden ticket that will sell this thing with the people who are too lazy to read reviews and don't care that much about awards. It's simple, it's viral, it's primitive...it will travel. Make the "I drink your milkshake" T-shirts, hand out the buttons and bumper stickers, cut the TV and radio ads that emphasize the line over and over, and sell this brilliant but undeniably gnarly film as a kind of half-melodrama, half-hoot."
-- Jeffrey Wells, January 9, 2008

The proper response to this hype and hoopla would be: "So what?" It's all after-the-fact anyway, and it has nothing to do with the movies themselves. Although, at least, the now-ubiquitous "I drink your MILKSHAKE!" catchphrase from "TWBB," which by now even USA Today has reported as a viral phenomenon, was inspired by the delivery of a line that's actually in the movie. (The brief "Friend-o" fad seems to have passed.)

Regarding issues raised by Brian De Palma and "Redacted" (see below): Here are two frame grab from Woody Allen's 1980 feature "Stardust Memories," a United Artists release. The movie is a Felliniesque comedy (it starts right off as a parody of "8 1/2"), not a documentary. The blown-up image on the wall was taken a dozen years before "Stardust Memories" (February 1, 1968) during the Tet Offensive by Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams in Saigon.

The man with the gun is South Vietnamese National Police Chief General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan. The man in the plaid shirt, who is or is about to be shot in the head (his death is shown in NBC News footage taken at the same time), is thought to be Nguyễn Văn Lém (or possibly Le Cong Na), and was either a Viet Cong officer or a political operative. His face was disfigured because he had been beaten. The title of the photo, which became instantly famous around the world, is "General Nguyen Ngoc Loan Executing a Viet Cong Prisoner in Saigon" and it won a Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1969. It was widely reprinted and was used as a symbolic image by the anti-war movement.

Adams later wrote in Time magazine:

The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths... What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?'

Although a number of "galleries and artists" are acknowledged in the end credits of "Stardust Memories" for the use of photos and artworks in the film, the source for this picture is not cited. The film does contain a standard disclaimer, reading: "The story, all names, characters and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons is intended or should be inferred."

MSN Movies received this despairing e-mail regarding my "Open Letter to Hollywood" piece. I'm not sure what to say, but I thought I'd share it as the cri de coeur of one disillusioned man, and a reminder of the chasm that has always existed between art and commerce in Tinseltown -- but a canyon that is occasionally bridged:

I was recently at a bar north of Boston, and discovered that the bartender was attending Emerson College, studying film production. He was interested in pursuing a career as a DP and eventually a director, and I asked him what kind of films he viewed in his program, mentioning such names as Fellini, Bergman, Kurosawa, Kubrick, the old great studio system directors such as Hawks, Huston, Cukor, etc. He said that he almost never watched such films, at least not as part of a class, and had only marginal curiosity about their work. He was far more interested in the technical [side] of film and the marketing aspects of the industry. He stated he understood the reputation of all of those people (although he had never heard of George Cukor), but his professors didn't stress much film history, and he didn't believe that this old work had much bearing on the reality of the industry today.

I look upon the mainstream films made in the current atmosphere and wonder how many have even a remote chance of standing the test of time. I've sat through dozens of viewings of films like "The Maltese Falcon," "The Quiet Man," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," "Network," and none of these films have lost their freshness. "Titanic," for a while the biggest movie ever, is now ten years old. Does anyone have any interest in it at all anymore, a decade down the line? "Casablanca" is 65 years old. How many Hollywood films made in the last ten years will still generate interest in the years 2062 to 2072?

The film industry as it exists today is no different than any other major corporate enterprise. Corporate enterprises are by nature conservative; their goals are to limit risk exposure and do whatever is the easiest thing within a given business structure. They want to sell you things they know you'll buy because you've bought them already, so the conglomerates that own the studios will keep churning out sequels, franchises, and copycat product until you stop buying, and then they'll go on to the next thing and bleed that to death.

What the hell is wrong with the studio risk-management -- er, movie -- business these days? I share some of my own modest ideas for improvement in an "Open Letter to Hollywood" at MSN Movies.

Now, some people say everything is just fine, and that we've even had a better-than usual crop of summer pictures this year: "Knocked Up," "Ratatouille," "Superbad," "The Bourne Ultimatum"... On the other hand, there's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," "Hostel Part II," "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry"... These, I submit, are conscious or unconscious cries for help.

None of my prescriptions is a panacea, but among the measures I suggest Mr. and Ms. Hollywood might want to consider are: more nudity (way more nudity); less emphasis on pain and torture as a form of entertainment (bad for concessions sales, for one thing); better recycling of stars who have fallen out of fashion (like John Travolta in "Pulp Fiction"); watch HBO and learn about sex, violence, character, and storytelling; don't keep making sequels until the original audience hates you for it (even the last installments in "trilogies" tend to range from disappointing to insulting); stop wasting time and depleting resources fighting protracted, losing battles against technologies that have always proven to make you more money in the end: "The future arrived the day before yesterday and you're still pretending it's due next week."

An excerpt:

...[Why] why do adults in Hollywood movies still behave as if they're on "The Dick Van Dyke Show"? (Nothing against "The Dick Van Dyke Show," which is one of the great achievements in television history, but you know what I mean: Rob and Laura not only slept in separate twin beds but they always wore pajamas.)

Sex in the movies seemed like it was going somewhere in the '70s, with "Five Easy Pieces," "Last Tango in Paris" and "Don't Look Now." In 1993, the great Julianne Moore played out a full-frontal scene -- an argument at home with her husband -- in Robert Altman's "Short Cuts," and it wasn't the nudity that was shocking, it was the physical and emotional reality of the scene. Do you know people who pop out of bed after sex sporting underwear? Who's in such a blasted hurry to get dressed?

The best special effect in the history of movies is the human face, with the human body coming in a close second. Use it. You think torture porn sells? The audience for porn-porn is exponentially larger. (Have you heard of this thing called the World Wide Internets? It revolutionized a whole lucrative section of the movie industry -- mostly the one located beyond Warners, Disney and Universal in the farther reaches of the San Fernando Valley.)

Read the full "letter" here.

Got any advice for "Hollywood" yourself?

If moviemaking were a science, then it would be a science. But guess what? Quite often elements that have nothing to do with the movie itself -- timing, release pattern, marketing, advertising -- have more to do with what makes the thing a hit or a flop. Especially today, when pictures are in and out of theaters before the public has a chance to decide whether they're worth seeing -- much less worth seeing again. Repeat business, which used to be a big factor in determining a hit, doesn't really kick in until the DVD release anymore.

But there are still would-be alchemists who imagine they can scientifically -- or, at least, statistically -- measure the ingredients of a successful movie. Take Professor Dean Simonton at UC Davis, for instance. He says he's isolated the components of the magical formula that accounts for a movie's appeal, with audiences and with critics.

Can you guess what they are? Of course you can.

Christy Lemire, who is identified as "AP Movie Critic," reports for the Associated Press ("Study analyzes secrets to movie success"):

Movies are supposed to be about getting lost in emotion. But one scientist has broken down the film industry to cold, hard facts. A psychology professor at the University of California, Davis, has done a statistical study of thousands of movies to determine what makes them critical darlings or box-office hits.

That's what flashed through my mind when I saw this top image in an online ad, anyway. One of these pictures is from a "Star Wars" movie (I forget which one, but it was Episode I, II, or III, I can tell you that). The other is from "Resurrecting the Champ," starring Samuel L. Jackson and Josh Hartnett. Can you tell which one is which?

(Hint: One of the movies does not, as far as I know, feature the Grand Master of the Jedi Order.)

Answer: In the top image, Jackson plays an older Yoda. In the bottom picture, Yoda is played by a different actor.

Following up on my recent posts about the commercial realities behind mid-century European "art films," and the various ways critics make sales pitches to exclusive audiences: Here's something fun and provocative from a 1964 French TV interview with Jean-Luc Godard, excerpts of which are included on the extras disc for the Criterion edition of "Contempt." (I transcribed the subtitles.) Like famed producer Bruce Dickinson, Godard put his pants on one leg at a time, but once they were on he made hits:

Q: Jean-Luc Godard, with "Contempt" you're once again on everyone's lips....

