Donald Trump and Hollywood Omertà

Many people have seen, or at least read about, the now-infamous “hot mic” tape of a candid conversation between Donald Trump and Billy Bush in September 2005. News outlets and the internet are currently saturated with analysis of the content of this tape, in which Trump admits that his money and power permits him to commit sexual assault. The astounding crudity of the verbal exchange was seen as revealing the true nature of Donald Trump’s personality and attitude towards women, and the revelation of this tape may well prove to be the tipping point of the 2016 presidential election.

But this article isn’t about the content of the tape: it’s about why it took so long for it to be released. This is the part of this incredible story that seems to be under-discussed— and it relates directly to Hollywood, which is why it’s being discussed here.

The official story is the producer of “Access Hollywood,” Steve Silverstein, remembered this interview about two weeks before the release and dug the footage out of archives. This story is almost certainly false. The reason why it’s not believable is actually embedded in how the tape was recorded.

This political bombshell (more of a nuclear warhead) was taken from a segment of “Access Hollywood” which documented a cameo Donald Trump was making on the soap opera “Days of Our Lives.” It was shot on the backlot of NBC Studios in Burbank. A camera crew was following Trump and “Access” host Billy Bush: both men were fitted with lavalier microphones and transmitter packs which broadcast RF signal to receivers attached to the camera. During the publicly-released segment a cameraman had stepped outside the bus to set up a shot showing Bush and Trump arriving at the studio to be greeted by soap star Arianne Zucker. Thinking they were off-camera, the two men engaged in a crude, degrading conversation about women. Aside from the on-camera personalities there were seven people involved in this taping: two cameramen, the segment producer, a production assistant, Trump’s bodyguard and PR person, and the bus driver.

After this segment was shot, the footage was likely seen and handled by even more people: on-line and offline editors, more show producers, audio technicians and maybe even an archivist.

Charlie Chaplin, during one of his
many, many court appearances.

So about a dozen people— very likely more— heard and saw this footage in 2005. Yet NONE of these people recalled this conversation, one of the most devastating revelations of character any political aspirant has ever uttered? Particularly as this 2005 taping came on the heels of complaints by the cast and crew of Trump’s show “The Apprentice” about his crude on-set behavior? That is an impressive case of collective amnesia.

Hollywood’s code of silence strikes again.

The film industry has been creating and controlling secrets since the days of Charlie Chaplin (and Lita MacMurray) and Fatty Arbuckle (and Virginia Rappe). The studios all had (and still have) well-funded departments which handled public relations and “fixers,” producer-level executives who specialized in keeping indiscretions out of the press. (Hail Caesar was a thinly fictionalized account about a famous studio fixer.)

The culture of secrecy goes very deep in both the film and TV industries. Entertainment is an unusual industry in that the general public is constantly and intently curious about it. Supermarkets do not devote shelf space at the checkout counters with magazines dishing the dirt on astrophysicists and farmers, after all. Scripts and storylines have to be kept secret: details of film shoots are kept from public view as much as possible as well. The need for confidentiality rivals the Pentagon’s.

It’s all for the greater glory of the Industry, of course. That, and jobs. A scandal that would bring down a star would shut down production. A leaked script would kill off box-office potential. Finally, there’s the prestige factor: being on the set gives even the lowest PA or grip access to some of that rare stuff, Hollywood Glamor— stacks of non-disclosure agreements are willingly signed to gain access to that inner circle.

Why did this revelation take so long to emerge into the light of public scrutiny? The culture of Hollywood, a full century of studio secrets kept, reputations protected, indiscretions hidden. And they are so good at it: Did you know that Tom Cruise is only 5’7”? It took a LOT of will to overcome that much inertia and tradition.

Jar-Jar Binks gets an appropriate home

In news that may or may not have used the cover of Hurricane Sandy to keep it quiet, The Walt Disney Company has acquired Lucasfilm Limited for just over $4 billion.

We're on the verge of a branding mash-up the likes of which has never been seen by media consuming public. Mickey and Goofy, Simba and Aladdin, Fozzie and Kermit, WALL-E and Mr. Incredible, Thor and Iron Man and The Hulk are now allowed (and will likely be required to) cavort with Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Mon Mothma and Count Dooku. The mind reels.

And the topper: A new Star Wars film is in the works. Now that George Lucas has taken his payoff and retired to his private valley, long-time Lucasfilm producer Kathleen Kennedy is starting up a new series, with Star Wars: Episode VII slated to release in 2015.

I can already see the direction Disney is going to take with their new intellectual property: Big, fast and fully integrated. New themes for the theme parks. New kiddie shows for the Disney Channel (Star Wars Babies? has that been done before?). They'll make their $4 billion back in no time.

For old-school fans like me, the ones who saw Star Wars back in 1977 and witnessed the franchise's sad decline, this is either great news-- or the big, final step into oblivion. It's obvious that the rock in the road in terms of the last three Star Wars films has been George Lucas himself-- his feeble kiddie-pandering, his dull political pontificating, and his peculiar and depressing take on morality. His decisions were impediments that prevented the second three films from reaching the heights of the first three.

With Lucas himself out of the way (after having written the treatments to Episodes VII, VIII and IX, which is his right, of course), and if Disney and Kennedy draft writers and directors with vision, the franchise may again achieve excellence.

If they fail to sieze this opportunity, get ready for endless versions of "The Star Wars Holiday Special," from 2015 to the end of time.

Kickstarting Indies To The Curb

This a few days old, but my old writing partner turned a post from Deadline Hollywood, Nikki Finke's website, which was quite an eye-opener. It concerns Kickstarter, a very cool website where people can crowdsource funding for various creative projects.

