The Big Picture takes a vacation

How can you miss me when I won't go away? In August, the French leave Paris, the Italians leave Rome and the studio bosses leave Hollywood. That's a good enough sign for me that it's time to hit the road. The Cubs are still in first place, so the family is heading off to make our annual pilgrimage to Wrigley Field, where we hope to sing a few choruses of "Go Cubs Go," the Steve Goodman-penned tune all loyal Cub stalwarts croon after a Cubs victory. Then it's up to the mountains for some reading and hiking.

Look for the blog to be back up and running a day or so after Labor Day, when I'll weigh in on more of the fall films and see if any of my vacation reading could be made into a good movie. My thanks for reading the blog. It's been a great pleasure having such a spirited conversation with so many smart people. I'm betting there will be lots to talk about after I return. 

Photo of Ernie Banks statue at Wrigley Field by Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images

Fall Film Preview: Mike Leigh is ... back!

It's been a calamitous year for specialty films, with all sorts of specialty divisions either going out of business or suffering huge cutbacks. Having seen a few of the fall offerings, I have to admit I was beginning to think the slump would never end.  "Synecdoche, New York," Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, has some clever writing and a great subject--a man obsessed with his own mortality. But it's basically a murky existential meditation on the meaning of life, without the Monty Python comic relief. After going unsold at Cannes, "Synecdoche" was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics, who'll release it in October and plans to put Kaufman on a 10- to 12-city campus speaking tour in hopes of hitting the target audience--apparently coeds who still read Camus.

Meanwhile, Focus Films has "Hamlet 2," due out in limited release Friday. The film, which stars Steve Coogan as an overzealous high school drama teacher mounting an outlandish sequel to Shakespeare's best-known play, sold for a whopping $10 million at Sundance last winter. I wish I could say Focus got its money's worth, but my guess is that audiences will shaking their head, wondering who packed the house at the festival screening. Amy Poehler has a great bit part as a loony ACLU lawyer, but most of the film's comic turns are dead ends. I think it's a safe bet that there will be no "Hamlet 3."

So now for the good news. After a four-year layoff since "Vera Drake," which earned three Oscar nominations, Mike Leigh is back with "Happy-Go-Lucky," a film about an irrepressible free spirit named Poppy (played by Sally Hawkins) who manages to giddily bounce around London, full of life-affirming good cheer, but without an ounce of cloying or mawkish sentimentality. (After all, it's still a Mike Leigh movie.) For me, the best performance in the movie is from Polly's nemesis, a driving instructor named Scott (played by Eddie Marsan, seen most recently in "Sixty Six.") A Leigh stock company regular, Marsan gives one of the year's great performances as a fuming sourpuss with the personality of an Old Testament prophet. Hands firmly clenched in a death grip on the steering wheel, he's enraged by everything, from Polly's flouncy boots ("Vanity before safety!") to what he views as the nightmare of British multiculturalism (when he spies an immigrant driver doing a poor job of negotiating a turn, he bellows: "Come on! Drive the car! You not driving a camel. We have laws in this country!").

He doesn't take to Polly's mirthful approach to life. "You can make jokes when you're driving, Polly," he says through gritted teeth. "But you will crash and will die laughing." It being a Leigh film, the story is chock-full of oddball characters, from a high-strung flamenco instructor to a troubled child in the kindergarten class Polly teaches. But the best part of the film is the way it so casually allows us to grasp how intertwined each relationship can be. No one is easily stereotyped. Mike Leigh's world, even a world dominated by a character who appears full of way-too-much unquenchable optimism, is always a world full of surprises.   

Miramax is slated to release the film Oct. 10. Here's a look at the trailer:   

Going "Full-Jew" in "Tropic Thunder?"

My colleague John Horn has a good story in our paper today about how the nation's film critics have come to the defense of "Tropic Thunder," Ben Stiller's new Hollywood satire, which has been under attack from various advocacy groups of its frequent use of the word "retard." Tim Shriver, head of the Special Olympics, has advocated a boycott of the picture. Stiller, among others, has said the film's mocking use of the word is poking fun at self-important actors, not the mentally disabled.

