Focus Features asked for the usual exit-polling to be done regarding last weekend’s opening of Phillip Noyce‘s Catch a Fire. Viewers exiting L.A.’s AMC Palisades Center and Pacific Sherman Oaks Galleria, Baltimore’s Muvico Egyptian 24, Houston’s AMC Studio 30, Seattle’s AMC Pacific Place and Kansas City’s AMC Studio 30 were polled and the usual ironies prevailed.
Everyone who saw it liked it quite a lot, but not enough people saw it overall. So who or what do we blame? The material, obviously — nobody wanted to see an ’80s apartheid movie. I half-felt that way when I went to see it the first time, but I came away enthused. Everyone’s been having the same reaction, it seems. You just have to see it.
Catch a Fire “died” last weekend — a gross of $2,023,397 for the three-day weekend on 1,306 screens, for a per screen average of $1550 — and yet (a) the film drew a well-above-average response with rating/recommend scores spread somewhat evenly across all four quadrants, (b) 56% of the audience described the film as “better than expected”, (c) the performances were rated “excellent” by 62% of the audience and “very good” by an additional 30%, (d) the film “played better to non-Caucasians (who made up 60% of the audience) vs. Caucasians although scores among the latter were still above average, and (e) the film played above-average in all six markets.
In terms of demographics, the audience was ethnically mixed and split fairly evenly between male/female and over/under 35. Specifically: 52% were 35-plus, 53% were female, 44% were African American (highest in Baltimore at 69%), 40% were Caucasian (the whitest audience being in Kansas City at 65%), 7% were Hispanic, 5% were Asian, and 53% had college degrees. What’s with the fucking Hispanics and Asians?
The primary sources of the audience’s information were TV spots (38%…overweight guys channel-surfing while sitting in Lazy Boys), the trailer (22%), word-of-mouth (15%), reviews (14%), newspaper/magazine ads (7%), radio spots (5%), and the internet (3%). This shows you how hip and plugged the over-35s are with the internet….not!

“Sacha Baron Cohen is one of the few British Jews to venture successfully into the comedy of shock,” writes New Yorker critic Anthony Lane in one of the oddest Borat reviews I’ve read so far. “[The] defense of Borat as an unwitting scourge of the reactionary — unearthing Midwestern beliefs no less parochial than those he left behind in Kazakhstan — is sound as far as it goes. But the movie goes further. It is equipped, like an F-15 Eagle, to engage multiple targets at once.”
And here’s where the curious umbrage kicks in. I can’t quite figure where Lane is really coming from deep down, but he isn’t very pleased with what Cohen’s up to, that’s for sure.
“If you can’t bear to hear Alan Keyes — whom Borat interviews, and who, like most of the participants, has no idea what he is dealing with — described as a ‘genuine chocolate-face,’ then for pity’s sake stay home. As for the scene in which Borat smooches a blond woman before introducing her as his sister, the ‘number-four prostitute in all of Kazakhstan,’ it is, like most of the film’s lavatorial gags, both daring you to gawk and forcing you to look away.
“What game is Baron Cohen playing, exactly, when he shows mock footage of an annual Kazakh ceremony known as ‘the Running of the Jew,’ in which children kick a giant egg to bits, to stop ‘the Jew chick’ from being hatched?”

Patrick Goldstein‘s “Big Picture” column is about the non- battle in today’s media culture between the pornography of self-exposure vs. modesty and reticence, and how two of the fall’s best films — Flags of Our Fathers and The Queen — “honor” the latter.
Really? I didn’t get the idea that Queen director Stephen Frears was “honoring” Queen Elizabeth II at all. The film doesn’t appprove or disapprove of her insulated cluelessness in the wake of the August 1997 death of Diana, Princess of Wales — it’s saying that the old-school sensibilities of Elizabeth Windsor and those of her generation no longer permeate the culture, and this was an event that made this clear. The Queen is saying “she doesn’t get it” over and over — in what way is that an honoring?
And while we sympathize with the glum-faced soldiers who went on that war-bound tour in Flags of Our Fathers, the bottom line reality is that they’re….kinda boring! We have to climb up that paper mache thing?…gee, I don’t think this is right…we should be back on the battlefield with our buddies…thank you, sir, this sounds like a good opportunity…strawberry syrup, please… yes sir…buy war bonds!…tell them I’ve gone fishing, son. They’re all good fellows, but they have no spunk in them…they’re stiffs.
Then I got to the end of Goldstein’s piece and realized what was going on.
Goldstein writes, “When I ask Eastwood where he keeps his Oscars — the showbiz equivalent of Bradley’s wartime medal — he points to a corner of the room. ‘There’s a couple behind my desk over there. They’re just sitting where they were put after the event.’ He shrugs, already a little uncomfortable talking about his achievements. ‘I appreciate the honor, but the question is — how far do you want to carry it?’
Eastwood, straight-arrow that he is, is telling Goldstein what’s on his mind. He’s also saying however much money Flags makes, he’s at peace with what it is, and proud of it. And, clever dude that he also is, he’s subtly telegraphing that he’s not that concerned if Flags of Our Fathers will collect a bunch of Oscar noms or not (although it’s a moderately safe bet it’ll get one for Best Picture…I think).
By saying he’s into the “thing” of it, rather than the things that may come out of it (money, awards), Clint is media-positioning himself and his film as being imper- vious or indifferent to failure, or the perception of same.

