Box Office Blues, By the Numbers

(courtesy Box Office Mojo)

In the era where studios deliberately put out target-marketed shit chock full of hot bods, special effects, and shallow characters, then expect to recoup at least 50% of their budget from curious/duped audiences on opening weekend, before word of mouth can get around, I am pleased to bring you the following news this week:

The A-Team has yet to make back half of its production budget in two weeks on over 3,500 screens. Add in marketing costs of $5 trillion and this bitch is in trouble.

Prince of Persia cost $200 million (plus marketing) and has only reaped $80 million so far--in four weeks on over 2,600 screens. Maybe a hog-wild Iranian box office will balance America's extreme disinterest?

Why Movies Suck Volume XV

All the people in charge are so busy trying to get their own shitty ideas off the ground that there is no room for original, intriguing material from outside the bubble.

I can hear that bitch cackling now, between hacking pack-a-day coughs, "Tweens will love it! They love everything!"
_

Overheard at the Office Today

Three of my favorite things overheard at the office today:

1. "I can't wait to be a grandma--I just want to skip all the middle parts and go straight to being a grandma." - said by a 26 year-old woman

2. "I begged my parents to send me to boarding school."

3. "I begged my parents to get divorced!"

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This Just Takes the Goddamn Cake

Can you imagine asking someone the following question?

"Can you photocopy the documents I am holding in my hand and FedEx them to me?"

That is, in not so many words, what a friend of mine was just asked to do as part of his duties on a Sears commercial today.

Yes, that is right--now my friend, in Los Angeles, must photocopy his back-up photocopies and spend $20 to overnight them to Hoffman Estates, Illinois. All so that the woman at Sears doesn't need to go through the trouble of having one of her assistants photocopy the original documents she has on her desk.

What a fucking BITCH.

And you wonder why everything is so fucking expensive these days...

_

Armchair Expose: The Advertising Industry

I have worked in the advertising industry--on the production end--for about nine years now, off and on, in Chicago and Los Angeles. Oh, what mine eyes have seen...

Most people have no idea what goes into the making of a commercial, so I shall forthwith explain, to the best of my knowledge:

A client--let's say Kraft Foods--has an advertising agency under contract for a set time period, say two years. When Kraft wants to unveil a new cheese-flavored product, they tell the agency to draw up a campaign for them.


Months of work go into the nitty gritty of the new campaign.

The Creatives (as they are known) at the agency toss around ideas and ultimately devise a universal phrase, tagline, or theme that will be used for the print campaign, television commercials, product packaging, etc (ie, "Come see the softer side of Sears!").

Then ideas for the content of the commercial campaign are tossed around. They will usually shoot between 2 and 12 commercials in one stretch, all somehow unified by the theme. After months of planning, the best ideas are scripted out, drawn up (literally--as detailed storyboards), and presented to the client in a series of meetings.

The client either approves the ideas or, more likely, tells them to make small changes based on whether or not their legal department will let them get away with certain things, or whether or not they think the idea will alienate any of their customer base or conflict with their brand image--or sometimes just because they want to exert a little power, show who's boss, etc.

At this point, the advertising agency puts it out there that they will accept bids from production companies for the opportunity to make said commercials. The competition is limited but fierce.

The production companies who decide to make a play for the job choose a director from their stable whom they feel is a good match for the campaign, based on his or her strengths, reputation, and previous work.

The director then submits an almost-always-laughably-written treatment of how he would direct the commercial, what little bits of sexiness, humor, or camera moves/editing techniques he might inject into the already-written commercial.


It always amazes me that one of the creatives from the agency doesn't just direct it, since that's all they want to do anyway (most of them ultimately become directors and exploit hteir industry connections to get jobs, knowing talent is irrelevant; the ones who don't become directors usually split off and form their own lucrative boutique agencies, emphasizing their 'edginess,' 'hipness,' etc). The campaign is already drawn up; the commecial is already written; the storyboards are already drawn; why suddenly bring in another cook?

As a result of this, the production company/director search is fairly irrelevant--the advertising agency is really just looking for the company that will submit the lowest bid BUT also give them a director they can brag about to their client (and friends back home).

Examples:

"He's David Duchovny's brother...and he did that campaign for __X__ that was so edgy--it's exactly the feel we're looking for..."

"I'm in LA, on set. Yeah, shooting a commercial for the new Volkswagen campaign. Roman Coppola is directing--yeah, his son. It's pretty awesome..."

"Rocky Morton will direct--he's one of the biggest directors in the business, wins all kind of awards, a total pro...it'll be great." (No mention that he also directed superturd Super Mario Bros)

As a result of the competition for the lowest bid with an accomplished or recognizably-named director, budgets have gotten smaller and smaller--in all the wrong places--and preparation time has become shockingly minuscule.

Example:
I recently worked on a series of two commercials for a major fast-food chain that was awarded to the company only six days before the two days of shooting were to commence--not much time for casting, location scouting, crew assembling, set-building, wardrobe shopping/fitting, etc.

Considering how long the campaign/commercial has been in development at the agency by the time shooting begins, it is amazing what stupid bullshit will still happen on set.

Example:
I worked on a Volkswagen commercial years ago, in Chicago, in the summertime, for their "4-motion" cars--a kind of proprietary part-time four-wheel drive system intended for their all-season customers.