G: So much the better if it helps the movie.... I wouldn't really care as long as they go to my movies. That's what's important.

Q: What do you think of reviews?

G: I think much more highly of them than most people do. It's probably because I was a critic once, and I said a lot of bad things. I was cruel and mean to a lot of people. And though my opinions haven't changed, when I read bad reviews, the important thing for me is the discussion that's taking place. Whether it's good or bad is not the issue for me....

Q: Do you believe there's such a thing as a fair review?

G: (shrugs) Yes, but criticism isn't an artistic creation. It will always be inferior. Seventy-five percent of critics are only in that line of work temporarily. That's why critics are always bitter and sad towards those they praise and those they disparage.

Q: You became a director after having been a critic. Do you think it's a step up?

G: Yes, being a critic was a good experience. It's good training.

Q: Doesn't it run the risk of stifling the imagination?

G: No. It made me love everything. It taught me not to be narrow-minded, not to ignore Renoir in favor of Billy Wilder, or something like that. I like them both, even though they are extreme opposites. [...]

Q: ... Even with all her clothes on, ["Contempt" star Brigitte Bardot is] still a gold mine. [...] Those who would like to see Miss Bardot undress in a movie made by a bad or vulgar director wouldn't dare go see it. But with you their conscience is clean because it's art --

G: Good for them. They're right. If they find her pretty, as I do, there's no --

Q: Some of your films have been failures. How does that affect you?

G: One of my films in particular, "Les Carabiniers," wasn't even a failure. It was... nothing at all.

HEADLINE; "Lohan defends herself after arrest

AP, LOS ANGELES (July 24, 2007) -- Lindsay Lohan says she's innocent.

The 21-year-old actress was arrested and released on bail for investigation of misdemeanor driving under the influence and with a suspended license, and felony cocaine possession, early Tuesday in Santa Monica, less than two weeks after completing her second trip to rehab.

"I am innocent ... did not do drugs they're not mine. I was almost hit by my assistant Tarin's mom I appreciate everyone giving me my privacy," Lohan wrote in an e-mail to "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush, the show reported on its Web site Tuesday night.

Police found cocaine in one of Lohan's pockets during a pre-booking search, Sgt. Shane Talbot said. Police initially said Lohan was also being booked for investigation of transporting a narcotic but later said she was not.

Police received a 911 call from the mother of Lohan's former personal assistant saying that Lohan was chasing her in an SUV, said Lt. Alex Padilla. The assistant had quit hours before, he said.

Authorities found Lohan and the woman in a "heated debate" in the parking lot of Santa Monica's Civic Auditorium at about 1:30 a.m.

Lohan's arrest comes as she still faces DUI allegations connected to a Memorial Day weekend hit-and-run crash in Beverly Hills. The actress completed more than six weeks in rehab less than two weeks ago, and had checked into a recovery clinic in January.

She had worn an alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet since her July 13 release from rehab and was tested daily to support her sobriety, her attorney, Blair Berk, said. She said Lohan had relapsed and was receiving medical care at an undisclosed location. Lohan's publicist, Leslie Sloane Zelnik, had no comment.

This story moved me to write a song, to the tune of "Unforgettable":

Uninsurable, that's what you are
Always crashing in your fancy car
Tabloid photos, so embarrassing
Flash your breasts when you're out Paris-ing
Media whore is a role you adore, but you're

Unemployable for picture work
Unprofessional, and quite a jerk
Keep the cast and crew awaiting you
And you wonder why they're hating you
Fear next year, you're carbon-dating your career

Unreliable, and more each day
Less than "adequite" in every way
Stanwyck wore an anklet to seduce
Not to monitor her booze abuse
You're a boor, a poor excuse for loose, too

Uninsurable, in Calvin Klein
Unendurable, no sign of spine
Famous for your notoriety
Not ability, insobriety
Pie-eyed claims of future piety, pooh!

Uninsurable, such a cliché
Scourge of SAG, Double-, and Triple-A
Liquored-up but not Anonymous
"Lindsay" has become synonymous
With pathetic DUI arrests, eeww...

See also: Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Denials Go Better Without Coke

An architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times reviews the new Landmark multiplex at the Westside Pavilion:

... [It is] designed to compete directly with your living room — with your sofa, your flat screen and your ability to pause, rewind, turn on the lights or just give up on the movie idea altogether and switch over to "The Daily Show."

As if to acknowledge how tough it's becoming to drag people out of their houses for a night at the movies, with home-theater technology getting better and traffic getting worse, the Landmark includes a number of domestic architectural touches. The most striking are three "Living Room" theaters on the top floor that hold between 30 and 50 people each. They include sofas and side tables as well as overstuffed love seats and ottomans by the high-end French furniture company Ligne Roset. [...]

All of the Landmark's larger auditoriums are pleasingly steep and feature extra-wide seats with cup holders that will accommodate your Chardonnay as well as a Big Gulp-sized soda. They are served by top-of-the-line Sony digital projectors, which construction crews were moving carefully into place last week.

But those rooms offer a variation on an architectural experience we all know well: the big movie auditorium with cushy seats and teeth-rattling sound. What's new at the Landmark, at least for a first-run theater, are those Living Rooms — not just for their furniture but for what they reveal about the industry's attitude toward architectural space in a digital era. [...]

This time around Hollywood is openly admitting the extent to which the public now associates the movie-watching experience with the comforts of home.

Well, why should a theater be less comfortable or less aesthetically satisfying than your average big-screen TV home set-up? This kind of thing has been done for years (the beanbags or sofas and ottomans in the front row and such), but what I'll be interested in seeing is whether cozy 30- to 50-seat auditoria can bring in enough revenue to justify building them.

Dave Kehr points out errors in the New York Times story about the future of 3-D by Sharon Waxman (the Judy Miller of showbiz reporting), which Kehr describes as "riddled with errors and misperceptions, to the point where it is actively misleading." Not the first time for Waxman, and it won't be the last. (I had to stop reading her "Rebels on the Backlot" book because it was likewise riddled with factual errors and such gross misunderstandings of how the movie business works that it led her to draw preposterous conclusions about what she witnessed or was told.)

There's a classic line in the Waxman article from Springsteen/"Titanic" producer Jon Landau: “The screen has always been an emotional barrier for audiences. Good 3-D makes the screen go away. It disappears, and you’re looking at a window into a world.”

Yeah, that damned screen. If only it weren't there to present an emotional barrier for us. (Maybe if we removed it -- and the back wall of the theater -- the projector could just show the movie into 3-D "reality" and allow us to really feel the emotions the movie is trying to convey!) It's like the way those blasted audio speakers get in the way of our emotional involvement in recorded music. Gotta get past that...

DK also refers us to a hilariously profane (i.e., Tarantinoesque) account of the "Death Proof" press conference in Cannes by Rob Nelson of the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages. Excerpt:

Not that I don't appreciate the privilege of seeing a longer "Death Proof"—I positively adored it at 87 minutes on the bottom-half of the ill-fated "Grindhouse" double bill. But whoever encouraged the Cannes Film Festival to advertise its new cut at "2h07" (i.e., 127 minutes)—director Quentin Tarantino, perhaps, or (more likely) the Weinstein Co.'s Stuntman Harv—is practically begging for a long ride on the fuckin' roof of the white Dodge Challenger, sans straps. I mean, the goddamn thing is no fuckin' longer than 113 tops—I fuckin' timed it—but that didn't stop Stuntman Harv from bum-rushing the Death Proof press conference yesterday to say that "you're missing the essence of Tarantino" at 87 (pffff...), and that the new cut, when it's released internationally, "will dwarf Grindhouse—trust me." Fuck, man. Does anyone, even Tarantino, trust Harvey Weinstein at this point?

Near the end of the press conference, which had QT literally sweating with enthusiasm for his movie and its many sources, a journalist asks Monsieur Grindhouse how he feels about writers having been requested by Harvey's crew to pay $1,500 apiece for a seat at the Cannes "Death Proof" junket. [...]

