Box Office News 12 28 20

Box Office Preview 12 24 20

Boxoffice News 12 21 20

BoxOffice Preview 12 18 20

Monster Hunter Hunter Hunts Monster Hunters.

Corporate Overlord watch: Final Cut Pro no longer uploads directly to YouTube! Tim and Sergei get into an argument or something?

BOX OFFICE NEWS 12-14-20

BoxOffice Preview 12-10-2020

Boxoffice News 12 4-6 2020

Boxoffice Preview 12-4-20

BOX OFFICE NEWS 11-30-20

Boxoffice Preview 11-26-20

Box Office News 11-23-20

Box Office Preview 11-20-20

BOX OFFICE NEWS 11-10-20

BoxOffice Preview 11-10-20

Box Office News 11-10-20

Boxoffice Preview 11-6-20

Weekend Preview 10/23/20

Box Office News Nov 2

Weekend Preview 10-30

Box Office News 10-26-2020

Box Office News 10-19-20

Tips on renting a theater!

It's Life Jim, Pretty Much As We Know It

 "The reason that most virtual reality movies don't work is because movies ARE virtual reality." - Roger Ebert

In this pandemic world, I have made an investment in essential survival equipment: an Oculus Quest 2 stand-alone VR headset with nifty hand controllers. 

It's a step up from my Oculus Go - two virtual hands instead of one, and better movement tracking, plus improved graphics. Got it last night and instantly started looking for stuff to load into it, and spent as much time exploring those worlds before the motion sickness set in. 

There's not an awful lot out there for it yet, by the way. Oculus has built it but mostly they haven't yet come, the developers. The platform has limitations, among the worst is that you need an awful lot of set design when a player can look in any direction. Still something caught my eye.

One of the most popular apps (can't really call this a game) is Netflix. Like Netflix on your TV, or phone, the app is free but you have to have a subscription to see the movies. The difference in Oculus is when you boot up you are in a ski lodge, on a nice leather couch, with a HUGE screen in front of you. You start a movie (I took another crack at Enola Holmes, still didn't like it) and the lights dim. You're in a darker room, but you're still watching a big TV. 

I happen to have a nice couch with a coffee table in front, facing a TV, and I sat down and watched a movie for a few minutes there. It was fun and then I started getting distracted. Why can't I get up? Why can't I get off the couch during the slow parts and see what's in that loft upstairs? Maybe I could put an Espresso machine on that counter?

There are plenty of other games available where you CAN walk around. One is Google Earth, sorta, and you can bark out any address in the world and there you are, in street view. And you'll find an awful lot of opportunities to shoot at homicidal robots or play virtual tennis or chat with ten-year-olds in other nations. But the idea that one of the most popular apps is Netflix and the attraction is you can be alone in a nice lodge instead of surrounded roommates in your crappy apartment... I think Roger Ebert's grave spinning is up even higher now.

Weekend Preview 10-16-20

Go bra, go!

Box Office News

Weekend Boxoffice Preview 10.9.20

The Comey Rule: It Is What It Is

 “It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.” —Alex Delarge, A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Got through the two-part, 3.5 hour Showtime miniseries The Comey Rule in one sitting, right after watching the Vice Presidential debates, in fact.

The production is top-notch, shot anamorphic in luscious cool tones by veteran DP Elliot Davis and directed by Billy Ray, who wrote the biopics Captain Phillips and Richard Jewell. Despite  its impressive length the miniseries never flags: it moves from one political dilemma to the next (Clinton’s emails, Russian interference and kompromat, etc.) with nervous energy throughout part 1 and into Part 2, where Trump finally shows up. He’s the ultimate non-moveable object, and every character in the film ends up crashing right into him.

Brandon Gleeson as Trump. He is often
shown in the Oval Office with the sun
shining so bright behind him it flares
across the screen. The symbolism at
work here is self-explanatory.

This is the first big-budget narrative biopic about the Trump administration. (there have been dozens of documentaries.) It features Jeff Daniels as James Comey, delivering one of his trademark “Tom Hanks Light” trustworthy and calm performances. The thing is packed with A-list stars like Holly Hunter and Jonathan Banks and Michael Kelly. (The most fun portrayals: William Sadler as Michael Flynn and Joe Lo Truglio as Jeff Sessions.)

Irish actor Brendon Gleeson plays President Donald Trump, and it is a revelation. He inhabits Trump: his Queens-hatched singsong voice, orange skin, sci-fi hairdo, the sack suits. Every third line is punctuated by the wet rasp of his nostrils taking in a breath. In the universe this film sets up in Part One— munificent, hard-working, sort of WASPy people dressed in plain suits, working hard but important jobs— Trump crashes into Part Two like a space alien. I hope he gets all the Emmys.

FBI brass, watching the 2016 election results.
Michael Kelly plays Andrew McCabe.
None of them at this point know
how doomed they are.

The screenplay was adapted from James Comey’s book “A Higher Loyalty,” and as such it tends to hagiography: Comey, in many places, comes off like a solid, patriotic G-man whose only loyalties were to justice and the FBI. But there is also a counter-theme to the portrayal the miniseries does not shy away from. James Comey is shown as a government official with a fatal flaw: he has no political instincts. No gut instincts at all, really. The whole Clinton email debacle— declaring an investigation less than fortnight before the election, and calling it off three days before— was shown as a result of his self-righteousness, his dogged adherence to procedure, without any thought to political fallout.  When someone as primal and cunning as Trump enters his life the miniseries shows in sickening detail he was utterly unprepared for it. He falls back on his honesty and competence, and in the end it makes no difference at all.

One of the wonderful elements of biopics like this is how they can show the color and detail behind events we have recently seen on television or the internet. Biopics somehow make what is real even more real, just like Alex Delarge told us. Great example: the public introduction of Comey into Trump’s administration, the scene he described in his book where when Trump entered, he subconsciously backed up to the opposite side of the room. Trump calls “his” FBI director over: Comey goes frozen-faced. He gives him the trademark tugging handshake and whispers “let’s get a few pictures together.” Meanwhile Comey’s wife and daughter are watching live at home— and the wife says, “that’s his ‘oh shit’ face."

James Comey (left) and Jim Clapper (right)
riding the elevator in Trump Tower.

Contemporary biopics are usually stories filled with dread. We KNOW what is going to happen to the hapless characters introduced in Act One, so all we can do sit helplessly as history and misfortune overtake them. The list is very long: Flight 93, The Perfect Storm, Too Big to Fail (the HBO biopic about the 2008 crash, this film’s closest cousin), and both of Billy Ray’s aforementioned writing credits.