The concept for the commercial was that a shitty old car made by somebody else (in this case a rented brown Ford Taurus from the '90s) would be spinning out of control down a snowy/icy road and a guy sitting in a nearby VW 4-motion vehicle would watch and say "glad I have my VW with 4-motion" and drive away safe and sound.

As a result, $20,000 was spent to build a remote controlled, driveable, spinning turntable that could hold the weight of the Ford Taurus and drive it safely down the street, spinning in place.

We paid the guy who did the snow in Fargo to drive down from Minnesota with his five-person crew to snow-up an entire office park we rented out. Gigantic blocks of ice were fed from a freezer truck into another truck--a modified 5-ton giant snow-cone machine--and sprayed everywhere for hours and hours, overnight and in the morning. When I showed up at 5am, my coworkers and I had to help the art department rake around ice chips to make the scene look a bit more realistic. Everything was set, the camera was ready to roll, the heavyweights had arrived from their 5-star hotel, and then...nothing happened.

I went over to video village, where gophers like myself set-up director's chairs for the client and agency representatives to sit and watch everything unfold and make comments like "hmmmm...I like it...but can we try him in a blue shirt instead, even though I said he needed to be wearing a red shirt?"

In this instance, on the VW commercial, the discussion was about the snow: "I'm worried that people who live in areas where it doesn't snow are not going to want to buy our car..."

I was blown away. What?!

As a result of this brief discussion, the entire 90-person crew had to stand around waiting for the snow to melt. Tens of thousands of dollars an hour to wait for snow to melt. Easily $10-20,000 to make the snow in the first place. A million-dollar-budget commercial, directed by the guy who made American Movie (and then parlayed that cult hit into a lucrative career directing commercials for VW, Nokia, et al).

The final result? A commercial where a brown Ford Taurus spins down the road for no reason and a guy in a VW car is glad he is in a brand-new, spit-polished VW, for some reason (it's newer?). There is no snow or ice around. It might as well be summer in Hawaii.

Huh? How long was this idea in discussion at the advertising agency? How many meetings did they have? How many snow and ice-coated pictures did they draw while mapping out the commercial? How many representatives of the client and agency approved the concept at multiple stages of the game? And nobody brought this up until the snow was already paid for and covering every square inch of an entire office park in Hinsdale, Illinois?

You can see why products cost so much these days...

At the end of each day of shooting, the exposed film (yes, they still shoot on film) is driven to the lab by one of the gophers. This is one of the most blatantly nonsensical customs in the industry. The film is loaded and unloaded by the least-experienced and lowest-paid member of the camera crew and then driven to the lab by the least-experienced and lowest-paid person on the entire crew. If either of these people mess-up, hundreds of thousands of dollars were completely wasted and the entire commercial needs to be reshot.

The gophers--known as PAs, for Production Assistants--make $200/day whether the day is two hours or 28-hours long. Yes--I know many people who have worked up to 28 hours straight. My own personal best is three 20-hour days in a row, when the agency wisely realized they needed to rewrite the entire 3-commercial Bud Light campaign because it wasn't funny (usually they just shoot and air them anyway).

PAs have been paid $200/day for the last 15 years. It is one of the only non-union positions on the crew. A bit of perspective: high-school-drop-out Blutos carrying around lights and extension cords make $500/day and have houses in Malibu and jet skis and jacked-up pick-up trucks and motorcycles and flatscreen TVs in their shitters, etc. Teamster dudes who do nothing more than drive around a van make $500/day. Wardrobe stylists and Production Designers make $1200/day. Directors of Photography make $8000 for a 10-hour day.
Directors make $15-20,000 a day. Yes--a nine-day shoot, plus two days of prep, would net a director $220,000 for 11 days of work. Wow. You are correct to be outraged.

And yet, it gets worse.

Example:

Years ago, I worked on an Herbal Essence shampoo commercial in Chicago, directed by legendary music-video director Hype Williams (who long-ago sold out) and starring Ashanti as 'the girl who has hair to wash.'

At one point, I was sent from downtown Chicago to suburban Skokie--in rush-hour traffic, easily a 2 hour round-trip--to purchase the last remaining brand-new (at the time) photo/video-capable iPod in the metropolitan area.

The producer, who was flown in from Phoenix, almost never worked and wanted to give it to Hype as a present, because he saw somebody else's on set and mentioned that he wanted one. Nevermind that Hype was being paid $20,000/day and that the commercial was already tens of thousands of dollars overbudget and still going strong...

Earlier that day, I had to drive to the South Side to pick up a special lunch for Hype and Ashanti and their respective posses, from a famous soul-food joint, despite the fact we had already paid $15/head for them to have a gourmet catered lunch. When somebody from one of their posses ate Ashanti's mom's lunch, I had to go back for more. These two trips easily ate up several hours of my work day. For no reason.

The next day, I had to pick up Hype at his hotel--The Peninsula, the most expensive hotel in Chicago--and drive him to the airport. [How much money do they spend on this guy and they can't get him a car service?] His luggage barely fit in my Jeep Cherokee because he not only had his overstuffed suitcases, but also an entire top-of-the-line desktop Mac--complete with oversized, widescreen monitor. He told the producer he wanted to do a little rough 'editing' in his hotel room while shooting, so rather than renting one, the production company bought him the whole set-up. It was never opened.

The only plus side to all this excess was that after Hype stopped off to make a few purchases "at that cashmere joint on Michigan Avenue" and wolfed down some Garret's popcorn literally like a wolf might, I got to hear the less-interesting--but still fascinating--end of a phone call wherein Snoop Dog gave Hype some much-needed relationship advice.