The usual simplistic knee-jerk responses have flooded in since last night’s summary and posting of a link to Michael Fleming ‘s piece about Steven Soderbergh‘s plan to shoot back-to-back Che Guevara films as of May ’07. I ran a response in “comments” this morning, but just so everyone sees it…

I gave this a think-through last night and came to the rudimentrary conclusion that The Argentine and Guerilla combined are are going to resemble parts I and II of Lawrence of Arabia — the promise, the dream and the mixed glory in the first section, and the bitterness, madness and despair that manifests in the second. Presumably there will be much more to these two films than what I’ve just summarized, but it took me just under 15 seconds to figure out the basic strategy — it’s fairly obvious — when I read Fleming’s story last night.
When the Soderbergh-del Toro-Guevara flick was just a single-film project (i.e., for the last several years), it was just Guerrilla — about how Guevara’s revolutionary fervor led him to quit his Cuban posts and embark upon a failed attempt to spark a revolution in Bolivia. It’s a story about failure, isolation…listening more and more to the sounds of your own rhetorical spinnings to the exclusion of real-world reality to the extent that it invites pathetic self-destruction.
As Christopher Hitchens once wrote, “Che’s iconic status was assured because he failed. His story was one of defeat and isolation, and that’s why it is so seductive. Had he lived, the myth of Che would have long since died.”
Because it’s largely about Che’s and Fidel Castro’s glory period (i.e., fighting and winning the Cuban revolution, which everyone marvelled at the world over…Batista’s allegiance was strictly with the moneyed elements who provided for him…he cared not for the poor), The Argentine will be about the hard climb up the mountain and then the reaching of the summit and throwing one’s hat in the air and dancing beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free.
So The Argentine is the upper and Guerilla is the downer. Up the mountain, down the mountain. I doubt if Soderbergh, del Toro and Buchman will make the two films as black-and-white simplistic as this, but this is clearly the basic scheme.
Even the folks in charge of the withered Cuban propaganda ministry would have trouble framing Guevara’s Bolivian episode in a positive light. Give Soderbergh, del Toro and Buchman a break and assume, as any reasonable person would, that they’re certainly not going to attempt to glorify Guevara in part 2…no way. These are intelligent artists making this film. Show a little respect.
They’re primarily attracted to Guevara’s life for the arc that it represents (everyone of any spirit strives for something fine and shining in this world and some achieve it, and then the dream fades and the muddled, sometimes bitter reality kicks in), for the highs and the lows, to the Lawrence of Arabia angle. Because this is the story that will captivate audiences 100 or 500 years from now.

Variety‘s Michael Fleming is reporting that Steven Soderbergh and Benicio del Toro are finally, finally about to begin shooting their long-delayed Che Guevara biopic, for Chrissake. Both of them. And both, for the most part, to be shot in Spanish…hooray for that! (For a while there I thought the linguistic tradition of Richard Fleischer, Jack Palance and Che would make a comeback.)

Soderbergh will shoot the two films — The Argentine and Guerrilla — in Mexico and various South American locations, including Bolivia. Del Toro will play Guevara; Javier Bardem, Franka Potente and Benjamin Bratt have been attached to this thing for eons.
Laura Bickford (Traffic) is producing. The Wild Bunch is the main financier along with Spain-based Morena Films and broadcaster Telecinco. The films will cost a grand total of less than $70 million. Talks are under way with domestic distributors. (James Schamus!) Laura Bickford (Traffic ) is producing.
Both scripts have been written by Peter Buchman, Fleming reports. Buchman and Del Toro have been working with a translator to put the dialogue into Spanish.
The Argentine will begin before the Cuban revolution with Castro, Guevara and a band of exiles reach the Cuban shore from Mexico in 1956. Within two years, they mobilized popular support and an army and toppled the U.S.-friendly regime of dic- tator Fulgencio Batista. Guerrilla begins with Guevara’s trip to New York, where he spoke at the United Nations in 1964 and was celebrated, blah, blah. Soder- bergh has already shot that opening footage with Del Toro and Julia Ormond, who plays TV journo Lisa Howard.

