"Boffo" doc
If there's one central message conveyed in Boffo, a slick, agreeable and insightful doc about success, failure and mainstream filmmaking now playing on HBO, it's contained in the answer to this question:
What's the one thing that seems to lead to the making of a hit -- more than a good script, a perfect cast, the right director, etc.? Or rather, what's the one voice that a producer or a studio chief needs to listen to above all the others? The answer is, "The one from the gut."
As producer Richard Zanuck says halfway through Boffo, "Your head can talk you out of a lot of things, but your gut always tells the truth."
Here's the first three or four minutes of Boffo. The speakers are (in precisely this order) Danny DeVito, Peter Guber, Peter Bogdanovich, Jodie Foster, producer Brian Grazer, 20th Century Fox chief Tom Rothman, Sydney Pollack, Morgan Freeman, Zanuck and fellow Jaws producer David Brown, and finally George Clooney .
Boffo was directed by Bill Couterie and produced by Variety editor Peter Bart, and is being billed as a celebration of Variety's 100th anniversary, but aside from several Variety headlines being shown, the promotional element doesn't feel all that persistent.
Boffo is very smooth, engaging, and well-produced. However, I have two or three beefs:
(1) Boffo seems more interested in being chummy with its celebrity talking heads and paying tribute to their past successes and being supportive of the industry's potential for making new successes, and less interested in exploring the whys and wherefores of failure. (There's a fascinating moment when Morgan Freeman is asked what went wrong with The Bonfire of the Vanities, and Freeman barely answers. His body language and facial expressions, however, speak volumes.)
(2) While it only deals with the monumental failures ( Howard the Duck, et, al.), Boffo doesn't even mention Last Action Hero...surely one of the most grotesque wipeouts of the last 15 or 20 years. It's not even a blip on the screen.
(3) Boffo doesn't deal at all with questions about why and how certain films have failed. It doesn't get into the word-of-mouth mystique and how various producers and studios have responded to it, or into research screenings and whether or not that's good or bad or a mixed bag, and it doesn't mention how bad-buzz spreading through the media has contributed, fairly or unfairly, to the failure of this and that film, and, in line with this avoidance, doesn't mention how bad buzz on this and that film moves much faster these days via the internet and text-messaging among the under-20-somethings.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on July 5, 2006 at 10:10 AM
comment #1
Patrick says ...
Jeff,
"Last Action Hero" may be have been a commercial fiasco, but it has become a cult film since. It was just way ahead of its time! Nobody expected Arnold to poke fun at the very genre that had made him a superstar !!! The movie was too postmodern for 1994...It's one of Arnold smartest films, and best performances.
Posted by Patrick at July 5, 2006 11:49 AM
comment #2
mihir says ...
No.
Posted by mihir at July 5, 2006 11:55 AM
comment #3
fest attendee says ...
during the LAFF post-screening q&a with the director, he more or less said that while he hoped to get more on the failures, people are just more willing to talk about the successes - shocking, i know (clooney is the one exception, who almost seems to enjoy talk about his sinking of the batman franchise). the closest the others get is talking about movies that COULD'VE bombed (like titanic) but didn't. and since the movie is 99% talking heads, the director made it sound like it was the best that they could do with what they had - and would probably agree with you. as do i.
Posted by fest attendee at July 5, 2006 11:55 AM
comment #4
LAH says ...
Hey Patrick, please tell me you're being sarcastic. "Last Action Hero" was not 'too postmodern' and it is most certainly not a cult film. Just because it still runs on cable from time to time doesn't make it a cult hit. It isn't funny, smart or remotely endearing. It was a hapless, witless misfire of a movie then and it still is today. And anyone who tries to paint a pleasant picture of that wretched fiasco might as well try to bring back the dead for their next trick.
Posted by LAH at July 5, 2006 12:31 PM
comment #5
Tom Brazelton says ...
I happened to catch Boffo this weekend on HBO and you're right on the money about Morgan Freeman's body language. Just the way he stared down the interviewer gave me chills. It was positively grave.
I don't know if it's the film fault that there aren't as many revelations about failure as success. If Hollywood is about anything, it's about maintaining the illusion up front and forging relationships behind-the-scenes.
I doubt you're going to get studio executives saying things fail for "X" reasons during a period where theater attendance is down. They need to promote the most positive portrayal of the industry as they can.
Alternatively, actors and directors aren't going to badmouth their contemporaries on record because of the relationships they need to maintain. The movie was generally talking to A-listers and I'm sure none of them got where they are by burning bridges.
I can understand why you didn't think the bio probed deeper, but I think the grit you may be after is stuff best left to less mainstream productions.
Posted by Tom Brazelton at July 5, 2006 12:33 PM
comment #6
Greg Wyshynski says ...
RE: Last Action Hero on TV.
That flop sticks with me for two reasons.
It's the only film I've ever paid to see at which I stayed until a child actor's name appeared in the credits just to boo him.
