Eccentric Flower:200002/More Film Commentary

Last night, due to circumstances beyond my control, I didn't sleep until five a.m. So if you'll pardon me, I am not going to talk about the real world today. Instead I'm going to rant about Hollywood some more.

This week's issue of Entertainment Weekly had a cover story that made me extremely cross. They do this story every year - on which stars are commanding the highest salaries - and every year it makes me cross.

I admit it: I have a dream of being a producer/director. It's tucked in there among all my other When I Am Queen of the Universe dreams - none of which I really want, but sometimes it's nice to fantasize about having the power, so you can do it differently from the people who are doing it so badly now.

If I were Queen of Hollywood, I'd make all actors work for scale. I don't mean "scale" as a euphemism for vaguely low pay, either, as EW suggests. I mean Guild minimum pay - nearly $600 a day. (I'd like to pay less than that. I don't make $600 a day, and I can act better than some of these clowns. But I'm willing to concede that I have a regular day job, whereas acting work comes in short-term bursts, so I'll cut them some slack.)

Now, is it fair to give actors a few thousand for helping make a film which might make Tons of Money? Of course not. That's why all the actors with speaking parts should get a share of the net (not gross) profits from the film - proportionate to the amount of lines they have and/or the amount of clout they're perceived to have; I'll allow some negotiating wiggle room on how the points are doled out - gotta give the agents something to haggle about.

The point is, they have to accept the gamble along with everyone else. I also favor this system for crew, designers, and even directors. Basically I want films to be run like a co-op. Everybody sacrifices their time and effort up front, for a day fee which barely covers costs. The real returns only come if the film is profitable - and everyone gets a piece of the pie proportional to what they did.

Call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I feel this would help movies get not just cheaper, but better. And "net points" would be less of a rip-off than it is now, because some of the things which the studios currently write into "production costs" (i.e. must be paid before net) would become part of the profit-sharing instead - like the director's salary.

Some actors and actresses, if this system were suddenly made The Law of the Land, would undoubtedly refuse to play. The older ones would retire to their fancy homes, and the younger ones would all stomp off in a huff, and they'd be replaced by unknowns who, to the public's surprise, would do just as good and sometimes better work for less money.

I mean, really. Of the people in the twenty-million club, not one of them can act worth a damn. The best of the lot is Harrison Ford, and as much as I adore him, he doesn't really act. He's a Jack Nicholson kind - always plays himself. Is he entitled to share in the huge profits from his pictures? Yes. He undoubtedly packs 'em in. But not up front.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: There is no job in this country that justifies a twenty-million-dollar one-time paycheck. There isn't even a job that justifies a one-million-dollar fee. I am all in favor of reaping gradual returns, but this up-front madness has got to stop.

Idealist that I am, of course, I thought that Hollywood already had profit sharing. Little thing called "residuals," which we in the word game would call "royalties." Hello? Can we just beef up the residuals a fair amount, and cut down on the up-front cumshaw?

Okay, I'm grouchy. I admit it. Some of it is just wondering why the American public has no taste. I mean, there isn't any excuse for Julia Roberts to even be working in film, let alone making twenty million off the top per picture.

But that's snobbish of me, right?

The other half of this rant is that Iain directed me to the Academy's official list of films which are eligible for 1999 Oscar consideration. I spent a little time yesterday afternoon distilling and annotating that list, and I learned a few things about myself.

First, do note that two films I saw and liked a great deal this year aren't on the list.Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run) was a 1998 German made-for-television (!) film; the subtitled, Australian version was what we all saw in 1999. And Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke) has had an eccentric release history outside of Japan. In case you were wondering.

Of the 250-odd films on the list, I saw thirty-one. Well, thirty and a half. What this tells me is not that I don't go to enough films, but that I'm picky. I had an opportunity to see a lot of those 250 films, and most of them were rejected as possibilities long before I ever saw a trailer or review.

In fact, the big shock is that I have much more specific tastes in subject matter than I thought. Of the thirty-one films, the vast majority are either
- witty, in the comedy of manners (slow) or screwball comedy (fast) sense;
- sarcastic, usually combined with "witty";
- suspenseful, in the sense of a spy thriller;
- (the big one) fantasy, in the broad sense that they contain some element of the fantastic, some hugely unrealistic setting or premise. In most cases this means outright "fantasy" in the book-spine sense, or SF, or a film of the supernatural - but it also includes Titus, for example, which is so obviously Grand Guignol spectacle that it falls into this category.

How can I put this without being rude? I can't: I was amazed at the geekiness level of my list.

There were only five exceptions to the categories above, and I would have to say that I disliked or hated four of those five. Two of them I attended because Nonelvis asked me to take her: the Austin Powers film and the South Park film. Two of them I attended as "study pieces" - so I could dissect and analyze the films later - American Beauty and Eyes Wide Shut - neither of which I really expected to enjoy. The wild card - the one which was way off my beaten path, but which I liked a great deal - was Three Kings, the hardest movie to classify this year.

It seems that if nothing else, I know what is a safe bet for my tastes. I only "disliked" four or five films of those thirty-one, depending on how you count it - and mostly those are the oddballs above - so my criteria for rejecting most films seem to be working. Unfortunately it may also mean that I'm missing a lot of out-of-genre films which I might actually turn out to like. I may be getting good value for my money, but at the expense of putting blinders on my eclecticism.

My vote for worst film of the year, of course, is Being John Malkovich, the film I walked out on. Some of this may have been because I expected it to fall into the narrow band of Things I Know I Like, and it wasn't even anywhere close. But I also continue to maintain that it was just plain rotten.

My vote for best film of the year - or, at least, the one I enjoyed the most - is surprising. You'll have to look at the mini-reviews on my list to find it.

Below the comments on the thirty-one I saw are a few brief notes on some I didn't see, and why. I find it just as instructive to remember why I rejected something as why I saw it. Also that's where the bitchiest remarks live, for those who like catty criticism.

I would, of course, be interested to hear from people who think I'm missing the boat on certain films, and so forth - I love comparing tastes, especially if it leads me to something I may have overlooked!