The year 2000 was my first living full-time in Los Angeles, having arrived from Atlanta on December 30, 1999, Y2K hysteria be damned. I got a job working as a projectionist at a theatre while also working as a reader for a small production company, and I immediately noticed something about a large number of people in Hollywood: they hate movies.

I have varied tastes, having argued the merits of gross-out comedy vs. Oscar bait type of movies. Everyone I met in the movie business claimed “Election” was their favorite movie of 1999, and the only person I met who had actually seen “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo” was Rob Schneider’s agent. And he was lukewarm about it.

Total worldwide box office take for “Election” = $16M ($14.8M Domestic).

Total worldwide box office take for “Deuce Bigalow” = $92M ($65M Domestic).

Not bashing either movie; I love them both. But you can see a discrepancy.

Anyway, the nominees for Best Picture:

“Gladiator” – Saw this at the pre-ArcLight Cinerama Dome and was blown away. Still have to watch it on TNT at least one of the thirty-eight times a month they play it.

“Erin Brockovich” – One of my favorite genres: Movies that suck on paper but are actually really good. I never expected the movie to be as funny as it is. Albert Finney wuz robbed. (more…)

‘L.A. TIMES’ TO INSTITUTE PAYWALL IN FIRST QUARTER OF 2012

No one reads this rag now, but now by not reading we’ll save money. Nice.

PODCAST WITH ‘RISE OF THE APES’ SCREENWRITERS

The married screenwriting team of Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver talk about the five-year experience of making the film, from the germ of the idea straight through to production, and how they got started in Hollywood. No overnight successes in screenwriting. They also co-wrote “Eye for an Eye” and “The Relic,” two underrated favorites of mine.

Budding screenwriters should definitely give this a listen.

SIX ‘BASED ON A TRUE STORY’ FILMS WITH UNPLEASANT EPILOGUES

If we learned anything from How Stella Got Her Groove Back it’s that a 20-year-old is capable of having a mature and fulfilling relationship that’s not based on sex. This is still technically true for the real-life Stella, author Terry McMillan, who wrote the book on which the movie is based. See, her real-life Jamaican lover based their relationship not on sex, but on a love of getting the fuck out of Jamaica by any means possible, even if that meant faking interest in an American tourist twice his age. … But that fact alone isn’t why the couple is separating — as it turns out, Jonathan Plumber, the real-life Winston Shakespeare, is actually gay[.]

[…]

When Hinkley’s residents contacted Erin [Brockovich] about their concerns (“concerns” is a term that here means “money for our cancer bills”), they found that their one-time advocate was now unreachable. Once they finally received the money, they noticed that it was far less than they expected. That’s because the law firm, wanting more than the agreed-upon 40 percent of the settlement ($133 million), took an extra $10 million for “expenses.”

SPIELBERG OBVIOUSLY FEELING BURNED OVER ‘INDY 4′

Spielberg should be embarrassed:

Steven Spielberg won’t make a fifth ‘Indiana Jones’ movie to “prove any point”.

The filmmaker – who has directed all four of the previous installments in the franchise – does know many people did not enjoy the last movie ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’, but would not work on further films just so he could win them round.

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[Ed. Note: What are the odds that the same day I praise this film, this happens? -- JN]

Proving once again that Hollywood always gravitates to the wrong causes, Tim Cavanaugh of Reason.com reported on Dec. 14 that the California town made famous by Erin Brockovich — an activism that Hollywood embraced with a major motion picture starring Julia Roberts — has proven not to have lived up to all the anti-corporate fearmongering that brought the town to the country’s attention.

For those of you that are hazy on the story, local activist Erin Brockovich successfully took Pacific Gas and Electric to court forcing it to pay a record $333 million class-action settlement because it was determined that the company allowed a toxic plume of hexavalent chromium 6 to be released from the natural gas pipeline based in Hinkley, California.

The charge from Brockovich and her supporters was that this cloud of hexavalent chromium 6 was surely going to unleash a wave of devastating cancers on the unsuspecting residents of Hinkley. The courts tended to agree. The court of public opinion also agreed. Interestingly, there wasn’t any real scientific proof to give the contention veracity, but everyone was just sure that increased levels of cancer would befall these poor people. The company lost and paid dearly.

It was just the sort of David vs Goliath story that drew Hollywood to the tale. A 2000 film starring Julia Roberts, one of the highest paid actresses of her day, was crafted to make a hero of Miss Brockovich.

Hollywood loves these anti-corporate stories. From actress Meryl Streep testifying before Congress on the dangers of the chemical Alar on apples and produce, to movies like The China Syndrome, a film about catastrophic safety lapses in the nuclear power industry, even to sci-fi shows like Robocop, a film that made a villain of corporations, Hollywood loves to think of itself as fighting “for the little people.” Sadly, in almost every case the denizens of Hollywood whip up sentiment against things without any truth or proof supporting their position. Meryl Streep was wrong about Alar causing wide-spread cancer, The China Syndrome wholly misrepresented the safety record of the nuclear power industry causing an entire generation of Americans to eschew nuclear power when the rest of the world was fully investing in it (without safety troubles, mind you), and Robocop was simply hyperbole gone wild. Oh, but Hollywood was fighting for you, don’t you know? (more…)

The movie business is not generally kind to women when they pass the age of 40, and Julia Roberts (now 41) is learning that lesson the hard way. The former Pretty Woman has returned to the big screen this weekend in Tony Gilroy’s Duplicity (Universal), and one prominent blogger wrote this headline:

Duplicity soft: Julia’s Comeback? Audiences Say Go Back

Julia Roberts and Clive Owen star in the fun, smart DUPLICITY, from writer/director Tony Gilroy

Roberts’ last starring role was in 2003’s Mona Lisa Smile ($63.8M domestic), and since then she has become a full-time Mom. Overall, she has 8 movies on her resume that have reached $100M in the US with her as a lead (I’m not including the Ocean’s Eleven franchise). Her most successful string of movies started in 1997 with My Best Friend’s Wedding ($127.1M cume) and ended with her Oscar winning performance in Erin Brockovich ($125.6M cume). During that span, she starred in 6 movies, generating an average of $115M in domestic box office.

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