“There is hardly any arthouse theatre left [in the U.S.], but I have a feeling that Hollywood is looking very closely at what I’m doing right now because in all these big action films with all the great special effects, real storytelling and real beauty and human depth are getting lost.” — Rescue Dawn director Werner Herzog speaking to The Australian‘s Rosalie Higson.

“I’m happy you brought up [Quentin] Tarantino. They say that I [am] influenced [by] Tarantino, so I had to go and rent Tarantino movies to see who was my influence. I think Tarantino belongs to the other kind of writers. It’s clear that he hasn’t suffered real violence in his life. I don’t have that sense of smell. I was cut by a knife before I was 14. So I know that violence is real. My cinema has nothing to do with Tarantino. You want to see one American influencing me? Go to William Faulkner.” — Babel screenwriter Guillermo Ariagga (also the writer of The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, 21 Grams, Amores perros) speaking to SF 360 writer Michael Fox.

They always say “never hold a drink in your hand when posing for a press photo” — here’s why. Little Miss Sunshine co-director Jonathan Dayton (l.) appears to be holding a bottle of Perrier, but the mere presence of a bottle in his right hand plus that vaguely smirky expression on his ruddy bearded face (he looks half-bombed) plus the straw pork-pie hat doesn’t make for a winning combination. If he’d put the bottle down and buttoned his jacket he’d be fine.

Sunshine co-director Valerie Faris (center) is also holding a Perrier bottle, but with both hands as if it the bottle is a piece of sculpture or an award she’s just won, and that makes all the difference. The lady looks sharp, elegant and reserved, like an art-gallery owner. L.A. Film Festival programming chief Rachel Rosen (r.) isn’t holding anything, and thank fortune for that.

Miami Vice did $8.8 million yesterday (Friday,7.28) with a projected $26.5 million by Sunday evening. Universal is probably going to end up with a gross of roughly $75 or $80 million at the end of the domestic run, which they’ll keep about 50% of which probably won’t cover their p & a (prints and ads) outlay. There’s foreign and video, of course, but there’s no way this Michael Mann pic, which cost over $135 million to make, isn’t a disappointer. A shame, too, for a film as rich and pleasurable as this one is — a rare instance of a sensual and sophisticated adult popcorn movie.
Pirates 2 was #2 with a $5,828,000 Friday and a projected weekend tally of $20,369,000. (Total domestic gross so far is $358 million.) John Tucker Must Die, a total stinker with the critics, came in third with $5,530,000 and a projected Sunday night tally of $14,106,000. Monster House was fourth with $3,589,000 and a projected weekend cume of $20,786, 000…off 46% from last weekend. The fifth-place The Ant Bully didn’t open (another black mark for WB marketing): $2,623,000 Friday, and a projected $7,774,000 by Sunday night.
WB’s Lady in the Water dropped 61% from last Friday, earning $2,230,000 yesterday for a projected $7,101,000 by Sunday night. Not only is M. Night Shyamalan’s drama not going to make $50 million, but it’s looking like it may be a push to hit $40 million. Add up Lady‘s failure, the weak Ant bully opening, the Poseidon mega-flop and the underperforming of Superman Returns (which is at $184 million but is losing screens big-time and is basically out of business) and we may be looking at an upper-level management situation with some rolling of heads down the road.
Another significant opening was the limited (seven theatres in N.Y. and L.A.) bow of Fox Searchlight’s Little Miss Sunshine. I’ve got $103,000 for Friday and a projected $359,000 by Sunday night with a per-print average of $51,000. (It opened on Wednesday, 7.26.) That’s very good. Definitely a hit so far.

This report on TMZ.com is terrible news for Mel Gibson, even though he was apparently loaded when it happened. Gibson reportedly lost his temper and became belligerent after he was arrested Friday on suspicion of drunk driving, and thereafter, a hand-written deputy’s report says, spewed anti-Semitic epithets. TMZ has obtained what is alleged to be four pages of the original report, written by L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy James Mee, the arresting officer.
TMZ is also reporting that the L.A. County Sheriff’s department had the initial report edited to keep the real story suppressed. (TMZ’s report says that “sources say Mee was told Gibson’s comments would incite a lot of ‘Jewish hatred,’ that the situation in Israel was ‘way too inflammatory.’ It was mentioned several times that Gibson, who wrote, directed, and produced 2004’s The Passion of the Christ, had incited ‘anti-Jewish sentiment’ and ‘for a drunk driving arrest, is this really worth all that?’ TMZ was told that Deputy Mee was then ordered to write another report, leaving out the incendiary comments and conduct. Sources say Deputy Mee was told the sanitized report would eventually end up in the media and that he could write a supplemental report that contained the eliminated information — a report that would be locked in the watch commander’s safe.)
The most damning section of Mee’s alleged original report claims that Gibson “launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements. One tirade, the report says, went as follows: ‘F***ing Jews…the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Gibson then asked Deputy Mee, “Are you a Jew?”
I didn’t mention this initially because it sounds so incongruous and insensitive alongside the anti-Semitic comments, but there’s one small upside for Gibson in this whole mess — i.e., reportedly having said to a female police sergeant as he was brought into the station “What are you looking at, sugar tits?” I’m sorry but that’s funny.
The way people tend to process these incidents, I suspect they’re going to boil the Gibson thing down to the basics and consider the Big Inflammables as a simplistic side-by-side equation — “Jews responsible for all the wars” vs. “sugar tits.” Bad Jews vs. sugar tits…see? Sugar tits is funnier. Spin the racial venom as the unfortunate ravings of a guy who had too much to drink (haven’t we all said or done something terrible or idiotic when we’ve had too much to drink?) and “sugar tits” becomes a joke for Bill Maher, Jay Leno, David Letterman, etc.

