HOLLYWOOD PMS

"Tron: Legacy," a costly 3D sci-fi movie

that Walt Disney Co has promoted for more than three years,

took the top spot at the North American box office,

but with a disappointing weekend haul of $43.6 million, according to estimates issued by the company on Sunday.

How do movies like TRON go wrong? Nick, my co-worker and Mr. EveryMan movie audience, scratched his head and asked that question of TRON.

"I mean, Roland, it had great actors, access to the best special effects around, and you know it cost millions upon millions to make.

And with all that, they made crap? How does stuff like this happen?"

Lucy Lawless, siren of XENA and SPARTACUS, is reported to have said,

"If it ain't on the page,

it dies on the stage."

Amen, Xena.

Industry observers had been expecting a three-day start in the $50 million range for TRON.

As openings go this year, the massively hyped sequel to an obscure 1982 movie failed to crack the top-10,

and observers have said it will need to rely on strong overseas business to break even.

Slapping the name Tron on a movie, loading it with 3D effects, and putting some woman in spandex in it, does not make me want to see the movie.

(Well, Olivia Wilde in spandex makes me want to rent the DVD.)

Also new was "Yogi Bear," a live-action/animated update of the old television cartoon.

It came in at No. 2 with $16.7 million, a few million dollars short of the expectations of its studio, Warner Bros.

It was also short the innocence and witty humor of the cartoon.

"How Do You Know," a comedy featuring a high-priced lineup headed by Jack Nicholson and Reese Witherspoon, was a major flop.

So who's to blame?

1.) The Four Quadrants.

And no, that is not the Cajun branch of the Illuminati.

It's how Hollywood grades movies :

The four quadrants :

Males : Above and Below the age of 25

Females : Above and Below the age of 25

The best quadrant?

Males below the age of 25.

They will go alone to movies they like.

They are more apt to take friends to said movie, making an event of it.

The next best?

Females below the age of 25.

They won't go alone. But often drag their boyfriends after going to two of their action movies in a row
.
So the best film to make obviously is a chick flick with guns.

Don't laugh. That's why we had the duds, KILLERS with Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher, along with the movie, KNIGHT & DAY, with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz.

Hollywood is a business.

And on date night, you've got to go see something. And Hollywood still believes the pipe dream that the Four Quadrants will make studios money. So story is secondary.

But not to us writers.

And the shame of it is that a good story costs just as much as a bad one. And the repeat viewings of a great film makes more money in the long run.

2.) HOLLYWOOD PMS is also to blame :


P ... politics


Studios, like heat-seeking missiles,

tend to follow the popularity of an actor or a director,

whether or not is based on anything close to quality.

Funny enough, it is called following the "heat."

At least that was the phrase several years ago.

Politics is more than following the heat however. It is about personalities, their flaws, their prejudices, their ego's.

Studio politics is office politics on steroids.


M ... money :


Hollywood loves its pre-sold franchises. Sometimes they work. Most times they don't.

I shudder when I remember what the movie A-TEAM looked like on the screen.

But the studio executives know that people reading their computer headlines will know the answer to that most important question : "What is it about?"

Franchises gives the reader of the movie ad a clear mental image of what the movie promises.

If the story is lousy or the film veers too far off the historical image. Low traffic. Sink hole where ticket sales should be.

Domestic ticket sales used to account for 60% of a movie's overall profits. Now, it's down to 40%. Worldwide ticket sales are now the make or break aspect of a movie.

The movie must be readily understood universally. Franchises are ideal for that.

Also killer titles : Legally Blonde, Crazies, 4 Christmases, and FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE {the title for my book -- hey, I can dream, can't I?}

Hollywood is not about art or about quality. It is about profits.

showBUSINESS it is called for a reason.

If on top of the 4 quadrants, your movie script is medium-budget, filmed entirely in one location --

and you are the screen writer, you may have to run out of the exec's office to keep him from giving you a wet kiss. Which leads us to ...


S ... Sex


Sex behind the camera ... the infamous casting couch.