But has anything ever gone wrong with PAs handling the film, you ask?

Answer: Yes.

Example:
In Chicago, years ago, it was a cold-ass winter day. The PA driving the camera truck home--loaded with over $1 million worth of equipment and all the exposed film from the job--stopped off at a 7-11 for a pack of smokes. He wanted to leave the heater on while he popped inside, so he left the truck running. Before he got back to it, somebody else had already driven it away.

The next day, the producer and production manager took thousands of dollars of petty cash and went around to every pawn shop in the city to look for camera parts, lenses, accessories, etc. Believe it or not, they were able to find everything and knew it was theirs, since they had all the serial numbers listed on the rental order.

Later on, the truck was found down by the river, right next to Chris Farley's van. All the exposed film was sitting safe and sound in the onboard darkroom.

For every 999 times the film and equipment is delivered safely, something like this happens. So why risk it? (Another, more common, example is leaving the film on top of the car and driving away. Ooops!)

Okay, so let's say nothing went wrong and the film was safely delivered to the lab. What happens next?

Well, the film is processed at a set time, along with film from random other jobs in town (the 6pm bath, the 10pm bath), and a pre-arranged messenger arrives to pick up the processed film.

The messenger takes the film from Burbank to Santa Monica (a 22-mile drive), to a post-production house, where the film is transferred to digital video by a colorist who bills $450/hour (although he probably only gets $200 of it, dividing the rest between the facility and his one or two assistants) and uses a millon-dollar magical computer to tweak the colors and lighting of the raw footage.
Once appropriately touched-up, where shit can be turned into gold at the push of a button, the DVDs of the day's footage, known as dailies, are messengered over to the production company or to set, so the director can look at it and admire his handiwork.

Once the shoot is completed--all the film exposed, processed, colored, dailied, etc--everything is shipped to an editor by a company called BellAir.

BellAir is like FedEx for the über-rich. They offer a service known as counter-to-counter, which means that one of their delivery dudes picks up your package, takes it to the airport, and personally loads it into the cargo-hold of a plane. Once the plane lands in New York (not always, but usually--it depends where the agency is based), another BellAir delivery dude picks it up at the airport and hand-delivers it to the editing facility. It is only one step short of paying someone to actually hold the film and fly to New York--which also happens on occasion.

At this point, the editor creates a rough cut of the spot(s) based on the storyboards, scripts, and conversations he has had with the director. The next day, the advertising agency producer and a client representative and a few other people come into the editing room, watch the cut, and tell the editor how he should have trimmed down the several hours of footage to a 30-second commercial.

The editor also continues to receive very different (usually covert) instructions from the director of the commercial. The agency cut, as it is known, is always the one that airs, while the director's cut is for his own personal use and is usually never seen again, although it may appear on his sample reel.

Once edited, all the film is then re-colored, tweaked, retransferred, and ready to go. It is shipped out to the networks for broadcast during whatever time slots the advertising agency has purchased for their client.

A commercial, or 'spot,' in the parlance of the industry, can be a regional spot, a national spot, a foreign spot, a global spot, a Super Bowl spot, etc. Maybe they will only broadcast it during Mad Men, maybe only during sporting events, maybe only once--during the Super Bowl. I worked on a Britney Spears Pepsi commercial years ago which was only aired in Japan during the World Cup--I never got to see it.


Actors who appear in commercials--who are chosen after a rigorous casting process (that has more to do with their 'look' than their acting ability, since they are usually onscreen in 2-second clips) where the agency folks and director might see 500 people for 10 roles--are compensated based on where the commercial plays (nationals are the most lucrative) and and how many times it plays.

An actor in a McDonald's commercial who says "Try our new choco-mocha shakes!!" might make $40,000 if it stays in rotation for a bit. Guys like Subway's Jared and Verizon's 'dude with glasses' who are spokesmen get paid based on an annual contract, as are lesser people like "the woman in the Lincoln commecials." They get a ton of money up front (example: Lincoln woman who says "check out these new sexy Lincolns" and does a little car-show-girl arm wave got $300,000 for a one-year contract for 4 spots), are required to be avaliable whenever, for a set number of commercial shoots, and are not allowed to appear in a commercial for another company.


So when all is said and done, a $500,000 commercial shoot that resulted in two 30-second commercials (and a couple trimmed down 15-second versions) actually costs quite a bit more, when you add up the fees paid to the actors and the airtime purchased. The total cost is easily in the millions of dollars. All to say something as unneccessary as: "Drink Coke, cuz we bought up all but two of our competitors and we've arranged to be the exclusive carbonated beverage sold in 60% of all stores and restaurants! And we're totally cool, too!"

The biggest mystery for me, still, is that I have probably worked on 200 commercials in my day and seen, at best, five of them. Where do they go? I don't watch much TV, which explains it away a little bit, but still--wtf? I'm sure some of them never make it to air, some of them are maybe only played in Europe, Asia, during Oprah, game shows, soaps, whatever.

It's not like it matters--of all the spots I've worked on, I probably only wanted to see a handful. Most are cringingly unfunny or just plain stupid. I still want to see that Britney one, though--especially because they only were able to get off about 4 of the intended 14 shots (or something paltry like that) before her mom forced her to leave because a private plane was waiting on the runway, at a cost of thousands of dollars an hour, to take them to a family funeral. (Britney was a sweetheart by the way; we kicked a soccer ball around together for a bit, I briefly fell deeper into lust, etc.)