I have no dog in this fight. I wasn't awestruck by the satire in "Tropic Thunder," but nor was I offended. In general, satire should be defended, whether it provokes the ire of conservatives, liberals or any other thin-skinned interest groups. But it is important, if you're going to defend satire, to be sure that you're willing to defend it all the way. If you're a liberal, it's easy to stick up for most of today's satirists, because most satirists are, by nature, liberal and contrarian, so it's not your ox being gored.

What would happen, for example, if Ben Stiller were making fun of Jews instead of the disabled? Just as an exercise in the art of tolerance, let's change just one word in a couple of the excerpts that John Horn ran from the current "Tropic Thunder" reviews. Here goes:

Harry Potter: Too naked for holiday season?

No wonder movie studios are petrified of the media! Every time a studio moves a big tentpole's release date, the conpiracy theorists surface, speculating all sorts of dark, quasi-satanistic motives. The chatterers are chattering again with the news that Warners has pulled "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" from its Nov. 21 date, pushing it to July 17. The blogosphere has treated the move with all sorts of raised eyebrows.

But nobody has floated a more preposterous theory than Foxnews showbiz blogger Roger Friedman, who proposed today the real reason he believes the movie got the bump: Warners is petrified that family movie fans will freak out when they discover that "Potter" star Daniel Radcliffe is appearing on stage this fall in New York in "Equus," a play that -- horrors! -- requires a bit of occasional nudity. Putting on his Inspector Clouseau investigator's cap, Friedman assumes the worst:

"Radcliffe appears naked in the play, on stage, and has sex in it as well. That's not the image Warner Bros. wants associated with bespectacled Harry, who remains chaste and virginal. Indeed, posters for 'Equus' are up all over New York, of Radcliffe's naked torso superimposed on a horse's head. This is not the sort of of thing that's taught at Hogwarts. For the movie to open on Nov. 21, Radcliffe would have to do publicity entailing answering questions about blinding horses and having sex with them vs. flying around and making potions."

Putting aside the obvious -- any 10-year-old could've told Roger that by the time of "Half Blood Prince," the Harry Potter protagonists are quite well aware of the opposite sex -- the theory is hilariously New York-ocentric, as if Middle America were really riveted by what was happening on one stage in midtown Manhattan. There's a more obvious explanation for the move: If you glance at Warner's schedule for 2009, it has a thin summer, with only one real potential blockbuster ("Terminator Salvation") on the slate. Putting "Half-Blood Prince" in the summer, where it could perhaps make even more money, beefs up a potential weak summer slate. It also takes some of the pressure off this fall's release schedule, which is so jampacked with product that, as Warners distribution chief Dan Fellman told me the other day, has more movies than most studios release in an entire year.

Having made more moola with "The Dark Knight" this summer than it ever had imagined possible, Warners can afford to bump its next meal ticket into another fiscal year, where it can keep all those corporate coffers nicely balanced with blockbuster product. I like a good conspiracy theory as much the next person, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

  Photo: Warner Bros. Photo: Daniel Radcliffe in "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince."

Gerry Rich is out at Paramount

This one is a shocker. Even though Paramount has been having one of the best summers in recent memory, Gerry Rich, the studio's head of worldwide marketing, just called to say he is leaving his job  He insists that he wasn't pushed out, an insistence that anyone leaving Paramount has to make, considering the constant in-fighting and the frequent executive departures over the past few years at the studio.

"It was my decision," Rich told me. "No one pushed me out the door. It's been an incredible summer, with  'Iron Man' and 'Indiana Jones' and 'Kung Fu Panda' and 'Tropic Thunder,' but I thought it was time to move on. I asked to be let out of my contract and after everyone thought it over, they very graciously said that if that was what I wanted, I could leave. It's been a great 4 1/2 year run, but I just felt it was time. Frankly, marketing executives don't often get to leave when they're on top and I just wanted to make a change. It's been a great ride."

It is expected that the studio will announce that Josh Greenstein and Megan Colligan, who've both been working under Rich, will take over as co-presidents of marketing. I'll have more to say about this as the news settles in, but it can't be a good sign for Paramount when someone with Rich's savvy and creativity as a marketer is so eager to bail out of his job.   

Photo of Gerry Rich by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.