... As you might've guessed, gorgeous Butterfly (Vanessa Ferlito) finally does her big Texas Chili Parlor lapdance for Kurt Russell's icy-hot villain in a scene that QT invests with as much meta-movie passion as a fuckin' car chase or shootout or samurai showdown. Butterfly's tailfeather-shakin' shit is ridiculously, hilariously hot—even, it seems, for the lady from Uzbekistan who pipes up during the press conference to thank QT for his kick-ass female-empowerment movie on behalf of "all the women of Central Asia."...

I meant to see Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" last weekend -- and I'd meant to see it at a couple of press screenings in the weeks before that. But... I don't feel like it. And -- as a civilian moviegoer who'd just go buy a ticket without being obligated to write about the picture -- I'm struggling with why I feel that way. All I know is that I was looking forward to it up until I saw the first images in the trailer, with that artsy desaturated color and lemon-chiffon-tinted cannonfire that reminded me of the early days of Ted Turner and his colorization crayons. (The marketing has been exceptionally trite and schizophrenic -- alternating between rah-rah battle action and equally sentimentalized sap, both of which seem false and trivializing in a time of such dire news from Iraq. But I'm fully aware how rarely the marketing for a movie actually resembles the movie itself -- which is why I routinely fast-forward through TV spots, except when I'm watching "The Daily Show" or "The Colbert Report" live!)

The movie opened to a "disappointing" $10.2 million on 1,876 screens and now everybody's writing about how the "expectations" they had for it being a leading Oscar contender are now "jeopardized" -- or something like that. I find it difficult to care about Oscar buzz or box office grosses. But one thing in this morning's New York Times semi-post-morem (Omigod! They might have to spend more money on the Oscar campaign!!!) struck me as, well, a little... odd:

... [Paramount distribution exec Rob] Moore said Monday morning that Paramount, DreamWorks and Mr. Eastwood had agreed to expand by 300 screens nationwide this week. He cited the movie’s reviews, as well as exit polls of audience members that were 50 percent better than average — a sure gauge of word of mouth, he said.

Copy desk! What do you suppose that tortured phrase about exit polls "50 percent better than average" is supposed to mean? That 50 percent of moviegoers surveyed said "Flags of Our Fathers" was above average -- compared to another 50 percent who said it was... average, or below average? That doesn't sound very good. That the average rating for "FoOF" was 50 percent higher than the average for all movies? Even that doesn't sound so impressive.

What's the median score?

Anybody else either reluctant to see, or eager to see, "Flags of Our Fathers." If you contributed to that $10 million over the weekend, what did you make of the movie?

My paen to a new, browner America in the age of 300 million (below) was in part a satirical (though sincere) reaction to the non-story about whether a "real mixed-race actress" should play Mariane Pearl, the wife of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, instead of Angelina Jolie, who is reported to wear make-up that darkens her skin-tone. This is how far we've come from Jim Crow laws: race is everything and if you're an octoroon, you'd better have the credentials to prove it if you want a job as an actor!

In the current HBO documentary, "The Journalist and the Jihadi, Mariane Pearl herself describes her background: "I was born in Paris, my mother's Cuban, my father's Dutch, I'm a Buddhist -- all this exotic stuff." Angelina Jolie, however, has a French name and a French godmother (Jacqueline Bissett) but was born in America to the grandson of a Czech immigrant (actor Jon Voight) and a mother who is part American Indian (Haudenosaunee). So, do we really have to have a contest about who's more "mixed race"?

Daniel Pearl, meanwhile, was a Jew from Encino, a classically trained violinist who switched to country fiddle and then to journalism. Who the hell are they gonna get to play that?

ADDENDUM: Mariane Pearl role originally to have been played by Jennifer Aniston; Pearl's response to Jolie.

Imagine a country where, even at the highest levels of power, ignorance is flaunted and incompetence rewarded. OK, maybe that's too easy. Imagine a studio dumping a movie because it just doesn't know how to sell it. Well, that doesn't take any imagination at all, does it? "Idiocracy," the new film by Mike Judge ("Office Space," "King of the Hill," "Beavis and Butthead"), opened in a handful of theaters in the United States while I was in Canada for the Toronto Film Festival. When I got back I learned that none of those theaters was in Seattle, so -- guess what? -- I haven't been able to see it.

But Dennis Cozzalio at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule reports that it's superficially dumb, deceptively smart -- and funny:

The groundwork for "Idiocracy" is laid in a hilarious parody of authoritarian educational films that exposes the roots of humanity’s slippery slide toward pea-brain-osity in the frigidity of intellectuals (or at least their yuppie subset) and the unchecked rutting of the uneducated poor. Smart folks are too selfish to procreate, while Li’l Abner and Daisy Mae can’t keep their genitalia to themselves.

Sounds simple enough, right? But by the time the movie really gets going Judge has laid culpability for the crumbling mental capacity of society at the feet of lawmakers, corporations and opportunistic politicians too. And let’s not forget the military—insofar as they represent by definition the aggressive arm of any government, Judge certainly hasn’t. A low-level army base slacker (Luke Wilson) and a randomly selected hooker (Maya Rudolph) are selected to participate in a military experiment, headed by an officer with more than just a little taste for the pimpin’ lifestyle—that’s how the hooker gets roped in. The experiment is designed to monitor physical changes in cryogenically frozen subjects over a period of a year. But when the officer’s illegal activities end up getting him imprisoned and the base bulldozed, Wilson and Rudolph are left on ice not for a year but for 500. The pair, barely three digits in the IQ department between them to start with, awaken to a world so battered and worn down by an abased pop culture, relentless corporate corruption and political ineffectuality that they are, by acidly ironic default, the smartest people on the planet.

I recommend checking out Dennis's essay about the film -- and what happened to it -- here. (BTW, as I write this, "Idiocracy" has a 71% rating on RottenTomatoes.com, compared to 43% for last week's box-office topper, "Gridiron Gang"; 31% for Brian De Palma's "The Black Dahlia"; and 17% for "All the King's Men," opening Friday.)

The Los Angeles Times -- which likes to fancy itself as the "paper of record" for the entertainment industry -- has officially jumped the shark. Wednesday it inaugurated a weekly column by Jay A. Fernandez called Scriptland, which is to be dedicated to "the work and professional lives of screenwriters." What this means, evidently, is that the L.A. Times is now in the business of providing free script coverage for the studios, because the first column features a gushy mini-review of a draft of a script by Charlie Kaufman ("Being John Malkovich," "Adaptation."). I could barely make it past this without gagging:

I have the new Charlie Kaufman screenplay on my desk.

I've read it — no, lived it. I've been moved and astounded by it. And I'm tortured by the dilemma of what I should or should not say about it here. I feel a bit like Frodo palming the One Ring. [...]

But many people, beginning with Kaufman, do not want me to have the script, do not want me to read the script, and without question do not want me to write anything about the script. Words like "super-sensitive," "invasive" and "freaked" have been cautiously leveled at me as I've reached out to those involved with the project to get their thoughts on it.

In other words: "Hey, I got ahold of something I'm not supposed to have and I feel kinda bad about it, and I don't have any good reason to write about it, but I just had to tell you! Ain't it cool?!?!"

No. It's not. Fernandez isn't a journalist and he isn't a critic; he's a leech, on the level of those self-aggrandizing amateur web trolls who think their premature, uninformed opinions about an unfinished work are "news." If the L.A. Times is going to play by these rules, it will be publishing its writers' opinions about leaked manuscripts of books before they are edited or revised by the authors, and unmixed rehearsal tapes of recording sessions. In the interest of fairness, the paper should also run commentary on early versions of L.A. Times stories before they appear in print, so we can see how that sausage is made. Everything needs to be pre-digested, doesn't it? Meanwhile, expect Times employees to spend a lot of time going through showbiz garbage cans. I'm sure readers will find all this extra groundless speculation -- and spoilers -- terribly useful and informative.