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.” — Julius Caesar (Act II, Scene II, 32-37)

USA Today‘s Suzie Woz flew to Toronto to watch John Travolta in a drag fat-suit sing and prance around to “You Can’t Stop The Beat”, a musical number in Adam Shankman‘s Hairspray. “It’s good,” Travola told her. “The effect that I caused is fun and all, but it’s a lot of work, man.” The film costars Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken and Nikki Blonsky. The filmic re-do of the Broadway musical (based on the ’88 John Waters film) will continue to shoot through early December, and is slated to open next July.

John Travolta as the “generously proportioned” Edna Turnblad — the role created by Divine in the non-musical original film and by Harvey Fierstein in the Broadway show

“I’m the guy who wrote you a few weeks ago after seeing Ed Zwick‘s Blood Diamond, and I wanted to add that I actually think the film has a good chance of being pretty successful,” reader John Robie wrote earlier today. “Although I wasn’t very high on it, it very well could get good word-of-mouth from people who will be persuaded into thinking it’s an important film.
“Blood Diamond is in the realm of The Last Samurai, which had a lot of support from mainstream filmgoers. A lot of my friends who don’t go to movies often and who tend to stay away from critical hits like Babel really liked Samurai a lot. Some even list it as one of their favorite films. I know, I know — I need to stop hanging with people like that.
“Point is, Zwick knows how to make movies that average folks think are works of art. Blood Diamond is a film for people who were bored by The Constant Gardener or preferred Crash over Magnolia. Not a bad film by any means — just not as powerful as it should have been. I don’t think it’ll be nominated for any awards, but I can definitely see people going to see it and recommending it to their friends.”

Letter to Clint

Some feel that journalists aren’t supposed to make before-the-fact suggestions. They’re supposed be good sheep and just eat the grass that’s in front of them ….baahh! But I’ve got one anyway, and I think it sounds pretty neat. I mentioned it to a fairly big wheel at Paramount the other day and he thought it was pretty cool also, so please give it a think-through.

My dad, a Marine Lieutenant who fought all through the battle of Iwo Jima, saw Flags of Our Fathers last weekend. He didn’t like it that much. The combat footage was bulls-eye, he said, but he didn’t care for the cutting back and forth between the battle and the war-bond tour. I was sorry to hear this on some level. I felt the same way but I thought his reactions might nudge me into a fuller appreciation of some kind. Lamentably, we were pretty much on the same page.
But after we spoke last night, I said to myself, “Wait a minute.” That idea I had three weeks ago about someone re-cutting Flags and blending it with portions of Letters From Iwo Jima came back, and the more I kicked it around the better it sounded.
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Six months ago…hell, six weeks ago your two Iwo Jima films were looking super- formidable. Not so much now. I’m not saying this with any relish whatsover, but the fact is that the tent has deflated somewhat. Flags is a pretty good film for the most part and certainly deserving of respect. But a little voice is telling me something better and fuller can be made from the footage you’ve shot.
A clear majority of the venerated critical community has done cartwheels over Flags of Our Fathers and it’s entirely possible (though not certain) that it will land a Best Picture nomination, but it’s sagging commercially all the same, and, let’s face it, this will have an effect on Academy nominations. You worked hard and long on Flags and put your heart into it, but facts are facts. It earned $6,300,000 on 2100 screens last weekend, which is a drop of just over 40% from last weekend despite an addition of 300 screens. I can’t be the only one thinking that Oscar glory may not be in the cards.

And Letters From Iwo Jima (Warner Bros., 2.9), a Japanese-troop POV drama about the same conflict, is being regarded by its handlers and marketers as a smallish art film — a sideshow. (There was a brief mention of it being offered to Sundance ’07.) I’m not saying it won’t be as widely admired as Flags; it may turn out to be even more so. But I’m sensing that however it’s received by critics, the industry and the paying public, it’ll be mainly regarded as a back-up maneuver. On these shores, at least.
My suggestion is this: sometime early next year go back to the Avid with your gifted longtime editor-collaborator Joel Cox (who cut Flags) and put together a third movie that willl be strictly about the battle of Iwo Jima — a new synthesis that will draw solely from the combat footage in both films, cutting back and forth between U.S. and Japanese troops.
It won’t even need a story. With experiences of this sort, “story” is over-rated. I’m thinking that the third film — rip off the title of that old John Wayne movie and call it Sands of Iwo Jima — could be a seriously kick-ass, impressionistic, here’s-how- the-battle-really-went-for-both-sides type deal.
The lack of a story will be a plus factor, actually — the terrible ragged honesty of the combat footage will be enough. That and the slamdunk theme, of course — the shared terror and common humanity between the U.S. and Japanese troops.