Well, that's about all I have to say about it right now. Hope that was informative and maybe even enjoyable.

Thoughts?

_

The Night A Girl Almost Died in My Arms

The year was 2002. I was 24 years old and living with my parents after an aborted move to Europe (didn't quite make it to the first trimester).

During this brief spell back in Chicago, before I moved out to Boston, I got sucked back into the local film industry I left not so ceremoniously a few months before. Because I am a whore.

Chief among the jobs I got during this period was a two-week stint as a production assistant on the elevated-train fight sequence in Spiderman 2.


The script wasn’t even finished yet; Tobey Maguire was rumored to be recovering from a grievous back injury on Seabiscuit, but director Sam Raimi knew he wanted this scene for his movie--knew exactly how he wanted it--and, like a child on Christmas Eve, just couldn’t wait.


My first few days of work consisted of hanging out in a CTA train shed and supplying a crew of rigging grips with suitcases full of White Castle sliders. Forever indebted to me, the rigging grips tried to add me to their crew as some sort of manservant, but the production manager nixed the idea.

Instead, I was put in charge of one of the nine elevated train platforms that make up the Loop in downtown Chicago. An older CTA train, which coincidentally looked like old New York subway cars, would do laps around the Loop while shooting from something like 14 cameras the rigging grips had mounted in every direction.

Each platform was run by two Production Assistants, who controlled about 10-15 extras. We were in contact with the Assistant Director via walkie talkie and one of us (me) had a megaphone. I would say things like this:

“Okay--jackets off! Come on everybody, we're all cold out here, but this will only take a minute. Now step forward along the track. The train will be here in 30 seconds. Remember--Spiderman is fighting Dr. Octopus on top of the second car. They’re shooting at a high frame rate this time, so please react at half-speed.”

Among my extras, who did little but sit around under the heat lamps bitching about the bitter November cold, were two girls that stood out from the pack. I spent most of my down time talking to them.

I call them girls because, as I later found out, they were seventeen. They drove in from Michigan every day--every day!--just to be low-paid extras out in the freezing Chicago cold for ten to twelve hours at a stretch.

Donna, the large, unattractive one, was naturally the most talkative and forward. Marie, her sexy, petite friend, was more the smile-and-stare type--a fox of few words.

After many days of standing out on the frigid El platform, chatting with them about god-knows-what, killing time, telling all the extras to stop complaining, and explaining to every single curious CTA passenger what was happening...I needed a night of drinking more than ever before.


Luckily, not long before the shooting finished up, the entire crew was invited to the private opening of a new dance club on Lake Street in Chicago. All we had to do to get in was say “Columbia Pictures” at the door. The production had used the as-yet-unopened space all week as a wardrobe/make-up/staging area for our extras (there were no principal actors in this scene--they would all be green-screened into the shots during post-production).

As usual, work would begin super early the next morning, but a sizable number of alcoholics turned out anyway; by the time I showed up with my friend Kevin, the party was in full swing.

The Spiderman crew was hanging out upstairs--up a metal spiral staircase--in a large booth behind a velvet curtain. They were all pretty drunk--especially Donna. She immediately began hitting on me in the sloppiest, least-strategically-intelligent manner.

I stared across the table at Marie, who was getting it both barrels from the 2nd Assistant Director, who had been loading her up with booze all night.

I didn't have much to say to the others there, so Kevin and I headed over to the upstairs bar, which was a zoological free-for-all. It probably took us twenty minutes to get a drink. We chatted a bit, probably talked about how sexy Marie was, and then mingled a bit more.

As soon as I finished that drink, I went downstairs to get another one at the calmer bar. When I turned around and took a sip, I saw Marie sauntering over, a smile on her face. She got right into it:

“My friend really likes you, you know.”
“I don’t care--I want you.”
“Well then we better get out of here or she’s not gonna like what she sees.”

At that, she grabbed my hand and dragged me away. I was barely even able to set my fresh drink down before we were out the door. It's amazing how strong a 90-pound girl can be sometimes--especially when you have absolutely no desire to resist.

Since I was living with my parents at the time, I had nowhere I could take this girl. I figured we could go to her place; then I remembered she lived in Michigan. Then I remembered I was too broke for a hotel. Then I remembered my car was illegally parked outside, in a red zone, with its flashers on this whole time.

Out of ideas and hoping she'd be game, I led her into the back of my car and we started making out. I remember her saying a few things along the lines of “Can’t we just go to your apartment?” but not really caring too much when I answered with a kiss and went from there.


The whole time we were out in my car, I was paranoid about three things:

1. A cop would come by to give me a ticket, see the steamy windows, ask us what we were doing, and find out Marie was only 17.

2. A tow truck would come by and tow us away while we were inside (a tow truck once tried to do this to me in college, while I was giving a girl a goodnight make-out in a street-sweeping zone--with the engine running!).

3. That a different girl I was extremely interested in (but not interested enough, I suppose) would come by after the concert she was at, as planned, notice my car parked right outside the door, with the flashers on, all steamed up and rocking, and start knocking on the window and shouting my name.

These distractions made it very difficult to focus on the task at hand, but I did my best.

What it turned out I SHOULD have been worried about, however, was something completely different. And way worse.

Not long after she got on top of me--firmly in the middle of things--she suddenly vomited over my shoulder and passed out.

