Hollywood Babble On & On #333: MGM, Relativity, & 2 Combating Columnists!

The Wrap's Sharon Waxman poo-pooed Nikki Finke for poo-pooing The Wrap's story about a plot by Relativity Media to take over MGM by buying up their debt, forcing the semi-moribund studio into bankruptcy, then taking it over, sweeping out the old management, putting in some new folks, and remaking the studio in their image.

Sharon Waxman says yes, and has what is alleged to be samples from a Relativity presentation called "Project Smith." The presentation illustrates a plan to take over an unnamed studio code-named "Smith" and by the way, Studio Smith, just happens to have the James Bond franchise.

Nikki Finke says that her sources say that Relativity is planning some other deal with the debt, possibly selling it at a profit at a future date when the general economy, and the studio are on a surer footing.

I'm not sure who to believe.

So let's look at the evidence:

Relativity recently dipped its toe in MGM's pond by co-producing the remake of The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3.

However, The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 lost a lot of money for Relativity, Columbia, and MGM, ouch.

Relativity has a very close relationship with Universal Pictures.

However, that relationship can't all that hot right now, especially after the bath both companies took with the movie Land of the Lost, and Relativity's rather odd decision to buy Universal's former "B-Movie" division Rogue Pictures and turn it into some sort of "lifestyle brand."

So this could go either way. The Project Smith papers could merely be a trial balloon by some executives at Relativity that got leaked, or it could be a real plan of action. The real trick is if Relativity and its backers have the hard cash to take over MGM, and make it an active company without amassing the sort of crippling debt that's kept the company from being more than just a bare bones distributor and a film library.

In the case of Waxman vs Finke, I only have one solution to prove who is right:

THUNDERDOME!!

Hollywood Babble On & On #331: 2 Bits About Bosses

1. NBC-U: IT'S EVERYONE ELSE'S FAULT

Kim Masters at The Daily Beast is a little amazed that the majority of the rumors about who is to blame for the slow sinking of the good ship NBC-Universal don't put the blame on its Captain and First Mate, CEO Jeff Zucker and network boss Ben Silverman.

The prevalent theory is that Zucker, Silverman, and/or their staff are planting the rumors in hope that it will somehow help them keep their jobs.

I can believe that theory, because they're definitely not running a studio/network, and henceforth have the time to go around planting rumors. The studio's had a string of turkeys this summer, and even managed to turn a #1 opening weekend for Bruno into a disaster.

On the network side NBC can't buy a hit, literally. The entire network's become a black hole, just being their has become a mark against the shows, regardless of quality.

The company needs a fresh start, with fresh blood, and you can't get much fresher than...
You can't blame me for trying.

Anyway, in other news...

2. BOB NEEDS HELP?

Defamer's buzzing about an anonymous help wanted ad calling for an assistant for a New York movie executive. They suspect the ad was posted by Bob Weinstein, who is debuting on this blog, and that he is in need of some help with operating The Weinstein Co. which currently makes NBC-U look well run.

Let's have a look at the ad, and I'll tell you what they're really looking for:

Responsibilities include:

· Managing heavy phones, rolling calls, and maintaining call sheet

Somebody to run interference from filmmakers demanding to know why their film hasn't been released, and won't be released, ever.

· Scheduling meetings and managing calendar for all work and personal related matters

Arrange meeting times that I'll ignore, and be able to take getting blamed for me being late.

· Supply constant mobile communication and attend to personal errands

Be able to answer my phone and wipe my ass at the same time.

· Preparation and submission of expense reports

Lots of imagination needed.

· Liaison between executive and studio presidents, financial institutions, talent agencies, principal investors, fortune 500 CEOs, writers, directors, producers, and A-list talent

You have to do it, because none of them are talking to me.

· Able to juggle multiple tasks, deadlines, and responsibilities

Basically do everything I tell you, all at the same time.

· Booking all travel and travel arrangements

Be able to book my travel on your credit card instead of the company card. The company will reimburse you, I swear.

· Traveling with executive, usually at the last minute and for unknown periods of time

I need someone to carry my luggage, and on occasion, me.

· Superb gate-keeping skills

Must be able to hold back angry torch wielding mobs. Which are legal in New York as long as they don't smoke indoors.

· Ability to travel on a moments notice and stay away from home for uncertain amounts of time

If I need you to meet me in the woods and to bring a shovel, you will do it.