Sex in front of the camera ... which is how we got Angelina Jolie in the lifeless THE TOURIST and Olivia Wilde poured into spandex for eye candy in TRON.

Well, that's it for my thoughts on Hollywood's deficiencies.

How about yours?

What recent movie had you asking, "What were they thinking of? --

How did this happen? -- They spent millions of dollars on this?"

Please tell me. I'm interested.
***

THE END IS NEAR! AGAIN! AND WE LOVE IT!

Eternity is really long, especially near the end.
- Woody Allen

IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD!

AGAIN!

AND WE LOVE IT!



We’re doomed.

Hollywood says so.

Why?


Pop Culture has long had a fascination with the end times.

21st century Man is like the proverbial kid in the backseat :

“Are we there yet?”


Man becomes preoccupied with the end of things

During bad times.


And these have certainly been bad times lately :

earthquakes,

tsunamis,

famines,

wars,and economic collapse.


Sociology professors say that our fascination with the end times reflects a hunger for meaning in these admittedly bad times.


We want to know where we are going

And how soon we will get there.


And while myths and religions have long talked about the end of the world,

It has only been since the rumblings that led to the first World War

that literature,and later movies, started telling stories of individuals

struggling during the world’s death.


H. G. Wells wrote his famous WAR OF THE WORLDS in 1898.



Scholars call the study of the end times …

Eschatology.

Which is fun for the dark little boy inside me because it

Is only letter and one syllable removed from

Scatology

Which is the scholarly study of folks fascinated with

Excrement.


And sadly, sometimes it’s hard to know the

Difference lately what with Hollywood has been giving us.


And so here we are in 2010. Some experts said we wouldn’t make it.

Some theologians thought the end would come

In 1988.


What? Why then, of all years?

It marked a full generation passing since Israel became a

nation in 1948.


Then, the theologians said the time clock

For the End Times started

When Jerusalem was in Israeli hands once more in 1968.


2008 came and went. Terrible times especially around here in Lake Charles after Rita.

But no End Times Unless all of this is a bad dream.


And sometimes it does feel like one, doesn’t it?


But the truth is when the end comes :

For you,

For Man,

For the World,

That time is unknown.

The unknown. Its allure is what gave birth to myth,

legend,

and tales told around the campfire.

Man wants to know the unknowable. Nature abhors a vacuum. Human Nature hates it even more.


Mankind can't abide not knowing. If Man doesn't have an answer, he will make one up.

And that is why we have myths.

And the desire to make up the answer is why we have science fiction and fantasy.


And the greatest unknown, of course is

Death.


We listen to doomsday economic, political,religious jihad news.

We go to the theater and see the world end, only to go outside in the bright light of day, seeing the cars pass by and hearing the pedestrians chatting away on their cell phones.

Just Hollywood. We're safe.

Aren't we?

Not so you’d notice.

Jamestown. Jim Jones convinced his followers that the world was about to end in nuclear horror. They mixed in cyanide with their Kool-Aid and drank it down.

Personally, I believe something stronger was called for.

It's a terrible joke for a horrendous reality

But …

There is Heaven’s Gate and its herald, Marshall Applewhite,

whose followers believed his tale that their souls were about to be snatched up by the spacecraft flying in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet. All they had to do get on board

Was die.

No Kool-Aid for them. No, sir. They mixed their poison with good old American Pie, washed down by vodka.

It is no wonder Hollywood considers us gullible.


But there is another reason why we all flock to End of the World movies such as

Armageddon,

Deep Impact,

When Worlds Collide,

I Am Legend.


We want to believe

That somehow, someway,we’ll be able to fix it and make things right.

Science has become our new God. And it will make things right.

Right?


Science may be God to some. But it is a vengeful God.

Man has never made a weapon that He has not ended up using. Even a limited nuclear exchange {5% of the global nuclear arsenal} would almost certainly ANNIHILATE life on Earth as we know it.


Hollywood responds with

THE ROAD

THE TERMINATOR MOVIES

THE BOOK OF ELI

EIGHT


Hollywood tells us what we want to hear :

Something good of what we were would survive.