Charlie Kaufman and his producing partners ― former Community showrunner Dan Harmon and Dino Stamatopoulos ― do not want to deal with Hollywood, and now at least for one project they don’t have to. A stop-motion animation adaptation of the Kaufman-written play Anomalisa raised $406,237 for the film’s production in 60 days via the crowdfunding website Kickstarter. “We want to make Anomalisa without the interference of the typical big-studio process,” according to a pitch video that Harmon and Stamatopoulos’ Starburns Industries put up on the project page. The film raised more than double the money the producers were asking from 5,770 Kickstarter backers.

These guys broke the Kickstarter record for film funding. Surprised? Not me. Is this good news? Not really. I was wondering how long something as wonderful as Kickstarter could last.

Kickstarter was specifically designed to give filmmakers outside the industry access to funding. Don't get me wrong: Kaufman and Harmon and Starburns have every right to use Kickstarter. But they shouldn't. Anyone with CAA-level representation and the ability to take meetings at a studio shouldn't. Basically, anyone with recognizable star power shouldn't.

Why not? Because they have an unfair advantage over the vast majority of other projects seeking funding. If I was some starry-eyed fellow with $1000 to give away on a film project, and I had to choose between giving it to an indie project written by John August with Johnny Depp penciled in for a cameo versus a digital feature written by Elmo Nobodyski from Rustbeltville featuring Jane Nobody, guess who gets my money? Which contribution gives me bragging rights, Hollywood cache and a T-Shirt with a star on it? Pretty obvious choice.

Celebrity--  admiration for sports heroes, movie stars, political heavyweights, what have you-- exists because it's a basic component of human social behavior, a deep part of our collective brain wiring. Throughout history and undeniably before it, people have always created hierarchies-- even when they aren't needed. We seek out great men or great women to personify our values and channel our aspirations.

This is why it is risky to invest millions of dollars in a movie with no recognizable stars. (And yeah, Pixar does this all the time, but they're a solid brand, which is a form of non-individual celebrity.) And this is why, even if an indie film on Kickstarter may be a superior idea to one offered by a Hollywood insider, it'll never outdraw it in terms of funding.

Kickstarter is a zero-sum game. There are only so many investors with so much money they're willing to donate. If the trend continues, and any Industry pro with the itch goes to Kickstarter to raise money for pet projects rather than ask a studio or (God forbid) use their own money, the long shadow their celebrity casts will make all the truly independent film projects offered seem that much dimmer.

The thing that makes Kickstarter wonderful is it's basic attitude of altruism. Donations are made to creative efforts of all kinds where the donor expects nothing in return but the satisfaction of giving a leg up to a project they feel is worthy. The presence of celebrity-driven projects debases this altruism: Even if donors get no return on financial investment, they get something back: the intangible return of celebrity association, a very real claim that some of the fame they contributed to rubbed off on them. This weakens Kickstarter's mission of creative altruism-- a plain example of Gresham's Law, bad money driving out good.

This couldn't happen, right? A bunch of Hollywood operators couldn't monopolize something as inherently democratic as Kickstarter, right? If I recall, The Sundance Film Festival was supposed to be a showcase for independent filmmakers. But the Industry discovered it-- and now Park City is not much more than an outlier of the TMZ, so insular that an alternative festival (Slamdance) had to be created to give indie filmmakers any sort of chance. So yeah, it can definitely happen again.

Springtime For Michael Bay

A pretty daisy. It's spring!

According to the "Heat Vision" (i.e. comic-book movie geek) section of The Hollywood Reporter, devotees of the 80's comic book "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" are quite upset at Michael Bay's plans to re-boot the franchise.

Ahhh. This sort of news is a wonderful gift-- A giant, multicolored prop department daisy. So let's savor it by pulling the pedals off one by one:

• Top Level Reaction: Okay, Michael Bay is going to make another iconic 80s kid-culture franchise. Worked before with those damn folding robots, should work again. (and just so you know it IS indeed working, the next Transformers movie already has a release date: June 27, 2014.)

Michael Bay has sent out a snippy, utterly unconvincing statement to this end, urging calm among his pissed-off and unwilling new fanbase:

Fans need to take a breath, and chill. They have not read the script […] Our team is working closely with one of the original creators of Ninja Turtles to help expand and give a more complex back story. Relax, we are including everything that made you become fans in the first place. We are just building a richer world.

The Turtles: (left to right) Mario, Luigi, Sacco and Vanzetti.

• Geek Point of Outrage #1: Bay wants to make the Turtles aliens, rather than mutants. This has struck fans an a terrible idea, completely inorganic to the whole "TMNT" canon. Alright, let us parse this from a normal person's perspective: human-sized turtles who love pizza and are ninjas who were mutated from normal turtles via toxic ooze-- versus human-sized turtles who love pizza and are ninjas but are actually from another planet. See? World of difference. How could he?

• Geek Point of Outrage #2: Michael Bay's unique style of filmmaking will "ruin" the "TMNT" franchise. This ruination would occur via the application of Mr. Bay's stylistic ouvre: baseline-dumb scripting; sexy pinup-girl female leads; cooperation with military and/or governmental agencies for added production value; not-so-subtle jingoism; comic-relief racist stereotypes; frenetic, loud and over-rendered CGI sequences. Admittedly, at first glance none of these Bay hallmarks seem to mesh with the "TMNT" universe, but I'm sure he'll find a way.

• The Purist Argument: When you sat down to see the first TMNT movie in 1990, did you feel that a huge disservice had been visited to the spirit of the comic books? Or did you feel, as I did, that the film was pointless, as "TMNT" comics were a thinly conceived, pre-sold-out indie-comic goof on the superhero genre in the first place?

