This may qualify as hyperbole, but Richard Schickel’s You Must Remember This––which premiered at Cannes in May, screened here at Telluride as part of a tribute to Schickel and will debut on PBS in slightly different form this fall––is maybe the most appropriately titled made-for-TV Classical Hollywood documentary directed by a working film critic I’ve seen this year.
“You must remember this,” is, of course, a lyric from “As Time Goes By,” the signature song from Warner Brothers’ Casablanca. From the opening montage of a tour through the WB backlot, set to a soundtrack of memorable lines from maybe a dozen and a half classic productions from that studio, Schickel’s film is devoted to anecdotal recall of Warner Brothers’ various signatures, from experts and witnesses who are dishy and not uncritical, but still often as sentimemtal as the song that Rick commands Sam to play again. From silent doggie star Rin Tin Tin (who, snarked writer and eventual head of production Daryl Zanuck, had the biggest brain on the lot) to the Busby Berkeley musicals that not so subtly told the viewer that “Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler are gonna get laid, and we’re all part of it,” to the social issue films of the 30s which carried “a vision of the world that was darker, more cynical, and more problematic than any other studio’s,” Schickel finds a surprisingly rich balance between behind-the-scenes trivia and multi-layered criticism. Access to talking heads including Molly Haskell, Neal Gabler, Jeaninne Basinger and former WB contract player Ronald Reagan certainly helps with the gravitas.
Also surprising was the slightly salty candor that ran through Schickel’s Special Medallion acceptance chat, which both the honoree and the audience seemed to find too brief. Still, Schickel managed to get out som zingers involving Manny Farber, Pauline Kael, the youth of America and John McCain. Some highlights after the jump.
Fox has brought a lawsuit against Warner Brothers, claiming that the latter studio does not have the right to release Zach Snyder’s Watchmen movie, because the former studio never full gave up their rights to the property. The movie’s supposed to come out on March 6, and though a court could decide that Fox should be cut in on its eventual profits, apparently that studio would prefer if the film was shelved altogether. Why did they wait until the film was finished in order to take action? Your thoughts, please.
Josh Brolin, Ben Affleck, Charlize Theron and Morgan Spurlock are among the celebrities expected to “either cross paths with or interface with such politicians as Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and assorted other city, state and national elected officials” at the Starz! Green Room at the Democratic National Convention next week.
The Coen Brothers have hired“Michael Stuhlbarg, a Tony-nominated actor with little experience in front of the cameras, and Richard Kind, a character actor best known for his role on ABC’s Spin City,” to star as brothers in their upcoming period comedy, A Serious Man.
Hollywood loves the energy crisis! Not only is there evidence that “higher gas prices boost boxoffice by prompting consumers to opt for the local multiplex over longer trips,” but foreign oil investors, prompted by a desire to avoid taxes on windfall profits, “look more favorably on the film biz — any film, really — because it means that even if a movie loses, say, 20% or 30% of its money, investors still come out on top because those losses pale compared with what a government might have taken.”
“There’s a superhero summit under way at Warner Bros,” says David S. Cohen at Variety, as the studio and subsidiary DC Comics meet to work out a “master plan” for shilling superheroes going forward.
The Chinese censorship board is demanding that cuts be made to the third Mummy movie––which shot for three months in China, and incorporates a replica of the Great Wall––but they’re not publicly specifying what it’ll take to let the film be shown in the country. Is anyone else starting to suspect that the Chinese censors just have really good taste?
The AMPTP won’t accept any of SAG’s counter-offers, and SAG won’t settle for the AMPTP’s “final” deal. So what now? No one knows for sure, but with SAG members continuing to work with no contract, it’s possible that the studios will “declare an impasse and impose the terms and conditions of the new offer.”
