There are moments, a few times a year, that clear more up than expected.
The EXCLUSIVE letter from Lloyd Levin, producer of Watchmen, one producer for Drew of the new HitFlix, is one of these moments.
Let me state from the top… the letter’s argument, on the face of it, is bullshit.
Is there anything more pathetic than a movie producer… a producer of expensive movies… suddenly wanting to sit around the campfire, hold hands, and sing Kumbaya, and talk about what’s “right?”
Lloyd Levin, who has produced some great genre films and some of the very worst as well (like all active producers), writes, “From my point of view, the flashpoint of this dispute, came in late spring of 2005.”
Well that’s lovely. For you. Right now. But 1991 and 1994 do not disappear from the planet when it is convenient for you. That is the reason – the only reason – why Fox is in the position it is in today. It has nothing to do with loving the script, hating the script, burning the script in f-ing effigy. Fox’s lawsuit is 100% about business and making it about the love of filmmaking is what someone who has lost an argument does to try to save face and to embarrass their conqueror.
But what is more fascinating about this letter to me is that it seems to be a ticker tape coming right out of Drew’s heart in his writing about this issue. I’m not saying that he was parroting Levin, but that he makes the same kind of “it’s about what’s right” argument. And, looking back, this was also the seeding of AICN from early on. Freeing information was about, in their minds, supporting the movies and the filmmakers.
And that’s great.
But this is not a poet’s corner. This is an industry in which tens and/or hundreds of millions are invested in ideas and the talent that will bring them to fruition and then the marketing artists who will sell them on an unsuspecting public.
It is amusing, on some level, to me to see so much cynicism about The Academy Awards, which are the to celebrate the art of it and not the commerce, because it has become, itself, a business and an industry has grown up around it. But if you really want to get down to it, The Oscars are a diversion, celebrating the art in what amounts to a Sunday Morning public affairs ghetto while the billions of dollars are flying like crazy around them. Same with the ratings system, by the way. MPAA loves for you to argue ratings… because it means that you aren’t thinking about the collusive oligopoly that this business is and always has been.
And all of Levin’s stuff about how daring WB is… puh-leeze n-word! Warners does not have a Tom Rothman rubbing some people the wrong way. But it is a business, first and last. They were “daring” enough to do a second film with Zack Snyder, who had hit a home run for them with material that seemed commercially limited, and he did it on a reasonable budget. Chris Nolan had already turned around Batman, so they knew that dark might be okay. They had no idea how big The Dark Knight would become – and if you want to know why there are such commercial hopes for Watchmen right now, that is the movie to look at – but they knew they would get a big visual epic with tights and great geek support and they took HALF a chance, splitting the film with Paramount.
Daring was giving Bryan Singer X-Men when there was no sense that he was a particularly interesting visual or commercial director. Daring was giving Gavin Hood a massive commercial franchise picture to direct, no matter how much interference has happened since. Daring was, to be fair, financing There Will Be Blood after no one else would for years (and we found out, financially, why). Daring was a studio making Hellboy II for more money. Daring was opening Burn After Reading in mid-September and getting the Coens' best opening.
Daring happens all the time in this town. Making movies is risky business. Always.
But I digress…
I think Drew is a very, very smart guy. I respect his passion and his brains. But he’s a sucker for someone who will make the case that they are righteous.
I admire much of what Lloyd Levin has done and Larry Gordon was, no ***, an idol of mine growing up. But this kiss kiss without the bang bang is well beneath his cynical intelligence level.
There is a reason for contracts and for laws. They are not flexible. They do not, in contractual matters, have much flexibility for the moral posturing of either side. It’s really, really, really simple. If you break your word – your contract – you are likely to lose and there is likely to be a cost associated.
That has NOTHING to do with the talented people who made a film or the good intentions of the studio towards the film or even whether Tom Rothman is King Dickhead. (I do not think he is, for the record. But I do believe he is tough on people he works with, for sure, and often makes decisions that I find iffy. But he has his job and I have mine.)
Simple questions:
If Fox went away tomorrow, would Lloyd Levin have WB distribute all the money to which Fox is legally entitled to the cast and crew of the film?
Will the cast and crew get a dime more if Fox “stands down” or a dime less if Fox does not?
Isn’t Lloyd Levin’s job, as a producer, to handle the business end and if so, why is he hiding behind the talent who actually put their hands together to make the movie instead of stepping up and saying, “We fucked up… is there a better way to fix this?”
But all the geeks will yelp, “Boo Fox! We hate Rothman! Boo hiss! When can we start buying Wolverine tickets online?”
Pathetic.
The art should come first. But when you start believing that daring ol’ Warners is there for the art and not for the money, you need to take some anti-psychotics and get some rest. And if you start believing that the legal battle going on has anything to do with art and not just the money, you need to ask harder questions.
This is not an Orson Welles movie being left to die. This is not Mapplethorpe being censored in Cincinnati. This isn’t even a publishing company doing a book deal to assure that the book will never get released because they don’t like the contents.
This is business. Simply business. Studio 101 business.
How did the rights of Hellboy go from Revolution to Universal? Was it free? Was it, “Hey, we love Guillermo, so he should do what he wants with the property?”
How about Boogie Nights? When PTA wrote every single stage direction into that script to avoid another studio forcing him to cut his film, was that silly because Mike DeLuca was so supportive… or was it just due diligence, even with final cut?
Remember when everyone in town laughed out loud at M Night Shyamalan for leaving Disney because he felt they didn’t love him and his script enough? He went to WB, where the made a business decision, pretended to love him, and lost money on the film. And then… he went to Fox.
Grow up, people.
P.S. 3:11p - When did the daring, gutty production of Watchmen start shooting? Six months after 300 opened. Would WB have moved into production with Zack Snyder had 300 bombed? You decide. And what were the gut reasons for not proceding with Paul Greengrss? And really, is this anyone's business but Levin's and Gordon's and those directors'? Nothing all that unusual has happened in this project, except for this legal mistake. I hope the movie is great, but all the effort to make it seem like something separate from Regular Hollywood is really annoying.
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2009/01/sometimes_a_gre.html