The Comey Rule is no exception. You get to relive the 2016 election and all the sickening depression that came with it. When Trump starts taking charge, all you can do is watch helplessly as career government employees try to comprehend someone like Trump, who has absolutely no care about the rules and laws and precedents everyone else relies on to keep government running smoothly. The most dread-fulled part of The Comey Rule is this spectacle of slow-motion disaster: The cool, competent bureaucrats and agency employees and lawyers who are are helpless in the face of Trump. They all know something bad is about to happen to the rule of law and the reputation of their agencies, and all they can do is look at each other and shrug.

“It is what it is” is a Trump quote about the Coronavirus, but it shows up in mob movies with regularity. It has a very specific meaning: it says a terrible thing has happened— but it HAD to happen, and there is nothing you or anybody on earth can do about it.

The 2020 election is upon us. Let us hope the outcome is a hopeful one, because The Comey Rule showed us how easy it is to watch everything go to shit and mumble “it is what it is.”

Box Office News Oct 5

Oh no, witches again

Box Office News 092820

Box Office Preview92520

William Goldman's "nobody know's anything" only on steroids

Box Office News

No news is kinda par for the course

Box Office News Sep 11 13

Nuff 'said, and it's hardly anything said.

BoxOffice Preview

Slllllllllllloooooowwwwww weekend

Box Office News Labor Day Weekend

Oh, BIG DEAL.

Box Office News Preview: Tenet Vs Mulan

These are historic times, kids

Box Office News Special Report: THE CW

Box Office News Aug 28-30

Meet the New Mutants, same as the old mutants! And that goes for Bill and Ted only in reverse.

A Technical Note About Monday's Box Office Report

I'm still stewing about the Chroma-key in that report, so much so that I felt compelled to make sure I could solve the problem. Excerpted here.

This might be a good time to explain what the hell the report even is. I'm not making money from it, and I'm not getting famous. Really it's just an excuse I use to get myself in front of a camera once a week. I've used it as a kind of constantly updating acting reel too. But I suppose soon you can look up the early episodes and experience a fond nostalgia for the days when you were able to be inside a movie theatre.

Anyhow, the pandemic has allowed me to up my game, report-wise. Since I'm not busy most weeknights I have started paying more attention to post-production. I may still dash off the report without any prior research but I have been looking into editing solutions. For years I was finishing these things on iMovie, a software package that Apple throws in to OSX like a fake tattoo in a box of Cracker Jacks. It's got a lot of good qualities and a lot of huge limitations.

I was a professional editor for a while and iMovie always felt like a step down from the Avid Media Composer, the system I went to a very expensive school in Burbank to learn about. The Composer itself was expensive in those days. In the nineties, if you wanted one of your own it would cost you somewhere between $15,000 and $125,000. And it sold too! If you were a pro the Media Composer would handle anything you threw at it. And it was cheap compared to cutting film in a rented editing suite. It has keyboard shortcuts for everything, which means that if you learn them you can cut as fast as you can type.

Anyway, that was thirty years ago. Apple and Premiere offered professional solutions at a tenth of the price, and now you can download a hobbled version of Media Composer for free. It only does 2k video so you can't really cut a movie on it, but I'm not doing movies am I?

Man what a tangent!

The thing I learned about the MC is somehow, they have the same chroma-key plugin that they were using in the nineties, and it's AWFUL. At first I was shooting on my iPhone, and compositing in iMovie because a monkey could use their green-screen system. It's really smart. You can green screen in the PHONE, man. 

But then I found that the free MC also offers free plugins and among them is a much better, more controllable chroma-key, so I started a couple of weeks ago with acceptable results. So what happened last week?

I rushed the shooting. Two mistakes: didn't light the background evenly (I liked a little shadow on my face and it turns out, can't do it) and the other one, and this it vitally important is I didn't lock the exposure on the iPhone.

Your phone probably does this: it corrects exposure on the fly. It's great for most situations but for green screen it means that if you move around the frame, or bring something light or dark into the frame, the exposure change and therefore, so will the background. And when that happens, whatever color you set to make transparent, the screen isn't that color any more. 

For the test above, I did it all right. Locked exposure, even lighting, and I made sure the screen fills the frame. I'm all set for Monday.

And most likely under ten people will watch, but one of them will be me.

Box Office News Aug 24

\\



Apologies for the terrible chromakey this week. Lock your exposure when you're acquiring images, is my advice!

Public Domain Friday: Latitude Zero

Here, got a movie for you.

I was completely unaware of this movie until last night, when it turned up in my Amazon Prime recommendations. What is this? I said. Joseph Cotton and Ceasar Romero in submarines? Directed by the guy responsible for all those Godzilla movies in the sixties? I'M IN!

If you didn't grow up watching it on Creature Features, it's probably for two reasons. One is that it's predictably awful. Joseph Cotton seems to be kicking off his late-career headlong dive into humiliation here. It's a few years before Lady Frankenstein and The Abominable Dr Phibes, and how he consented to wearing this costumes (and I swear, it must be a little lipstick and rouge also) can only be explained by a need for money or some really strong kink we never found out about. Romero fares better, if only because he'd been doing Batman for a couple years and was comfortable with camp.

The other reason appears to be the usual legal battles. The movie is an international co-production between Tojo studios and Four Star Productions, an American television production company. But early in the production, after flying Americans to Japan for shooting, Four Star went bankrupt and left the movie to soldier on with half the budget intact. Then once the initial TV rights expired they were held up in a legal battle which kept it out of sight for decades. It's only now that ALL rights have expired that you can see this. 

Box Office News

Box Office News August 10

A fun assortment this week!

Box Office News

The return of the major studios! *



*Return with an asterisk

Sirius I Ain’t

So, in April I got a used car. I’ll skip the details except to say this: It’s a 2017 model and like a lot of more modern cars it came with a free trial of Sirius XM, the satellite radio service. I’ve never been interested in Sirius and when I saw the handouts in the folder with the manual, I threw them away. I was driving for a couple of weeks when I saw an email that said somehow, without my knowing, the free trial had been activated. So I have been checking in every couple days.

 

It’s a great alternative to terrestrial radio. I live in L.A., which is a major market for radio and the choices still suck. On-air radio somehow reached the point where they market-researched themselves to death. They’re giving it away and I’m still not taking. So Sirius, with its lack of commercials and it’s weird narrowcasting (there is a channel devoted entirely to Canadian Stand-Up Comedy, for example) is a refreshing change from that. The only problem is, so is internet radio.  Since I can play my phone through Bluetooth, Sirius can’t compete with the sheer wild-west programming of the internet. PLUS everything I like is already free.