It is, without a doubt, the most painful pan-and-scan job of any action film I've ever seen.
Posted by Greg Wyshynski at July 5, 2006 1:22 PM
comment #7
Anonymous says ...
I saw the doc the other day
I must have heard them say "nobody knows" about a thousand times. And thats about as deep as the doc went.
The whole thing was pretty sucky.
The best part was Richard Dryfuss on the set of poseidon with blood dripping down his face....
Now that must have been an omen.
Posted by Anonymous at July 5, 2006 2:03 PM
comment #8
Larry says ...
The irony is was when they cast Morgan Freeman as the judge in Bonfire Of The Vanities, that was when people knew the project was going to fail. In the novel, the judge is an old Jew who works in the Bronx and sticks by the law, but is overthrown when he won't kowtow to racial politics. The book is about everyone in New York coniving against everyone else, exploiting a criminal defendant for their own purposes. Putting Freeman in that role signaled to everyone they wanted to play it safe, which won't work with Bonfire.
Posted by Larry at July 5, 2006 2:13 PM
comment #9
Anonymous says ...
This "trust your gut" nonsense sounds mysteriously like something George W. Bush might say (ie. an explanation for decisions made out of ignorance). Everyone knows studio execs do more harm than good and it's precisely because they put so much faith in their uneducated guts.
Posted by Anonymous at July 5, 2006 3:29 PM
comment #10
nola says ...
I disagree. Not enough execs listen to their guts. They try to use formulas to predict what will be a hit. As we all know it's a crap shoot.
Part of the problem could be most studio execs today are MBA drones who don't know movies, so they don't have a "movie gut" to listen to.
Posted by nola at July 5, 2006 3:40 PM
comment #11
Reedyb says ...
A couple of comments.
Last Action Hero: unwatchable. I tried again last week.
Morgan Freeman in Bonfires: If you remember, he was cast to replace Alan Arkin who was originally cast. It may have been because Alan Arkin was the only good casting choice and would have stood out against Hanks and Willis.
Boffo: Is a good clip show, but nothing really more. There are no stories about any of the movies and if you didn't know the stories (as I'm sure everyone who reads Jeffrey does), then it made no sense. I spent the entire time telling my daughter the back stories that weren't presented. One or two knew things would have been nice. Context. That's what makes a documentary shine.
Posted by Reedyb at July 5, 2006 4:40 PM
comment #12
Anonymous says ...
seeing that we're talking execs, their guts and business decisions, let me use the wonders of cut-and-paste....
DRIVING MISS DAISY is one of my favorite Hollywood business stories:
A moderate success on Broadway
A Pulitzer Prize winner
A Well Respected cast with name recognition
Said cast willing to work for scale
A $7.5M budget
And no one wanted to make it.
According to an interview Zanuck did at the time for the NY Times, if memory serves, he was told basically there just wasn't enough profit potential.
To me it was a no-brainer: it was no-lose project. You knew it would recoup it's costs and make some money. It was clearly positioned to be Oscar-bait. Why not just go ahead, make it and take the chance on doing even better?
Because even when it comes to matters of business, these MBA trend watcher execs who think they know this industry's fiscal realities don't know dick.
DAISY did $106M domestically and $145M Worldwide gross. Factor in video and you can see that it was one of Warner Bros. top earners that year.
And no one wanted to make it.
To paraphrase John Cusack in HIGH FIDELITY: I think their guts have shit for brains.
Posted by Anonymous at July 5, 2006 7:12 PM
comment #13
Steve C. says ...
My bad - forgot to sign my DIASY post
Posted by Steve C. at July 5, 2006 7:19 PM
comment #14
Ron says ...
There is ONE brilliantline of dialogue in Last Action Hero which almost makes the entire film worth watching....
Joan Plowright's intro to Lawrence Olivier in the kid's classroom. Classic.
Watch it.
Posted by Ron at July 5, 2006 9:36 PM
comment #15
Dixon Steele says ...
What you have to keep in mind is that studio films are never about "gut reactions".
There isn't ONE film today made in the studio system that isn't vetted by various departments: theatrical, video, foreign, TV sales. Everyone weighs in, keeping in mind the budget, cast, script, etc.
THE 40 YEAR-OLD VIRGIN (Jeff's fave) got pushed through when the head of Universal video said "I can sell that TITLE". That sealed the deal.
The days of a mogul saying "I don't care, let's do it" are over. Movies cost too much to make and market. The average cost of production AND marketing is 80 MILLION per picture.
Posted by Dixon Steele at July 6, 2006 11:47 AM
comment #16
Harvey says ...
BOFFO was verrrry lightweight and seemed totally random, more random than even TCM's recent "Edge of Outside" which is completely all over the place but at least has Ed Burns, in green shoes, comparing himself to Cassavettes. Made me laugh more than nitrous oxide.
Posted by Harvey at July 6, 2006 12:04 PM