Warner Bros. has decided against showing Martin Scorsese‘s The Departed (Warner Bros., 10.6) at September’s Toronto Film Festival. That’s what they told me today. No comment but do the math. It may just be a good down-to-business crime movie and that’s fine, but that’s what Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey was (to me anyway) and that played Toronto. Look at it this way: if The Departed was an “Oscar hopeful,” as Movie City News is calling it right now (Friday at 5:11 pm), wouldn’t it make sense to show it in Toronto? Of course it would. If The Departed had, say, a 12.15 release date WB might want to hold off unveiling it until early to mid-November, but The Departed‘s 10.6 release date makes it an ideal film to show at the Toronto Film Festival, which happens roughly a month earlier. Obviously WB is seeing some kind of downside in this.

Ryuichi Sakomoto‘s “Bibo No Aozora” is on the soundtrack at the end of Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu ‘s Babel, and it really sank into me — the music, the film, the whole package — when I saw it a second time on Wednesday. Here’s a YouTube video of Sakomoto playing “Bibo No Aozora.” Just a taste.

For those feeling confused about Kevin Smith‘s having announced he’s filling in for Roger Ebert on Ebert & Roeper next week only to read that Jay Leno is doing the same thing at more or less the same time, here’s the deal. Leno is taping his show with Roeper on 8.1, and this show will air the following weekend (8.4 and 8.5). Smith is taping his show on 8.4, and this will air the weekend after next (8.12 and 8.13).

A rich, extremely successful actor-director has a rep of being a bit of a conservative goony-bird, or at least a guy who’s staunchly religious and off on his his own philosophical beam. (I’m not saying it’s in any way weird to be a hardcore Catholic with a Holocaust-denying dad. It’s allowable in a free society, and if this is what works for the guy, fine.)

Let’s also say this actor doesn’t like being thought of as an oddball and wants, perhaps on a subconscious level, to let people know he’s not some ultra- Catholic tight-ass and is just as much of a flawed effed-up guy as you or me. What would be one way of doing that? If you ask me, getting popped for a DUI at 2:30 ayem is just what the doctor ordered.

Owen Wilson is officially denying any inspiration or connection on his part between the “Dupree” character he plays in You, Me and Dupree and “Cousin Dupree,” the song written and performed by Steely Dan.
Wilson didn’t address the possibility that someone else in the creatve food chain — Dupree screenwriter Mike LeSieur, let’s say — might have gotten the idea for the Dupree character from the Steely Dan song. (Read the song’s lyrics and tell me somebody’s not doing the sidestep.) Steely Dan’s Walter Becker and Donald Fagen complained about the alleged ripoff a week or so ago.
In a statement released by spokesperson Ina Treciokas, Wilson said: ”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 19.”

The trailer for Martin Scorsese‘s The Departed (Warner Bros., 10.6) is up and looking good. It hasn’t been cut to suggest that Scorsese has made something startling or “extra” — it tells you it’s probably just a good sturdy cops-and-bad guys drama about a criss-cross undercover deception. Yeah, I know: Miami Vice in Boston only doubled, and with a more colorful, charismatic bad guy (Jack Nicholson), right? But no Michael Mann-like visual flourishes, the trailer implies. Nothing too moody or off-angled or digitally artified. I wonder if they’re sending this puppy to the Toronto Film Festival? (If they aren’t, that will send a message.) An obviously kick-ass cast competing with Jack — Leonardo Di Caprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Vera Farmiga, Anthony Anderson, Ray Winstone, et. al. The only not-quite right thing is DiCaprio’s crew cut — his wide, starting-to-get-heavyish, Italo-Germanic features need longish hair to sand down the edges.

Earlier this week Linday Lohan‘s rep Leslie Sloane-Zelnick said that her client hadn’t shown up for work on the set of Morgan Creek’s currently-rolling Georgia Rule and had subsequently been taken to an L.A. hospital because she was “overheated and dehydrated” because she was “filming in 105-degree weather for 12 hours.” Horseshit, Morgan Creek chief James Robinson has essentially declared in an angry 7.26 letter sent to Lohan and her reps. And now The Smoking Gun has gotten hold of a copy and posted it…good going!

In the letter, Robinson calls Lohan’s recent behavior “discourteous, irresponsible and unprofessional” and that she’s “acted like a spoiled child and in doing so [has] alienated many of [her] co-workers and endangered the quality” of Georgia Rule, a Garry Marshall family heart-warmer now being with Lohan, Jane Fonda and Felicity Huffman topping the cast. The IMDB log line says it’s about “a rebellious, uncontrollable teenager (Lohan) who is hauled off by her dysfunctional mother (Huffman) to spend the summer with her grandmother (Fonda)” and blah, blah. So Lohan’s obviously staying in character off the set.
Robinson tells Lohan that “you’re well aware that your ongoing all night heavy partying is the real reason for your so-called ‘exhaustion’” and that Morgan Creek henceforth refuses to “accept bogus excuses for your behavior.” He warns that Lohan will be held “personally accountable” for losses caused by her actions. He claims that Lohan’s behavior has already “resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage” and that Morgan Creek may sue her unless she straightens up and flies right. “I urge you to take this letter seriously and conduct yourself professionally,” Robinson concludes.