I hope that movie critics, and actual journalists, will protest. Loudly. This really is a new ethical low, tarring the efforts of the paper's real reporters by sticking their work with gossip and innuendo. What is newsworthy about a work-in-progress -- unless (like Emilio Estevez's "Bobby" in Toronto) its makers have decided to screen it for the press and ticket-buying public? Fernandez hasn't seen the movie in any form. Kaufman is set to direct it himself, but hasn't even finished casting it yet. "Meanwhile," Fernandez concludes his item (after telling us an image that appears on "Page 1"), "I feel terribly sick to my stomach." Yeah, he's not the only one. What a self-serving piece of crap. I have a great idea, L.A. Times: Why don't you go put your Calendar entertainment coverage behind a web subscription wall again?

(Tip: Hot Blog.)

Michael Tolkin, who wrote the novel and screenplay on which Robert Altman's "The Player" was based, has published a sequel in which studio executive Griffin Mill, now 52, is trying to get out of Hollywood. Tolkin has this to say about the state of movies, in a New York Times interview:

“The movies haven’t been very good the last three or four years, they really haven’t,�? he said. “Everybody knows that. At least that, maybe more. And what they were will never return.�?

The source of all this creative- industrial- complex angst is the death of what he both eulogizes and parodies: the classic journey-of-the-hero story structure, analyzed by Joseph Campbell in the 1940’s, popularized a generation ago by George Lucas through “Star Wars,�? spouted and shorthanded by studio executives ever since, and all but trampled to death, Mr. Tolkin said, by nearly every subsequent action movie and thriller that Hollywood has turned out.

Or as Griffin puts it: “Physics cracked the atom, biology cracked the genome and Hollywood cracked the story.�?

What he's talking about, of course, is the ubiquity of screenwriting guru Robert McKee's story structure techniques, satirized in "Adaptation." with Brian Cox playing McKee.

When the conversation turns, as it so often does these days, to blogs (or "the Internets" as Stephen Colbert is fond of calling the online realm), you'll find an astonishing number of people who, even in 2006, have absolutely no idea of what they're talking about. Like Bruce Kluger in USA Today, who writes: "If ever America needed a wake-up call about the mythology of blogging, we got it this month.... "

Kluger, who also contributes to Parenting magazine and Huffington Post (god help 'em), proceeds to destroy the "mythology" that, well, didn't exist until it was created by the mainstream media (like USA Today)... because they don't know what they're talking about. Kluger cites the defeat of Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut primary (then increasing Joementum in recent polls) and the disappointing box office receipts for "Snakes on a Plane" as evidence of "the capriciousness of the blog culture":

Lieberman's boomerang reminds us that voters represent a meager percentage of the total populace — and that bloggers are an even tinier subset of that group. Consequently, what appears to be a coast-to-coast juggernaut on a 17-inch monitor is, in the real world, simply an elaborate PC-to-PC chain letter — enthusiastic, but not necessarily the national mindset.

O, capricious bloggers! How dare you fool the MSM into thinking you were all-knowing and all-powerful! Shame upon thee! This is a great example of what I was writing about the other day -- another Straw Man piece that sets out to strike down its own assumptions, none of which apply to the exterior universe. It's the JonBenet Ramsay "murder suspect" hysteria/drivel all over again.

Happy "Birthday" to David Poland, whose Hot Blog, Hot Button column and Movie City News are favorite sources of information and commentary about The Biz around here. This week marks the Ninth anniversary of The Hot Button and the 1000th entry in The Hot Blog.

Check out the latest column to see how much has changed (and hasn't) over these nine years. He's also posted his Rules of Thumb -- sort of a combination of the Ten Commandments for Understanding Showbiz and Charles Foster Kane's "Declaration of Principles." I think he's dead right on all counts.

Congrats, David!

TOP TEN HOT BUTTON RULES OF THUMB

1. Great Media Outlets' Standards Are Less Stringent When The Subject Is Entertainment And That Sucks.

2. $150 Million Is No Longer A Blockbuster In Theatrical… But Right Now Represents The Start Of A Road To More Than $200 Million In Returns to The Studio In Most Cases Thanks To The New DVD Market And Expanded International Theatrical Market.

3. Successful Movie Advertising Sells One Idea At A Time… And There Actually Has To Be An Idea Worth Selling

4. The Story Of The Moment Is Almost Never The Real Story

5. There Are Very Few Journalists In Entertainment Journalism

6. Talent Is Your Friend Until It's Time For Talent Not To Be Your Friend

7. Reviewing Scripts Or Test Screenings Is Selfish And Immoral… You Do Not Know What Effect Sticking Your Nose Into Process Will Have And More Often Than Not It Is Negative

8. Opening Weekend Is Never About The Quality Of The Movie

9. There Are Things I Know And Things I Don't Know And Sometimes They Change

10.Love What You Do And Do What You Love Or Get The F--- Out.

Does this kind of behavior reflect badly on Paramount?

Does it reflect badly on Scientology?

Is it good for the Jews?

Didn't John Travolta do this very same thing back in 1977?

You tell me. (No, I really don't care.)

UPDATE: Lunch with David on the non-story: "Have You Picked a Side Yet?"

"Reviews should be objective. Keep your opinions out of your reviews!"

-- actual comments from alleged "readers," sent to Roger Ebert and just about every other critic on every planet in the solar system (except Pluto)

(NOTE: If the above quotation does not bring tears of laughter to your eyes, do not let those eyes tarry here.)

People love to quote William Goldman's famous saying about the movie industry, which is that "Nobody knows anything." Most people who quote it have absolutely no idea what it means. The phrase is tossed about as being the wisest thing ever said about showbiz, and fortunately for those who are doing the tossing, it's just vague enough to sound true under almost any circumstances. So, it is thought to be "right" more often than a stopped analog clock, which is said to tell the correct time twice a day. (The clock is not "right," of course -- it just coincides with external events that allow someone to perceive it as being correct if you check it at certain times. It's a coincidence. That's an important distinction.)

I think perhaps the most profound meaning of "Nobody knows anything" (out of all possible meanings) is not just that nobody knows what will be a hit, but that the audience does not know what it wants. They'll tell you what they want, but if they could really articulate it or quantify it, and if the studios could create some kind of quality control mechanism to manufacture it, Disney and Paramount and Warners and Fox and Sony would be as financially successful as, say, oil companies.

"All in all, it's been a rotten tomato of a summer for America's embattled film critics.... It's no secret that critics have lost influence in recent years. A recent Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that among 18- to 24-year-olds, only 3% said reviews were the most important factor in their movie-going decision making. Older audiences still look to critics for guidance, especially with the smaller, more ambitious studio specialty films. But during the summer months, with studios wooing audiences with $40 million worth of marketing propaganda, critics appear especially overwhelmed, if not irrelevant."

-- The Los Angeles Times, asserting that critics are less powerful now than they never were. (8/15/06)

God, I love that paragraph. Go ahead -- read it again. One of my favorite propaganda techniques -- used in politics, journalism, criticism, you name it -- is to present evidence (or, better yet, opinion polls cited as if they constituted evidence) refuting something that was never true -- or even widely thought to be true -- in the first place. It's a form of genius, really -- like the opinion polls asking Americans if they believed Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, presented as though it could be made true if a majority felt it was. (There's another term for this technique: Fox News.)

This propaganda trick is related to the Straw Man argument, where you attack a position somebody doesn't hold instead of the one they do, but you pretend they're saying something they don't believe instead of what they actually said. All it takes is a bad listener. In the case of this article in the LA Times last week, it's made especially compelling by the knowledge that Times management has wasted colossal amounts of money on a poll of youngpeopleoftoday, forcing good reporters like Patrick Goldstein to have to invent something to make it appear the poll's findings meant... anything.

Read that hilariously insignificant statistic from the Times/Bloomberg poll one more time (and take an extra moment to savor the deliciously insinuating phrase, "It's no secret..."): Only 3 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds cited film critics as the most important factor in deciding whether to see a movie. Conclusion: It's no secret film critics are losing influence!!! The mind boggles. What percentage of persons in this six-year age span cited film critics as, say, the third-most important influence? Fifth-most? And what did this same age group say five years ago, 10 years ago, or 27 years ago? The "3 percent" figure is so narrowly defined that it's not just meaningless, but exquisitely, absurdly. ludicrously so. Somewhere, Joseph Heller is laughing out loud. And think about this for just one second: How many 18- to 24-year-olds do you know who depend primarily upon adult authority figures (like critics), above all other influences, to make their media choices, whether it's movies, music, video games, TV, web sites, whatever? Three percent seems a bit inflated to me.