It’s been all-but-confirmed for awhile, but thisVariety story nails it: Magnolia will self-distribute What Just Happened?, Barry Levinson’s Hollywood satire which the studio produced through 2929 Entertainment but were hoping to unload at either Sundance or Cannes. “There were offers,” Eamonn Bowles told Anne Thompson, “But we can make more money doing it ourselves.” They’re planning a platform to medium-wide release for October.
Brazillian novelist Paulo Coelho is a MySpace addict! But at least the one-hour-a-day user has found a way to funnel his obsession into something productive: he’s planning to “‘curate’ a Web-generated film based on The Witch of Portobello from MySpace video and music submissions.”
Department of Bad Ideas In The Name of Box Office Equivalency, Part 1: Apparently inspired by the success of Indiana Jones and It Really Didn’t Make THAT Much Money, Paramount is hiring Brett Ratner to direct Eddie Murphy in a fourth Beverly Hills Cop movie. It was Murphy’s idea, and there’s currently no script.
Department of Bad Ideas In The Name of Box Office Equivalency, Part 2: Apparently emboldened by the success of Transformers, Michael Bay is working on another film based on a toy: Ouija. Yes, that board with the alphabet on it that allows slumber partying fifth graders to talk to the dead.
Department of Things We Can’t Complain About: In honor of their 85th anniversary, Warner Brothers is dipping into their catalog of 6,800 films to push forth a ton of new DVDs and reissues, including “sets of superhero films, musicals and Westerns, including three editions of the MGM’s How the West Was Won, all slotted for third-quarter release, followed in the fourth quarter by horror and holiday collections, including an ultimate collector’s edition of A Christmas Story.”
It may seem like a waste of space to beat this dead horse too heavily, but since we did devote time to analyzing why the bombing of Speed Racer is likely to have a detrimental effect on the future of the blockbuster, it’s relevant. Turns out, the film made even less money than Warner Brothers estimated––about 8% less, dropping its 3-day gross from $20.2 million to $18.6 million, and dropping the film from second place for the weekend, behind the unbeatable Iron Man, to third behind the flash-in-the-pan What Happened in Vegas.
What’s to account for the discrepancy? Apparently, when WB released their numbers on Sunday morning, they were estimating Sunday’s final take based on a typical weekend’s metrics, without accounting for the fact that this past Sunday was Mothers Day––ie: the single day of the year when parents are least likely to pander to their kids’ whines about going to see a hyper-active live-action cartoon. The other studios called bullshit, and by late Monday the real numbers came to light.
The real question is: why didn’t Warners foresee that Mothers Day was going to be a black hole for a film that apparently only appeals to eight year olds and contrarian aesthetes?
The Cannes Film Festival will show a classic Warner Brothers film every night of the fest, including I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang and Dirty Harry, as part of a tribute to the studio’s 85th anniversary. Also on tap: film critic Richard Schickel’s doc, You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story.
John Waters is making a Christmas movie! And it’s gonna star Johnny Knoxville and Parker Posey! The film was reportedly once setup at New Line; this Hollywood Reporter story implies that it was abandoned during that company’s mom and dad took its keys away, and that ThinkFilm “is said to be in talks to come aboard.”
On Tuesday, Variety negatively reviewed the new Broadway musical Glory Days, pejoratively likening it to a certain “digital revolution”-enabled movie movement that has “democratized the filmmaking process, opening the floodgates for kids straight out of school with no life experience and no stories to tell to start making navel-gazing movies.” Today, the trade reports that Glory Days has ended its run after one show.
ThinkFilm has announced their acquisition of Azazel Jacobs’ Momma’s Man, for theatrical release after its New York premiere at New Directors/New Films next month. We reviewed the film (which I love) when it premiered at Sundance, and also interviewed Azazel.
Joan Cusack is playing Isla Fisher’s mom in a romantic comedy about a New York magazine journalist with a lot of credit card debt (ah, romance). Before you ask, “Wait, does that even make mathematical sense?”––yes, it does. If Joan gave birth when she was 14. Eight years before playing a teenager in Sixteen Candles.