 

Sirius knows this. They want to charge $22 a month for their service but they can’t compete on generic product alone. However, they have a few arrows in their quiver and the battering ram is, of course, Howard Stern. Somehow he was the biggest thing on the air and when it came time to renew his contract, he could see that radio was plunging into the abyss and he sold franchise to Sirus. He’s exclusive there. You want Howard, you gotta pay for satellite. It’s a good deal for everyone – Stern is making bigger money than radio could afford and he’s a koi fish swimming with sea monkeys.

 

In the whole free trial period I haven’t once even ventured near any of the several Howard Stern channels. Didn’t like him in the nineties, don’t now. Not my cup o' tea.

 

So the trial is ending tomorrow. There ARE things I like and will miss. The Beatles station is fun sometimes, and the Big Band music. And since I also won’t pay for cable, the 24 hour news networks have audio feeds. Believe me, most of the time you don’t miss the visuals. But I don’t feel like any of this stuff is worth paying MONEY for. I just thought it was cool to enjoy while it was free.

 

They’ve been sending me daily emails reminding me the trial is almost up. Also, I’ve had three sales calls but each time there was a technical problem and they lost the signal and cut off. It sounds like I’m toying with them but I swear it was real phone trouble. I guess maybe the sales rep was driving under a bridge at the time.

 

I noticed from the emails that I could renew at full price. But on the same page they are also offering a $5 a month plan for a year (and then it goes up to full price) which tempted me a little bit. Then I thought, nah, I could use that money for something else. And THEN, last night I saw a deal… extend the trial for another three months for two dollars. I went for it.

 

Part of me says just give it up, but I’m only out two dollars and I have this sneaking feeling if I hold out long enough, they’ll let me renew in November for another two dollars. And if not I will just walk away and listen to Old Time Radio Detective show channel on the internet.

 

The moral, I guess, is if you have an antipathy to Howard Stern you are more powerful than you think.

Weekend Box Office 7 27

A brief review of Relic included at no extra charge

Weekend Box Office News

9 movies - it's almost a top 10!

Weekend Box Office News

Like a phoenix, only still on fire

Weekend Box Office News

It's the opposite of a blockbuster holiday weekend

Falling Down: D-Fens Quixote

An image from the incredible opening shot. The camera starts on
Michael Douglas' lips, flies out of his car, allaround it, and settles on
him again. This was before computer graphics made this easy.

A recent re-watching of the 1993 Joel Schumacher film Falling Down (it was a homework assignment) turned up a number of fascinating elements— some of them unadulterated 1990s values, some modern re-evaluations, and at least one new definition. Falling Down, it turns out,  is a lot of different things.

Synopsis. William Foster, recently fired from his aerospace job, walks away from his car in a Los Angeles traffic jam. He embarks on a city-spanning adventure: he is trying to get to Venice for his daughter’s birthday party, despite the fact his ex-wife has a restraining order against him. What follows is a series of obstacles to his goal, all challenges to his worldview, one that is fading away. While he is being pursued by Detective Prendergast (Robert Duvall) the protagonist’s quest becomes a path of increasing violence and destruction across the city.

Parable of White Victimization. Time has not been kind to many of this film’s themes. The most obvious one, the one pursued in the press at the time: D-Fens was a “latter-day prophet, denouncing the hypocrisy of our times.” White men were losing ground in an ever-more-diverse America. At the time, when Hollywood and popular culture was basically white men as well, this crisis was internalized.

The staff of Whammyburger, being told they make a lousy product
by a man waving a TEC-9 around. Dede Pfeiffer (center) is the
completely unflappable counter girl. She's a hoot.

D-Fens establishes his “everyman” credentials by constantly questioning things many people at the time questioned as well. Those questions start out picayune: Why does a can of Coke cost 85 cents? Why doesn’t Whammyburger serve breakfast past 11:30? Why can’t I just sit here and catch my breath?

Vignettes are sprinkled throughout the film that reinforce his “angry white man” perspective. Urban decay. Police harassment. A homeless white guy holding a begging sign, next to industrious Latino men selling goods on the street.

Beth (Barbara Hershey) realizing she may have had a hand
in the victimization of a 1990s American white male--
the least victimized sort of person there is.

Later, his questioning veers into more sweeping social criticism. While cutting across a golf course, D-Fens wonders why the vast green space isn’t open to the public. He later hides in the pool house of an immense mansion, and finds out (via a family of poor tenants) that it is owned by a plastic surgeon. At the time, these observations struck close to home: Was D-Fens a victim?

The film went a bit further than that to indemnify William Foster as a victim of his times. When the police interview his ex-wife Beth (Barbara Hershey) she admits her reasons for placing restraining order on him were spurious. He had a temper, but he didn’t drink and never struck her or her daughter, and the judge who set the order “wanted to make an example of him.” As the interview progresses she looks increasingly distressed and embarrassed.

Joel Shumacher and screenwriter Ebbe Roe Smith crafted Falling Down to channel “White Male Paranoia.” The reason the image of Michael Douglas — buzz cut, broken horn rims— made the cover of Newsweek is this film successfully captured a moment in history. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union, George Bush scaled back defense spending on a massive scale. Military installations were closed. Aerospace companies like Grumman and Lockheed closed down facilities all over the United States: Southern California was hit hard. William Foster’s job is obviously part of this loss, part of the USA’s military-industrial contraction as the cold-war era was coming to an end. To the people who ran the show back then— middle-class white men— they saw it as something that was happening to them, and they were the victims.

(As an aside, my mom worked for Lockheed for 30+ years, and I was an eyewitness to the post-cold-war wave of defense industry layoffs. It was as bad as it came off in the film, and it didn't just affect white men.)

D-Fens as Anti-Antihero. This is not just wordplay for a villain: it’s the best way to describe him. A character can be categorized by two criteria: deeds and thoughts.

A HERO is a character who does heroic deeds and embodies heroic qualities. Captain America, Indiana Jones, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Joan of Arc, Robin Hood: all embodiments of positive values and behaviors.

An ANTIHERO is a character who does heroic deeds but does not embody heroic qualities. Tom Jones, Tristam Shandy, Deadpool, “Mad” Max Rocketanski, Rick Blaine and the nameless protagonists of Sergio Leone’s and Akira Kurosawa’s films fit this description. They do not obey any rules of lawful conduct, are often transgressive or violent, but in the end their acts resolve into a greater good.


A VILLAIN is a character without redeeming qualities, who actively oppose the efforts of heroes and the greater good. Darth Vader, Sauron, Noah Cross, Norman Bates, The Wicked Witch: all are engaged in selfish ends that will cause great harm if they succeed.