Fortunately for me, I emerged fairly unscathed and discovered she had mostly vomited on the seat and a pile of her own clothes. Unable to wake her up, I cleaned Marie off as best I could with some paper towels I had in the back and set about trying to dress her lifeless body.

The sexy little top she had been wearing looked like a pile of knotted shoelaces covered in vomit, so I found a spare t-shirt in the back and put it on her with great difficulty. The skirt was a bit easier, but hardly a walk in the park. I can’t imagine how hard it is for morticians to put a goddamn SUIT on a corpse--they must have some really helpful tricks.



How now, brown cow? It's not like I could take her to my parents house...

I remembered hearing my friend Kevin leave the club earlier, talking to some random dudes as he walked past my car, and hoped he was still awake. I headed straight for his apartment in Wicker Park and called him up as I drove, feeling more like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction than I ever care to again.

“Kevin! Thank god you’re up. I need to talk to you about something. I'm coming over right now.”
“Okay...”

I parked across the street from his place, buzzed in, and went upstairs. I sat on the couch, folded my hands, took a deep breath, and looked at him gravely. Who knows what the hell he expected me to say, but here’s roughly what he got:

“So...Marie and I were having sex in the back of my car and then she threw up on me and passed out. She won’t wake up and I don’t know what to do. I can’t take her to my parents’ house and she lives in Michigan. Can I bring her up here?”
“Where is she right now?”
“She’s in the back of my car. Outside.”
“Jesus. Yeah, I guess...”
“I think I’ll need your help to get her in...”

Kevin and I went out to my car and, not sure of any other way to do it, I told him to get her legs and I took her arms. As we carried her across the street, I made moves for the back door to the building, but Kevin nixed that immediately.

“There’s a party on the first floor, where we played flip-cup that one night. They’re all out on the porch. They’d see us--we'll have to go in the front.”

And so it was that two nondescript white males in their twenties carried the lifeless body of a young woman down Damen Avenue at 2 o’clock in the morning on a Friday night.

We approached the front door to his building just as it opened.

A few guests were saying goodnight to the hosts of the party. One of them held the door open and they all stared at Marie with googly-eyes. I said the only thing you can say in that situation:

“She’s really drunk...”

We started up the stairs and Kevin dropped her. Then he dropped her again; I was glad he didn’t have the arms. I threw her over my shoulder and carried her up the three flights of stairs myself, probably relying on some sort of ‘lift-the-car-off-your-baby’ adrenaline boost, although the fact that she probably only weighed 90 pounds helped, too.

I didn’t want her to vomit all over one of Kevin’s couches, so I set Marie on the wooden floor between the dining room and the living room and we both stared at her, unsure of our next move. I realized there was vomit on the t-shirt she was wearing, so I took it off and gave her my clean sweater instead.

As I struggled to clothe her lifeless body once more, Kevin stared appreciatively at her fantastic breasts--a perverse reward for his efforts and discretion, I suppose.

Then he scared the shit out of me.

“Are you sure she’s alive?”
"No..."

My heart stopped. I hadn’t even thought of that! Holy shit!

As selfish as it is, my immediate fear was prison. I hadn’t bought her a drink all night and she was the one who propositioned me, but try proving that in court.

Something tells me the headline would’ve run something like this:

“Local man gets 17 year-old Michigan girl drunk, then rapes and kills her, gets life.”

I leaned down and held her wrist, searching desperately for a pulse. Nothing.

I got even more scared.

I held a few fingers up against her throat. Nothing.

Now I started to really really freak out. I leaned down and placed my ear in front of her mouth, my hand on her chest, looking for any sign of breathing. Nothing.

And then, suddenly, she breathed--a small sort-of 'back-from-the-dead' gasp that made me unprecedentedly grateful. Simple pleasures, right?

I heaved a sigh of relief, threw a blanket over her, grabbed one for myself, tried to stop my body from shaking, and crashed on the couch.


A couple hours later, my alarm went off and I hit the shower. I threw my dirty clothes back on and roused Marie from her slumber.

She awoke with a beatific smile, rose to her feet, stretched out an adorably-huge yawn, and wrapped her arms around me lovingly. She exhibited absolutely no hangover symptoms, no ‘I saw death two hours ago and it wasn’t pretty so I decided to come back’ symptoms, nothing.

She sighed and held me tight, spoke softly in my ear:

“Thank you so much for not taking advantage of me last night.”

Once again, my heart stopped.

“You know we had sex, right?”
“Yeah.”

I tried to wrap my brain around what exactly she was thanking me for then--“Thank you for not calling up all your friends and letting them run the train on me last night. It was really sweet of you.” “Thank you ever so much for not sewing my vagina shut / harvesting my organs as I slept last night.” But all I said was:

“We gotta go. I can’t be late.”

It was probably 4:30am. We walked over to my car in the nearly-freezing rain and headed downtown. The vomit marinade had done wonders for the interior.


As I tried with difficulty to navigate the dark, wet, and empty streets of Chicago--our production had almost every street around where I needed to go completely blocked off, which always makes it hard for the crew to actually GET to work--Marie happily mused on our future.

“I’d love to read some of your writing sometime. You should come out to Michigan and we can hang out. Oh, that’d be so awesome...”
“Yeah, yeah, sure...”

One image immediately plastered itself squarely on my brain--her dad on his front porch with a shot gun. I would no be going to Michigan.