Speaking of fuzzy math, I don’t understand these figures at all. Turner Broadcasting (TBS, TNT, etc) has picked up broadcast rights to a number of films that will theoretically be released by New Line and Picturehouse later this year. Variety says, “The coin involved in Turner’s purchase…[comes] in at a high end of about 11% of the eventual domestic box office gross of the four New Line pictures.” How do you calculate eventual gross on films that have not only not opened, but which lie in limbo because their ostensible distributor no longer really exists? According to this story, Warners execs have just started screening films on New Line’s leftovers, and questions like “What pictures will ultimately make it to the slate, and when will they be released?” have yet to be answered. Isn’t the eventual gross of, say, The Women remake heavily dependent on whether or not Warner Brothers gives it the full push as if it were one of its own, or, conversely, dumps it in September when all their “real” fall films are opening at Toronto?
Variety reports that Time Warner is getting rid of New Line heads Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne and is absorbing the “indie” into the general Warner Brothers machine. Nikki Finke has the full press release.
I don’t have anything to say about this, other than that NO ONE should be allowed to start a headline with the phrase “Toldja!”––even if they did, in fact, tell us.
You knew this blog post was coming when Warner Brothers issued a say-nothing statement hours after Heath Ledger’s body was found last week. Now, a little over a week later, the scraps of news and speculative think pieces are flooding in; I read them and put the relevant information in a bullet-point list so that you wouldn’t have to.
Kim Masters at Slate says The Dark Knight hasn’t entered the ADR phase yet, meaning that if any of Ledger’s lines need re-recording, they’ll have to use a voice double. More interesting is the fact that Warner Brothers is spinning The Merchandising Issue as a moral one: if they don’t sell authorized t-shirts with Heath Ledger’s face on them, “The pirates would come out of the woodwork, and then it’s completely out of control.”
Chris Thilk says the third party companies who planned to partner with Warner Brothers on tie-ins (including Hersheys, who are planning some kind of Batman chocolate bar) were mostly not planning on using Joker imagery anyway, and will be able to continue with their capitalization plans unabated.
Borys Kit passes along word that WhySoSerious.com has been appended with a black ribbon. The creepy Joker images and Ledger soundbites otherwise remain intact.
Meanwhile, at Reel Pop, Steve Bryant reports that the “Why So Serious?” poster featuring an image of Ledger, which will likely be taken out of print, is selling for upwards of $70 on eBay. “Does the fact that I desperately want one make me soulless and insensitive?”
I’m sure by drawing attention to it I’m essentially ensuring its demise–although, maybe not. Remember that six minute preview of The Dark Knight that’s been showing in front of IMAX prints of I Am Legend? The one that popped up on YouTube via camcorder bootleg and was promptly removed, causing the Guardian to make up a story about it having been “leaked” mistakenly? Um, it’s back, in the form of a new, better bootleg. Oddly, this one was posted three days ago–a lifetime for such a blatant copyright violation. Did the YouTube police take an extended holiday? Or has Warner Brothers decided to back off and let the blogs at it? Regardless, if you’re interested, you should probably watch it ASAP.
Holy bungled distribution Batman! The wrong trailer has been sent out! Or was it? Audiences in America who turned up to see an Imax preview of I am Legend this week have been treated to an apparent accidental taster of the forthcoming Batman movie, The Dark Knight, which is not due to arrive until July next year. Six minutes of the film were “accidentally” screened in Imax cinemas and the bootleg quickly leaked on to the internet.
Dodson doesn’t site any sources, so it’s hard to say why he reads this as “an accident”––beyond the fact that I guess he didn’t read this story, or this story, or this one, all of which indicate that Warner Brothers had made their intention to run the six minutes public as far back as October. But then, in a stunning feat of blog cliche, he cynically spins this non-accident as a devious conspiracy devised by evil marketing geniuses:
But although Warner pulled the bootleg preview from YouTube earlier today, you can’t help but wonder if this was accident or design…All those who saw it reported that the six minutes of raw action didn’t half leave them panting for more. The Joker couldn’t have planned it better.