But William “D-Fens” Foster is something else. He is a regular man, down on his luck and emotionally unstable, but not extraordinary in any way. Throughout the film he voices reasonable opinions, social commentary about the crumbling world around him. His goals are not intrinsically villainous: he merely wants to go home, and is forced by all manner of extraordinary obstacles to adapt ever more violent methods to achieve his goal.

D-Fens does not aspire to heroic status. He merely wants simple, basic needs filled: change for the phone, breakfast, a moment to rest in a vacant lot. These simple goals are always thwarted— so as the film progresses he cares less and less about behaving in a lawful manner. In his eyes, all he sees are forms of injustice, large and small: overpriced soda, gang territoriality, pointless road closures, obnoxious golfers. In his eyes it’s all injustice against him and the world he comes from.

But in the end, when Prendergast pulls a gun on him on Venice Pier, D-Fens looks at all he has wrought— family running, police clearing the area— and finally comes to the realization that according to the rules of the world he now lives in, he is the bad guy.

"I'm the bad guy?"

He is an ANTI-ANTIHERO: A character who understands morality and justice, but is incapable of any form of heroic action, and in the end acts against the greater good. The anti-antihero is distinct from the antihero by their mindset: they believe their goals are for good and believe are working toward the good, but are blind to the destructive nature of their actions and in the end do no good at all.

Michael Corleone was a decent example of an anti-antihero: he wanted to do good, become legitimate, but in the end (of Godfather 2, at least) was incapable of saving his family or himself.  Perhaps the all-time greatest anti-antihero ever created was Walter White. Every move he made was designed to get himself out of a bad situation (poverty, disease, anonymity, humiliation). By the end he ends up destroying everything he loves. Viewers of “Breaking Bad” rooted for him every week, because he was a likable, normal guy with relatable problems. Every week he slipped further and further away, to a place where there was nothing left but violence and revenge.

The Episodic Journey. Jim Bisso pegged Falling Down precisely: it’s Don Quixote, Western literature first modern novel, and it pulls two elements from Miguel de Cervantes’s 17th-century work. In form, both center on a wandering protagonist in a series of disconnected encounters. Don Quixote also shares an important trait with D-Fens: both are delusional. Quixote overdosed on tales of chivalry from the past and has come to believe they are quite real. D-Fens is also obsessed with a past where he was the hero of the American narrative.

The difference is in the final details: Don Quixote’s quest takes years and in the end he recovers from his delusions. D-Fens's wanderings take place over the span of one day, his violence and delusions only get worse, and in the end is killed via “suicide-by-cop.*”

1993 vs. 2020. D-Fens is not some sort of MAGA prototype: He was a product of mid-century values who is finally being forced to deal head-on with the reality of the post-Cold War world. He looks like the sort of gun-toting bigot we see on the news in 2020, but he isn't.

In one episode D-Fens stops to buy his daughter a gift— and watches black man picketing a bank across the street. His sign says “Not Economically Viable.” The man is shouting that he was denied a loan due to the color of his skin. He is then arrested and taken away. D-Fens sympathizes with him, even going as far as repeating the sign’s slogan.

Later D-Fens is sheltered from the police by Nick (Frederick Forrest), the deeply bigoted, racial-slur-slinging military surplus store owner. Nick admires D-Fens's violent spree and exclaims “I’m with you! we’re the same!” Nick shows D-Fens some Nazi artifacts and gives him a LAW rocket launcher (talk about Chekov’s gun!). But D-Fens is repelled by Nick’s white supremacy. D-Fens ends up stabbing Nick to death to prevent his likely rape— which informs the trope that virulent homophobes are latent homosexuals.

It may be a 1993 cultural assumption at play here, but William Foster is not a white supremacist, He is not comfortable in multicultural America, and is clearly nostalgic for the days of unquestioned white hegemony before the 1990s, but racism is never his core motive.

We can look at Falling Down in 2020 and see D-Fens as the unsprouted seed of the MAGA mindset. It would take 20 years of union-busting, opioid addiction, corporate offshoring, a drastic loss of economic status and constant watering by conservative news for this seed to bear the fruit we see sprouting everywhere today.

* Japanese literature and cinema feature a “Ronin Character.” This is an antihero protagonist who, when freed of the considerable restraints of society, openly criticizes and challenges the status quo. But the cost for such freedom is always the same: they die by the end. Falling Down fits into this concept well.

(h/t to John for the title.)

Weekend Box Office

A cinema recession!

Weekend Box Office News

Progress, made!

You Too Can Have The Number One Movie In America

People around the world dream of it. It's a trophy. It's the top, the Tower of Pisa, the Mona Lisa. It's sweeeeeeeet success. It's climbin' the charts with a bullet. It's being named as the number one movie in America. Normally it's a crazy dream because you will never have the resources to make a movie that popular, let alone fight the big studios to get enough screens to show it so you can generate the ticket sales to even break into the top ten.

But of course, ain't no normal nowadays.

I've been doing a little Box Office Report for years now. When the box office results are reported by the distributors I relay that data to you. It's more obsessive/compulsive behavior than a real attempt at informing by now, but there's still information. And earlier this year, when the all the movie theaters shut down for the pandemic, I took a week off. But the following week, having nothing better to do on Monday night, I checked it out and saw that my source, Box Office Mojo, reported no box office sales. That WAS news, so I reported that. And that was the report for the next month. No movies out!

Then, remarkably, movies came out. At first they were all from IFC films, and I understand that they were releasing to a few regional drive-ins. They were making almost no money, but at the same time they had all the top movies in the country. They had the whole chart! Then gradually a 2nd distributor came in. We have gone from a top three to a top 8. Collectively last weekend they grossed what might be the catering bill for a few day's shooting on Black Panther. However a movie called The Wretched has managed to break Black Panther's streak with 5 weeks at the top of the chart.

(It's about people who live next door to a witch)

Then there is Unsubscribe. This movie was out for one Wednesday, in one theater in Westhampton Beach NY, and it was the number one movie on that day, making $25k. And here's how!

Last month, Nilsson said, he and YouTuber Eric Tabach were chatting about how movie theaters across the country were closed due to the pandemic. 

"We joked any film put in a theater would instantly top the box office," Nilsson said. "Realizing the unique situation presented a loophole, we hatched a plan." 

The duo decided that if they rented out a theater — what the film distribution world calls "four-walling" — they could keep every dollar they made from ticket sales. 

"If we bought every seat, the money would funnel right back into our own pockets," he said. 

The next day, Nilsson wrote a short horror film titled "Unsubscribe." He shot it a week later, completely over Zoom. 