Marie was somewhat concerned about her friend, Donna. Donna had seemed much more drunk than she was, so I was a bit worried, as well, but cared more about getting to work on time and putting this night from hell behind me.

We saw Donna coming out of the Dunkin Donuts around the corner. She was alive!

Her story was pretty funny itself. She got way out of control not long after we left, kept dropping glasses and shouting and being generally obnoxious. The 2nd A.D. took charge and escorted her out. On the way down the spiral staircase, she vomited all over people on the dance floor below.

The manager of the club got super pissed-off, obviously, and decided that this moment would be a good time to ID her. He got even more furious when he realized she was only seventeen and blamed 'Columbia Pictures' for letting her into his club. Idiot.

The 2nd A.D. threw Donna in a cab, took her to his hotel room, dumped her on the spare twin bed, and headed back out to a 4am bar with some of the hard-drinking production assistants.

When he didn’t show up for work the next morning, his boss called his hotel room and Donna answered.

“Yeah, he’s here. He’s sleeping.”

Five minutes later, a whiskey-soaked, unwashed 2nd A.D. showed up on set, scattered and dangerous.

The other production assistants, who had been smiling at me ever since I walked into the office, said that he was out for blood, that I had ‘stolen his girl.’

This dude was like 38 years old, overweight, unattractive, and, clearly, sleazy--he was the one buying Marie all the drinks, increasing his odds, I suppose. Sleazy and smelly maybe, but also my boss; I avoided him like the plague and headed out to my platform early.

Marie and Donna didn’t show up with the rest of my usual extras. I wondered what was up. About an hour into shooting, they both appeared across the platform from me and waved goodbye. During a break between shots, the PA from the other side came over and said Marie had left me a message:

“If you ever want to see your sweater again, come to Michigan.”

Cold.

I knew right then that I would never see her again, never see my sweater again, but also that it was probably for the best. I kept her number in my phone for years, occasionally debated giving her a call, but the image of that shotgun, and the memory of that narrow escape, prevented me from ever using it.

_

Mommy, Why Do Actors Always Sound So Stupid When They Talk?

You know he's crazy

While you're standing in line for a flight at the airport, unintentionally listening to one of those ubiquitous, who-pays-for-these, flat-screen TVs broadcasting oceans of shit, have you ever seen Brad Pitt interviewed about why Benjamin Button had to be shot in New Orleans?

(It HAD to, by the way; wouldn't have worked anywhere else. Wait--it would have, the hurricane shit was completely pointless--could've been Charleston. Or Baltimore. Or New York. Or Boston... Wait--but what about the train station clock? Probably fiction, equally worthless. Wait--what about the fact that New Orleans is mostly black? Wait--race is never once commented on. No wonder Brad had nothing... --Ed.)

It is one of the most hilariously useless moments ever captured on video (thank hell they didn't waste film on that shit).

Ever heard Tom Cruise answer a question a reporter/host asked him?

Ditto.

Ever heard somebody as "honorable and good and strong and 'smart'" as Angelina Jolie answer questions thrown at her?

Ever heard any other actor speak outside of the multiplex?

Why do all these people sound like idiots, when they are usually so witty and funny and charming and irreverent and sexy?

Answer: When they're under the gun, even though they've been prepped with phrases and lines and facts by their publicists, managers, and agents...they don't have WRITERS**.
Nor do they have directors forcing them to stick to those lines the writers wrote. Nor do they have the benefit of a second take...

You're pretty sure he's super cool

It's no accident that movie stars have become far less glamorous, fascinating, cool, and sexy since we've started to see them on TV all the time. Interviews? Tours of their homes? DVD extras? Please---stick to your day job.

Which is, just so all you actors remember, reading the lines that somebody smarter than you wrote. You are a puppet--a puppet who can certainly improve the script at times, fair play, but not so often that they should just be allowed to go around speaking on their own all the time and expect to maintain the same awe and respect from their audience.

Since everything is cyclical, I wonder when Hollywood suits will wise up and stop letting their talent speak. Oh, wait--it's not their talent anymore. That's the problem!

Sadly, not all horses should be allowed to run free...


{Okay, so I was looking for the clip of Brad Pitt I saw at the Sacramento airport a couple weeks ago and couldn't find it. I found this instead; it might be better. Watch it. And keep in mind that this is not only EDITED, but put out there, into the ether, approved by the studio...}

{For a good Tom Cruise bit, click here and watch the Tom Cruise clip...}


** For those of you don't know who they are or what they do, that makes sense--writers are the most under-appreciated people in the movie business. They just write the story and all the things the people say in it.

The Trouble With Hollywood, Part 2: Perfectly-Timed Case Study

The new Will Smith vehicle--Seven Pounds--opened this past Friday. What is it about? Well, after watching the trailer, it's hard to say. As far as I can tell, it's about Will Smith helping people who don't know why he's helping them, other than the fact that "he has to." The trailer and posters also pitch that this movie is directed by the same guy (Gabriele Muccino, perhaps Italy's only mistake?) who directed The Pursuit of Happyness, which was Will Smith's last attempt at Oscar glory by playing a real-life hero who conquers his fears and depression, and does good in the world, and scrunches up his face a lot in "emotional pain."

How did Seven Pounds do this weekend at the box office, you ask? Well, it finished second to Jim Carrey's Yes Man, with a take of only $14.8 million. Both movies performed well below expectations. Translation? They bombed. They might even lose money (I hope).

But what was to blame for this unexpected predicament?

