Day: September 23, 2020

Common Cause

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The profitable Variety and the money-losing The Hollywood Reporter are now (or are soon to become) sister publications run by the same outfit.

Variety and Deadline owner Jay Penske (PMC or Penske Media Corp.) has inked a deal with MRC, a media and production company founded by Modi Wiczyk and Asif Satchu, to operate The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and Vibe under a new shingle called PMRC.

Variety excerpt: “PMC will lead daily operations of an expanded entertainment and music brand portfolio under the PMRC banner that will bring two Hollywood trade institutions under the same roof for the first time. Billboard, Vibe and the Reporter will join PMC’s Variety, Rolling Stone and Music Business Worldwide.

“The second joint venture calls for MRC to use its content production assets — which include Dick Clark Productions — to develop new content and business opportunities drawn from stories and other intellectual property culled from across PMRC brands.”

I asked some folks for a little speculation. “What might actually happen with the merger?”, I wrote. “What do your nerve endings tell you? Whenever companies or publications merge there are always people who get cut loose. Always. And we all know The Hollywood Reporter has been hemorrhaging money for a long time.”

Informed guy #1: “Variety is in excellent financial shape, and THR, as you said, has been hemmhoraging money for a long time. So I would expect that there’ll be changes there. But I think Penske wants to save THR, not kill it. And this, in the long run, is its best chance of being saved.”

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Malignancy

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Apparently another “bit”, the partial idea being to trigger and enrage. But not altogether because he’s said more than once that “we’ll have to see.” In other words he’s serious. Anyone who says he’s just playing people like me haven’t been paying attention. Bill Maher has been talking about “what if Trump won’t leave?” for three years or so. And here we are.

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Obligation of a Trailer

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Trailers have to sell the basic sizzle to the lowest common denominator. Naturally. Millions have to be briefed on what the Chicago 7 trial was all all about — who was who, what the Nixon administration was after, what the political currents were in ’68 and ’69. All to say that Aaron Sorkin’s film (limited theatrical on 9.25, Netflix release on 10.16) is much better than what this trailer indicates. Aces with room to spare. I knew this less than five minutes in.

I wish, by the way, that I could find a clip of that Bobby Seale courtroom bit in Woody Allen‘s Bananas (’71). Allen’s Fielding Mellish is prosecuted for treason or grossly un-American behavior, and, like Seale, is soon bound and gagged by the presiding judge (the resemblance to Judge Julius Hoffman being unmistakable), etc.

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How Long Can Theatres Hold On?

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When Tenet stalled domestically, distributors large and small gulped. The writing on the wall was there for all to read, and many are deciding to cut bait for the time being. Certainly on Disney’s part. Black Widow, West Side Story, Deep Water…all bumped into ‘21. Who knows what major titles will open this year? I’m feeling very sorry for exhibitors — they must be in shock right now. What a horrendously unsettling era we’re all living through, and largely because of how Trump handled, or rather didn’t handle, the pandemic. Along with his lunatic followers and those with attitudes like Van Morrison‘s, plus the help of under-30 party animals. Three months ago we were all expecting that some kind of limited theatrical situation would be opening up by…October or early November? Certainly by the holidays. This is such a tough situation. It’s brutal.

Good News

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Default fundamentals apply when a director assesses another director’s work. Political, fraternal, instinctual. If a deep-down reaction is, say, one of genuine if slightly muted admiration for the craft, theme and/or performances (or for all three), the director will always brush aside the “slightly muted” and amplify the love. Always accentuate the alpha — there could never be a reason not to. So we’re naturally obliged to regard all such testimonials with a grain of salt. That said, Aaron Sorkin‘s assessment of David Fincher‘s Mank is encouraging as hell.

Echoes of the Present

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What’s the big gripe against BLM wokester shitheads in Portland, Seattle, Chicago, D.C. and elsewhere? That the occasional looting, taunting, window-breaking and trashing of small businesses over the last three or four months have persuaded chubby, gray-haired hinterland types to think about voting for Trump.

The exact same complaint was being heard in the late ’60s, which was that the unruly appearance and behavior anti-establishment hippies and yippies were prompting Middle Americans to vote for Nixon and “lawnorder.”

There’s a discussion along these lines in Aaron Sorkin‘s The Trial of the Chicago 7. On one side are the rambunctious, frizzy-haired Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, and on another the pragmatic, moderate-minded activist Tom Hayden. Their attorney William Kuntsler is thinking about putting one of them on the witness stand, and they’re discussing who this might be.

Hayden: Maybe he thinks I won’t get the crowd worked up at all. Maybe he thinks there are jurors who rely on the safety of the police, and are put off when someone calls them pigs. Or maybe he wants a witness who dresses like a grown man.

Rubin: The cops in this city in the summer of ’60 were pigs.

Hayden: I wonder how many of them had kids in Vietnam.

Rubin to Hoffman, pointing at Hayden: “He‘s gonna take the stand, not you? And we’re okay with that? (beat) Abbie?

Hoffman (to Hayden): What did you mean, the last thing I want is to end the war?

Hayden: What?

Hoffman: Centuries ago when the trial started, you said, why did I come to Chicago? And I said, ‘To end the war.’ And then you turned to everyone and you said, ‘The last thing he wants is to end the war.’ What did you mean by that?

Hayden: That you’re making the most of your close-up.

Hoffman: Yeah?

Hayden: No more war, no more Abbie Hoffman.

Hoffman: What’s your problem with me?

Hayden: I wish people would stop asking me that.

Hoffman: Answer it. One time.

Hayden: All right. My problem is that for the next 50 years, when people think of progressive politics they’re gonna think of you. They’re gonna think of you and your idiot followers. Passing out daisies to soldiers and trying to levitate the Pentagon. So they’re not gonna think of equality or justice. They’re not gonna think of education or poverty or progress. They’re gonna think of a bunch of lost, stoned, disrespectful, foul-mouthed losers. And so we’ll lose elections.

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