"Dude! Can we, uh... Bring the brewskis?"
-- Frat Boy Leader (Michael Bay), Mystery Men (1999)

• Appeal to Realism: If I were king of Hollywood, I would have given the TMNT reboot to Kevin Spacey. He could have engaged Alexander Payne to direct an Aaron Sorkin script, and created a work which explores the existential and psychological underpinnings of the characters. My version would have been a lot more like "Flowers for Algernon," a quartet of reptiles bought to sentience via genetic alteration-- but briefly, as the toxins which granted them super turtle-ular powers will eventually kill them. It would be a study in heroic, Homeric fatalism, four characters determined to do good before their ooze-given gifts destroy them. Oscar contender! Also a downer-- which is why I'm not king of Hollywood.

• Mike Returns to Form: Most folks (okay, most hard-core movie geeks) may remember Michael Bay from his semi-memorable cameo turn in Mystery Men (1999) as the cool, collected leader of the Frat Boys. Perhaps he looked around the set, saw how much Universal lavished on a star-studded film based on a marginal 1980s comic book-- a spinoff of Bob Burdon's "The Flaming Carrot," a goof on the superhero genre-- and decided to do thou likewise?

(p.s. see what I did with the title up there? 'Cos Megan Fox said Michael Bay was "like Hitler" in the press, it got back to [Transformers producer] Steve Spielberg, and Bay fired her tattooed ass from the franchise.)

March Oddments 2012

••• John Carter of Ishtar: I made comment almost exactly a year ago about how weird it was to be witnessing another entry in the "biggest flop of all time" contest. Now it's super-weird, because both are big-budget films by big-name directors with associations to the animation industry-- and both flops have Martian themes. The difference is budget: John Carter cost roughly double of Mars Needs Moms. The regularity of this phenomenon allows me to predict the article I'll be writing for "March Oddments 2013:" It'll be about the box-office failure of (I'm guessing) Disney's adaptation of Fredric Brown's 1955 novel "Martians Go Home." It'll star nobody, be directed by Nick (Wallace and Gromet) Park (his first live-action film) and in keeping with the trend it'll be budgeted at $500 million.

The New York Times has an unbeatable headline for the epic John Carter fail: "Ishtar Lands On Mars." I'll save you the effort of scaling their paywall and give you the gist of it: John Carter was a passion project by Pixar honcho Andrew Stanton. Because Disney wanted to keep him happy, they greenlighted everything he wanted, even though there were red flags from pre-production on (No stars, cryptic source material, somebody had already made Avatar, etc.)From the Times article and what I learned from John Lassiter speaking at the Austin Film Festival, it boils down to two big problems:

1. The collaborative Pixar production method was much vaunted at Austin as the antidote to dumb producer-based decision making. Unfortunately, this method seems to not work on live-action films. Stanton had to do expensive re-shoots on John Carter to get the film he wanted. For a front-loaded Pixar production, this is no big deal: Nothing is really final in computer animation until someone pushes the "render" button. But live action, where you need a lot of expensive equipment, craftspeople and artists to show up to help realize your revision, is another beast entirely.

2. It was, like Ishtar, a case of studio management worshiping celebrity-- in this case, the guy who had a hand in some of Disney/Pixar's biggest hits. Hollywood is unique in the entire crazy capitalist world for occasionally investing huge amounts of capital purely out of deference and admiration of talent. In fact, a lot of problem films can be traced to this, the inadvertent reversal of celebrity worship. It's supposed to go down and out, like a storm drain: When we ordinary folks become glassy-eyed at Angelina Jolie's leg or start hopping up and down anticipating the release of a long-lost Joss Whedon film*, the celebrity engine is working properly. But when studio executives start worshiping their own employees, well, the engine starts backfiring and will eventually catch fire.

••• Hollywood Echo Chamber: Managed to catch Hugo and The Artist this week. Liked The Artist better: It was fully committed to it's premise, that of being a silent film. It was even shot in 4:3 Academy format aspect ratio, end to end, admirably authentic. Hugo had a layer of "Film History 480" to it-- Martin Scorsese trying to educate all of us on the protean era of cinema. The Artist is steeped in the world it portrays (Hollywood 1927-1932) but it's all in the service of pure entertainment: at the end, unlike Hugo, you don't feel like someone is going to slap a quiz sheet and a #2 pencil in your lap during the final credits.

••• Under The Bus: Over the last few days and months I think I figured out a new and strange decision process used by the producers of compelling shows like "Game of Thrones," "Breaking Bad" and especially "The Walking Dead." This involves dispensing with The Character Shield. "You viewers like interesting characters, right? Then let's kill some of them off! You're sure to come back next season and see how we're coping with it!"

*The Cabin in the Woods. Just thought I'd warn all that, much like Eddie Murphy's A Thousand Words, when a film is delayed release for four years there may be more than one reason for it.

Hollywood's Immune System

In order to see Contagion comfortably, I chose a late, late showtime: 10:55, the last showtime at the Tanforan 20. From what I'd read about the effectiveness of Steven Soderbergh's new thriller, I wanted at least a few rows of seats between me and the next moviegoer. There were only 8 or so in the auditorium, and nobody was coughing. (but there was, as there always seems to be in late-night movie screenings these days, a couple dragging their toddler-aged kid along.)

Contagion is a very good, very scary film. Soderbergh calls it a horror film, evading the "thriller" tag, and he has a good point. Good horror plays on primal fears-- remember that grotty dude hacking away without covering his mouth at Starbucks last week? Sure you do. That, coupled with the always-unsettling glimpse of the thin veneer of society peeling away at the epidemic's later stages, creates feelings of rising unease as the film progresses. And as it uses Soderburgh's signature multiple-storyline style, you're never quite sure which of the Oscar-caliber ensemble is going to bite the dust next.

