wired

That $113.3 million that War of the Worlds earned over the last six days since opening last Wednesday (6.29) may sound good in the trade stories, but believe me, Paramount distribution execs are disappointed. “They’re crying about this,” a marketing veteran is telling me, because “they didn’t make the $150 million they were hoping for over the first six days.” And now they’re probably looking at only $200 million or a bit more domestically. (They’ll have $150 or $160 million by the end of next weekend, and then the fall-off will kick in more severely.) Add in video and foreign and they’re looking at a break-even finale for a feature that cost at least $135 million (Roger Friedman reported $182 million), not counting the $50 or $60 million in marketing costs. (Par co-financed Worlds with DreamWorks.) At least part of the grief and the groaning is over the Scientology-proselytizing by WoTW star Tom Cruise. Some observers believe he shaved the first-six-day gross by $40 million by doing his Scientology nutso stump speech on various interview shows (like that Today appearance with Matt Lauer) and ranting against Shields’ use of medication to ward off post-partum depression, etc. “They knew they had a problem picture on their hands,” the observer says about the Paramount team, “but they thought they could get $150 million for the opening week…but they didn’t get it because of that lunatic. I know people who are saying they won’t go to another picture of his. He’s become another Mel Gibson. Movie stars are like royalty…once they fall of the throne, they can’t it back again.”

I’m hearing “no,” “forget it,” “terrible,” etc. on Fantastic Four (20th Century Fox, 7.8), which I never wanted to see anyway, and a friend of a close relation is saying Walter Salles’ Dark Water (Disney, 7.8) doesn’t make it. (How could that be? The hand of Walter Salles has been nothing if not assured in his past films.) I’d normally wait and make my own calls in the proper time frame, but there haven’t been any Manhattan screening invites in my inbox. The downbeat Dark Water word will probably translate into a weak box-office showing, but Fantastic Four is expected to debut hugely.

That concern I expressed about Cameron Crowe possibly allowing for a Walter Parkes-styled pruning of Elizabethtown (Paramount, 10.14) is, I’m told, not a concern. The panic spasms began with Crowe telling Benjamin Wagner of MTV News that “the movie’s still a little long” and that test screeners are asking what parts can be cut out, etc. (See 7.2 Word item about the “long and important” version.) But just after that Word item ran I heard Crowe recently threw together “an experimental short cut” for his team to consider, and that after this screening it “[they] all looked at each other and said, ‘Restore it all.'” Crowe is now in the editing room fine-tuning the “long and important” cut and resultantly there “will be no ‘untitled’ version of Elizabethtown on DVD…this time it’s going into the theatres.”

“Making people laugh is the lowest form of humor.” — the late and very wise Michael O’Donoghue.

Yesterday’s Sunday New York Times piece by Jake Tapper about the continuing pattern of degradation for the National Lampoon “brand” had, of course, a familiar ring. The dumbing down of Lampoon-provided humor began 27 years ago with the success of National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) and, at the command of thick-fingered-vulgarian publisher Matty Simmons, changing the long-since-disappeared magazine’s orientation from something to be savored by witty hipsters to one that was basically about hormones and getting laid. Tapper’s article starts by mentioning one of those celebrate-the-inner-gorilla recreational events for spring-breakers on South Padre Island, Texas, called the National Lampoon Greek Games. “Greek Games are part of what the new owners of National Lampoon Inc. are calling a resuscitation of an American comedic treasure,” Tapper writes. “But veterans of the original National Lampoon and others who were greatly influenced by it are horrified by the wet T-shirt contests and worse. The new efforts may, in some sense, revive National Lampoon, but in another sense, they show how one of the most ambitious and influential experiments in comedy — which began with a group of young geniuses sending up J. R. R. Tolkien (1969’s “Bored of the Rings”) — is ending with beer-soaked soft-core porn.” I wrote more or less the same piece in August ’03 when the 25th anniversary DVD of National Lampoon’s Animal House had just been released. That John Landis film “has long been celebrated for bringing a new fuck-all mood — ’60s juvenilia mixed with a kind of loutish, upfront randy-ness– to the Hollywood formula comedy, and for singlehandedly spawning the dim-bulb, horny-guy, getting-laid genre,” I wrote. “National Lampoon humor had once signified a very bright, wittily subversive kind of humor. After the movie it meant Bluto and beaver shots and a kind of stiff-banana attitude. I’m not saying the National Lampoon magazine was anything like Collier’s or The Atlantic. One of my all-time favorite pieces of fiction in that magazine was Chris Miller’s ‘First Blow Job.’ But it WAS Collier’s, in a way, compared to what the magazine became in the post-Animal House late ’70s, after Simmons decided to emphasize the oafish stuff that made the film so popular.” Here’s an excellent website about those early-to-mid ’70s National Lampoon issues called mark’sverylarge…extremely thorough, all the covers, etc.

