THB #93: The Batman (no spoilers)
| March 6, 2022
‘Days turned to weeks, and Arnold never woke. On April 1, after her kidneys began to fail, her family removed her from the ventilator and she became one of nearly 20,000 New Yorkers who have died of the virus. There was no funeral. She was buried alone, just her body and a rabbi, who allowed the family to say the Kaddish prayer by phone. Arnold lived a life that was “New York through-and-through,” her friends and family said. She spent childhood summers in a Woodstock artist’s colony with her painter father, librarian mother and two sisters, who explored the woods on their bicycles and dreamed up elaborate games starring fairies and mermaids. Arnold skipped several grades in school and was once expelled over an incident in the girls bathroom that involved fire, a toilet and Jack Kerouac’s daughter. As a teenager, she aspired to be a rock n’ roll groupie. Mimicking Geraldine Chaplin, the daughter of Charlie Chaplin, Arnold tattooed a tiny black dot under each of her eyes — displaying a flare for the dramatic that complemented her dirty blond crown of unruly hair and rotation of eccentric outfits. ‘Everything in Jen’s world had glitter on it.'”
LOST: Jennifer Robin Arnold, 67, Costume Dresser on Broadway’s “Phantom of the Opera” for Over Thirty Years
-30-
May 1, 2022
"Netflix, the great disrupter whose algorithms and direct-to-consumer platform have forced powerful media incumbents to rethink their economic models, now seems to need a big strategy change itself. It got me thinking about the simple idea that my film and TV production company Blumhouse is built on: If you give artists a lot of creative freedom and a little money upfront but a big stake in the movie’s or TV show’s commercial success, more often than not the result will be both commercial (the filmmakers are incentivized to make films that will resonate with audiences) and artistically interesting (creative freedom!). This approach has yielded movies as varied as Get Out (made for $4.5 million, with worldwide box office receipts of more than $250 million), Whiplash (made for $3.3 million, winner of three Academy Awards), The Invisible Man (made for $7 million, earned more than $140 million) and Paranormal Activity (made for $15,000, grossed more than $190 million).From the beginning, the most important strategy I used to persuade artists to work with me was to make radically transparent deals: We usually paid the artists (“participants” in Hollywood lingo) the absolute minimum allowable by union contracts upfront, with the promise of healthy bonuses based on actual box office results—instead of the opaque 'percentage points' that artists are usually offered. Anyone can see box office results immediately, so creators don’t quarrel with the payouts. In fact, when it comes time for an artist to collect a bonus based on box office receipts, I email a video clip of myself dropping the check off at FedEx to the recipient."
Jason Blum Sees Room For "Scrappier" Netflix
| April 30, 2022
"As a critic Gavin was entertaining, wry, questioning, sensitive, perceptive"
Critic-Filmmaker Gavin Millar Was 84; Films Include Cream In My Coffee, Dreamchild
April 29, 2022
| January 24, 2022
DP/30 Audio: Bombshell, Jay Roach
| December 13, 2019
DP/30 Audio: The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Jonathan Majors
| December 4, 2019
DP/30 Audio: The Mustang, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre
| December 4, 2019
I miss her. She was such a bright light to everyone who knew her. ❤