You don’t even need an “ending” to this film, or a beginning even. You just need to take us back there once again and just stay with the battle this time, and just let the raw truth of it soak in on its own terms.
In my Flags review I imagined that someone out there will someday take the DVDs of Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima and recut them into Sands of Iwo Jima and put the finished product up on YouTube. I’m suggesting a recut third version because you should do it, not some kid from NYU film school.
Every director knows there’s no such thing as a final cut of any film — there’s only the version he/she has to settle for when it’s taken away by the distributor and duplicated into release prints. The deck can always be re-shuffled, and why not? We’re living in a fluid world of endless digital re-imaginings and alternate versions these days. And Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima are your movies, your material. It should be yours to do or not do.
I’m not saying you need to commit to assembling and releasing a DVD of Sands of Iwo Jima. It may not work out. It may be a lousy idea. I’m saying you and Joel should at least try it and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, no harm done. But if it does, you’ll obviously be happy and satisfied that you gave it a go. And so will your fans.

New tracking data arrrived this morning, and it contains good news for Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (Fox, 11.3). It’s tracking better than those recent press stories have indicated, I mean — 40 general awareness, 39 definite, 10 first choice. Room to grow but that’s fairly decent for an 800-screen starter. Flushed Away is 59, 27 and 5….better. The Santa Clause is running 87, 33 and 9 — still the strongest of the bunch.
Babel goes into the top 15 markets (San Diego, SF, Chicago, Dallas, Boston, Washington, Montreal, Philly, etc.) this Friday, and then a national (1200 screens) release on 11.10. Awareness is still building and will be accumulating over the next 10 days until it achieves, in the arcane jargon of the trade, “maximum weight drop.”
As noted previously, Stranger Than Fiction (56, 34, 3) is going to open better than A Good Year (44, 22, 2). Harsh Times is facing a tough slog…23, 24, 1. Night of the Living Dead, The Return.
Casino Royale (11.17) is doing pretty well for a big release that’s two and half weeks out, but not all that terrifically for a Bond film — 69, 35, 7. Happy Feet is looking very strong for animated kids film…50, 32, 4. Let’s Go to Prison (11.17 also)…13, 18, 0. (Well, how are you and yours about a movie called Let’s Go to Prison?)

The ridiculously drawn-out Becket saga (thanks to those ass-dragging dilletantes at MPI Home Video) is at an end, thank fortune. Peter O’Toole‘s Oscar campaign team — i.e., the Miramax publicists pushing his Best Actor candidacy for Venus — will be comforted to know that this 1964 multi-Oscar nominated film, in which O’Toole arguably gave the finest performance of his career as King Henry II, will open at Manhattan’s Film Forum on 1.26.07 and then L.A.’s Nuart on 2.9.07.

O’Toole’s Venus performance must sink or swim based on its own merits, of course, but reminding Academy voters what a brilliant, world-class performance he gave 42 years ago (plus the fact that he was flat-out robbed of the Best Actor Oscar when My Fair Lady‘s Rex Harrison took it instead) clearly enhances the brief.
Peter Glenville and Hal Wallis‘s widescreen historical epic, which was remastered in ’03 by the Motion Picture Academy’s Bob Pogorzelski, will also open in several Landmark theatres in February, March, April and May via Marty Zeidman‘s Slow Hand Releasing, which was hired by MPI to handle theatrical as a promotional prelude to the Becket DVD release.
MPI spokesperson Christie Hester stated earlier this year — disingenuously — that MPI “intends” to release the Becket DVD in the first quarter of ’07. The more likely release will be next fall. Perhaps MPI should announce a release during the first quarter of ’08, just to give themselves a little leeway? Make it the summer of ’08 — then they’ll really be covered.

L.A. Times columnist Claudia Eller has written a fairly glowing, nicely observed profile of Paramount Vantage chief John Lesher, who’s used his talent relationships (i.e., nurtured during his many years as a hot-shot Endeavor agent) to build the former Paramount Classics into a formidable producer and distributor that’s easily on the level of Fox Searchlight and Focus Features. Here’s hoping that Paramount Vantage’s Babel, which goes wide on 11.10 into 1200 theatres, does as well en masse as it did last weekend.