The Paula Wagner-Tom Cruise Show flops

There has been coverage everywhere about Paula Wagner leaving United Artists and lighting out for the territories (here's a good piece from our paper). The only math anyone needs to know is this: After securing a $500-million film financing deal from Merrill Lynch to make a slate of 15 to 18 films over five years in their effort to revive the moribund UA label, Wagner and her UA partner Tom Cruise managed to release one movie in two years. To add insult to injury, the one movie, the Cruise-starring "Lions for Lambs," was a bomb. UA's second film, the upcoming Bryan Singer-directed "Valkyrie," has bounced around on the release schedule, buffeted by all sorts of negative buzz.

What happened? People close to the situation tell me that Wagner got played by MGM chief Harry Sloan. A one-time agent and longtime Cruise confidante, Wagner is Hollywood Old School: She still thinks the business revolves around servicing movie stars. Sloan is Hollywood New School: He realizes the business is all about money, perception and gamesmanship. Having jumped at the chance to run a big-time studio, Sloan quickly realized that he'd installed himself as the admiral of a sinking ship. All his moves since have revolved around perception, since Sloan realized it would be almost impossible to get investors to sink more money into MGM unless Wall Street believed the ship was being turned around.

Whenever matters have looked dire, Sloan has bought more time with a splashy announcement. First it was bringing in Wagner and Cruise to revive UA. More recently, it was bringing in producer Mary Parent to head production at MGM. What Wagner never seemed to realize was that she was a pawn in the game. She had greenlight power and plenty of Merrill Lynch moola, but whenever Wagner tried to greenlight a movie, Sloan blocked it, either saying MGM wouldn't distribute it or saying he didn't believe the studio could market it. What Sloan really wanted was UA's money, which he needs to pay for some of the movies Parent wants to make. The real tipoff was the news last week that Sloan had signed a new long-term deal at MGM. His future secure, he quickly moved to grease the skids for Wagner's departure.

The blog world today has been full of reports about a new Sloan press release paying homage to Cruise, saying the star remains a "full partner in control of UA." That's how much power a fading movie star like Cruise has today--he forced MGM to kiss his tuchis, but he couldn't save his longtime partner's job. In Hollywood, as in Washington, you learn to follow the money. And someway, somehow, you can bet most of that UA money is going to be keeping Harry Sloan's faltering MGM empire alive.    

Photo of Paula Wagner by Matt Sayles / Associated Press

The Hollywood boxing undercard: Tony Kaye vs. David Bergstein

Capitol Films and ThinkFilm impresario David Bergstein has been taking it on the chin in the press in recent months, dogged by charges that his financial woes have led to a string of unpaid bills, lawsuits, layoffs and film production shutdowns. A variety of lawsuits have been filed against ThinkFilm, most notably a suit from Oscar-winning "Taxi to the Dark Side" documentary director Alex Gibney, who charged ThinkFilm with "fraudulently concealing" its ability to properly release the film.

Albie Hecht, the former Nickelodeon chief who produced the Oscar-nominated documentary "War/Dance," told the Hollywood Reporter he still hasn't seen the small advance he was promised from ThinkFilm, calling Bergstein "the biggest disgrace in the film business." After the Reporter's well-reported take-down piece, the industry has been buzzing about who would surface next to take a swing at Bergstein.

As it turns out, his latest combatant is Tony Kaye, who called me yesterday to share his concerns that Bergstein was badmouthing Kaye's new film. For the uninitiated, Kaye is the eccentric British video director (having worked with everyone from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Johnny Cash to Roger Waters) who got into a huge tussle with New Line Cinema over the release of his 1998 film "American History X." When the studio allowed Edward Norton, its star, to do some re-edits on the film, Kaye had a meltdown, demanding that his name be removed from the film, then got into a dispute with the DGA when the guild wouldn't let him use the pseudonym of Humpty Dumpty. For a while, Kaye's bizarre behavior made him largely unemployable in Hollywood.

Kaye has received better reviews in recent years, especially from the release last year of his abortion documentary, "Lake of Fire." He's been in New Orleans for close to a year, shooting "Blackwater Transit," a dramatic thriller that stars Lawrence Fishburne and Steven Dorff and is set in the post-Katrina chaos of New Orleans. Kaye believes it will be a big comeback vehicle for him. So why is he suddenly so unhappy with Bergstein?