(BTW, what are the ages of the "older audiences" who "still look to film critics for guidance" -- and what percentage of them rank that guidance as the most important factor in making moviegoing decisions about those "smaller, more ambitious studio specialty films"? Man, oh man -- those pollsters ask specific questions! "What is your most important source of guidance for smaller, more ambitious studio specialty films?" But did this Times/Bloomberg poll yield only one quotable statistic? If not, why weren't others cited to put this one in perspective?)

This is the kind of story that is based on "overturning" assumptions that never were. News Flash: Bush administration officials may have underestimated when they said the invasion and occupation of Iraq would cost no more than $1 billion and was unlikely to last more than a few weeks -- or as Donald Rumsfeld said, "I doubt six months." The word, "Duh" was invented for these occasions. If you honestly did not realize how preposterously false the original premises were, then you might get fooled again into thinking the second non-story qualifies as "news." (Follow up story: According to the president, when it comes to Iraq, "failure is not an option" -- even though that is the option deliberately and consistently favored by his administration above all others 9 times out of 10.)

In about a year, expect another News Flash: Poll Reveals Young People in Teens and Twenties Notoriously Unreliable Poll Subjects.

I think I was in college before I ever became aware of, or paid the slightest bit of attention to, box office grosses. Until "Entertainment Tonight" came along in the early 1980s, you had to subscribe to Daily Variety in order to find out how much money a particular picture was taking in, and I couldn't have cared less. I was thrilled when I would go into a theater to watch a movie and there would be lots of seats. This was long before I became an exhibitor myself, and suddenly saw things from the other side. I'd never thought of movies as a lowly business before, but it didn't take long to figure out the economic repercussions: The fewer people in the theater for a particular picture, the fewer movies like it we'd be probably get the chance to see, or (later) show. Somebody's got to buy the overpriced concessions, pay the film and theater rentals, the salaries, the heat and electricity bills, etc.

I'm only sporadically interested in ticket sales or advertising campaigns -- but in the case of "Snakes on a Plane," where the movie itself was always irrelevant, I confess I'm a bit perplexed that, despite all the hype and supposedly feverish anticipation, its opening weekend numbers were so blah. Critics were mostly removed from the equation (although some went to see the movie at late-night shows Thursday night, which meant reviews landed in Friday and Saturday papers). But if you level the track and don't count those extra grosses from Thursday night, "Snakes on a Plane" barely squeaked by three-week-old "Ricky Bobby" for the three-day weekend.

I was at a party with a whole buncha film critics Saturday, and everybody who had seen "Snakes on a Plane" had liked it. They all agreed it was a serviceable B-movie and a pretty fun time -- indeed, a pre-fab "Rocky Horror"-like audience-participation experience from the very first showings. So, my question to you, Scanners readers, is: What happened? Did the hype turn people off -- or was it just overexaggerated among a limited Internet-savvy crowd, while mainstream audiences just weren't all that interested? Or could there have been more people like me out there than anticipated -- people who felt it wasn't so much that we didn't want to see a movie called "Snakes on a Plane," we just felt -- long before it actually arrived -- like we already had? I'd like to get your theories on it. If you saw the movie, what did you think? What do you make of the box-office and audience response? Or would you rather just forget about the whole thing?

Chuck Klosterman has a story in Esquire magazine called "The 'Snakes on a Plane' Problem: The tragedy of the best-titled movie in the history of film." The truth is, I don't think "SOAP" is such a great title, just a generic one. I can think of a lot of others I think are funnier or more effective or more creative -- from "Eraserhead" to "Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens" to "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" to "Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby" and the upcoming "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan."

But Klosterman has some smart things to say about "SOAP" and what it means at this point, when it is not yet a movie (and a product that won't be screened in advance -- make of that what you will) but is really only a marketing phenomenon. He writes:

"Snakes on a Plane" is like the Wikipedia version of a movie. A year ago, New Line Cinema planned to change the title to the ultraforgettable "Pacific Air Flight 121," but everyone who cared (including its star, Samuel L. Jackson) freaked out. That reaction was understandable; the one thing everyone seems to agree upon is that "Snakes on a Plane" is a funnier, more expository, paradoxically intriguing moniker.

A while ago, I wrote that the problem I had with "SOAP" was that I had heard so much about it (and, really, what more is there to say after those four words?) that I felt like I'd already seen it. Klosterman envisions the movie's -- or, at least, the title's -- appeal as "irony in reverse" -- a picture designed to be cheesy so that the audience can feel superior to it:

If a film never takes itself seriously and originates as satire, everything is different; its badness means something else entirely. "SOAP" doesn't fit into either category: It doesn't take itself seriously, but it's not a satire. It will probably be unentertaining in a completely conventional way. Which, apparently, is what people want. They want to see "Snakes on a Plane" in order to tell their friends that it's ridiculous, even though a) that's the only thing everyone seems to know about this movie, and b) that's been the driving force behind its marketing campaign. It's not a bad movie that's accidentally good, and it's not a good movie that's intentionally bad; it's a disposable movie that people can pretend to like ironically, even though a) it's not ironic and b) they probably won't like it at all. The only purpose of "Snakes on a Plane" is to make its audience feel smarter than what it's seeing. Which adds up, since that's part of the reason people like reading the Internet.

I wish this movie were still called "Pacific Air Flight 121." Really. That would be so much worse, but so much better.

What a blessed relief it will be on Friday, when there's actually a movie to respond to. Not that I intend to see it. As far as I'm concerned, it may as well be called "Kitties on a Plane." I just don't think snakes are inherently scary or creepy -- not like, say, "Patchouli on a Plane," the thought of which makes me sneeze and feel nauseous -- although I suppose poisonous ones or constrictors are to be avoided in the overhead bin or the seat pocket in front of you, especially when the "Fasten Seat Belt" sign is illuminated. But I feel like someone should pay me if I have to hear Samuel L. Jackson say that m-----f----n' line again.

Believe it or not, there are still a few good Mel Gibson jokes left to tell. This one's from Andy Borowitz. EXCERPT:

"Listen, I'm all for blaming things on the Jews, but this guy went too far," said Mr. bin Laden.

The al-Qaeda leader said that the next time Mr. Gibson feels the urge to spew hateful rhetoric, "count to ten first."

"There's a time and a place for everything," Mr. bin Laden said. "And the time to launch into an anti-Semitic tirade is when you're speaking on al-Jazeera from the comfort and safety of your cave -- not when you're stopped by the cops."

Yes, by all means, count to ten first. That way you won't say anything you mean that you might have to apologize for later.

"I'm not an anti-Semite. I just talk like one when I'm drunk!"

UPDATE (8/2/06): Maureen Dowd offers a brief overview of The Bigotry of the Mel (sober, and in his movies) in today's New York Times. Mostly he's on record (in interviews and on film) as anti-gay and anti-Jew, with perhaps an especially low tolerance for gays of the Hebrew persuasion and Jews of the homosexual persuasion. Dowd turns over the last half of her column to Leon Wieseltier, a major Jew and by implication one of the Hebrew-American leaders Mel has asked to help him through anti-Semitic rehab. Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, who says Mel has been "a very bad goy.":

“It is really rich to behold Gibson asking Jews to behave like Christians. Has he forgotten how bellicose and wrathful and unforgiving we are? Why would a people who start all the wars make a peace? Perhaps he’s feeling a little like Jesus, hoping that the Jews don’t do their worst and preparing himself for more evidence of their disappointing behavior. [...]