Later in the film there are plenty of scenes of National Guard troops in digital camouflage and Hum-Vees keeping roadblocks. This aspect calls back to the discussion about Torchwood: Miracle Day, which covers remarkably similar ground concerning profound social disruption. But here's the thing: the high-concept sci-fi idea of everyone on earth inexplicably granted life everlasting is sort of fun to think about, but the hard-science idea of an unstoppable virus wiping out millions is not only depressing and scary to ponder, less than 100 years ago something very similar actually happened.

Aside from the micron-sized and therefore un-telegenic virus, there's a human villain in this piece: Alan Krumweide (Jude Law), a crummy, weedy fellow who sows fear and misinformation and false hope in alternative medicine cures through his blog. In a film that focuses on the selfless efforts of government scientist to save lives (a la Outbreak and The Andromeda Strain) he represents the conspiracy nuts, the anti-vaccine moms-- the whole, weird anti-science know-nothing movement that seems to depressingly be steadily gaining traction in larger society.

But I think there's something more subtle going on here. This is at least the second major feature film which paints a harsh picture of the internet in general and social networking specifically. Recall the tone of The Social Network, a film that exposes Facebook's roots as a crude sexist college diversion and it's founders as litigious snobs or prickly sociopaths. And in Contagion, it's made clear that everything would be going so much better for humanity in general if it were not for some nutty blogger from San Francisco (surprise: Hollywood yet again portrays the Bay Area as a scenic loony bin).

And why shouldn't establishment Hollywood view the Internet in the worst possible light? As far as the studios are concerned, it's a disease.

I think such negative depictions of internet culture in major movies are a sign of Hollywood's immune system going into overdrive. Even now, there is little the internet and social networking can do to help studios sell tickets: viral hits like Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project are so rare they've become cautionary tales (as in: never mention either of them when you're pitching a script). In realpolitik, internet film marketing is just another money-suck for which studios are obliged to staff buildings full of web designers and marketers to create feckless web presences for their movies.

The internet has come to represent nothing less than a full attack on Hollywood, a galloping infection that attacks both control of product and the bottom line. The studio buys a script, and they have to make sure it doesn't get uploaded somewhere. Greenlight, and there are even more potential leaks. Outright piracy begins generally at the first pre-screenings right through general release, eating away box-office as effectively as a blood-borne parasite eats red blood cells. As whole films fall into bit-torrent oblivion, snippets of their films get cut out and put on YouTube or Daily Motion and there's little to be done about that either. Finally, even the home video market and it's tidy widget-style sales model is being sapped by streaming services, offering the same film for a fraction of the cost of a DVD or BluRay version.

As falling revenues draws the industry into existential crisis, we're seeing it's immune system deploy T-cells and leukocytes, out to destroy the malignancy. Expect to see more.

Once upon a time, internet culture as depicted by Hollywood was a rich source of pseudo-high-tech, blatantly unbelievable tropes: "I'll have to hack their IP with a custom-written worm to access their triple-encrypted password. And… there it is!" Remember Hackers (1995) with Angeline Jolie as "Acid Burn" and Jonny Lee Miller as "Crash Override?" Hoo-boy. But that was then: the era of that sort of fun-loving naivete is over.

Charlie Harper Is a Real Live Boy

Okay, I watched the 20/20 interview of Charlie Sheen, and have followed the breathless hysteria/moral panic outrage over his recent behavior. I have read articles about his outbursts and the subsequent production halt on "Two and a Half Men." He is being compared on ABC's "Nightline" to Lindsay Lohan and Christina Aguilera, and even Qaddafi.

I haven't the slightest idea what everybody is so worked up about. Charlie Sheen honestly advertises his values and lifestyle every single week on his sitcom (and several times a day in syndication). Nobody who watches this show should be surprised in the least by these "shocking" new revelations.

I am never, ever going to get on a high horse and judge the guy. He's living a lifestyle the rest of us can only envy. In his ABC interview most of what had was say was quite reasonable, given his unusual life perspective. About the only thing I can say about his recent behavior is that it resulted in shuttering his show, and any sort of personal outburst that interferes with profits is bad business. But come on: whose fault was that? Sheen's, for having a chip on his shoulder and an oversized ego, or Chuck Lorre for being thin-skinned and also having an oversized ego? Name a person at a level high enough to directly profit from the #1 sitcom on American television who wouldn't have an oversized ego?

If we're going to go ahead and compare spasms of media celebrity outrage, Charlie Sheen would best be compared to Woody Allen. In 1992, Allen's relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, 34 years his junior and his sort-of stepdaughter with Mia Farrow, became public. The hue and cry was most extreme. But Woody Allen had telegraphed his preledictions for, um, younger women in his film Manhattan. Why was everyone so surprised when it turned out to be true?

Hey, as long as nobody gets hurt and nobody's livelihood is threatened, Charlie Sheen can be Charlie Harper all the livelong day. In fact, that's what I love about the guy.

Eximius Scaphium XLV

Another splendid event of imperial scale, in which the battle-tested Sarcinatori of the tiny outlier settlement of Sinus Verdis faced off against the favored Faberici Ferrum of the mighty Civitates of Arces Pittus before more than 100,000 lustily screaming citizens. The gods of the republic were sated by the spectacle-- particularly Bacchus, Mars and special guest deity Mammon, god of money.

The Super Bowl is a celebration of American exceptionalism, and in that respect the comparison to a Roman triumph is most appropriate. Barbarian pastimes like soccer are unmentioned; decadence is taken to the extreme ($900+ for SRO seats for the game; $200 to watch it from the parking lot); and viewership outside the sphere of our direct control is noted only as affirmation of the superiority of our particular form of SPQR. It is a far more reassuring indicator of the state of the Union than the presidential state of the union address could ever be, and it is far more effective at addressing the needs and fears of our collective psyche.