Hollywood doesn’t seem to get the message. Which is :


WE want to survive, skippy!


Which is why the end times movies that do the most box office are the ones in which the main hero survives

MAD MAX franchise.

The first MATRIX.

The 1st PLANET OF THE APES movie

{Yes, I know Charleton Heston’s not ecstatic.

But he’s alive and he’s got the babe. And a kicker of a last scene.}


Think INDEPENDENCE DAY :

Great last scenes. “Get up and shout” scenes.


Now think CHILDREN OF MEN :

“Put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger” last scenes.

And the box office receipts showed it.


You and I don’t want to spend ten dollars to get depressed!

We can stay at home and be that for free!


Oh, and don’t think that the scenario of CHILDREN OF MEN could happen?

Think again, skippy.


The average sperm count has dropped by HALF in the last 30 years!

HALF.

People in industrialized countries don’t make nearly enough babies.

People in the third world lose many of their young children to poor conditions.

It gives you something to ponder.


That’s why I emailed Megan Fox told her of my excellent genes,high I.Q,and sturdy genetic stock.

With her looks and my brains, we’d make beautiful babies. Her lawyer emailed back something silly about cease & desist.

She’s just thinking it over.


Riiiiiight.


And then, there is the zombie craze.

Oh, sure, it’s all fun and games until your girlfriend suddenly wants to make a snack of your brains.


But Hollywood knows we are drawn to a story following a small group of friends, facing a world of devastated, formerly familiar streets filled with throngs of trudging,hungering, walking corpses.

We ask :

What would I do in such a situation?

Where would I go?

Who would I take?

What would I bring?


But behind all the movies lies the promise that we could survive if we were smart and lucky.


Bottom Line :

We could survive.

There would be a tomorrow.


We all have an inbuilt need to associate ourselves with those who survive.

We all have this crazy human need to believe that we will beat the odds when others do not.


There's a powerful scene near the end of The Road, the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize—winning novel, where a father and son sit silent together under brooding skies

on a wasted, nameless beach, littered with human and whale skeletons.

They have finally reached the coast after traversing by foot a post-apocalyptic America
filled with nightmare dangers, hardships, and traps.

The boy, about age 10, has never seen the sea.

"What's on the other side?" he asks.

"Nothing," replies his father,suffering from malnutrition and despair, after having fought off evils both human and animal.

All along he has urged his son to maintain hope—

to "carry the fire" — but has slowly lost his own.


The boy, who believes there's still goodness somewhere in their dark and dying world,

looks out to the sea and says,

"There must be something."


Wanting to keep his son's hope alive, the man pauses and then answers.

"Maybe there's a father and his son, and they're sitting on the beach too."


Like McCarthy's 2006 book, the film is both depressing and redeeming;

it depicts one of the most loving father-son relationships to appear on the big screen.


And this particular scene speaks volumes for all of us asking a universal question.


What's on the other side?


And that is what good Science Fiction and Movies do for us :

They help us discover for ourselves what we feel is on the Other Side.


In my worldview,there is indeed a Father and His Son waiting for us

On The Other Side.


And remember …

"apocalypse" doesn't mean end, but is Greek for "revelation" -- an unveiling of truth.


Let us keep looking for truth in the world around us and in that most puzzling world :

The one within us.

IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD ... AGAIN

The unknown.

Its allure is what gave birth to myth, legend, and tales told around the campfire. Man wants to know the unknowable.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

Mankind can't abide not knowing. If Man doesn't have an answer, he will make one up. And that is why we have myths. And the desire to make up the answer is why we have science fiction and fantasy.

And the greatest unknown?

Death. Our own. Our species.

And that is why we have the explosion of end times movies :

LEGION, 2012, AVATAR {in its Think Green way.}

ZOMBIELAND, SHAUN OF THE DEAD

NIGHT, DAY, HOUR, SHOPPING MALL OF THE LIVING DEAD movies.