“Moreover, it is the elders’ considered view that whereas alcoholism may require a process of recovery, anti-Semitism is a more intractable and less chic failing. This was not a moment of insanity, even if Gibson is insane. His hatred of Jews was plain in his movie and in his twisted defense of it, which was made when he was sober under the influence of his primitive world view. Perhaps he thinks that all he needs to do is spend a few months in AA — Anti-Semites Anonymous — and find some celebrity sponsor and run for absolution to Larry Zeiger, I mean Larry King, where he can say with perfect sincerity that the Holocaust was a terrible thing and gut yontif.

“We understand that Gibson cannot do it alone. But why do we have to do it with him? We would find it hard to be in a room with him unless, of course, he wants to count some money with us. Why doesn’t he turn to the vast number of his Christian brothers and sisters who show no trace of anything resembling his disgusting prejudice?

“Mad Max is making Max mad, and Murray, and Irving, and Mort, and Marty, and Abe. But we’re not completely heartless. If he wants to do Shylock at dinner theater, fine. If he agrees to fill his swimming pool with Kabbalah water, fine.�?

Truth is, I didn't interpret "The Passion of the Christ" as anti-Semitic, although I see how others could. But as a director, Gibson has taken stories based on Jesus and William Wallace, and stripped them down into nothing more than bloody tales of martyrdom and revenge. (Even his performance in Franco Zeffirelli's film of "Hamlet" was less a man tortured by doubt than an avenging angel.) The primary emotion all these films express -- and, especially, evoke -- is outrage, hatred. And that speaks just as loudly as anything he himself has said off-screen.

Drunk people say the darndest things. Like Mel Gibson, who was arrested on DUI charges Friday (blood alcohol level: 0.12; legal limit: 0.08). He seized the occasion, around three in the morning, to offer the arresting officers his assessment of the role of Jewry in world affairs. And, really, who wouldn't, under the circumstances? Field sobriety tests present splendid opportunities to expound on a range of subjects, especially if you can't focus on any one of them for too terribly long. You've kind of got a captive audience (or vice-versa), and if the cops will listen and record what you say, what a handy way to organize your religious and political opinions before they put you in a detox cell! According to the incident report obtained by AOL's TMZ.com and summarized in the New York Daily News:

The "Passion of the Christ" director repeatedly said, "My life is f----d," according to the report by Los Angeles County Deputy James Mee... [...]

"F-----g Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," Mee's report quotes him as saying.

"Are you a Jew?" Gibson asked the deputy, according to the report.

The actor also berated the deputy, threatening, "You motherf----r. I'm going to f--- you," according to Mee's report.

The actor also told the cop he "owns Malibu" and would spend all his money "to get even with me," Mee said in his report.

TMZ quoted a law enforcement source as saying Gibson noticed a female sergeant on the scene and yelled at her, "What do you think you're looking at, sugar t--s?"

Deputy Mee then wrote an eight-page report detailing of the incident, but higher-ups in the sheriff's department felt it was too "inflammatory" to release and would merely serve to incite "Jewish hatred," TMZ said.

(Note: Officer Mee's last name is not a traditional Hebraic one.) TMZ.com, which broke the story and the allegations of a police cover-up of Gibson's Jew-hating tantrum, reports that Malibu police had stopped Gibson two other times for DUIs -- three years ago and last year -- but let him slide. Not Friday, though.

Everybody and her pedicurist has been weighing in on this, but the first thing I thought of was how alcohol loosens the inhibitions that usually prevent people from saying what they really feel. Drunken free-speech probably more accurately reflects someone's true attitudes than sober, publicist-crafted press statements. Gibson has apologized, saying he has a problem with alcohol. But it sounds to me like he has a bit more of a problem with Jews. And as Albert Finney said in John Huston's film of "Under the Volcano": "There are some things you can't apologize for." A commenter over at Anne Thompson's Hollywood Reporter Risky Biz Blog sums up my own feelings about Mel's Latest Disgrace:

Wow, that booze is pretty potent stuff. Like Mel Gibson, I can say that some of my best friends are Jews. It's quite disturbing to think that I might denounce them with obscenities and blood-libel accusations if I drank too much alcohol.

Jeepers.

Yeah. Jeepers creepers.

MEL UPDATE (8/1/06): Mel Gibson issued another apology (this time to Jews -- oops, he forgot the first time), asking for forgiveness, and announcing that he will check into rehab. We assume he means the Shylock Center for Jew Abuse, but maybe not. Classic stuff from the horse's... mouth: "There is no excuse, nor should there be any tolerance, for anyone who thinks or expresses any kind of anti-Semitic remark.... [Note: It's the remark that is inexusable, whether silently thought or said aloud, not the anti-Semitism itself.] But please know from my heart that I am not an anti-Semite. I am not a bigot. Hatred of any kind goes against my faith." And yet... hatred of any kind is almost always said to go against any faith -- and yet, it's that same faith that people use to justify their hatred. Maybe Mel needs to detox on whatever virulent strain of renegade Catholicism he's infected with...

Hot Blogger and Hot Button colunist David Poland has posted his third, breezy "Lunch With David" vlog over at iKlipz and I think it's the funniest one yet. This week's topic: Secrets in Hollywood -- who tells 'em and whether they really want anybody to keep 'em. The premise is simple, kind of like an UnCabaret routine (or Johnny LaRue's Street Beef): one person, one camera, one table. David sits down and tells you whatever's on his mind about goings on in The Biz, at the box office or behind the scenes. He's a funny guy (and knows just how to play to the camera for comic effect). David describes the newly launched iKlipz as a kind of MySpace for movie people -- in particular, folks who want to distribute their films and videos on the web. So, I went ahead and joined up. (It's free.) Wanna be my friend? ;)

Owen Wilson has released a statement responding to the claim by members of Steely Dan that "You, Me and Dupree" was a rip-off of their song "Cousin Dupree.":

"I have never heard the song 'Cousin Dupree' and I don't even know who this gentleman, Mr. Steely Dan, is. I hope this helps to clear things up and I can get back to concentrating on my new movie, 'Hey Nineteen.'"

New York Magazine reports on "How Kevin Smith Reinvented Movie Marketing." By manufacturing a dust-up with a TV movie critic just before the opening of his film and getting lots of free publicity? Sure. But also, by listing 10,000 of his MySpace "friends" in his credits:

Smith’s newest addiction is MySpace: “I think it has a lot to do with growing up fat, ’cause you’re always trying to find acceptance and credibility. I’ve been on since March and I’m closing in on 50,000 friends. So I feel like, Wow, that’s kind of cool.�? The Weinstein Co. hatched a plan to promote 'Clerks II' by putting the names of the film’s first 10,000 MySpace friends in the credits. They thought the contest would go for weeks. They had the names in two hours.

Smith feels a compulsive need to win over an audience with the sheer tonnage of his verbiage; there were no short answers to my questions. Even though he’s now a 35-year-old father who lives in his pal Ben Affleck’s old house in L.A., Web surfers still have access to insanely intimate details of his life: One blog post this month touched upon his predilections for cunnilingus, anal sex, and picking his nose.

Meanwhile, The Onion lists Smith's "career highlights," including:

2004: Got honey-mustard sauce all over favorite bowling shirt, but was able to learn from the experience and grow as a director.

This may be the definitive test to see whether Smith has a sense of humor. About himself.

A couple days ago we published an Opening Shot contribution for Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" in which Allen cited an old joke to illustrate a point about his view of life:

Two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says: "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know, and such small portions."

I couldn't help but think of that when I saw the open letter Steely Dan's Donald Fagen and Walter Becker posted on their web site ("Open Letter to the Great Comic Actor, Luke Wilson"). Be sure to check out the groovy Residential Suites at Longworth stationery: "Where Value is King... And So Are You!"