Some random observations:

• The game itself was, as last year, quite a good one. And this time I almost nailed the point spread: I picked Green Bay by 5, and they came within a point of that. Good passing, some amazing plays and smart officiating. The pros down on the field conducted their game with professionalism, unlike...

• No wardroom malfunctions per se, but a few things did go spectacularly off the rails. Christina Aguilera muffed the lyrics of "The Star Spangled Banner," the anthem for the country where the Super Bowl is being played this year and, coincidentally, the nation Ms. Aguilera was born and raised in. Blowing the national anthem at a professional sporting event-- now there's something I've never seen before. When Rosanne Barr's performed her notorious crotch-grabbing version back in 1990, even she got the words right.

Around the middle of the halftime show some massive lit-up stage pieces were wheeled in so the performers could cavort about on them. one section malfunctioned--leaving what should have been the word "LOVE" looking like "LO\'E."

• Ah, the half-time show. To quote someone else's Twitter, "It was nice of the Black Eyed Peas to come back in time and warn us about the future of music." Funny, but the show was definitely a look at the present state of pop music, which looked like a Broadway version of Tron: Legacy-- LED-lit costumes, inexplicable geometric patterns and very serious, Cylon-sounding AutoTune abuse. Slash appeared as Slash, doing a Slash guitar jam. Usher showed up, doing a very convincing Usher. And hey-- if the BEPs were doing a medley, where was "My Humps," dammit?

• The commercials for the most part were banking on familiar American themes, nostalgia, trivia and slapstick humor. Some seriously thin retreads were shown--GoDaddy.com, Snickers, eTrade: same s***, different year. Two car ads caught a lot of attention, both highlighting some rather arcane and useless new features of their vehicles: The Darth Vader VW ad (keyless ignition, which looks kinda dangerous) and Chevy Cruz's Facebook capability (which probably IS dangerous).

My favorites were the ones that pushed against the paradigm a little: The stirring, beautifully shot Chrysler ad featuring Eminem-- with the tagline "Imported from Detroit," which re-brands it as being somewhere outside the USA and confirms just about how far the Motor City has fallen. The Groupon Tibet ad, which started like a far-left political message and came within a hair of pissing off the Chinese government AND most liberal activists.

• Although there was nothing but loud cheering throughout the telecast, much of what has been written about this contest has a vaguely apocalyptic tone. The feeling is that Super Bowl XLV may well be the biggest, best one we'll ever see. A dispute with the NFL player's union looms, and there is much talk about a shutdown or lockout in the upcoming season.

Even if the players, the league and the owners iron everything out, the awareness of how the modern game exacts such a high physical and neurological toll on players is rising. The men on the line of scrimmage have been leading tackles "from the hat" (i.e. helmet-against-helmet drives) for years now, and the majority of NFL players have had serious concussions as a result. 2011 may see the beginning of a wave of class-action suits against the league from punched-out, demented former players. Dark clouds are forming on the horizon, and the barbarians (or at least barbarian-sized former players) are gathering at the Danube.

So if this were were a Roman spectacle, Super Bowl XLV is set during the reign of emperor Trajan (98-117 CE), a time when the Roman  Empire reached it's maximum extent.

Oh, and forgive the bar-floor Latin. The title, I realize, would be better translated as "Scaphius Maximus XLV." Oh well: Sic transit Gloria Cheeseheads.

Golden Globes Successfully Roasts Itself

Ricky Gervais Didn't exactly blow his hosting gig at the Golden Globe Award Show, though it certainly looked like it. I think he was up to something a bit more subtle.

In the course of the long ceremony he treated the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the literal hand that was feeding him, to a non-stop barrage of sneering abuse, some funny, some shockingly blunt. Right out of the gate, Gervais made jokes about The Tourist, the star-studded bomb nominated for best comedy or musical (huh?), a nod which may or may not have been influenced by the film's producers junketing the HFPA to Vegas. It had zero chance of winning anything, but nominating one of its stars guaranteed Brangelina would attend the awards ceremony. Gotta have them!

Ricky Gervais made fun of Phil Berk, the president of the HFPA, practically to his face. He was not amused. He also introduced Steve Carrell with a joke that his early departure from "The Office" was killing the franchise he created. Steve was really not amused-- though it's hard to tell if he was just in character.

Ricky Gervais' antics polarized the audience as well. Aside from the justifiably livid Mr. Berk, Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and especially Robert De Niro did not seem to appreciate Rick Gervais' blunt snark. Christian Bale, who worn Best Supporting Actor for The Fighter (well deserved!) threw a punch of his own at the HFPA, calling the press people who nominated him "those awful characters." (When Christian Bale started to speak, my wife sat up and said "I had no idea he was English!" This is much to Mr. Bale's credit, if you ask me.)

It was one of the weirdest awards shows I've seen in a while. What made it weirder is I watched it sort of backwards: came in the last 45 minutes or so, then picked it up from the top when NBC repeated it at 8 p.m. PST.

This is what I think Ricky Gervais was doing: what he was hired to do. He was trying to de-legitimize the Golden Globe Awards-- this year's awards, at least. He was, in gangster-movie parlance, busting out the joint.

This is not as seditious as it sounds. As things stood, the HFPA was already riding some bad press about the whole Tourist/Vegas Junket nomination buying scandal. Another similar report of vote-buying had just appeared in the trades mere days from the ceremony. The Golden Globes people could do two things: ignore the bad press and carry on, or hire someone like Mr. Gervais, let him torch the place, and start over. Hollywood is all about image control, and though things looked remarkably out-of-control most of the time, The HFPA successfully took it's scandals public, turned them into punchlines, and even looked like the victimized party at the end.