"Last week, Eric and I bought out a theater in Westhampton Beach and screened to an empty audience," he said. "The next day, it was the number one box office movie in America, as reported by 'The Numbers.'"

Yep, that's the whole audience

You might call it pointless. It's pointless. But is it? Do YOU have the number one movie in America after one week of shooting and post? Could you take advantage of a movie theater that would rent for peanuts because it's better than nothing? More importantly, these guys probably will get a production deal from it. No one will watch the movie but executives admire the chutzpah that it took to come up with it.

Of course when I said YOU could have the number one movie it's true. But since it's been done once and we're all onto it, ain't no production deal for you.

Hey if you want to see this, knock yourself out. It's 4 bucks to watch the whole thing, which is likely the catering budget of Unsubscribe. Help them recoup!

Box Office News

Wonders continue to not... cease

Box office news

Look, another report if you like that kind of thing

Box Office News

Showgirls: A Non-Perverted Re-Examination

Showgirls was a bomb in theatrical release. When it was
released on home video it made a $100 million profit. I
suppose the audience was more, um, "comfortable"
watching it the the privacy of their own homes.

It may be some form of social-distancing madness setting in, but when Showgirls (1995) appeared on cable last night in lurid HD I watched it all the way through. I realized it was only the second time I have watched this film (excepting the bits and pieces I would run across while channel-surfing). Showgirls was first released when I was in Los Angeles, if I recall at a decent venue, like the Chinese Theater: I was unable to persuade anybody to go see it with me.

Anyway, as this loud, garish anti-bildungsroman played out, I realized I may have a few things to say about it. I’m not actually recommending you to see Showgirls (I did that for you) but if you run across it and decide to take the challenge, I’m offering tools for a fresh re-evaluation.

This re-evaluation starts with an overview of Paul Verhoeven, a very successful director in the 1980s and 1990s, possessed of a very unusual auteur vision. The concepts and values he explores are so strange and unique they energize his films to this day. His major themes:

• 

Commodification - Paul Verhoeven’s films often explore the idea that human relationships are purely transactional, and human life can be converted into various forms of marketable property. RoboCop (1987) is about a person who is transformed into the property of Omni Consumer Products. Total Recall (1990) is about a company that creates pre-packaged memories— the core of human experience— and offer them up for a price, with optional add-ons.



• Corruption - Good government and sound corporate management are not things that exist in Verhoeven films. His films are populated with cutthroat and immoral executives, weak mayors, sociopathic governors and degenerate police detectives. America is shown as a country in deep moral decline. Democratic norms have been replaced by corporate rule and transactional graft.

The only time he shows a functioning governmental organization is in Starship Troopers (1997), which depicts the Mobile Infantry as a force capable of sound leadership, correcting it’s mistakes and achieving victory— however, this depiction is clearly marked as completely unreliable.

• Sexual Fear - I don’t know what happened to Paul Verhoeven when he was a kid (maybe it was some trauma from his childhood in occupied Holland living near a German V-2 rocket base) but something messed him up a little. Sexuality—especially female sexuality— is often depicted as destructive and menacing (Basic Instinct, Fourth Man) or, in the case of Showgirls, omnipotent. Attraction is always balanced with fear and, as mentioned above, weighed as a transaction.

On to Showgirls, which channels every aspect of Verhoeven’s auteur vision in an open, lurid, unsubtle way.

Nomi as we first meet her.

• A Brief Synopsis:  Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkeley), a beautiful young woman with a mysterious past, hitchhikes into Las Vegas. She manages to get a roommate and a job at Cheetahs, a nude club, where she gets the attention of a casino entertainment manager (Kyle MacLachlan) and the star of the casino’s topless show (Gina Gershon). They pull strings to get her a place in the show’s chorus, which begins a story of intense backstage rivalry as Nomi begins her ascent to star status.

And yes, Showgirls is NC-17 and all about titillation, filled end-to-end with nudity and sex acts. But take my word for it: after about 15 minutes or so, the visual spectacle becomes numbing. Women show up nude because that’s their job, nothing more.

Verhoeven protagonists are often new-born characters— ones that really didn’t exist before the start of the film. Nomi Malone enters the film from places unknown, with an unknown past, under an assumed name (“No Me, Alone”), no money, possessions stolen. RoboCop was a synthetic creation that in Act I only existed as an OCP boardroom proposal. Douglas Quade, the nice guy played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall, may be an artificial personality implant. Verhoeven is not afraid to question the bedrock reality of his protagonists— and it’s always a neat way to kick off a movie.

• Las Vegas World - Showgirls is mostly about Las Vegas and what a deeply insane place it is. Founded as a city where any and all vices are accommodated, it is in Verhoeven’s vision the  capital of America, the final embodiment of the values of a corrupted, amoral country.

The system of Las Vegas— money is all-important, ends always justify means— is contrasted against, of all things, culture. Dance, theater, and music are all represented in Showgirls in one form or another— all crushed flat under the weight of the Vegas version of show business. Dance is stripping. Theater is a hugely overproduced topless show. Music is represented by a pop star who is nothing less than a sadistic rapist.

And Nomi fits right in: she is the trash princess of a trash city. She has no values outside of purely transactional ones. The value-free system that rules Vegas rewards her, over and over. Nomi Malone is a rags-to-riches success story, a Horatio Alger story with G-strings.

• Nomi the Verhoeven Protagonist - Nomi Malone is extremely unlikeable. She shares this unlikely protagonist quality with Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct (1992) and Kevin Bacon in Hollow Man (2000).

Nomi is selfish, vain, deeply ignorant (“I love Ver-sayse”) and has a hair-trigger temper. About half the one-on-one scenes Nomi has in the film end with an angry physical outburst. Part of the fun of Showgirls is how it reproduces the queasy feeling of being around someone with mental issues: you don’t know moment to moment what will trigger them, which keeps you on your toes.

Reviewer Mick LaSalle described Showgirls as a film that,
like most of the characters, puts on lipstick well past
the natural borders of the lips.

• The Narrative Synthesis. Here’s the part that makes this a truly weird, very telling Verhoeven film: Every other character loves Nomi Malone. Her roommate adores her, James the dancer is in love with her, and she manages to charm the entire staff of the Stardust Hotel and Casino. The star of the topless casino review she is in and the casino’s entertainment director compete for her affections.

This is the insane, coked-up, glitter-coated heart of Showgirls: one messy scene after another, all mismatched emotions and screaming and throwing things and storming out of rooms. The other characters watch her go, eyes wide in love and lust, eternally forgiving.

