I love movies. Ask anyone who knows me. I can tell you who played the business manager in Imitation of Life (the first one, with Claudette Colbert, not the glitzed-up remake). I can sing the verses from Guys and Dolls and My Fair Lady (not that I can carry a tune, but I know the words). I’ve seen Pulp Fiction, The Godfather, Blade Runner, Mean Streets, The Last Emperor, THX 1138, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Rear Window, Apocalypse Now and The Philadelphia Story on big screen and small at least twenty times each, all the way through. I’m a glutton for good cinematic fare.
Knowing what the medium is capable of, it pains me to see so much time, effort and money thrown away on projects that seemed specious from the start. There’s no point in ragging on the sophomoric or titillating films targeting teens (and adults who haven’t yet discovered the wonders of internet porn). That kind of fluff is the cash cow for today’s Hollywood. I will take on, instead, a particular film that unsuccessfully aimed itself at a mature, more thoughtful audience and is still (amazingly) in theaters, titled The Box.
A little background first – the film is an adaptation of a short story by Richard Matheson (Button, Button) already adapted once for the television series The Twilight Zone a few years ago. The Zone episode adhered pretty closely to the original work, filling the hour quite nicely. Producer/Director/Screenwriter Richard Kelly, coming off a critical and box-office bomb in Southland Tales after wowing people with his film Donnie Darko, pitched an expanded storyline of Button, Button to Warner’s, having gained Richard Matheson’s blessing to tinker with the tale. He came away with a good part of his $30 million budget and immediately blew a considerable chunk of it on Cameron Diaz, with co-stars James Marsden and Frank Langella each taking their own share. Keep in mind, we’re talking high-concept sci-fi horror genre here … money spent on acting talent leaves less for special effects and support. I love Cameron Diaz. I’d wash her car buck naked just for a glimpse (I’d bring along a sufficient supply of barf bags for her), but she was too pricey for the project envisioned by Kelly and it showed in the results.
By Kelly’s own admission in a pre-release interview, he confessed to trouble in keeping the story focused. Well, that’s what happens when you take a good short story and begin adding aliens and government conspiracies and talking toes to it. The result, after editing, left us with a movie we’d have to watch twenty times in order to piece together its thematic quilt. Maybe when it comes out on DVD or, better yet, streaming from my Netflix account. It’s certainly not worth the price of one ticket, let alone twenty. Based on reviews and the current box office numbers, Kelly is in the middle of a critical and commercial losing streak.
The gory details – opening on November 6th 2009 in 2,635 theaters, the movie pulled in $7.5 million in its first weekend. Some of that is attributable to the presence of Ms. Diaz and some of it to the $5 million or so that the studio and distributors put up for promotion in the weeks leading up to the opening. Fox and NBC NFL broadcasts were filthy with that trailer from the middle of October. Including that weekend, now 45 days later, the total US gross is just under $15 million. The average return-on-investment for a studio is 55% of the total gross, less marketing expenses. It’s a safe bet that the Time/Warner board of directors is going to have a field day with studio chief Barry Meyer for allowing Kelly to mess with the profits from the latest Harry Potter bonanza.
I did mention that the movie is still in circulation, though the screen count is down to around 100 nationwide. They’re pulling in around $10,000 a day total, or $100 per theater. At that rate, the studio should make their money back in a year and, judging by the stubbornness shown in not putting the movie out of its misery, they may be planning on just that. How else can anyone justify multiple showings to a handful of popcorn-eating dunderheads? United Artists closed down Heaven’s Gate after a week back in 1980. I remember that because I mailed away for tickets (in a time when the US Postal Service actually served a purpose) only to have the Criterion Theater mail back my check with their apologies. In these days of multiple screens and robot projectionists, apparently it pays to call in some favors and milk every cent out of a movie during a primary run. Once it closes, it’s a safe bet this one won’t ever hit the revival circuit. I don’t think even the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys would want to touch it.
Like I said, I love movies. But, the movies I love come at the price of having to endure an artistic crapshoot that paints a majority of screens with unmitigated crap. For me, it’s like having Cameron Diaz, but only after she’s been dipped into a loaded cesspool. Um, okay, I guess I can stand the smell, but I’d rather not.
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