Personally, I never took a liking to Ricky Gervais or his humor. Not sure why he rubs me the wrong way-- too smug, too dry, too look-at-me-ain't-I-clever. I always though he was a comedian's comedian, which is why I thought he'd do a slick job hosting the Globes. Called that one wrong, huh?

A few disconnected observations:

• The tone of the show was so odd and vicious that when The Social Network won for best picture, Jessie Eisenberg and his blandly handsome co-star (whose name I forgot) looked positively hesitant about ascending to the stage at Scott Rudin's request to share the accolades. I don't blame them.

• Nail a bunch of 2x2 studs together, paint them gold, then adorn with strings from several bead curtains: Do-it-yourself Golden Globes Awards set! I especially liked the "Flying Crystal Pickles" backdrop.

• "Glee's" Lea Michele does not seem to have an "off" switch. That's the likely reason a camera was stationed about eight inches from her head the entire evening.

• Chris Colfer won for his work on "Glee." Very well deserved. Kudos also for Steve Buscemi for "Boardwalk Empire." It's the Year of the Really Pale Actor!

• Someone still needs to explain to me why Annette Bening's work in The Kids are Alright was better than Julianne Moore's. Just confused, is all.

• Aaron Sorkin, winning for his Social Network screenplay, gave us a valuable insight into the mind of a Hollywood insider, offering his opinion that “elite is not a bad word, it’s an aspirational one.” I hope the valet at the Beverly Hilton, after hearing this, keyed his Lamborghini Murcielago.

Today in super-obvious movie news

LA Times:

Online critics name "The Social Network" best picture

I suppose this could have alternately been headlined "Today's 'to a person with a hammer, everything is a nail' news."

A few days ago, after the tag of some show like "The Middle," I witnessed the following commercials run in order (verified via my DVR):

People's Choice Awards Show promo (:15)
Critic's Choice Awards Show promo (:15)
Ad for toilet paper coyly featuring animated bears in woods (:30)
Golden Globe Awards Show promo (:30)

These first two I have barely heard of, nor have I heard of the Online Critics dealie referred to in the lede. Amazing that someone keeps creating more awards and awards shows-- it's as much of a growth industry as film festivals were pre-2008.

I wonder where it's all headed, especially when one considers the overall number of motion pictures being distributed slips a bit every year. I can see a time in the not-too-distant future when the number of released films and awards for them coincide exactly. Then we'll be in feel-good heaven where, as in elementary school athletics, everyone wins!

Tony Curtis' Film Noir

Tony Curtis passed away yesterday. He was a fine leading man who either never got his truly big break or thought he never did. Hollywood can be a tough biz in that respect: Even at the stratospheric heights of marquee stardom (perhaps especially at that level) achieving a level of effortless fame is rare.

It was probably no coincidence then that MGM-HD screened The Sweet Smell of Success last night. I've never seen this film before, though I have the DVD (still in it's shrink-wrap).

An amazing film. It contains one of Tony Curtis' finest dramatic performances: Sidney Falco, a sycophantic, mendacious, grasping publicist. He's a thoroughly unlikable character, but all credit to Tony Curtis for finding small bits on the edges, a striving to success and a need for respect that is part of our common humanity, that audience can occasionally grab onto.

Sid the slimy PR flack carries the film, primarily because The Sweet Smell of Success is a film noir, a genre where having an unlikeable protagonist is a positive. It's an unusual noir piece because nobody gets killed in it. Beat up, yes, but not killed. I was strongly reminded of In a Lonely Place (d. Nicholas Ray, 1950) another noir set in the world of show business. The main character is a screenwriter (Humphrey Bogart) with a violent temper who is suspected of a murder.

What I found fascinating were the physical presences of the leads. Tony Curtis' Sidney Falco is a slight, thin pretty-boy (several male characters make note of his prettiness) who is always in motion, slipping in and out of scenes, hovering, scheming. In contrast, the heavy/prime mover of the piece is show-business columnist J. J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster). He enters scenes like a battleship, slow and overwhelming. Lancaster is a physically commanding presence, tall and broad-shouldered, his horn-rims the only clue his profession is a writer and not a Marine colonel or linebacker. It is likely unintentional (Orson Wells was originally considered for the role) but the effect is odd: Hunsecker is an acid-witted writer who can kill careers with the stroke of a typewriter key, but on screen he looks like he could murder anybody he can get his hands on. Double whammy.

The unlikeable protagonist aspect of noir seems to be the key factor in The Social Network, David Fincher's "Facebook movie" which releases today. To essay the prickly, standoffish Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg they chose Jesse Eisenberg. This is brilliant, because he physically fills the bill: hawkfaced, thin, anxious-looking, with only one or two achievable facial expressions. Dana Stevens in Slate described him as "the black hole in the movie's center." This is exactly how I described Eisenberg's performance in Zombieland. And Adventureland. and The Squid and the Whale. Now that's good casting.

Oscars: Hooray for Conventional Wisdom

The fabulous 82nd annual Academy Awards handout is now in the history books. It was a triumph of Hollywood Conventional Wisdom, a perfect sort of ceremony that featured no real surprises. Okay, there were a few:

• Somebody made the strange decision this year was to start the Best Actor and Best Actress nominees with encomiums from peers and co-workers: we were treated to Tim Robbins talking about Morgan Freeman (funny), Colin Farrell toasting Jeremy Renner (embarrassing, but also funny), Stanley Tucci gassing on about Meryl Streep, etc. This process ate up over ten broadcast minutes, and it was deadly. Time stopped.