· Ability to stay on top of an ever-changing day and night

Follow my mood swings.

· Attending events and company-related functions with executive

Do my running and fetching, and making sure that everyone knows that I'm still important.

· Take dictation and be responsible for speaking on behalf of executive

Write down what I say, and then leak it to the press, verbatim, to make the company look like it's still viable.

· Coordinate screenings, meetings, private lodging, parties, etc. for executive and senior staff

Must know what places don't ask for cash up front.

Experience and qualifications must include:

· BA/BS degree

We've got lots of BS here, that's for certain.

· Expansive knowledge of film and the film industry

Know the difference between who hates me, who loathes me, and who is plotting to kill me.

· Must know how to do script coverage

Look at films that we either won't make, or bury if they do get made.

· Minimum 2-3 years experience assisting another top-level executive or high-level professional

I need someone to tell me what it is that a top level executive actually does.

· Organized and detail-oriented

Be what I am not.

· Excellent writing and communication skills

Mus rite gud an talc widdout usin da word "fuck" in every sentence.

· Personable and professional demeanor

Keeping your crying jags, and depression fueled booze and drug binges on your own time.

· Minimum of three references

Not that I'll be able to check them, no one's talking to me anyway.

· Must know how to use blackberry and Microsoft Outlook

Because I don't.

· Mac & PC literate

Able to fix the computer that I threw at you.

Wow, that ad says a lot.

(Knock-Knock)

Who could that be?

Bob Weinstein?

Aaargh!

Hollywood Babble On & On #328: Miscellaneous Money-Movie-Media Musings

As I mentioned in my last post, today was the day of the annual library sale, where the public and school libraries of three counties put all their over-stock books together and sell them at great prices. I'm talking $5 for 3 hardcovers, and $2 for 3 paperbacks (mass market and trade size).

For a stingy yet voracious reader like myself, I always go ape-shit crazy at this sale, and I bought a huge load of books for about $25 in just about every genre and subject. The trick is that you have to get to the back room of a small town library at before 8:00 AM on a Saturday, and wait amid a cloud of blackflies and mosquitoes for them to unlock the door. Then you have to fight the crowd, which gets bigger every year and these book buyers can get pretty aggressive.

Thankfully I had my mace.
I showed that little old lady who's the boss when she tried to poach that book about movies from me. And the lesson is: Don't bring a brittle hip to a mace fight.

Anyway, enough about me, because I'm really boring. You've come here to read me gripe about the business of show biz, so let's go...

1. UNIVERSAL TAKES A BATH

The flailing NBC-U empire just released their second quarter revenue report, and their profits are down 41%.

Ouch.

And don't expect things to get much better, especially with their summer tent-pole mockumentary Bruno collapsing 89% at the Box Office after a big opening night, showing that despite spending around $100 million to promote the film they bought for $42 million, the film did not have legs to wax.

While it's predecessor Borat made over $100 million domestically, the film cost less thant $20 million total, and had nowhere near the promotion budget Bruno had. Which means that NBC-Universal forgot that the real key to Borat's success was that it was so cheap to produce and release. They thought that if they spent more, they would make more, and forgetting that a hard-R comedy based on an already over-exposed concept.

And don't get me started on the NBC network. The former home of "must see TV" has become a black hole where shows go to die.

And when it comes to the management of the company, all they seem to do is worry about public relations. At this stage, changing your "message" is like giving the Titanic a paint-job as the North Atlantic comes over the poop deck. The problems with the company start and end at the very top of the company.

In my arrogant opinion, management at the top of NBC-U is completely and totally dysfunctional. And what I don't understand is that General Electric doesn't seem to see it. I know that Zucker, the CEO of NBC-U has a reputation as an ass kisser, but if I ran GE, I don't care if an executive's head shows up on my colonoscopy, if they cost me over 40% of a subsidiary's profits, I'm going to drop them the way NBC Universal dropped Life with Sarah Shahi and some guy named Damian Lewis or something like that.

Anyway, if GE actually realizes that today's economy requires all facets of a company to be at least functional, they may make a move for some reform.

Of course any move to fix NBC-U would require more than a few pink slips at the top, I could loan them a mace if they want it, but I don't think they do anything. It's the law of commercial inertia.