This isn’t some example of bad writing—though overall, it's not very good. Joe Eszterhas got $2 million for the script, and it ended his superstar career. It is not poor direction either. Paul Verhoeven is… hanging a lantern on it. For all his quirks he is a very capable director, and he would not have crafted such jarring interactions without a purpose. He WANTS you to notice how weird and off-putting it is to have every character in Showgirls sucking up to a horrible, vindictive person like Nomi Malone, who would just as soon spit in your face than thank you for a lovely dinner.* Why?



Why do people put up with Nomi’s shit? Because Nomi is America. She is the embodiment of Late Capitalist American values. Everyone else is simply trying to appeal to her to get ahead, much as Americans have to buy into the system, deal with corrupt corporations and no unions and no health coverage, to get ahead. We are all prepared to be screamed at, spat on, be thrown down the stairs.

Nomi succeeds because in Las Vegas sexuality is a commodity. She proves to everyone she is the most skilled at leveraging her sexuality to ascend the ladder of success. Everyone is constantly trying to figure out how to attach themselves to her success so they can succeed as well. It may look like love or lust but it's pure, heartless transaction.

Nail polish is another major thematic detail; it serves
as a metaphorical battleground between Nomi and
Cristal (Gina Gershon). Weird but effective.

One of the most telling details I noticed in this screening is one that only a director could add: Nomi’s eating habits. Burgers and fries, burgers and fries, burgers and fries. When confronted with a menu at a respectable restaurant (respectable for Vegas: it’s still laminated) she confesses “I don’t know what all this is,” and admits to, in the past, have been content eating dog food. This is a huge character tell. Nomi is Verhoeven’s perfect American: uncultured, selfish, amoral and ignorant— but also self-possessed, confident, and recklessly aggressive.

That’s the realization. Showgirls wasn’t just 131 minutes of tits and screaming in a hideous neon Las Vegas hell-scape: There’s a message in the middle of it, a sharp indictment, and in recent years it has only become more apparent it was a prescient message. In the 25 years since the premiere of Showgirls all the emotionally unstable trash people, the ones that swim in the muck of vice as if it was the River Jordan, moved out of the trash capitals and into our real one.

*There was as similar complaint voiced about the dramaturgy of Starship Troopers, that it was filled with incompetent, flat acting and childish relationship dynamics. It was called “Archie, Betty and Veronica in Outer Space.” Again, this style was chosen very much on purpose. We are supposed to notice how silly and clichéd the narrative elements were, because it’s a propaganda film from the future. The movie we’re seeing is not a movie: it’s a government-engineered work of fiction, designed to increase enlistments and validate a fascist military government. None of it was supposed to be “real.”

Box office news

No news is the new normal

Nobody Knows Anything, For Real This Time

William Goldman’s famous Hollywood aphorism “Nobody Knows Anything” has never applied with as much profound depth it does now.

Hollywood as a collective definition is composed of several large interlocking systems, all designed to create, produce and distribute entertainment content. Most are being crushed by the coronavirus lockdown. Going through the process beginning to end:


• Pre-production is still going strong. TV writer’s rooms are staffed via video conference, and scripts are still being optioned. Projects are still being greenlit, and everyone is positioning for the days that will follow COVID-19.


• Productions are dark. Thousands of film and TV show production companies are shut down, crews on furlough, sound stages empty, equipment unrented. Film and TV Production are collective endeavors, ones that require a lot of close contact (for example: during shooting, an average cinema camera rig has three sets of hands on it) so it won’t be safe for a long time. News and some forms of reality TV have the edge here: “American Idol” is experimenting with a remote contestant format, which is better than nothing.


• Live theater is utterly dark. Hamilton is playing at precisely zero venues worldwide.


• Streaming services and cable are doing incredible business right now. Industry leaders are worried about the medium-term health of this sector: If the astounding level of unemployment continues, subscriptions to streaming services and full-service cable will start to dwindle as people find them increasingly unaffordable.

• The big hit to Hollywood: Film Exhibition. Movie theaters are closed, and the prospects of movie-going returning to prior levels any time soon is increasingly uncertain. In fact the very survival of movie theaters is in doubt: AMC may be looking at bankruptcy protection (something they do once a decade or so, but still).

Movie-going has been derided constantly in the age of streaming as a dinosaur, a relic of the pre-television industry. This is what most of this post is going to concentrate on, because I do not think people really grasp how absolutely vital the movie theater ecosystem is, and how losing them will profoundly affect almost every other aspect of the entertainment industry.

Studios operate on a “tentpole” model: big, well-publicized films released to thousands of theaters worldwide and provide revenue through box office sales for other productions. To turn a profit for these films, which are generally budgeted over $100 million, huge theater capacity is required, hundreds of thousands of butts in seats. Marvel, the newest large studio, operated on the tentpole model 100%. Others operate downmarket, packaging independent films made on modest budgets.

But all this machinery has stopped.

I’m offering two prognostications for the future of the motion picture exhibition industry, both on the extremes.



FULL RECOVERY SCENARIO



A seating diagram programmed to create a safe space around each sold seat.
A mix of singles, 2s, 3s and 4s shown. Nobody is placed in the middle of a row
so they do not have to pass close to anybody else. Capacity is reduced 75% to 80%.

When the states start slowly opening up theaters again, social distancing guidelines can be put into effect to assure patrons who are going to be VERY VERY NERVOUS about going into a darkened windowless room full of strangers.

The way I came up with (which no doubt the theater chains are implementing) is centered around the fact that most theaters are based on reserved-seat ticket sales. When a block of seats is purchased, the seats around them are condemned for the screening to maintain a 6-foot defensive space. If strict contact rules are allowed— two parties per row to eliminate close passing for the aisle, which is always ass-to-face— theaters can be filled about 25% of capacity. This does not allow for full sellouts, but it is at least equal to a modest weekday crowd.


During these first few weeks or months people will likely be treated to low-budget fare. Independent films, genre comedies, horror films: films with modest budget and the possibility of getting a return even in lower-capacity venues. Studios can and will reserve their large-budget tentpole films until they can get enough screening capacity to make releasing them a worthwhile risk. (a lot of big-budget films are frozen in post-production as well: visual effects houses are not operating, and a film the scope of something like Avengers: Endgame can’t be finished off on somebody’s iMac at home.)

Once the curve is safely flattened theaters can go back to full capacity, though it remains to be seen if people will feel confident enough to pack themselves into sellouts for quite a while. Some late-summer big-budget releases— the sequel to Wonder Woman being an example— are sticking to their release dates, betting the huge audiences are just waiting for the all-clear.





Bravely sticking to a mid-August
release date. Notice it's already
been moved down from June.

COLLAPSE SCENARIO

Major chains, empty but still paying huge rents for their their multiplexes, go out of business. Theaters that survive see persistent poor box-office as people, still spooked by COVID-19, stay away.