But there was a sound reason they decided to structure these categories that way: the undeniable force of Conventional Wisdom. Everyone in the Kodak Theater knew who the winners were. Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock were just plain due for Oscars, period. No Eddie Murphy in Dreamgirls snubs tonight! So the surprise in the end was how well the ceremony was engineered to make two solid locks seem downright magnanimous.

It wasn't exactly a fix, but Conventional Wisdom was too strong this year (as were the "for your consideration" campaigns) to allow any other outcome. When the Best Actor segment was over, I turned around to the people watching the broadcast with me and asked: "Think fast: what film did Jeff Bridges just win for?" "Uhhhh... Country Heart?" Giving everyone a moment to be personally celebrated, to have a moment of unshared spotlight, probably seemed like the least the Academy could do. Gotta keep Oprah happy...

• Conventional Wisdom made it's shadowy presence known again a few moments later, for the Best Director award. Okay, can you tell me what presenter Barbra Stresand would have done if a white male had won that Oscar? Tarantino as Taylor Swift and Babs as Kanye West, that's what.

And they played Katherine Bigelow off to "I Am Woman." What the hell? Jon Stewart calls the Oscars "The Gay Super Bowl:" Maybe there was a need to bury the needle on the kitsch-o-meter at least once during what was otherwise a rather restrained evening. I mean, the dancers were wearing-- quelle horreur-- street clothes!

• Speaking of what the hell, during the "rollcall of the dead" or whatever they call it, the Academy acknowledged Michael Jackson-- but not Farah Fawcett, who passed away on the same day. She was in nine theatrical releases: He was in two, and he was dead for one of them.

• Since Barbra was appeased by the selection of a female director, The air was let out of the Best Picture category as quickly as possible. Tom Hanks practically trotted out to the podium, tore open the envelope, barked out the winner (The nominees were not listed!) and quickly moonwalked back to allow Bigelow to retake the stage. (I really liked seeing Hurt Locker stars Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty take the upper stage, howling, laughing and doing The Bump. Spontaneous and fun-- and, with all due respect, I doubt they'll ever be up there again.)

• A few surprises were to be had, my favorites being two blatant displays of bitchery. Roger Ross Williams, winner of Best Documentary Short Subject, came up on stage and started gushing in the emotionally overwhelmed way most lower-level Oscar winners gush. Then an apparition wearing a sparkly shower curtain-- Elinor Burkett, the category's other winner-- came in stage right, pushed him aside and said, "Ain't that just like a man?" She then started in with her grand, swinging-for-the-fences speech-- and the mike was abruptly cut off. 45 seconds, people! The long shot afterward showed the presenters trying to shoo her off the stage.

Sandy Powell won her third Oscar for Costume design. She slowly slinked to the stage, fairly broadcasting the fact she made her own gown. Her speech went something like this: "This my third Oscar, so it's not quite as surprising to get it. I would dedicate this to all the new talent and designers just getting into the business, but I'm keeping this."

• In some of the podium presentations, there was a strange, rather prominent noise going in the background, a roaring, clunky commotion. It was in the parts where the nominees were speaking into the podium mikes, which were pointed upwards and were likely catching machinery noise in the massive flyspace above the Kodak Theater stage. Or it was, for the first time ever heard by the public, the great gears of The Industry meshing. The great gears grind slowly, but they do grind everyone.

• My wife summed it up best: "Everyone got what they deserved: the nominees, the audience, everyone."

ADDENDA: Dana Stevens of Slate had an interesting interpretation of Sandy Powell's speech: she may have been signaling that the Academy can stop giving her awards, thank you. And from what I have read on the Washington Post, the Elinor Burkett stage shove was the end result of some amazing offstage action.

Bruce Willis Hunts Gorillaz

Gorillaz is a great idea. It was hatched by musician Damon Albarn of Blur and artist Jaime Hewlett. The band is comprised of four fictional characters, 2D (Albarn's vocals), Murdoc (bass), Russel (drums) and Noodle (guitar). Because the only consistent musical element is Albarn, the band encompasses a wide variety of styles and features a dizzying number of guest musicians, from Tina Weymouth to Snoop Dogg to Bobby Womack. Their look is provided almost entirely by Hewlett: his visual style is cartoony, awesomely detailed and strangely realistic.

Gorillaz make great music-- they're maybe the only band left, aside from Asleep at the Wheel, I still lay out money for. But it's really all about the music videos: they are arresting, amazing, great. As a virtual band, they were made for that medium. Check out the Gorillaz channel on You Tube and watch: You don't find 2D animation that good anywhere anymore, and it blends with live action seamlessly.

"Stylo," the new video released in advance their new album Plastic Beach, is close to fully live action affair. In a neat cameo, Bruce Willis hops into a vintage red El Camino and tears off across the desert, in all likelihood a bounty hunter or assassin or both, pursuing three members of Gorillaz in a 1968 Camaro SS. They were rendered in 3D computer animation.

So here's the problem: Gorillaz doesn't work as 3D animation. They work, animated or otherwise, as bold line art. Jaime Hewlett's sharp style and exuberant, tight animation (usually done by London's Passion Pictures) overcome the oddities built into the character sheets: empty black or white eyes, green skin, snaggly teeth. In "Stylo," 2D looks sick, Noodle robotic (well, apparently she is a robot now: who knew?) and Murdoc ghastly and undead. In an attempt to better blend the virtual characters into live action, they stumbled and fell deep into the uncanny valley.

There was a term I learned in a class on animation I took in college: "Appeal." It refers to the combination of elements that make animated characters work. Big eyes, simple lines, and slightly stylized features embody the concept of appeal. Mickey Mouse, anime characters and Spongebob have it. But a lot of 2D characters only work that way: render them in 3D, and the appeal vanishes. Think of a Simpsons action figure: not quite right.