Fagen and Becker address their open letter to Luke to complain about his brother Owen's movie, "You, Me and Dupree," which they say is a bad movie that they think Owen should have thanked them for, because they think the story (and title) resemble their song "Cousin Dupree," off the "Two Against Nature" album. "Cousin Dupree" is about a guy who... well, let them put it in their own words:

Well I've kicked around a lot since high school
I've worked a lot of nowhere gigs
From keyboard man in a rock'n ska band
To haulin' boss crude in the big rigs

Now I've come back home to plan my next move
From the comfort of my Aunt Faye's couch
When I see my little cousin Janine walk in
All I could say was ow ow ouch

Honey how you've grown
Like a rose
Well we used to play
When we were three
How about a kiss for your cousin Dupree

Write Fagen and Becker:

Anyway, they got your little brother on the hook for this summer stinkbomb -- I mean, check the reviews -- and he's using all his heaviest Owen C. licks to try to get this pathetic way-unfunny debacle off the ground and, in the end, no matter what he does or what happens at the box office, in the short run, he's gonna go down hard for trashing the work of some pretty heavy artists like us in the process. ... I mean, we're like totally out in the cold on this one -- no ASCAP, no soundtrack, no consultant gig (like we got from the Farrelly Bros. when they used a bunch of songs in their movie, "You, Me and Irene" or whatever). No phone call, no muffin basket, no flowes, nothing....

But, hey, luke, man -- there is one petite solid you could do for us at this time -- do you think you could persuade your bro to do the right thing and come down to our Concert at Irvine and apologize to our fans for this travesty?

OK, I can see some similarities between one Dupree and the other -- especially the ramblin' nature of the character, the sleeping on the couch, and all that.

But, frankly, I think Owen Wilson's Dupree is even more like the out-of-place "special friend," the unwelcome guest who will not leave, who is the title character of the Dan masterpiece "Gaucho":

Can't you see they're laughing at me
Get rid of him
I don't care what you do at home
Would you care to explain...

Who is the gaucho amigo
Why is he standing
In your spangled leather poncho
And your elevator shoes
Bodacious cowboys
Such as your friend
Will never be welcome here
High in the Custerdome...

No he can't sleep on the floor
What do you think I'm yelling for
I'll drop him near the freeway
Doesn't he have a home...

UPDATE: Discussion of various interpretations of "Gaucho" (any or all of which work) here. Best of all: " It's obvious that the singer is berating an acquaintance (a roommate or other such cohabitant?) for his association with some poseur, a lightweight, freeloading hipster fraud who's long overstayed his welcome. Beyond that, though, we know nothing. Who are these characters? What are the circumstances of their involvement? What is the Custerdome? In the end, of course, it doesn't matter, because we're hearing a snippet of a diatribe from one character to another, and that's all we're supposed to be hearing."

In my review of "You, Me and Dupree," (which, to meet Sun-Times deadlines I had to write immediately after seeing the movie Monday night), I mentioned several indications that the movie had undergone some drastic cutting and revisions. I wrote:

Even more perplexing are the laborious set-ups for gags that are missing their payoffs -- the most notable being an entire character (Mandy, the love of Dupree's life for a few scenes) who never actually shows her face onscreen. We keep waiting for the punchline, but there isn't one. It seems she has simply been cut out of the movie (wait for the DVD, kids!). Perhaps, at one time, she was Annie, the fifth-or sixth-billed character supposedly played by Amanda Detmer, whom I do not recall ever showing up for work.

Since writing those words, I have Googled, I have investigated, and I can't find any reports on what happened. It's unusual to see somebody with such prominent billing and so little screen time (though, undoubtedly, other examples exist). Usually, somebody who has been cut out of the movie would also be removed from the credits -- though still get paid. (That's what happened when we had to cut Harvey Keitel's priest scenes out of "It's Pat," although he was great in 'em.)

I asked Anne Thompson and she said she had no idea what had happened. I asked David Poland and he said he'd spotted Amanda Detmer (a favorite of his) in the opening wedding scenes, but didn't know why she went away. It's clear from the way "Mandy's" scenes are shot, that her face is deliberately being shielded from view. But why? I'm throwing it out there to all you knowledgable cinephiles and voracious readers out there. Anybody know what the deal is?

OK, I don't usually get into the tabloid "news" (that much) -- this is, after all, a site devoted to the in-depth appreciation of cinema in all its manifestations (while understanding the realities of the entertainment business) -- but this is just too much: Three irresistible trash stories all hitting the wires in one day! Where is Kathy Griffin when I need her?

Tom and Nicole: Never Married!

BBC: In fact, Kidman didn't need an annulment for one simple reason: in the eyes of the Catholic Church her 10-year union with Tom Cruise, a renowned Scientologist, never happened.

Rush Limbaugh Busted for Illicit Viagra Possession!

AP: Rush Limbaugh could see a deal with prosecutors in a long-running prescription fraud case collapse after authorities found a bottle of Viagra in his bag at Palm Beach International Airport. The prescription was not in his name. [Dare we ask whose it was? We always knew not enough blood was getting to his head.]

Barbara Walters Upstaged by Some Old RuPaul Impersonator!

AP: "I love Star and I was trying to do everything I possibly could — up until this morning when I was betrayed — to protect her," Walters told The Associated Press.

Critics may argue about how much talent M. Night Shyamalan has as a filmmaker. But in The Village called Hollywood (and the offices of advertising agencies hired by American Express), he's still seen as a marketable brand name. That's why some profess to be shocked, shocked that the endlessly self-promoting Shyamalan has such nasty things to say about Disney, his former studio home, in a new book, "The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale." According to The Guardian:

The all-out critique of Disney has astonished industry insiders in Hollywood, where arguments between directors and studios are commonplace but rarely aired in public. Not so for Shyamalan's industrial-sized fallout with Disney. Early drafts of the book circulating in Hollywood are leaving many stunned at how strongly the director has turned on his old studio.

Someone over at MindValley Ecommerce Labs found a pirate DVD of "Good Night, and Good Luck." in (San Francisco's?) Chinatown that promises a different take, as it were, on the 1950s television showdown between Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy. If you look closely, you'll see this isn't a porn rip-off (that would be "Good Night, and Good F***") -- it's the Oscar-nominated George Clooney movie with, um, embellished packaging. (Patricia Clarkson's role has been enhanced, too.)

I wonder: Do you suppose that somebody enticed to buy this movie with that artwork might, perhaps, be disappointed in the black-and-white historical film inside? Might this person, then, be a bit wary of buying pirated DVDs in the future? Or does the sexed-up cover make for a delightful coffee-table conversation piece?

My favorite thing is the juxtaposition of the hot wet babe with the tag line: "We will not walk in fear of one another." I am convinced that she does not walk in fear -- of McCarthy or anybody. Rather, she walks in high humidity.

(tip: Poland)

The figure responsible for last year's so-called Hollywood slump may just be be the savior of this year's summer grosses, according to some biz types. Yes, we're talking about Jesus Christ. Mel Gibson's blockbuster "The Passion of the Christ" attracted so many people who don't ordinarily go to the movies in the spring of 2004, that it made the revenues for 2005 look out of whack in comparison. But this year, JC helped inspire "The Da Vinci Code" to a miraculous opening (despite generally bad reviews -- a miserable 24% on the TomatoMeter). It's been the top grosser for five weeks overseas, where Box Office Jesus has trumped all the X-Men's superpowers combined. Next, the King of the Jews is poised to take on "Forrest Gump," making "The Da Vinci Code" the biggest Tom Hanks movie ever. Holy Fool!

(Second) Coming Soon: "Superman Returns." He's been away, but now he's back. Just like You Know Who....

Never send a business reporter to do a critic's job.

I'm sometimes amused by the naïveté of my critical and academic colleagues when it comes to the business realities of how movies are made, and why they turn out the way they do. They tend to view movies as a purely creative medium, and dismiss the influences of marketing and commerce on the "end product." But, on the other hand, whenever I read reports about "the biz," I'm equally amazed at how they approach movies as if they were factory-tooled widgets, nothing more than the products of corporate and marketing deals and decisions. The truth is, of course, that most movies are creative compromises, the results of a vast and complex set of inter-related artistic, commercial and economic judgments.

You'd never know that from Jon Fine's series of posts at his Business Week Fine On Media blog about so-called "product placement" in this season's episodes of "The Sopranos." Fine thinks the proliferating brand-name mentions are "suck-uppy" and rates them on a "one-to-ten scale of egregiousness" -- although, he reports, "'The Sopranos,' a show I like very much, does not do product placement in the fee-for-sense. Nor does HBO, although at times they've played footsie with the idea."