All day yesterday I was chipping away at a lead piece about Jacques Audiard’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped but it never quie got there. One of the hang-ups was trying to explain in plain terms the half-feral, curiously charismatic quality that Romain Duris brings to his lead role. I guess I’ll post next Wednesday (7.6), but in the meantime know that this reimagining of James Toback’s Fingers is truly one of the year’s best. (Along with Hustle & Flow, Cinderella Man, Grizzly Man, Mad Hot Ballroom Crash, Cronicas, The Beautiful Country and …I’m a little surprised I’m including this…Last Days.) In her 7.1 review,
New York Times critic Manohla Dargis called it a film with “beautiful images, strong emotions and the joy found watching a movie aimed straight at the heart and head. Summertime is meant to be the season of the adult moviegoer’s discontent, one reason The Beat That My Heart Skipped is more than just a well-timed gift — it’s essential viewing.” While you’re reading her piece click and listen to “Monkey 23” by The Kills (off their Keep on Your Mean Side album)….which is heard twice during Audiard’s film. It’s purchasable for 10 cents at www.allofmp3.com, or you can just buy the CD, which I highly recommend by the way.

In an interview with MTV News’ Benjamin Wagner, Elzabethtown director-writer Cameron Crowe says “the movie’s still a little long.” Wagner goes “no!” and Crowe says, “The guy who runs the focus group asks, ‘What would you cut out?’ And the group immediately starts arguing. One person says, ‘Well you can cut this’ and someone else says, ‘Are you crazy? You can’t cut that!’ Then this girl says, ‘Well, you know, it’s really hard to know where to cut ’cause it’s long and important.’ So we’ve been joking about that. We called the cut ‘long and important.’ But it can’t be that long, or that important. We’re gonna cut it down.” Oh, no! When I read this, I quickly wrote Crowe and said, “Please…puhleeeze don’t honor the legacy of Walter Parkes in any way, shape or form with the editing of this film. I want to see…no, thousands of us want to see the long and important version of Elizabethtown, and not the Brad Grey or Robbie Friedman version. C’mon, man.”

Research-screening numbers for The Wedding Crashers (New Line, 7.15) have always been fairly high but yesterday’s (6.30) tracking report says that awareness levels are just okay…not any better than they were for Monster-in-Law two weeks out. Since it’s playing well, the obvious solution would be to sneak it next weekend.

Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Warner Bros., 7.15) is tracking very big. The trailer makes it groaningly clear this is one of those heavily painted, what-you-see-is-what-you-get films…which American audiences have alway tended to wet themselves over. I guess I’m different because it definitely gave me pause. Is Burton over? Is it fair to ask if he has another Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands or Beetlejice in him? I wonder.

Jett says he’s sick to death of superhero team-spirit movies and that Tim Story’s Fantastic Four flick (20th Century Fox, 7.8) is therefore going to suck it next weekend. The tracking says he’s wrong — it’ll end up somewhere in the mid $30 million range….maybe higher. Jett’s age group isn’t the target audience anyway; this is more of a family-trade film for the not-very-hip.

Okay, all right…the Butterscotch Stallion, the Butterscotch Stallion, the Butterscotch Stallion…the whirlwind holy-hell Butterscotch Stallion! It’s like one of those songs
that get into your head and you can’t flush out to save your life. I paid no attention to the original “Page Six” item when it ran a week ago last Tuesday (6.21) but now it’s stuck in my head and it won’t go away. And here comes The Wedding Crashers (New Line, 7.15) to keep it all going.

Those Tom O’Neil calls about the lead Oscar ponies are way early, obviously, but they sound reasonable. It’s cool that O’Neil shares my excitement about George Clooney’s Goodnight, and Good Luck (Warner Bros., October) as something that might warrant excitement. It may sound presumptuous to speculate that David Straitharn’s portrayal of Edward R. Murrow during his ethical showdown against Sen. Joseph McCarthy might (who knows?) punch through on its own terms…but when has Straitharn ever dropped the ball? I’ve only one concern: Murrow’s mystique was very dependent upon the sound of that soothingly authoritative voice of his and I’m wondering if Straitharn can coax his own voice into delivering that special timbre. O’Neil’s prediction about Goodight is, of course, based on absolutely nothing except the fact that the Gold Derby homies want very much to admire and promote the shit out of it if it’s any good. If this happens, they and others may be pushing it for a Best Picture nomination along with Steven Spielberg’s 1972 revenge-for-the-Munich-massacre drama (which I wrote about in early March), Sam Mendes Jarhead, Rob Marshall’s Memories of a Geisha (this website does not approve of geisha films) and Tommy Lee Jones’ The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (a critics’ film but not for the Academy, I fear).