2. E-BOOK THE FLYING CAR OF LITERATURE

Amazon, the online bookseller, has convinced a lot of people to not buy the e-book reader The Kindle when they snuck into people's machines and deleted copies of George Orwell's 1984 because they were having a dispute with Orwell's publisher. Now they refunded the cost of the e-book to those customers but it does tells me why the e-book will be the flying car of literature, always right around the corner, but never really coming to fruition beyond a novelty.

Why?

Because when you buy a Kindle edition, you don't really own that e-book. You are merely licensing the right to read it as long as Amazon keeps on good terms with the publisher, or doesn't just take it back in an act of corporate whimsy. What's to keep them from changing the terms of use, and jack up their prices and demand that you pay the difference, or have your Kindle library deleted?

Nothing, except the fear of litigation, which companies tend to lose when they become big enough to crush all who oppose them.

That's why I will remain a Luddite when it comes to books, I prefer hard copies, and if you want to take them, you not only have to pry them from my cold dead hands, but you will have to get past my mace to even try.

3. SOMETIMES THE CLOSET ISN'T A BAD PLACE

Director/producer Todd Holland is apologizing for remarks he made at the Outfest Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, where he said that some gay actors should stay in the closet for the sake of their careers.

Now I think he was partially right. I think all actors, regardless of sexual preferences, should be in the closet.

I don't care if an actor is gay, straight, bi, tri, or has a fetish for goldfish, and I don't want to hear about it either. I would like to go on line on the internet, or in line at the supermarket, and not see yet another cover story about who the royal hell Jennifer Aniston is dating this week.

Also, I would like to get Jada Pinkett-Smith to stop going on about her and Will Smith's sex lives. Yes, you have a lot of sex, so why are you here talking about instead of at home getting your freak on? Have all the sex you want, let Will wear the French Maid outfit this time, just don't make it national freaking news, because I don't want to hear about it.

So here's my proposal, if gay actors have to be in the closet to protect their careers, then everyone else has to be in the closet as well, and place a moratorium on the media from speculating on their sex lives. Maybe this will make people learn to live without giving a shit about which actor is sleeping with which, and demand more of that bottomless chum bucket called the media than just a sexual tally card.

Hollywood Babble On & On #325: Miscellaneous Monday Money Movie Musings

1. BRUNO GOES DOWN, BUT NOT IN THE WAY HE LIKES...

Sasha Baron Cohen's mockumentary Bruno, made about $30 million in its opening weekend, that's the good news for them. The bad news is that the ticket sales between Friday and Saturday dropped around 39%.

That doesn't bode well.

Universal paid $45.2 million to Media Rights Capital for the right to distribute the film, and then shelled out tens of millions more to promote the bejayzuz out of the flick, so if it fails to crack the $100 million mark, Universal could lose a lot of money on what looked like a sure thing.

Then again, if you looked at the history, they might have seen this coming, but I think I know why they didn't.

Borat cost $18 million dollars to make, didn't spend as much in promotion, and pulled in $128 million domestically. That's great, especially if you owned a piece of the film, but when you look at the big picture, when compared to the $500 million to $1 billion made by the big blockbusters, it's not that groundbreaking.

Then you make another movie, which is pretty much the same thing, except this time the foreigner in question is flaming gay, you run the risk of the audience going in on opening night, expecting the fresh originality of Borat, but seeing nothing new except for more genitalia on display.

This kills the repeat business, plus the word of mouth that gives a film legs past its opening weekend.

The film may pull it's onions out of the fire thanks to international box-office, but I'm not sure if the film is being distributed by UIP (Universal's international distributor that it co-owns with Paramount) or if MRC licensed those rights to other companies. I'll have to look that up.

I fear that Universal got a little caught up in the media hype over Borat, which outweighed its box-office enormously, and thought that if they spent tens of millions to sell the film they could make Bruno, even bigger. The problem is that a one-trick pony tends to have diminishing returns, and you have to protect your investment.

2. THE GERSH AGENCY GERSHES ITSELF UP

The Gersh Agency has dropped the "Agency" from its name, and now it's just called Gersh.

I'm not so sure as to why they thought that was necessary, but whatever floats their boat as they say.

The Gersh Agency also announced that Steve Gersh, the 3rd generation of Gershes, has joined the family business as an agent.

Well, I wish him good luck. Family businesses can get complicated, because of familial and business stresses working together to screw you, and a lot of them don't survive the third generation. I hope his family has taught him the business well, and that he's got the hustle in his bones to make it, because I like seeing people succeed by working hard, and not pissing it away.