Without a way to recoup investment for big-budget films, the studios release them streaming at a loss. Streaming and on-demand represent a revenue source, but compared to theatrical release box office it’s tiny, ancillary, in the old days a way to slightly round up the numbers.

If the financial downturn continues and people cancel subscriptions, even this outlet will become even more problematic. Without a path to profit studios will eventually stop green-lighting big-budget films entirely. For movie geeks who hate comic-book movies this sounds heavenly, but remember that big films finance small films. The Lord of the Rings trilogy financed a decade’s worth of modest-budget New Line films.



Without theaters, the theatrical distribution system will collapse. This will create chaos: non-chain theaters that managed to stay open will have nothing to screen. Drive-in theaters, the only healthy subsection of the exhibition industry, will collapse as well when they run out of films to screen.



This bleak scenario ends on your TV: Streaming, on-demand and TV will be the only outlet for scripted entertainment. The big franchises will likely be broken up into series and miniseries. Cable and premium, already increasingly turning to series to attract viewers, will start to shrink: many of the add-on premium channels show endless theatrical films, and with that source of content gone add-ons like Starz Action and Showtime Comedy will start vanishing.



The other problem is the eternal conflict: Hollywood versus The Internet. If the theater industry collapses, the Internet wins— and never forget the old hacker battle cry: “The Internet wants to be free.” People naturally EXPECT films to be cheap or even free when they’re on TV. Additionally, any film put out on streaming is available for torrent download within hours. In my job as a post-production profession I’ve always advised indie filmmakers to only put your films on streaming platforms when all other revenue streams— festivals, optical media— have been exhausted. Once it’s online, you’re done making money off it.

 But with all the eggs in the TV screen basket we’re back to the ability of people to pay for these services. If hard times persist, many of them will end up cancelling, which will drive revenue even lower.

Well, those are the extremes. I think the reality will be somewhere in-between: some chains will close, some big-budget films will be canceled, and it’s going to be tough to make a living in Hollywood for a while.

But really: nobody knows anything.

Movie News

Never give up, never surrender

Box Office News

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/xPZE1jC

The link above.. if you like this stuff, send me some scratch.

Movie box office figures

The magic of cinema, and groovy lights.

Movie box office figures

Weekend Box Office

A movie with a dog as the main character.

Weekend Box Office Valentine's Day Weekend

It is romantic, isn't it?

Weekend Box Office

I didn't mention it but it was Oscar Weekend. Exhausting.

Weekend box office

Gretel, Hantzel, schnitzel

2019 Best Picture Nominees: Place Your Bets

For the first time in a long time, I actually saw all nine of the Best Picture nominees this year. Here’s what I found notable about them, and a stab at prognostication

FORD V FERRARI – It’s been called a “Dad Movie” and it is: A Boomer story about the one thing Boomers really care about: cars. In this film you can see the humble origins of all the obnoxious high-performance supercars currently being driven around by midlife-crisis millionaires and decadent oil-money royal nephews: Ferrari, Shelby, McLaren, etc. Feels like a fill-in nominee, but Christian Bale has a slim chance to score a win.

THE IRISHMAN – A Netflix offering from Martin Scorsese. I’d argue that, like JOKER, it's an imitation of a Scorsese core cinematic offering, despite the fact he directed it. Really more of a Robert De Niro film: he was instrumental in packaging the deal and bugging Joe Pesci 20+ times until he came out of retirement to participate. It’s overly long, which has a lot to do with the production oversight methods of Netflix (more below) then actually having three hours of story to tell. Look at a few acting nods, but not a Best.

JOJO RABBIT – This is the one film that I consistently forget is in the running. Not that it’s forgettable: it’s such a singular, unique film that it doesn’t fit into the mental framework of Oscar movies. It’s a comedy / drama about 10-year-old Hitler Youth member during the last months of World War II. His imaginary friend is Adolph Hitler, and his core beliefs are challenged when he discovers a Jewish girl hiding in the attic of his house. So it’s a strange setting for a comedy, but a very worthy film-- one that I’m afraid will get passed over because stories like this make some people queasy.

JOKER – Perhaps the first superhero movie (or rather a supervillain movie) from either major imprint to get a Best Picture nod. It may well take the big prize: JOKER has a polished look with solid art direction. It’s also a nihilistic story that is centered on explaining away the creation of a murderer as a product of hard times. It does not quite justify him, though, which is where Joaquin Phoenix’s remarkable performance comes in, pushing against the amoral narrative. It may well take the big prize.

LITTLE WOMEN – This is a fine film, filled with great performances and meticulous art direction (it will get Best Costume because, as we all know by now, Best Costume always goes to the movie where actors wear clothes that look like costumes). The story was given the Tarantino script-blender treatment, transformed from a time-linear narrative to a flashback / flash forward style that breathes a considerable amount of surprise and energy into the familiar tale. Great Gerwig did not get a Best Director nod, which usually means it won’t take the big prize.

ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD – QT really mended some fences with me with this film, which luxuriated in the sunny universe of Hollywood in 1969. It will appeal to Academy voters ‘cos it is a very flattering look at their own industry, giving it the standard glossy take as a creative, glamorous place where dreams come true. However the gory, historically inaccurate, needless ending will sink this film.

MARRIAGE STORY – Another Netflix joint. The performances by Scarlett Johansen and Adam Driver are electric, riveting and devastating. I get the feeling one or both will be rewarded. The film itself was… fairly good? It felt like a TV movie, and it suffered from the same problem most Netflix features have: it’s sloppy, underbaked, feeling a lot more like a first edit than a final cut. This has a lot to do with how these films are financed: Netflix is not trying to sell movie tickets. These films are made to generate buzz for a streaming service, which is trying to increase subscriptions. Absent the need to compete one-on-one, Netflix does not insist on one more script polish, one more effects pass, one more edit. Look at the downstream offerings on Netflix and you can really see this oversight philosophy in action.

PARASITE – This is, hands down, the best film of 2019. Enormous creative energy in the direction, photography and design, the acting is superb, and the story is both timely and utterly unique. It tells the story of a poor family which figures out a way of gaining the employment of a rich family through deception and clever thinking. Unfortunately it a Korean film in Korean: there are a certain percentage of film viewers who simply do not like reading subtitles. I HOPE it gets best picture, so I’ll just make it my personal pick.

1917 – a visually and technically superior gimmick film that is staged as one long continuous take. It tells the story of two young soldiers on a perilous mission to deliver a message behind enemy lines. The problem with gimmick movies is the gimmick overwhelms everything else, like story or acting performances. So even though it is a visual spectacle, 1917 is an emotionally static affair. I spent most of my time looking for the parts where they hid the cuts— when a tree is in the foreground or when the scene enters darkness. This film already took some significant pre-Oscar industry awards, and Hollywood may well reward it: they do love their bright, shiny objects.