So, to recap: Warner Brothers said they were going to show a six minute Joker short before I Am Legend. Then they showed a six minute Joker short before I Am Legend. When a camcorder bootleg of this footage ended up on YouTube, Warner Brothers had it removed, in an attempt to protect their copyright and further bolster ticket sales for I Am Legend. Then a blogger accused Warner Brothers of intentionally leaking the short but deviously making it look like an accident.
UPDATE: Sorry kids, the party’s over. As of 4:27 pm, this video “is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.” If you find it elsewhere online, let me know.
I doubt it’ll stay up through the day (you probably have about three hours before the work day begins in L.A. and someone at either WB or YouTube figures it out), but a camcorder bootleg of the Joker-centric Dark Knight prequel/preview/possible first six minutes of the movie that has been tacked on to IMAX screenings of I Am Legend is currently on YouTube. I meant to go see if for myself this weekend, but thanks to a snowstorm and general end-of-year madness, that just didn’t happen. As far as the bootleg goes, between the muffled sound and the dutch-angled, lap-eye view, I’ll have to watch it a couple of times through to fully get what’s going on, but doesn’t it sort of seem like one of the Joker’s doomed cronies is doing a Jack Nicholson impression? And if so–spoiler alert–then maybe the point of this preview is not, as Christopher Nolan previously stated, to tell the story of “The Rise of the Joker,” but to literally kill off our impression of the Joker as based on Nicholson’s performance in Tim Burton’s Batman?
I’m probably wrong. I’m sure you’ll tell me all about it.
Is it just me, or do these alleged Dark Knightpublicity images look more like packaging shots for a $10 Joker Halloween costume than promo stills for a summer franchise film? Wait–is that the point? More at Aint it Cool, via WeSmirch.
Go to Variety.com this morning, and chances are you’ll be greeted by a full-page For Your Consideration ad on behalf of The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. Which is interesting, considering that when the film premiered in September, Warner Brothers all but declined to promote it, spending the bare minimum on advertising and making it virtually impossible for non-coastal critics to write reviews. Whether it’s a last-ditch salvage job or it was part of the plan all along, maybe Warner Brothers understands that this is a film with limited mainstream appeal that nonetheless deserves a chance to play in the awards game?
Maybe, maybe not. For me, the overall takeaway from the ad (I took a screencap and pasted it above, just to make sure it wasn’t an early morning hallucination) is that the studio is still working against the movie’s strengths. Looking what they’re specifically flogging in the ad: Andrew Dominik for Best Adapted Screenplay, at the exclusion of Roger Deakins for Cinematography, which should be a lock? Sounds like a contractual obligation. Maybe more egregiously, the ad has room for the names of five producers, but no push for Casey Affleck as Best Supporting Actor?
I know, I know––gift horse, mouth, blah blah blah. Tell me why I’m wrong in the comments.
Fox has brought a lawsuit against Warner Brothers, claiming that the latter studio does not have the right to release Zach Snyder’s Watchmen movie, because the former studio never full gave up their rights to the property. The movie’s supposed to come out on March 6, and though a court could decide that Fox should be cut in on its eventual profits, apparently that studio would prefer if the film was shelved altogether. Why did they wait until the film was finished in order to take action? Your thoughts, please.
Hollywood loves the energy crisis
It’s been all-but-confirmed for awhile, but 
Department of Bad Ideas In The Name of Box Office Equivalency, Part 1: Apparently inspired by the success of Indiana Jones and It Really Didn’t Make THAT Much Money, Paramount is hiring Brett Ratner to direct Eddie Murphy in 
It may seem like a waste of space to beat this dead horse too heavily, but since we did devote time to analyzing why the bombing of 
The Cannes Film Festival will show 
ThinkFilm has announced 
