THB #93: The Batman (no spoilers)
| March 6, 2022
Wreckless Eric: “The test results came through last night. Mine’s positive – I’ve got it. I felt deeply disturbed when I got the news and quite emotional. If I’m honest about this I’m vaguely / acutely worried in the back of my mind that I might suddenly go downhill and die, but I find getting older is a business of constantly facing up to one’s own mortality. A growing list of friends that are no longer with us appears to be developing and it’s becoming clear to me that one day I’ll be on it. So I stumble into moments of acceptance and find myself thinking that if this doesn’t kill me then old age or something else eventually will. Dying… it’s an ironic fact of life. When my mother was getting really old she said: ‘I’m not scared of dying, it’s just that it’s a great party and I’m not ready to leave it yet.’ I feel pretty much the same except that I’m not exactly not scared of dying – it’s not the being dead that worries me, it’s the manner in which it might come about. And I like being alive – I want to stay on at this party until some time in the small hours. The crappier I feel the more I’m driven to get in the studio and get things done. I’ve got albums to make. I decided a long time ago – and I’m down on record as saying this (literally as of last year’s ‘Transience’ album) that I want to leave behind an indelible stain. And I feel almost ok when I’m working on my recordings.”
-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
No Responses to “Reckless Eric”