Rory Bruer, Sony’s president for theatrical distribution, said he believed that Seven Pounds was hurt by the weather. But like Pursuit of Happyness, he said, the movie could earn total ticket sales of more than six times its opening — a level that might yet extend Mr. Smith’s winning streak [of consecutive movies earning more than $100 million, which stands at 8 --Ed].

Still, critics were especially rough on Seven Pounds, with its deliberately veiled plot line involving a man’s self-destruction in an effort to make up for his past. In a review for The New York Times, A. O. Scott said it was possibly one of most “crazily awful motion pictures ever made.” (courtesy NYTimes.com)

There you have it, folks; people didn't go see the movie because of the weather. It had nothing to do with it being an inexcusable piece of shit. Thank you for righting my upside-down world, Rory "The Asshole P.R. Robot" Bruer. You should win this year's Will Smith Award for Useless Everyman Heroism at the annual Assholes Convention on Boxing Day. Please claim your prize--a free one-week brainwashing course at the Scientology Testing Center on Hollywood Boulevard.

_

The Trouble With Hollywood Is...

that it's in the pocket of big business. I know this is not necessarily a new assertion, but let's get to the root of why and how this is not a good thing.

The first problem is that everybody loves movies--movies are art for the masses. You don't have to know how to read, how to think critically, how to study and examine; the images flash before your eyes at 24 frames per second for 90-120 minutes. You can take away from it whatever you want: "It was funny when the guy tripped." "That girl was hot." "Did you see that car crash?!" "I loved the characters; they were so troubled, so real..." "I never knew where it was going--but I always loved where it went!" "I didn't really understand it, but the critics loved it, so I do, too."

There are infinite levels of enjoyment. This leads everybody to think they know how to make them, that they know what the people want to see. But they don't. Not everybody should paint, not everybody should write, not everybody should be a photographer, not everybody should make movies.


The second problem is that movie stars are glamorous--they have the best parties, the most sex, the most fun...everybody wants in on it. Why should some CEO-type spend his life running the east coast's most-successful aluminum siding corporation when he could be running Paramount Studios and banging wannabe starlets all day long, when he isn't chatting about Europe with Clark Gable over martinis at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool? This leads people into the industry who shouldn't be there, who don't have the same goals in mind as those who burst with stories to tell on the silver screen.

The third problem is that there is a lot of money to be made. Or lost. There is much more money at stake in the film business than in other artistic realms. A bad painting loses the price of paint and a canvas ($100-200?); a bad photo shoot loses the price of your model, location/studio rental, props, assistants, hair/makeup, a few rolls of film, processing, and printing ($5-10,000?); a bad movie loses millions. Such risk naturally engenders less risky content. And so Hollywood operates with the notion that the movies don't have to be good to be successful; they just need to be successful.

Pirates, tornadoes, volcanoes, superheroes, fantasy warriors, the WWII platoon that could...in Hollywood, with so many people at the helm who shouldn't be, an idea hasn't run its course until it's been run so far into the ground that it came out the other side. When the movies bomb, the market is to blame, not themselves. Original ideas so often fail because they are crowded out of the marketplace by tits, guns, and familiarity. "Oh, I heard of that book!" "Oh, I like that guy's shitty TV show; now let's see him in a movie!" "That last vampire movie was okay; let's go see this newer one that's even worse!" This, of course, leads the studio heads even further away from original ideas.


The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was my favorite movie of 2007. It was only released in 301 theaters; it only grossed $3.9 million domestically. It only needed to make $30 million to break even, but it was never even given the chance. As a result, slow, beautiful, intimate, 70's-style character pieces have 'proven' to not resonate with audiences and future similar projects will have an even more difficult, if not impossible, time getting made.

But there will be a FOURTH Terminator, and then a fifth... There will be another Dane Cook movie, even though he has repeatedly bombed ("We just haven't found the right vehicle yet...can we make him a vampire-wizard who falls in love with his nymphomaniac assistant, Angelina Jolie in glasses?").


But the main problem with Hollywood is one that people rarely discuss. Maybe they aren't even aware of it. Maybe it isn't true. I think that art should not be giving the public what they want; it should be giving the public what they don't even know they want, but like when they see it.

Who would have guessed they would like a Picasso, before they saw one? Can you imagine a publisher giving Henry Miller an advance for Tropic of Cancer? Art forms are forever shifting according to the whims and passions of artists, who create what they think the world needs, not what it wants. How do you move forward if you're always standing still or, worse, moving backwards?


What are the big sellers in photography these days? Can you picture a hunky fireman calendar hanging in the Art Institute? A cute picture of a kitten in a coffee mug for sale in a high-end art gallery? These are the photographic equivalents of the book and movie series Twilight, to chose one example. Yet, these photographs do not push real art out of the marketplace; the sad thing is that this is not true for the movies. If Twilight is playing on 4000 screens, then other movies are not playing anywhere.

If you are a studio executive, don't hire a talented screenwriter to turn your shitty, derivative idea into a script; hire him to write a script that he or she wants to write, regardless of whether or not you think there is an easily-pinpointed demographic ready to eat it up, whether its beauty can fit on a poster. Writers are artists, not tradesmen. Ditto for directors; the idea of a producer or studio executive having final cut on a movie makes me sick.