DAYBREAKERS, 48 DAYS LATER, 48 WEEKS LATER

SUNSHINE

RESIDENT EVIL, TERMINATOR, I AM LEGEND,

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, MATRIX

INDEPENDENCE DAY, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW,

SPLICE

Why so many end time movies? They are popular. Why? We look at the headlines and see we have a compulsion to destroy ourselves. And the heights of science provide a certain deadfall for the human race.

We as a movie audience need to work out the terror of our race committing ethnic cleansing on a species scale in a safe arena.

The comforting blackness of a movie theater, surrounded in the safety of fellow humans laughing, shouting out in surprise or dismay, and cringing from CGI horrors.

See, Martha? It's just a movie. No bungled science will wipe us out. It's only Hollywood. Only 3D and CGI and over-the-top writing.

It can't happen in real life.

We ignore the whispers from the news : Jamestown. Cambodia. North Korea. Iran. The Trade Towers. Haiti. Chili. Ever growing dead areas in the oceans. The shrinking ozone layer.

The smoke detectors are still going off. The rain forests are still burning. Entire species of life disappearing. Where did all the bees and butterflies go, honey?

We slurp our cokes, munch our popcorn, and cringe at the latest terror-of-science movie lunging out at us from the screen.

Are we all mentally ill as Stephen King asserts? We outside the asylums can just hide it better? Or do we do it to establish a bar of what is normal and what is not?

We are handed our baby brother who promptly pukes on us. We bat him on the forehead, and get one from an angry parent. So we learn to smile and chuckle, "Oh, look. How cute."

And when we watch on the movie screen an older brother put on a Halloween mask and chop off the head of a younger brother, inside we say, "That'll teach him."

We listen to doomsday economic, political, religious jihad news. We go to the theater and see the world end, only to go outside in the bright light of day, seeing the cars pass by and hearing the pedestrians chatting away on their cell phones. Just Hollywood.

We're safe.

Aren't we?

**********

IT IS WHAT IT IS or HOLLYWOOD PMS

One of the sayings of my favorite private eyes, Spenser, happens to be "It is what it is." Unstated is the follow-up : "And not what you would wish it to be."

As it turns out, it is also how screenwriters talk of Hollywood : "It is what it is." Unstated is the follow-up : "So deal with it."

Jo Schaffer http://jostorm.blogspot.com/ , whose husband is in "The Biz," commented yesterday that it isn't always about the money. It's also about "Politics."

And sadly, Jo is right. Studios, like heat-seeking missiles, tend to follow the popularity of an actor or a director, whether or not is based on anything close to quality. Funny enough, it is called following the "heat." At least that was the phrase several years ago.

Politics is more than following the heat however. It is about personalities, their flaws, their prejudices, their ego's. Studio politics is office politics on steroids.

Which brings us to "Hollywood PMS : Politics, Money, and Sex {behind as well as in front of the cameras -- and for a fascinating view of that topic read MARLENE (Dietrich) written by her daughter, Riva -- As Marlene, the German-born Maria Magdalena Dietrich (1901-92) was a charismatic movie actress of the 1930s and 1940s. Like Greta Garbo, Dietrich symbolizes glamour and mystery.

Riva's perspective is unique and affecting. Using her mother's diary, radiograms, and letters, she gives proper weight to Dietrich's youth, her experience on the Berlin stage, her collaboration with director Josef Von Sternberg (e.g., The Blue Angel , 1930; Morocco , 1930), and her latter-day triumphs on stage and as a chanteuse.

There are arresting tales here (father and stepfather killed in World War I; a stint entertaining U.S. troops during the Battle of the Bulge; affairs with legends of the screen and other arts) that give the reader a true grasp of both biographer and subject.} You can get a used hardcover from Amazon for just a penny. How cool is that? http://www.amazon.com/Marlene-Dietrich-Maria-Riva/dp/0394586921/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0

And no, I haven't monetized my blog. My only reward will be the smile I get when you write me how much you enjoyed reading this amazing peek into a world strange and wonderful and sad.

Speaking of sad, let's get back to present-day Hollywood, where sequel no longer means an unexpected twist as in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK but more explosions and a lead actor phoning in his performance as in IRON MAN 2 {a likable but basically the first movie without the hero growing as much as in the first one.}

What is missing? Not much. Just something called craftsmanship. You know, what agents rake us over the coals for lousing up.

How does a writer make science fiction {or fantasy for that matter} real? Especially writers for movies and TV, for without the script all you would have are good-looking actors gazing at one another -- or into mirrors.

More likely the last.

Well, for one thing, you have to make the science plausible. And let's face it, some writers are better sellers of the impossible than others. It's why we have gotten the presidents we have in the past. Let's nail those amoral speech-writers with rotten tomatoes, shall we?

But all joking aside, the science in the tales has to be internally consistent, not change from page to page. Still more importantly, life must be seen taking its toll. Heads must rock back by the thrust of the rockets. Nausea must make stomachs feel like high-tide in zero gravity spins.

Life must hurt. It does for all of us. It must for the characters we watch or we will not believe in them.

We will not buy a story where there is cause without effect. That is why STAR WARS seems more real {despite its space opera elements} than STAR TREK. The blast doors have scorch marks. The Millenium Falcon has dings and dents.

Solo must whallop the door facing of the cockpit to jar the tangled wiring loose enough to fire up the engines. The good guys lose, die, and the survivors feel it in their guts. A father cuts off the right hand of his son. Children, a whole school of them, are cut down by one evil man with a light saber. The evil emperor wipes out the Jedi and rules the galaxy for a generation of terror and oppression.

In life, the bad guys sometimes win. If science fiction or fantasy is to be experienced as "real," then night must fall as it does in the day of each of us. Isn't the true thrill of the dawn based on the depth of darkness to the night preceeding it?

That is why, in a strange way, science fiction can be more "real" than literary fiction. Gene Roddenberry tackled subjects like prejudice, duplicity in war with its betrayed trust of innocents, pacifism in the face of threat, and religious intolerance at a time in the sixties that no other TV show could have done.

And because Gene tackled those subjects that were all too real to his audience, the crew of the Enterprise became real to the viewers as well.

VOYAGER lost sight of that fact. One episode whole shuttles would be destroyed, the ship itself broadsided by raking lasers. And the next week, the ship would be spotless and a new shuttle would be gleaming in the bay.

BATTLESTAR GALATICA showed us wires hanging from the ceiling of the battered starship episode after episode. Mistakes of crewmen would hound them from show to show. Just like our own mistakes follow at our heels for years. Even more, it showed Mankind's arrogance and callousness coming back in the form of his children, the Cylons, to teach humanity that payback is a terrible thing to waste.

Each of us are heading to that last great Exit. Some of us are closer than we realize. As we walk, are we awake or asleep? THE MATRIX and TOTAL RECALL, to mention two Sci-Fi movies, ask that question of us. It is a question that only we can answer. Good science fiction can broaden our perspective to answer it more truthfully.

Again, I am musing in preparation for my two talks at the CON DU LAC Sci-Fi convention here in Lake Charles in June. Come check out its website, will you? http://www.condulac.net/.

Well, that's it for my thoughts on Hollywood's deficiencies. It's easier than looking at my own! And for all of us dreamers out there who refuse to quit, here's Diana Krall :
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I entered the Summer Bucket List of 10 items I would want to do this summer :

1) Finally go out with Angelina Jolie. She's been calling me and calling me. I usually wake before I answer yes to her demands to go out with me. But darn it, this summer I'm gonna stay asleep long enough to say yes.
2) Which leads into my next beloved plan : to get enough sleep. Yeah, me actually going out with Angelina is more likely.
3) Do two excellent presentations at the Sci_Fi convention this June. That is something I actually have a shot at doing.
4)Have a reputable agent offer me representation. Hey, a guy can dream.
5) Have a reputable publisher buy the rights to my novel.
6) Have a studio buy the movie rights to my novel. It's a goal. And goals are good to have.
7) Have the publisher push my release up by a whole year because they're so impressed with my novel.
8) Actually take a vacation this year.
9) Take that vacation in New Zealand.
10) Go out with Angelina Jolie. I know. I know. I already said that. But some things are worth doing twice.