Boxoffice-July.1999

couldn't nudge past the $40 million mark
in the U.S. and finished badly in the red...
In the past, [MGM owner Kirk]
Kerkorian's behavior always had been to
wait until things looked blackest, then
magically extricate himself with a
Houdini-like maneuver. By early fall, the
ideal conditions for this sort of caper
seemed to be at hand. MGM reported it
had lost $113.9 million for the first nine
months of 1998. The company was preparing
to market a $700 million stock offering
to the public, with the old Armenian
acknowledging that he would invest another
$630 million in the company.
Kerkorian also calmly agreed to pay an
additional $235 million to Seagram to
acquire the Polygram film library
..According to experts in evaluating
transactions of this sort, Kerkorian had
made an excellent deal for himself..
Thus Kerkorian was diligently building
up his core asset, which would be a
key pawn in any future negotiations to
merge MGM with a more substantial distribution
organization, a scenario that
clearly enticed him. To further signal that
MGM was still a going concern, the company
announced its intention to release
12 to 14 movies during 1999 and also to
continue building its TV operation...
In sharp contrast to Kerkorian,
DreamWorks, the fresh-faced newcomer,
was cheerfully counting its winnings for
the first time in summer '98. Four years
after proclaiming themselves the new
Dream Team, Spielberg, Katzenberg, and
Geffen had finally made a major dent in
the marketplace. Two DreamWorks projects,
"Saving Private Ryan" and "Deep
Impact," had finished among the top five
summer films and in early fall "Antz," a
smartly crafted animation movie, also
became a genuine hit...
[0]ne thing emerged loud and clear
from summer '98: DreamWorks was here
to stay. Admittedly the profits on its pictures,
like "Saving Private Ryan" and
"Deep Impact," would have to be divided
with cofinanciers and codistributors. And
there would be a massive payout to their
auteur partner, Spielberg, a man who,
despite his goodwill and enthusiasm, also
had the gift for emerging with extraordinary
largesse from any transaction...
The Dream Team could rejoice about
"Saving Private Ryan," but it was
Paramount that developed the movie and
shared in its bountiful revenue streams.
The same held true for "Deep Impact."
The shotgun marriage with DreamWorks
clearly had been good for the studio.
Aside from these triumphs, however,
and from the glowing success of "The
Truman Show," the remainder of
Paramount's summer program had failed
to generate excitement. Brian De Palam's
"Snake Eyes" received poor-to-mixed
reviews and lost steam at $65 million in
the U.S. Paramount's vaunted alliances
with other Viacom divisions such as
MTV and Nickelodeon yielded little for
the
summer, a further reminder of the
myth of corporate synergy, though
Nickelodeon's "Rugrats" would emerge
as a major winter hit. While Lome
Michaels maintained his viselike grip on
"Saturday Night Live," despite a steady
descent into mediocrity, the latest of his
dumbed-down movie spin-offs, "A Night
at the Roxbury," came and went with
haste... "Dead Man on Campus" from
Viacom's MTV division also failed to
make a dent...
Even
as the studios carved up the
largesse of summer '98, they
pondered the legacies. Big bucks
had been made, but there had been some
big scares.
The biggest was the hype scare. Allied
with its fast-food partners, toy makers,
and other marketing zealots, Hollywood
felt prepared to rewrite the textbooks on
mass marketing. That is, until the customers
started their revolt.
The great "Godzilla" rebellion sent
shock waves through the ranks of the
hypemeisters. The noise level of the hard
sell had been turned up too high, and
suddenly moviegoers seemed to be saying,
"You'd better deliver the goods or
we'll turn on you." The weapons of mass
marketing had produced a countervailing
force—mass disdain—and the studios as
well as the filmmakers had to run for
cover.
Yet in the end the audiences kept coming
back for more. Movies were regaining
their grip on the pop culture. Weekly
admissions, having plummeted from 78.2
million in 1946 to 15.8 million in 1971,
suddenly were sharply on the rise yet
again. The fact that both "Saving Private
Ryan" and "There's Something About
Mary" were runaway hits vividly illustrated
the range of taste globally. There was
room both for an 'Armageddon" and for
a "Truman Show"...
As Hollywood kept raising the stakes
of the blockbuster game, risk-taking
would become all the rarer. And the
stakes would keep rising: The number of
$150 million escapades may diminish, the
special-effects megamovies may be somewhat
curtailed, but the overall costs of
producing and marketing movies showed
no signs of retrenchment. Making
movies had become a global game of
chicken, with the new oligarchs of mass
entertainment rewriting the rules as they
went along.
Summer '98 flashed some signals of
caution, and they were noticed, but the
beat goes on. A new corporate culture
was being planted in Hollywood. The
vanities were firmly in place but there
were as yet no flickers of a bonfire. HI
Excerpted from "The Gross: The Hits,
The Flops— The Summer That Ate
Hollywood" by Peter Bart, editor of
" Variety " (St. Martin's Press, 304 pages,
$24.95)
"The Worst Movies of All Time
Or: What Were They Thinking?" by
Michael Sauter (Citadel Press/Carol
Publishing Group, 358 pgs., $18.95)
If light, leisurely and giggle-inducing
reading is what's needed to get through
an afternoon sunning on the beach, ther
look no further. Sauter's updated anc
revised "The Worst Movies of All Time''
is sure to keep anyone's amused attention
to the point of sunburn.
Sauter's latest collection of stinker^
covers the gamut, ranging from what he
calls "The Baddest of the Bs" ("Theyi
were the second feature at Saturday
matinees. The third attractions on drivein
triple bills. The movies you could
later find at 4:00 a.m. on the local TV
channels") to the "Big-Budgeti
Bonfires." which lists "Armageddon" as
the most recent addition. Sauter postu-j
lates of his latest entry, "So is this the
future of filmmaking? More big-budget
thrill rides that play like computer
games? Or will movies of the next millennium
actually be computer generated,
making actors, directors and other
people obsolete?.. .if that cloudy day
comes... we'll never have to see another
movie by Michael Bay."
Riddled with ironic but sadly accurate
plot summaries of the worst of the worst
and featuring such goodies as "The;
Worst High-Camp Melodrama Starring
Hollywood Stars Made Up to Look Like
Asians" (194rs "The Shanghai
Gesture") and analyses of "Sign of the
Times" flicks ("Beach-Blanket Bimbos,'"
"Slasher Movies.") "The Worst Movies
of All Time" has a little something loi
everyone. — Francesca Dinglasan WSk
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