Don't make a vampire movie because another vampire movie made a lot of money. Don't shit out Narnia because Lord of the Rings did well. Don't make one $200 million movie, hoping to make $1 billion; make five $40 million movies where the artists actually have control, and one success will make you hundreds of million of dollars (the others will probably break even, once foreign box office and rentals are added into the mix). Don't spend $100 million to advertise a movie because it sucks and you need people to think they'll be missing out on a cultural touchstone if they don't see the movie whose egregiously-Photoshopped posters cover every bus bench and building in town.

If you're going to be businessmen, at least learn the first rule of business: never throw good money after bad--cut your losses.

Stepping aside from the art/business struggle, even from a purely business standpoint these are all bad decisions when you think long-term, when you think about industry health and growth. In the short term, a piece of shit derivative schlockfest might make some money, you might think you made the right call, and start production on two sequels, but you will pay for it by losing trust, which eventually results in losing customers.


Audiences are no longer as loyal as they once were, to studios, directors, actors...they have been burned too many times. They saw Patch Adams. They saw Troy. They still like to go to the movies, because it makes for a great date, a great escape, a great experience; but they are more fickle and can now only be tempted by a sure thing. They pick and chose more carefully and so the executives feel they need to give them a sure thing, a movie Joe Shmoe knows he will like because he already saw it with different actors in the same roles.

Studios complain that declining interest in going to the movies is a direct result of home theaters, illegally circulating DVDs, high ticket prices, a glut in the marketplace, technological distractions like the internet and video games...but these are not the problem. They WISH that was the problem; they don't want to admit--even to themselves--that the problem lies in their short-term profit strategies. Look at what happened to Wall Street this year; why would Hollywood be any different when it is run by the same people? People don't go to the movies as much as they used to BECAUSE THE MOVIES SUCK.

Hollywood should be leading the people, not pandering to them. Once we get visionary businessmen in charge of the picture business and they cede creative control back to artists they believe in, we will be back on track for long-term success; short of this reality, things will only get worse.

_

Who Knew Richard Marx Was So Revered?

I was singing a Richard Marx song in the shower yesterday--Now and Forever, the #1 wedding song of the early '90s--and found myself almost immediately at a loss for lyrics.

Oddly, there was a time when I knew every word to every track on his album Paid Vacation. As hard as that is to admit to people right now, I take solace in the fact that I was merely the victim of a sadly-limited musical exposure.

Despite the fact that my parents came of age in the 1960s-70s, the only CDs in our house were the following:

1. Aretha Franklin's Greatest Hits
2. Cristopher Cross -- self-titled
3. Huey Lewis and the News - Sports
4. Huey Lewis and the News - Fore!
5. Huey Lewis and the News - Small World
6. The Back to the Future soundtrack (with 2 tracks by Huey Lewis)
7. The Beverly Hills Cop II soundtrack
8. Bonnie Raitt - Luck of the Draw
9. A dozen or so classical piano and Christmas CDs my dad would listen to

Notice the lack of even the Beatles and Rolling Stones, much less funk and soul records...

Anyway, I digress. As I searched my memory bank for more lyrics to Now and Forever, I was instead reminded of a story that one of my bosses told me once, at a sushi restaurant in St. Charles, IL (don't worry--I had the beef teriyaki). To protect my boss' identity, let's call him Reinhold.

Reinhold and I, along with maybe a dozen other crew members, were crammed into monastic dorm rooms on the grounds of a former convent, working on some awful Accenture conference for a week and a half, so it was nice to get out on the town, even if that town was St. Charles. After a few tall bottles of Kirin, Reinhold told me that before he got into producing boring conferences, he was a touring lighting designer for various musicians throughout the late '80s and '90s.

I asked him if he had any good stories and he told me one of his favorites.

Reinhold was the head lighting designer on a Richard Marx World Tour when his popularity was at its peak (early '90s?), and their last stop before returning to the United States was in Taipei, at some sort of large arena.

Richard Marx had been a prima donna the whole time, so nobody on the crew was surprised when he didn't turn up on time for the show. As more time passed, however, the packed house started to get riled up, shouting, chanting, screaming, stomping.

"We want Richard! We want Richard!"

The crew all gathered backstage, fearing things might soon turn ugly, to discuss their options if it did. Then Richard Marx's tour manager turned up to inform the crew and the local promoter that Richard was not going to perform because he had a cold.

"But what are we gonna do with this crowd? They're gonna tear this place apart if you go out there right now and say that?!"

The local promoter took to the stage, grabbed the microphone and said to the throng of rabid Richard Marx fans, "Richard Marx will not be performing tonight because he hates the people of Taiwan."

You can imagine their reaction. Ape-shit NUTS.

Reinhold followed some other crew members through a hole in the fence behind the stage, left the madness behind, and headed back to their hotel as the mob no-doubt tore the stadium apart.

The crew members all went to their rooms, hurriedly packed their things, and headed down to the lobby in the elevator. When the doors opened, an angry mob filled the lobby and they found themselves staring down the barrels of a half-dozen AK-47s.

They were all taken hostage and led into a room to be interrogated.

According to Reinhold:
"Luckily, I was able to talk my way out of it and we all headed to the airport. As soon as the plane landed at LAX, we said goodbye and headed our separate ways, since we all lived somewhere in California anyway. Richard had to find a whole new crew to staff his last few tour dates stateside."

Who would have thought a Richard Marx tour could involve such adventure, eh?

I wish I knew what Reinhold said to the guys with the machine guns, but he wouldn't tell me. Said it was a long story--a long story I never got to hear. Hopefully he didn't give away any state secrets...