In a few weeks, we’ll see how I did!

Weekend box office

Here it is! Thanks to ALEXIS KILEY for the good advice.

Weekend Box office report teaser

Concept by Alexis Kiley

Harley Motherf***ing Quinn

[Warning: adult language and situations. No spoilers, though.]

Harley Quinn, voice supplied by "The Big Bang Theory's"
Kaley Cuoco. So less of the insane Brooklynite attitude from
previous iterations, more of a scary SoCal girl.

I don’t review TV shows that often, animation almost never, and I’m not a comic book fanboy. But I chanced upon a review on io9 that was so intriguing I had to check it out— and I was not disappointed.

“Harley Quinn” is a comedic adult animated web-based show now streaming on DC Universe, behind an $8-a-month paywall. It tells the story of Harley Quinn, the Joker’s lover and sidekick, as she dumps him and tries to invent herself as an independent person and supervillain in her own right. She does this with the help of her best friend / roommate Poison Ivy (Lake Bell, a wonderfully dry voice performance), and her crew of minor villains who I would know if I actually read comic books.

Harley and Poison Ivy, roommates. These two characters
may be the most 'shipped couple on the internet. So far
they are depicted a just close friends, but the season
is not over yet.

The dynamic between Harley Quinn and Joker has been well-documented, and they’re even going to make it big deal out of it in the Margot Robbie-starring live-action film coming out next month. Her character has been described as suffering from dependent personality disorder: in her former life she became so obsessed with Joker while treating him in Arkham Asylum she abandoned everything to become his often-abused sidekick. As a super villain origin stories go it may be the most mundane one ever: Harley was a victim of abusive, manipulating partner, a trauma untold thousands of people are suffering every day in the real world. It has given her character a special resonance with fans: even though Harley is a supervillain, her personal emotional issues have a human scale and her efforts to break free of her abusive partner make her even more relatable. The show does not shy away from this unhealthy dynamic, and in fact it casts most of her personal growth as an anodyne to Joker, her romantic obsession transformed into professional competition. Harley a fun character, given considerable depth: she is "a bad guy, but not a bad person," and her story arc probably has her headed to antihero status.

The creators of “Harley Quinn” made a strange but ultimately transformative decision: As it is not a broadcast show there are no real restrictions to language and content, so they decided to make a show for adults. It's a bit of a shock. To give a feel for the dialog:


Harley (to Joker, in a subconscious confrontation): “You think you created me, but no one did. My fucked-up parents didn’t create me. Neither did Jessica Sarner when she lied to the whole fucking camp and said I lost my virginity to a horse! A HORSE!” (applies baseball bat to Joker’s crotch: he doubles over) “Neither did those cops who questioned me for hours about what happened to Jessica Sarner! And YOU sure as hell didn’t fucking create me, Puddin’!”

And the sexual innuendo is of the single-entendre variety:


Bane (to Joker on phone): “Harley is at Penguin’s nephew’s Bar Mitzvah.”
Joker: “She crashed the stupid thing?”

Bane: “Yeah. Seems like she’s doing pretty well. Brought a tiger. Pretty cool!”
Joker: “What? Anyone can buy a tiger. You know she has HPV, right?”
Bane: “Most sexually active adults do.”
Joker: “Shut up!”

Dr. Psycho, after the second time he called someone a c**t.

Yeah, the filter is off and this makes it for fairly exhilarating viewing. There are some limits: no female nudity (yet*), but lots of pixelated male crotches. The show even has a line, and one character crosses it: Dr. Psycho, one of Wonder Woman’s nemeses, is blackballed out of the Legion of Doom for calling her, in the heat of battle, a c**t. (it’s the only profane utterance bleeped on the entire show.)

I know adult-oriented animated series are not exactly a new phenomenon: “South Park” is 20+ years old, seriously raunchy, and the movie was legendary in that regard. Every episode of the immensely popular Adult Swim series “Rick and Morty” is filled end-to-end with bleeps and blurred-out genitalia.

What makes “Harley Quinn” exceedingly unusual is the fact it is camped dead center in the DC Universe. It is not a sidecar, like the way Deadpool— the foul-mouthed, violent antihero from Marvel— is a sidecar, peripheral to the X-Men universe (several X-Men make an appearance in the sequel) and completely walled off from the big-money Avengers universe. Deadpool will never crack dick jokes with Captain America. (Professor X, maybe.)

In her show Harley regularly interacts with the big hitters, Batman and Superman and the like. The iconic superheroes they spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make movies about. And by “interact,” I mean when Harley meets The Batman in the first episode, she adamantly insists he is called that because he fucks bats.

Wonder Woman, eating her own brand of breakfast cereal,
realizing all the ground rules have changed.

This juxtaposition turns an amusing series into a surreal one. What we have is a series which has IP-critical superhero guest cameos— and they basically stand in inhibited silence while a collection of supervillains dance around them, calling them out with ripe curses and sexual innuendo. The decision by DC and Warner Bros. to execute this vision is mystifying.

The other exhilaration that comes from ”Harley Quinn” is how this adult theme remakes every character anew. All the profanity and frank sex talk draws attention to the eroticism that rushes like a deep undercurrent under all superhero stories.The supervillans and superheroes depicted in the blockbuster movies are (mostly) extensions of their juvenile, sexless origins as juvenile, sexless comic-book characters, still hewing to a long-gone 70-year-old Comics Code. Not on “Harley Quinn:” on that show, everyone depicted are People Who Fuck.

People Who Fuck are all around us: it is the normal state of the human race. The great majority of DC and Marvel movies and TV shows still depict their intellectual property as non-existent from the waist down, like Muppets. This is my biggest peeve with the MCU: missing the normalizing dimension as People Who Fuck, for all the significant kisses and long, lingering gazes they’re all just cardboard simulations of real people.

This is the liberating synthesis of “Harley Quinn,” the result of the thesis of comic book characters mixed with the antithesis of real-world People who Fuck. Even though they are set in an unbelievable, unrealistic universe of magic and superpowers, the characters depicted within seem more real than any version of them that came before.

*One of the most confounding things about Adult or R-rated entertainment of late: no problem with profanity and verbally describing sexual situations-- but nudity is increasingly rare. I think, in the case of this show, the influence of the internet is the major deciding factor. If the showrunners ever decided to show Harley Quinn running around with her tits out, every fanboy image server on earth would promptly explode. So that will never happen.