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 #323: Independent Daze...

1. TROUBLE IN PARADISE OR A TROJAN HORSE?

Lionsgate's management has made a deal with 19.8% shareholder Mark Rachesky to go on the company's board and apparently side with them against corporate activist/raider Carl Icahn.

The twist in the tail is that Rachesky is an old friend and former apprentice to Icahn. So you can look at this in two ways. Is there a breech in the relationship between Rachesky and his mentor? Or is he going to be a Trojan Horse, and help open the gates to Icahn and finalize his planned takeover of the company?

These two men have a lot of history, so it's a matter of time if we see if they're really rivals, or allies in the takeover of Lionsgate.

I hope that whoever takes over Lionsgate, that it's the company that survives. It has the potential to provide a new business model for Hollywood if the management has the right philosophy.

So let's keep our eyes peeled on this one.

2. WEINSTEIN CAN DO BASTERDS, BUT PROBABLY NOT MUCH ELSE...

Nikki Finke reports some good news and bad news for the battered and beleagured Weinstein Company.

First...

THE GOOD NEWS: It looks like Harvey and Bob were able to shake enough change out of the couch cushions, and clip enough enough coupons to put the $30 million minimum needed to handle the domestic release of Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds.

Of course this is a mixed blessing for the company. To raise this money they had to hoard all their available cash, and not release a lot of their upcoming production slate, including some rather expensive productions. Which is really not much of a change in their usual business model of burying productions made by anyone whose name doesn't rhyme with Benton Farentino.

However, this is still a terrible risk for the Weinstein Company, because their whole future is pretty much riding on this one film. As I've said before, the roots of the film are in the dark, nihilistic, and anarchistic European war-action-exploitation films of the 1960s and 70s. American audiences may not care for a dark, nihilistic and anarchistic view of the war that made grampa a hero, and could be turned off by the whole thing.

The film may do connect better with European audiences, who remember WW2 differently than Americans, but those distribution rights, and the revenues they come with, are with Universal. That means if Americans don't make Basterds a domestic hit, the Weinstein Co. is going to be screwed royally.

And now...

THE BAD NEWS: A rumour that the Encore/Starz media company was going to invest in TWC was referred to by a company insider as "complete and utter bullshit."

BURN!

But seriously, why would anyone invest in TWC in any way that didn't involve the ouster of the men whose name graces the stationary.

I mean these are the people who:

A. Bought loads of independent films, only to sit on them, sometimes for eons, and refuse to release them for obscure accountancy reasons, ensuring that any momentum, and potential for profits, from the festival attention these films got is lost completely.

B. Started a feud with NBC-Universal over Project Runway, resulting in millions lost to litigation over bad faith contract negotiations, and a major mega-conglomerate contemplating the aesthetics of their heads on pikes.

C. Put all their eggs in the basket of getting another Oscar under their belt, destroying relationships, alienating Academy voters, and putting no thought into releasing something that might, you know, make a lot of money.

D. Produced and released a lot of really shitty films that lost boatloads of money.

E. Pissed off just about everyone that ever did business with them.

I can understand the position of Encore/Starz completely.

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.