THB #93: The Batman (no spoilers)
| March 6, 2022
More Rushfield: “Will Smith is a goddamn genius… Or his publicist is. All the while the Academy dithers and takes three weeks to “investigate,” and consider appropropriate response, check with lawyers no doubt, comb the by-laws to see what guidance it gives for an act of violence by one member against another during the ceremony, consider precedents, take the temperature of the membership, etc. etc. Perhaps even appoint a blue-ribbon panel whydoncha! The Academy had one chance to redeem itself — by acting clearly and decisively in response to this. Making up for what they failed to do on the night with some fuzzy repercussions later. Of course they were never going to do that. And now that rug has been pulled out from under them. Will Smith has slapped the Academy’s face once again…
“So where was ABC during all this? More to the point, where was Disney? And here’s where you get the problem of having someone at the helm who doesn’t come from production, and has never been in a mile of live entertainment production becomes a problem. As much as I think the Iger/Chapek comparisons are generally unfair and misleading, in this case there’s something to it. It’s hard to believe that Bob I, who made his way up overseeing Olympics coverage, would’ve sat on his hands while this was going on and not put in a call to the booth, to the Academy, and not said, get that man off my airwaves! So where was Disney television leadership (Chapek, Peter Rice, Dana Walden) during all this? Did they voice any concerns about what was happening in their broadcast?”
-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 “Rushfield Slap”