My message to Steve Gersh: Don't screw it up, that's your name on the letterhead too, and that comes with a truckload of responsibility.

Hollywood Babble On & On #322: A Couple of Miscellaneous Money-Movie Musings...

1. MGM GETS A THUMBS UP

At least they get a thumbs up from the auditors, who declared the long moribund company a "going concern" in a recent report. (h/t Nikki Finke)

Well, bully for MGM I say, especially with some interested and potentially very serious buyers sniffing around.

Let's hope that these buyers are able to get around the company's crippling debt, and get the company on a solid and productive footing again. And since I don't like to repeat myself, though I often do, here are a few tips they might want to consider.

Plus, I hope that they don't try to leap right into trying to make the company a mega-major again, it hasn't been that since the late 1960s, and has to start modest, and grow from there.

2. NBC PINS A SPIN MEISTER

Jeff Zucker, the head of NBC Universal, appointed a long-time friend to take over public relations for the battered network/studio conglomerate. I had made some suggestions of who they could hire, but Zucker had his own ideas.

This news has sparked one of my trademark PSYCHIC FLASHES!

I predict that they'll be crowing a lot about Sasha Baron Cohen's Bruno making a lot of money on its opening, while completely ignoring the financial and creative washout of Land of the Lost, or that NBC could be the only network on the air, and still end up in fourth place.

Hollywood Babble On & On #317: Miscellaneous Movie Musings...

1. ASTEROIDS? WTF?

Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, is taking time off from carrying Paramount, to go to Universal to adapt a big screen live action version of the Atari video game Asteroids.

For those of you under 35 who don't remember Asteroids, you basically control a little trial, that flies around the screen, blasting strangely geometric "asteroids" with you mighty pixel cannon. Take a look at this picture to bask in its amazing eye-popping graphics.

Now I am not the type to think video game adaptations are all that great an idea, even when the games have a story, but I'm positively gobsmacked that someone thinks they can make a movie from the video game with even less narrative content than Pac-Man.

In fact, I think Universal got conned.

Face it, if you want to make a sci-fi action adventure with asteroids, slap together a script about rivalry among outer space miners, toss in a love interest, a disaster, and some pirates, aliens, or alien-pirates, after their booty, and call it Asteroids. It's just that easy.

There was no reason for them to go to Atari and spend good money to buy the movie rights to a game that's been mostly forgotten by even the people who made the high score screen. Asteroids is a common word, used all the time, and unless you're going to cast a bunch of geometric shapes, any story would be different from the complete non-story of the video game. But someone must have made one hell of a sales pitch, using terms like synergy, and paradigms, and other shit, and Universal fell for it like country rubes chugging snake oil.

I salute the people who sold Universal Asteroids as a movie, you truly are magnificent bastards.

2. HARVEY WEINSTEIN, CRITIC AT LARGE

Harvey Weinstein, the founder and destroyer of flailing failing indie TWC, recently posted his first official movie review at web-site The Daily Beast. Now if Harvey decides to keep doing movie reviews for a living, because he's certainly not making anything as a producer, he's going to need the sort of blurbs that will get his name onto movie posters again. So here are a few for him, gratis, because I know he's broke:

-"A brilliant independent movie, I could sit on it for years."

-"This film sucked so hard, I was looking for my name in the credits."

-"This is the sort of praiseworthy film I would crush with one of my multi-million dollar Oscar campaigns."

-"I passed on this script, so you know it must be good."

I hope you can find a use for them Harvey.

3. IN DEFENSE OF GWYNETH

Poor Gwyneth Paltrow, she's being attacked again for unfavorably comparing the USA, the nation of her birth, and the cradle of her career, to another country, this time Spain.

Well, I've decided to not attack Gwyneth for these statements. In fact, I think she has a good reason for making them.

This is a woman who has spent her life surrounded by rich people, and rich show-biz people. She has no idea what it's like for the people who live with incomes under seven figures, and it shows.

Her upbringing is the wealthy equivalent of being raised in the woods by inbred hillbillies who ain't got no knowing of dem dere folks who live in dem dere towns and cities and ain't got no hankerin' to learn about dem either. Except instead of a shack in a holler, it's a house in the Hamptons, or Beverly Hills, and the only Americans she knew who aren't rich are usually the servants, and they're only allowed to speak when spoken to, and even then it's strictly "Yes Mistress."

She's not a pretentious twat who hates her country, she only knows rich America. Blame them for the bad impression, not her for her ignorance.