 

Lionsgate: Will bigger be better?

After proving itself to be the spunkiest, most resourceful and opportunistic mini-major studio in Hollywood, Lionsgate is about to undergo a major mettle-testing transformation that could make it a true industry powerhouse or send it stumbling into a crash-and-burn death spiral. As my colleague John Horn reports in his Thursday Word of Mouth column, while much of Hollywood is cutting back on film releases, the industry's most successful indie studio is opening four major films in four consecutive weeks, all in wide release, meaning more than 2,000 screens.

And that's just the beginning. The studio is oh-so-close to announcing the hiring of Alli Shearmur, a veteran studio player who was a successful production executive at Universal Pictures and served a brief stint as co-president of production at Paramount until studio chief Brad Grey axed her and Gail Berman in a bloody studio purge in early 2007. Shearmur's hiring--she's slated to start work at the studio early next month--is a coup for Lionsgate Motion Picture Group President Joe Drake, who has been making the rounds at talent agencies for months, saying that Lionsgate intends to finance more of its own pictures, a crucial step in the studio's strategy to create a more lucrative revenue stream and add value to its film library.

Up until now, Lionsgate has made most of its money on fee-based acquisitions, which are a steady revenue source, but don't deliver the kind of home-run style returns that Warners gets from owning "Harry Potter" or Disney gets from owning its "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise. Some of the movies Lionsgate is best known for--the "Saw" horror film franchise and the upcoming Oliver Stone-directed "W."--were financed by outside parties, who end up with the lion's share of the profits.  With marketing costs skyrocketing, Lionsgate needs to create its own franchises, hence the arrival of Shearmur, who helped launch two wildly popular franchises at Universal, "The Bourne Identity" and the "American Pie" series, which still makes millions for the studio in direct-to-DVD form.

But there are huge risks involved in a studio bulking up this quickly. Will Lionsgate survive the pitfalls along the way? And how will Shearmur fit in with the studio's freewheeling, close-knit executive fraternity? Here's my take:

Shocker: 'People' critic skips summer movie season

What would happen if you kept a film critic from seeing an entire summer season of movies? Would they start hallucinating, climbing the walls, begging for a little Judd Apatow fix? Or would they start joyously bounding around, kicking their feet in the air, shouting "Free at last, Lord almighty, I'm free at last?"

It sounds like a twisted, Kubrickian laboratory experiment that could easily go awry. But it's actually happened this summer to my pal Leah Rozen, longtime film critic at People magazine, who's been on sabbatical this summer, tending to family matters. I asked her to write a little essay about how much separation anxiety her months away from the multiplex had caused. As it turns out—don't let this get around!—critics can kick the movie habit just as easily as any civilian. Here's her report:

Tom Cruise in 'Tropic Thunder': Not 'retarded'

Hollywood loves buddy pictures, so it's kind of fun these day to see Ben Stiller doing some serious cozying up to Tom Cruise, who if you haven't already heard 1,000 times does a funny turn as a bald studio chief in Stiller's new Hollywood spoof "Tropic Thunder," which opens Wednesday. Stiller has had his pre-release problems in recent days, notably the threat of a nationwide boycott of the film by a coalition of disability groups, who are furious over what they've called the film's open ridicule of the disabled.

In "Tropic Thunder," Stiller plays a narcissistic and not-so-bright action-movie actor named Tugg Speedman, who, in an attempt at becoming a serious actor, starred in a movie about a mentally disabled man called "Simple Jack" -- which leads to an off-color discussion with Robert Downey Jr.'s character about the merits of going "full retard" for a role in the pursuit of Oscar gold.

Stiller has claimed he's not making fun of disabled people, only actors who'll do anything to advance their careers. Few critics of the film are buying that line of argument. On the other hand, no one is complaining about Cruise's over-the-top portrayal of a nutty studio executive, who would surely do anything to advance his career as well. Stiller, who has a long history of spoofing Cruise, talked to The Times' indefatigable staff writer and man about town Chris Lee about how he got Cruise to do the part, whether it's really based on Sumner Redstone and why Tom is such a "special" person. Cruise could probably use a little extra love these days, especially after being replaced by Angelina Jolie in the Sony thriller "Edwin A. Salt." Give it a read: