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February 05, 2007
The Record Remains Blurry
Two NYT stories in the last couple of days illustrate the problems with the paper's movie business coverage pretty clearly.
First, Laura Holson’s follow-up on the gossip that we all heard about Team DreamWorks being raging mad about the way DreamWorks was positioned as a division of Paramount in some way equal to Vantage and MTV Films, suggesting that Stacey Snider, et al, reported to Brad Grey in a meaningful way.
Of course, what Holson leaves out of the discussion of the issue completely is that the positioning came directly on the heels of Gail Berman’s firing, a moment in which Grey and Viacom in general, had to take a strong position to avoid any potential Wall Street negativity. And this is so basic to why the event happened that its absence from the story is inexcusable.
Then, further issues inside of the piece…
“Still, on the first anniversary of its $1.6 billion sale to Paramount, a unit of Viacom, DreamWorks is stinging from a series of slights delivered by their newfound corporate overseers.”
The $1.6 billion sale was a temporary holding situation for Viacom, for whom selling off the DreamWorks library for $800 million - $1 billion of that amount was an absolute foundation of making the deal.
Three issues are key in that. First, that Viacom’s actual investment, by design, was well under a billion dollars. Second, that Viacom does not own the DreamWorks library. Third, that DreamWorks’ library is held by people who are looking forward to turning it over again, much as MGM is looking to sell itself yet again after “selling itself” to Sony.
“Mr. Spielberg said in an interview two weeks ago.”
How in God’s name can The New York Times have an on-the-record interview with Spielberg taking public positions against Paramount and not publish for two full weeks?
“’At the same time, I have some bargaining power,’ Mr. Spielberg continued. ‘I insisted, contractually, on autonomy for DreamWorks if I was going to continue under the Paramount and Viacom funding arrangement.’”
How can Holson fail to leave out, given that Spielberg is speaking about his autonomy, that the employment contracts of key DreamWorks players, except for Snider’s 5 years (which likely has a buyout) have less than two years left on them?
“’I’m more enthusiastic today then when we acquired it,’ said Mr. Grey, who brokered the deal to buy DreamWorks. ‘They have earned the deal we’ve made with them.’”
Where is a little math?
There are 15 films currently on the Paramount release schedule (not including Vantage) in 2007. Seven are from DreamWorks (Norbit, Blades of Glory, Disturbia, Transformers, Seven Day Itch, Sweeney Todd, Things We Lost in the Fire Fall). Two more from DreamWorks Animation (Shrek the Third, Bee Movie).
Six are from Paramount proper. One, Zodiac, is a holdover from 2006. One is a domestic distribution pick-up from the Sony-based Revolution Studios (Next). One is from the more-than-a-decade old relationship with Lorne Michaels and SNL Studios (Hot Rod). One is a Scott Rudin holdover (Stop-Loss). And two are from Lorenzo Di Bonaventura (Shooter, Stardust).
He better be enthusiastic. When 60% of your year’s schedule comes from one source, including what seem inevitably to be your five biggest grossers of the year, enthusiasm is more called for, it is a basis for survival.
Why isn’t the New York Times pointing out the basic fact that the studio is already facing life and death based on DreamWorks’ product? I don’t know.
“For some, the transition looks easy. In 2002 Universal Studios, now owned by General Electric, acquired the executive team behind Focus Features, who have successfully backed a string of modestly budgeted Oscar favorites, including “Brokeback Mountain” and “Lost in Translation.” Other relationships, though, have not fared as well. In 2005, Harvey and Bob Weinstein were forced out of Miramax Films, the studio they sold to the Walt Disney Company in 1993, after years of feuding over power and money.”
Comparing the acquisition of Propaganda/USA/Gramercy or Miramax to acquiring DreamWorks is simply off the charts wrong. God bless David Linde moving up to share the top slot at Universal and congrats to The Weisnteins getting Disney to expand their budget five-fold over a decade in business, but there is nothing close to an analogy there. Not then and certainly not now.
Frankly, the Par/DW story is so screwed up that comparing Sharon Waxman’s rather soft and reflective-of-previous-work miss with her “Where are the indie auteurs hiding?” piece seems unkind. Still, they published within hours of one another.
The problem with Waxman’s story is that it has the same fangirl failing of her book, Rebels on The Backlot. It fails to really investigate its own premise, rather than taking everything and every quote at face value.
I hope that Kimberley Peirce turns out to be a great director. But Boys Don’t Cry had some great performances and in spite of an Oscar for Hilary Swank, it had no other Oscar nominations in any non-acting slots. And Ms. Peirce had made a short version of the Boys Don’t Cry story four years before making her feature debut.
On top of that, why seven years before her second feature? We don’t know. The focus of Ms. Waxman’s lead paragraph refused to have speak to The New York Times. A spokesperson for Ms. Pierce explains what she was occupied with not making up through 2002… four years before she started shooting her 2007 release.
Darren Aronofsky made a leap from a $3 million budget to a $60 million budget. Doesn’t that point deserve making? Doesn't it go a long way to explaining what happened?
Shouldn’t Karyn Kusama’s five years between Girlfight and Aeon Flux and the artistic and financial failure of the second film have been worth mentioning?
How does Spike Jonze get mentioned without mentioning that he is also a very involved producer on films like Human Nature and the two Jackasses, working on his Palm Pictures directors package, as well as his involvement with his ex-wife’s Lost In Translation, going through a divorce, and prepping and producing the soon-to-shoot Charlie Kaufman directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. Of all the directors mentioned, he has remained the most busy, in spite of not making movies.
Fincher is a classic case of a guy choosing not to make movies. But Baz Luhrmann… did Sharon miss the year-long (probably longer) journey into opera?
“Perhaps Quentin Tarantino, child of the video culture, feels at a loss when faced with the war in Iraq and global terrorism.”
Huh?
Ass to Notion: "Thanks for getting out of me."
How does The New York Times let a piece about a specific group get published without a single quote from a single person who is part of that group? Especially when the story is a think piece that never answers its own question with any authority.
The quoted are del Toro, Cuaron, Crowe, agent Jeremy Barber, Lorenzo DiBonaventura (the man who let Brad Pitt stop the first incarnation of The Fountain in its tracks… which might answer the question, “Why not more Darren Aronofsky?”), and Laura Ziskin… is there a story these days when one of/all of these people is not available for comment?
And why didn’t Cameron Crowe get questioned about why the only time he didn’t take either three or four years between releases is when he did Vanilla Sky, a close-to-the-original remake of a Spanish-language film, after Almost Famous? I’m pretty sure the answer would not have been, “There’s no community.” Or maybe it would have been. But at least the question would have been asked and answered.
Thing is, I think this is a reasonable idea for a story. But a lack of cooperation from the focus of her premise combined with no reporting outside of the usual suspects makes for a really bad story. Each of these directors has a very different story. And in trying to tell them all, none of them are told accurately or with any real insight. Either you have the story or you don’t and what Waxman published simply doesn’t have it.
Frustrating.
Posted by poland at February 5, 2007 05:26 PM
Comments
So you're bashing Holson for reporting "stuff everybody already knows" (even though many - if not most - don't already know it) and then, in the same breath, bashing her for excluding details that "everybody already knows"? If she'd included said details, wouldn't you have yawned louder? You're really living up to that Wells quote about how if Jesus Christ floated down from the heavens onto the White House South Lawn, you'd say, "Is anyone really surprised by this?"
Also: "But Boys Don’t Cry had some great performances and in spite of an Oscar for Hilary Swank, it had no other Oscar nominations in any non-acting slots."
Um, so fucking what? Is the artistic merit of "Boys Don't Cry" really validated by an Oscar nomination for editing? And if Oscars truly are the be-all, end-all, then Peirce managed to direct the two women in her film to dual Oscar nominations and one win. That's pretty impressive for a debuting director.
Posted by: James Leer ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 5, 2007 06:36 PM
Good post, DP but why are you getting us sidetracked from discussing this weekend's opening of Norbit!
Posted by: Direwolf at February 5, 2007 06:37 PM
Actually, JL, I'm not bashing Holson for writing about the subject. I am bashing her for doing a poor job of it.
Why do I get the feeling you really aren't interested in discussing what I wrote, but just bashing away on me? Hmmm...
Or maybe you have something to say about the content of the Holson issues I brought up... or for that matter, the Waxman piece.
Posted by: David Poland at February 5, 2007 07:01 PM
Kimberley Peirce didn't get Oscar nomination doesn't mean that she didn't do well job on "Boys Don't Cry" . (We can't say that Lars von Trier didn't do well job on "Breaking the Waves" and Pedro Almodovar didn't do well job on "Volver"; both movies only got best actress nomination for Oscar awards)
Generally, a actor/actress won't get Oscar nomination for giving strong performance in a so-so movie.
(Sorry, my english isn't good)
Posted by: marychan at February 5, 2007 07:46 PM
"But it is possible that the self-indulgent American culture that shaped these filmmakers and made them so successful in the 1990s has left them ill equipped to take on the weightier questions facing society in the new millennium."
I'll merely mention films ALREADY LISTED in the article to counter that ridiculous statement: Fight Club, Three Kings, Requiem for a Dream, The Matrix
Funny how she forgot to mention Soderbergh in this article . . .
Posted by: luxofthedraw at February 5, 2007 08:31 PM
Kim Peirce should have directed Memoirs of a Geisha, she had the interest and the Japanese background to do an excellent job in the spirit of the book ,and instead we got the colorful bore it became.
She's doing this
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489281/
and at least she hasn;t done alot of crap.
Cameron Crowe should go back to Singles territory I think. The late 90s early 2000s I haven;t liked his stuff. Vanilla Sky was terrible compared to Abre Les Ojos which was creepy and and a serious mindbender. And I hated Elizabethtown, but maybe that's just me.
Panic room...not good, hope Zodiac is better
Punch Drunk love I though was a weak experiment and I can;t think why PT Anderson would cast Adam Sandler in anything, yuck. but I am looking forward to There will be Blood with DDL.
Ms Waxman needs to check what's in development etc since plenty of indie auteurs (if they are auteurs) are "working" it's just hard to get a movie made in any decent time frame if its his/her own material.
Posted by: Lota at February 5, 2007 08:48 PM
I thought Dave was bashing Waxman for lazy, slipshod journalism, not for reporting "stuff everybody already knows". If she wanted to do this piece right, she should have contacted every one of the directors she's scrutinizing, not just the one. And if she did contact Fincher, Jonze, et al, and they didn't want to talk, then put that in with the other turndown. But I doubt she did do that much legwork, because all of those people refusing to discuss the issue would have been a hell of a great talking point for the piece: "not only are they all taking years to make new movies, they're all staying silent about it".
Posted by: Hallick at February 5, 2007 08:57 PM
I am not saying Peirce is not going to be a good or great director. But her first film does not put her in the pantheon... or in the same category, in my opinion, as any of the other directors mentioned in the piece. Of course, I wouldn't have put David O Russell there after Spank The Monkey (And I now would in spite of Huckabees) and I would put Mark Romanek there, but in combination with all his pre-feature work.
Posted by: David Poland at February 5, 2007 09:51 PM
You really put out when you go up against the paper of record. I hope you know what you're talking about, because I'm buying it.
Posted by: T.Holly at February 5, 2007 10:47 PM
"Why do I get the feeling you really aren't interested in discussing what I wrote, but just bashing away on me? Hmmm...Or maybe you have something to say about the content of the Holson issues I brought up... or for that matter, the Waxman piece."
I did talk about your issues re: the Waxman piece, in particular, Kim Peirce. It would do you well to stop implying that anyone who critiques you (as you do to so many others, having appointed yourself the entertainment industry journalism ombudsman) has a personal vendetta. JeffMCM critquing you does not mean that he is Jeffrey Wells, me critiquing you does not mean that I am a basher, and you critiquing the industry ought not mean something so surface-level. If you assume that every time out, imagine what those you critique think.
"One Hour Photo" was awfully shitty to put Romanek in some sort of pantheon. His video work is amazing, but his feature was not. Peirce's, however, was pretty damn great. I do wish she had made more movies, but to bash her for a lack of tech Oscar noms seems so arbitrary that I can't fathom where you're even coming from. That is what I'm addressing. Maybe rebut that part next time, you'll do a lot better.
Posted by: James Leer at February 6, 2007 01:53 AM
Hi David thanks for inviting me over here. You're spot on about the weirdness of doing such an article without talking to most of the players. But Sharon is a nice lady so don't be too hard on her. Observations:
-Pierce's film that she walked away from was SILENT STAR about the unsolved murder of director William Desmond Taylor which was at New Line and then Dreamworks. Mike DeLuca was a big champion of hers. She didn't work because she was afraid that she was a one trick pony. She likely is.
- Sharon oddly omitted the idea that David O Russell reportedly doesn't play well with others. Weirdly, THREE KINGS was made during Lorenzo's watch and I thought he tried to replace the guy yet here he is blowing smoke up David's dress. Odd.
- When you interview Matthew Vaughan around STARDUST time ask him how Lorenzo got involved in STARDUST. It's a great story.
- Fincher wrapped Zodiac and started Benjamin Button like a week later. Torso is waiting for him at the end of the year. I mean- that's prolific.
- Guillermo and Alfonso are the real deal- she at least got that perfect.
Thanks DP be well.
Posted by: Don Murphy at February 6, 2007 09:26 AM
The _real_ Don Murphy?
Posted by: jeffmcm at February 6, 2007 09:35 AM
"Sharon oddly omitted the idea that David O Russell reportedly doesn't play well with others."
Doubly odd since she wrote that very unflattering piece back in 2004 about O. Russell's erratic, sometimes psychologically abusive behavior during the shooting of I HEART HUCKABEES. Maybe she didn't want to get on the director's shit list again, though that obviously shouldn't be a concern for a good journalist (which I think Waxman definitely is despite some gaps in her reporting here).
Posted by: Jeremy Smith at February 6, 2007 10:26 AM
I think it's obvious that Waxman wants Peirce to be somehow shorted or mistreated by Hollywood, since she's a woman. Boys Don't Cry was all about Swank--the shots of the moon and the plains and road are just stuck in, as producer Christine Vachon noted in her book, because Peirce didn't shoot enough coverage. I think she's not likely to direct anything else as good.
Posted by: KateC at February 6, 2007 07:45 PM
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