THB #93: The Batman (no spoilers)
| March 6, 2022
“When I worked at the Hormel meat-packing plant, I did dream – a lot! – that I was best friends with Schwarzenegger. You know those dreams when you have when you’re just so drunk? Well, look, if you work on the kill floor of a meat packing plant, you will get drunk every night. But eventually that crazy dream came true! So I go out to meet Jim Cameron at his house, he’s nice to me, and then he says, “Okay, do the audition scene.” I said, “Yeah, I didn’t learn the audition scene.” He says, “What?!” I said, “Well, because I know I’m not getting the movie, so why even try?” But he sighs, and he goes, “Well, since you’re here, just read it off the paper. It’s three pages.” I read it one time. He’s, like, “Get Arnold down here.” Again, up until then, Arnold Schwarzenegger was the guy from my dreams at Hormel, an bodybuilding star of the world, an action star and now he’s walking down the stairs. We do this scene together one time. Sometimes in life, something clicks. Well, something clicked there, I tell ya, and it worked. And Jim Cameron said, “You got the part, Tom.” I was, like, “Holy shit!” And he goes, “But don’t tell anyone for two weeks.” A Few Words From Tom Arnold
-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
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Critic-Filmmaker Gavin Millar Was 84; Films Include Cream In My Coffee, Dreamchild
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| 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
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