It's nice to see fresh Gorillaz content out there, even though their feature-film project seems to have caved in. I just hope "Stylo" is a bump in a long desert road, and the real-life creators steer their virtual creations back to a hand-drawn look.

The Long Road to the 2009 Austin Film Festival

My Screenwriting History:

1984, Santa Cruz: My friend Jeff and I rewrote “Shoes,” a romantic comedy short-film script Dan K. wrote about a house painter who get mistaken for a fine arts painter. Both of us were huge Samurai film fans at the time, so we changed the setting from American suburbia to Japan during the Tokugawa era. It was called “Hakimono.” It was a cute little story.

1990, College Screenwriting Class: wrote the first act or two of a feature. It was so atrocious, I think I blotted out all memory of it. Seriously, I still feel bad for the instructor, who had to read it.

2001: the FX channel starts stripping “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” two episodes a day. I catch up on the entire series in less than two months. In a dazed epiphany, I write up a spec. (Or was it a just a fan-fic in courier with industry indentations?) Either way, out of my addled mind came “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead,” a "BtVS" episode told from a Tom Stoppard-like outside perspective. I liked it a lot, and so did every one else who read it. I was encouraged to enter it into competition so I entered it in the Scriptapalooza TV contest, along with “Three Little Fishies,” another spec in which Buffy and the gang mentally time-traveled to Sunnydale during World War II. “Rosencrantz” quarter-finaled in the One-Hour category, and was the best "BtVS" spec script showing that year.

2004: I partner up with John Harden on a short-film script, “I’ll See You In My Dreams.” It was a rewrite, but it came out as a very funny little story with a nice button on the end. He entered it in (I think) several places, but we hit in Britain: it semi-finaled in the British Short Screenplay Competition.

2007: Wrote a 10-pager called “Arrangements,” about a dying man who has an affair with his cute undertaker. I entered in the Cinemar Short Screenplay Competition in Santa Cruz, and my script won. They produced it later that year with the talented Chip Street directing, and it premiered at the Santa Cruz Film festival.

NOW: The creative synergy with John was good (we have the exact same birthday: the shared existential perspective is a big help), so we decided to try to write a feature. I came up with an idea (that's the hard part, believe me) while I was watching Lingerie Football during Super bowl halftime, and pitched The Sensitivity Program to John to co-write.

Many drafts later, it was finally ready. I hesitated consenting to send it to any competitions. It was a prodigious effort, and it needed to be polished to a gleam before it could be put out. (John is a short-film maker, and as such is fearless when it comes to film festivals.)

When it was good and ready we put it into one, and only one, competition: the 2009 Austin Film Festival, widely considered the finest screenwriter’s festival in the US.

The Sensitivity Program semi-finaled in the Sci-Fi category.

This is big.

For a little perspective, here's an excerpt from John’s press release (italics mine):

As semi-finalists, Harden and Christopherson's work has survived two rounds of eliminations and joins a group that represents the top 1% of approximately 4,000 screenplays submitted to the competition this year.

The annual competition receives approximately 4,000 entrees and only the top 10 to 12 percent move on to the second round of the competition. Fifty entrants qualify for the semi-finalist round, 20 will become finalists and six will qualify for a final award.

Needless to say, I’m goin' to Austin! We’re all booked in. So expect some cool behind-the-scenes, insider reportage at the end of October from the 2009 Austin Film Festival.

Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The launch of a new blog: Hang a Lantern On It

The wait is over! After a lengthy hiatus, the fellows from Box Office Weekly are at it again, skewering the entertainment world with witty, quirky and thought-provoking insights.

Hang a Lantern On It (http://hangalanternonit.blogspot.com/) is the new site, named after an obscure screenwriter's catchphrase. A sample of the articles already up and available for your edification:

• "Mad Men" and the erosion of your civil rights.

• We have met Godzilla, and he is us.

• "Wizards:" A cherished fantasy classic that really sucks.

• The new 3-D craze: Enough, already.

• Coming Soon: Austin Film Festival 2009!

Hang a Lantern On It is a followup to Box Office Weekly, the popular, oft-syndicated weekly podcast and blogsite on The Podcast Network. The change to the Blogspot publishing site allows the contributors a forum with an amazing amount of content flexibility-- without the requirement of producing what is essentially a half-hour radio show every week. As co-contributor Daniel K. so pointedly wrote, "The ‘cast was just too much for me, and I put in three years, which is plenty for this kind of stuff."

So please check it Hang a Lantern On It, and feel free to comment and subscribe. We'll do our part and keep the quality articles coming!

About the Contributors:

Daniel Krause has a long and unstoried background in showbiz, having authored over ten unproduced screenplays and a number of TV spec scripts. Additionally he was a writer on and performer in SIMUL TREK, a Los Angeles radio show that improvised a new dialog track to currently airing STAR TREK episodes; he bounced around several improv groups in the 90's. He has published online blogs and journals since the mid-1990s: He was the voice of Box Office Weekly and currently podcasts DARK MEAT: MUSIC FOR DEPRESSIVES. He also acts occasionally in plays in the Los Angeles Area.

Skot Christopherson is a Bay-Area post-production and DVD expert-- and a life-long film fan. He has journaled online since 1999 (with the online chronicle of his old truck). A San Francisco State University Film Theory major, his screenwriting efforts have been awarded in four competitions-- Including this year, semi-finaling the in the prestigious Austin Film Festival. He plays bass for No Exit, a Bay Area cover band. He does not have a Facebook account and has never twittered-- due to, as anyone who has met him knows, his painful shyness.