Fine doesn't acknowledge that there may be a number of creative reasons why real products and brand names are used on the show -- aside from the usual deals that allow nearly all movies and TV shows to keep their budgets down by gaining access to free consumer goods, from cars to soft drinks, that are used on screen. "The Sopranos" happens to be about people for whom bling means just about everything, despite all their talk about maintaining old-fashioned "family values" (you know, like omerta). It's a show about people in a strictly hierarchical social structure (organized crime, the mob, La Cosa Nostra)who pursue crass, vulgar, conspicuous consumption as a signal to others that they're advancing their station in life. Their lives are all about "product placement."

The protests against "The Da Vinci Code" are expected to reach their peak this opening weekend. And in reading some of the reactions to the movie and the book (see here), I noticed that much of the heat seems to center around whether people will mistake the book's and movie's fictions for historical realities. You'd think the general public would be smart enough to understand what a novel is, and that such books are different from scholarly works of nonfiction, even when they incorporate actual facts or events.

For example, one of my all-time favorite novels is Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" and it is about a bomber squadron based on the Mediterranean island of Pianosa during World War II, but to my knowledge the titular rule has never been part of U.S. Air Force regulations, nor did Clevinger actually pilot a plane into a cloud and not come out the other side. In part, that is because Clevinger, like Robert Langdon (the hero of "The Da Vinci Code" and Dan Brown's previous novel, "Angels and Demons"), is a fictional character. World War II and the U.S. Air Force and Pianosa, however, are real. And so is the Mediterranean.

Anyway, I was surprised to find that Wal-Mart is (still) selling "The Da Vinci Code" on its web site with this false and misleading description:

What do we talk about when we talk about Tom Cruise? What are our images of him really based upon, besides his own publicity stunts and some headlines? And just how did the top movie star in the world become so unlikeable in the public eye, an object of scorn and derision in the media, and a punch line for stand-up comics? Normally, a movie star's fall from gross -- er, grace -- wouldn't interest me much (although I am still trying to figure out how Burt Reynolds' 1970s career flamed out). I've interviewed hundreds of actors and filmmakers over the years and I've always made it a personal policy never to ask them, or speculate in print, about what they euphemistically call their "private lives," mainly because I really don't think it's any of my (or your) business. I'm interested in their work, not in what they do in their off hours.

But the fascinating thing about Cruise is how he's made a public commodity of his so-called "private life" (or his own image-manipulation version of it, presented for your entertainment). You'd think he would have learned something from the tabloid headlines generated by the sudden and mysterious split with his superstar wife Nicole Kidman, and tried to keep his personal affairs as private as he can. But no. When somebody boasts about details of his alleged off-screen love life on the most popular talk show in the world, goes on TV to say a pregnant actress (Brooke Shields) was wrong to seek medical treatment for her postpartum depression, and acts as a public spokesperson for his supposed "religion" in interviews (if you grant Scientology that status) -- even to the point of having Scientology tents set up on the set of Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" in case cast or crew wanted to take a Free Personality Inventory -- well, that's when the "personal" becomes part of the star's public branding. And Tom Cruise is a brand name, every bit as much as Apple or Starbuck's or Subway or Volkswagon.

At first I wasn't going to write anything about last weekend's "disappointing" domestic grosses for "M:I:III" (or, as Stephen Colbert pronounces it, "Miiii"), because, well, who really cares about the box-office numbers of movies like "Miiii" (or Celebs Who Act Out)? Especially when "24" gives you trickier plotting, more believable stunts, top-flight production values, first-class actors (Kiefer Sutherland, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Stephen Spinella, William Devane, Ray Wise, Jean Smart...) and characters for whom you can actually feel something besides an indefinable creepy revulsion (though some have that quality, too), week after week (and in digital surround and HDTV, no less) -- making pre-packaged, pre-fab disposable summer action products like "Miiii" seem as dinosaurish and unnecessary as they truly are. (Note to self: How do I really feel?)

But then I saw this headline above a Reuters story Thursday: "Hollywood friends rally around Tom Cruise." Yes, dear readers, Tom needs some friends just now (if only, evidently, to buy batches of opening-weekend tickets to "M:I:III" at the Scientology Celebrity-Center-adjacent ArcLight Theater in Hollywood). It was too absurd to pass up.

So (he said wearily), let's recap:

His Cruiseness's public "approval ratings" (says a USA Today opinion survey) are way down there with the likes of... George W. Bush:

Readers have sent in some choice bits of poetry and prose from the MPAA's Classification and Ratings Administration, which I consider to be the institutional poet laureate of Hollywood.

Chris Finke writes: "I work in a video store, and often read the mpaa ratings to pass the time. the two greatest ratings that i have come across are:

"'Gummo': 'Rated R for pervasive depiction of anti-social behavior of juveniles,including violence, substance abuse,sexuality and language.' (I didn't know that anit-social behavior was restricted to those over 17 years of age.)

"'The Day After Tomorrow': 'Rated PG-13 for intense situations of peril. (Straight, to the point, and most importantly, meaningless.)"

Jonathan Walker extolls a particularly atmospheric rating for the disastrous 1996 movie "Twister": "Rated PG-13 for intense depiction of very bad weather."

And Dan Maloney and Eric Mees write separately regarding the masterful blurb for 2004's "Team America: World Police": "Rated R for graphic crude and sexual humor, violent images and strong language - all involving puppets."

Wait, there's more...

You may not have noticed one of the most exciting blurbs appearing in ads for "Mission: Impossible III." It reads: "Intense sequences of frenetic violence & menace, disturbing images & some sensuality!" (OK, I added the exclamation point.)

The reason you may not have seen this is because it appears in a little box in the lower left-hand corner of some print ads, and at the end of some TV ads and trailers, in a little box next to the code "PG-13." Yes, "frenetic violence & menace," "disturbing images" and "sensuality" -- though they sound like something a critic or a marketing department might say -- are words (superlatives?) employed by the Motion Picture Association of America (or, if you prefer, the Classification and Rating Administration, or CARA, a subdivision of the MPAA) to describe the reason for their PG-13 rating. Whew! Heady stuff, no?

"Sure to be one of the best films of the year." -- Jeffrey Lyons (on "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio")

"Anthony Hopkins gives one of his finest, most endearing performances in what is sure to be one of the year's best films." -- Jeffrey Lyons (on "The World's Fastest Indian")

"Sure to be one of the most successful thrillers of the year!" -- Jeffrey Lyons (on "Mission: Impossible III")

Let us pause, in what is sure to be one of the most successful pauses of the year (after all of the year's pauses have been experienced and ranked accordingly, of course), to consider the devaluation of language. We could also consider the devolution of film criticism, but let's not limit ourselves. What can we deduce from the three quotations above?

Quick: When you think "Tom Cruise," what's the first thing that pops into your mind? Tabloid celebrity? Love-struck happy dad? Couch-jumper? Noted skeptic and scholar of the history of psychology and psychopharmacology? Censor? Superspy? Scientologist? Actor? The former Mr. Kidman? The future Mr. Holmes? Movie star?

The release of "Mission: Impossible III" on Friday is being touted by some as a referendum on Cruise's career as a celebrity with marquee value. It's Cruise's third time out as superspy Ethan Hunt (no, not that guy who used to be married to Uma Thurman -- the secret agent dude!), so the franchise may have quite a bit of steam of its own. But after the Scientology-backed clampdown on the "Trapped in the Closet" episode of "South Park" in the US and the UK (and today, by the way, happens to be Day 50 of "South Park" Held Hostage) and other bizarre off-screen behavior, Cruise's box-office status is being... questioned.

A serious breach of security has ripped through the movie industry. Somehow, some way, a critic in Florida (of course) got in to see "Benchwarmers" -- and leaked it to the press! Well, OK, so maybe that shouldn't be considered much of an intelligence leak (more like a diaper leak), but it happened to Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel, and he's going public about it. On his blog, Frankly, My Dear..., Moore says he got an invitation to a screening Monday night at a local theater, where seats were saved for the press. It seems the regional Sony publicist had forgotten to inform him that the press had been uninvited. (He should have read Scanners last week!)