..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

The Price of Silence  

… Stop me if you’ve heard this one. When asked about the nature of working in Hollywood at a tribute during the World Film Festival about a decade back, filmmaker Oliver Stone struggled to provide an apt description of the terrain. After much meandering, he appeared to have an epiphany and blurted out that the great thing about the American film industry was that it operated as a “meritocracy.” When pressed on the point, he could only offer that as long as you made money for the majors, the door was open.

Looking at Stone’s career - which has been dogged by controversy and zigzagged from commercial highs that include Platoon and JFK and the box office doldrums of Heaven and Earth, U-Turn and Nixon - it’s only partially true that his present currency (preparing Alexander the Great with Colin Farrell) is linked to his commercial record. The same can conclusion can be applied to virtually every actor that’s been featured above the title of studio bombs and blockbusters … only more so.

Stars receive incredible paydays not to stretch their performing muscles but to flex their abs and pecs in glossy programmers and franchises. Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh once referred to any film followed by a number as a “whore’s game.” It should also be said that sequels and such are a bean counters game. New installments or old favorites cost more because those who made the initial movies want a bigger piece of the profits or a larger paycheck or both to wade back into the familiar fray. These retreads also traditionally fare less well at the box office. So, if MegaSuccess II costs 20% more and is anticipated to gross 30% less than its inspiration and still shows up as making money on the spreadsheet, it’s given a green light.

Get Shorty, a surprise hit back in 1995, has never spawned a sequel because - despite considerable effort on screenplays and deal points - it’s been deemed too expensive to work commercially. The even longer gestating follow up to The Way We Were will certainly now never be made because the artistic personalities involved have relationships that are too brittle to withstand their respective close-ups.

I maintain that no sequel or second chapter of a successful film can ever be as good as the picture that prompted it. Some will trot out The Godfather II as an exception and, to carry this notion to a ridiculous extreme, X2: X-Men United. While there’s no denying the merits (considerable in the first instance) of either example, the bottom line is that neither picture would have ever been considered, nor would the artists have been allowed untrammeled freedom had the first film not existed.

The Matrix, while certainly given the go-ahead with commercial consideration in mind, was made at an economic price that afforded its creators some luxury to indulge in craft and artistry. Its imminent second and to follow third installments - The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions - were far more calculating financially with each new film’s budget ballooning four fold and the studio secure in the belief the new installments would perform at comparable box office levels to the first film … maybe even exceeding that benchmark.

Still, somewhere in the pit of every studio chief and development exec’s stomach is that gnawing, acid-churning feeling that new chapters of beloved movies won’t quite have the emotional and artistic kick of what spawned their creation. They may lack a sense of history in a broader sense, but retain an acute grasp of the fates and diminishing returns in every sense of Grease 2, Jaws 3-D and Look Who’s Talking Now. So, when a marquee performer gags at the first draft of the sequel to the film that thrust him or her into the spotlight, their repulsion and trepidation must be salved. And the most immediate and obvious manner employed in Hollywood is money.

No matter how enjoyable the experience of making Analyze This could have been for Robert DeNiro, one doubts he entered into Analyze That for the dramatic challenge it afforded him. One has to imagine, in contrast, the prospect of Taxi Driver II with the actor and director Martin Scorsese reunited by a first-rate, compelling and credible script from Paul Schrader. The comparison isn’t exact because the film that established the trio as front line talents was barely commercially successful and made at a time when the studios still felt obliged to produce movies of social relevance. However, to take the example to its somewhat logical conclusion, the fact that Taxi Driver was not boffo at the box office would mean that the artists hoping to continue the story would be doing so out of a certain passion and not in pursuit of retirement money.

Some films are made because the people behind them want to work at a level that tests their talent. Invariably a project of that nature is not obviously appealing to a broad base of moviegoers and has to be budgeted modestly. People who headline movies and receive $20 million compensations are being paid for their silence. No one wants to hear a movie star say “I did it for the money” and no one who takes the money wants to segregate his/her career between passion and profit.

Last weekend, Larry King interviewed Nick Nolte who repeated the fact that he would do films such as Another 48 Hrs. and I Love Trouble for big fees and develop a heart flutter during production. So, for a decade he’s worked outside the mainstream on the likes of Affliction, Afterglow and Mother Night and one can only assume his flutter evaporated when the producers of The Hulk asked him to play the creature’s father. Whether Nolte has worked for scale, deferrals or less than $1 million is not relevant. He put his art where his mother was and was doubtlessly pliant about the dollar remuneration because of a personal challenge that loomed.

In terms of meritocracy, there is no correlation between good work and hefty salaries. In fact, what presently exists, anomalies aside, is an inverse relationship between the two and it’s just one of many disconnects in American cinema that has fractured the system and created a nurturing environment for soulless executives and neurotic artists.

The pursuit of challenging roles in films with something to say is almost exclusively the domain of the so-called independents or, more accurately, the specialized divisions of the majors and a few feisty upstarts. And because the studios have such a stranglehold on movie screens, the potential for a film such as In the Bedroom to crossover is limited.

The top grossing independent film of 2002 was My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a film that looked liked a cheaper version of a studio romantic comedy such as The Best Friend’s Wedding but sans stars. However, whereas Spider-Man and seven other films (including Greek Wedding) generated domestic box offices of more than $200 million, the best performing serious films produced outside the studio system - Gosford Park, In the Bedroom, Monster’s Ball - pushed and shoved to $35 million to $40 million in ticket sales. The commercial potency of the trio was greatly enhanced, ironically, by Oscar nominations.

Normally non-mainstream films of a challenging nature rarely gross $10 million and such critically praised pictures as Personal Velocity, The Believer, Tully and Ivans.xtc couldn’t crack a $1 million gross. Still, most name talent will work for less than their quote when confronted with material that stretches them. The lure of something of quality shouldn’t be viewed as a sacrifice but when someone who can command $20 million works in a production budgeted at $2 million, one has to conclude an inequity exists between quality and popularity.

Last month, I caught a quirky movie titled Levity. While the cast of Billy Bob Thornton, Morgan Freeman, Holly Hunter and Kirstin Dunst doesn’t exactly scream blockbuster, they can all lay claim to hefty asking prices in studio fare and are highly recognizable performers. The film - the story of an ex-murderer in search of purpose and redemption on re-entering society - was written and directed by Ed Solomon whose screenwriting credits include Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Men in Black and the forthcoming remake of The In-Laws. One can just imagine the dismay his serious, sober script must have elicited from execs familiar with his popular works.

I read that it took Solomon five years to put the project together and no doubt it could have only been made with the quality cast he secured working at a fraction of their usual fees. It was likely budgeted at less than $2 million cash with the prospect of seeing deferrals a mild chuckle. There’s no question that the film suffers from the constraints of not having a budget but one ought to be forgiving of that in light of the conviction and emotion of the cast. Somehow the bean counting of foreign advances, video and cable sales and very modest theatrical hopes cobbled together to make the film seems more purposeful than deciding whether the world is ready for Armageddon II.

Robert Mea Culpa, the sequel

Right star, right agent, right year, right genre … wrong movie. Last week’s column noted the profit participation deal Lew Wasserman hammered out for client James Stewart back in 1950. The film in question was Winchester 73 and not as previously cited.

 

- by Leonard Klady