Definitely Not L.A.

“Pimp My Book Cart” contest winners.

Norah’s new one (out today) biggest pre-order ever.

Magic 8-Ball indicates the Summer ‘07 movie season will shatter box office records, with at least one high-profile sequel or would-be tentpole debuting virtually every weekend from May through August.  Spiderman, Shrek, Capt. Jack, Jason Bourne and Danny Ocean will all be back for Rounds 3, and Bart Simpson and Optimus Prime are…well, primed, to make serious coin with their first outings to the monsterplexes.

With all of that competition and dough on the line–more than one budget will top $200 million, and that’s without prints and publicity–you’d think the studios would be taking advantage of Sunday’s huge Super Bowl audience to start building the buzz: remember ID4’s exploding White House ad?  Super Bowl.  Even the Hulk teaser with the unfinished SFX that made the hero look like the Jolly Green Giant gone to seed had us talking.  (In the negative sense, sure, but we still talked about it.)

This year, though, according to Variety, the only two films slated for spots during the game are Terrence Howard and Bernie Mac’s Pride and John Travolta and Tim Allen’s Wild Hogs, both March releases.  (A few films, like Norbit, Eddie Murphy’s attempt to set a record for fastest loss of critical mojo, will take advantage of much cheaper ad rates during the seventeen-hour pregame show.)

The only Super Bowl ad buzz I’ve detected surrounds a spot starring K-Fed, so something’s clearly askew.  For the past decade, the number of movie ads has trailed only the number of beer ads during the big game–every would-be summer blockbuster could be counted on for at least a 30-second blurb with a money shot to get our attention, like a flying cow or a heat-seeking missle bouncing Tom Cruise into the side of a car.

What’s changed?  Variety speculates that it’s the pressure, both to raise the bar on the teaser ads themselves and to complete the complex and pervasive special effects so many of these films require.  Most will be racing to the finish line in the weeks before release, so rejiggering the production cycle to crib together enough finished, killer footage for a Super Bowl spot that might prompt bad buzz anyway is riskier than merely sitting it out.

I’m sure the internet plays a part.  When leaked images from the Simpsons movie cause fanboys to geekgasm, why bother spending $2 million on a Super Bowl spot?

Here’s a related point to ponder: when will the Oscarcast folks drop the dopey rule keeping the studios from purchasing ad time during the awards show to tout upcoming movies?  What better time to show off your goodies than while a huge audience of film fans are gathered round the tellyvision?  It’s nuts, I say.  Nuts.     

Katie Holmes “turns down” Dark Knight.

Hmm…plum role in the big-budget sequel to a critically acclaimed blockbuster directed by one of the hottest directors in town or second-billed lead in a low-budget comedy by the writer of Thelma & Louise making her directorial debut? 

Yeah, that makes sense.

Trying to decide whether to call that “gay bands” site (see: 2 posts down) a hoax, a prank, or satire reminded me of how I wound up immortalized in a Roger Ebert book.

In the mid-’90s, I spent way too much time contributing to a text-only listserv devoted to movies.  Like most listservs, it was generally 15% about the topic at hand and 85% about flaming and flirting, but there were enough smart, funny and snarky movie geeks hanging around to make it worth having to sort through all of the drivel.

One early morning I cracked an actual newspaper to seek information–this was the mid-’90s, remember–and chuckled at the latest boycott being mounted against the sinister forces at Disney.  You might remember the heyday of Donald Wildmon and his American Family Association: they saw “SEX” in the skies over the Lion King’s savannah and giant erections in the towers of Ariel’s castle.  Scary stuff, and I’ll leave that vague.

Inspired, I dashed off–15 minutes, tops–a spoof chain e-mail from Don and his AFA urging a boycott of Disney over the movie Toy Story.  I was all too familiar with the style and verbiage of such things, “thanks” largely to a controversy hitting closer to home at the time, a scuffle over a silly book with a shiny metal cover, but that’s another post.

Thanks to the frightening power of the internets, I can actually share some of the Toy Story tomfoolery with you, 11 years on:

In TOY STORY, rated G by the ultraliberal MPAA, the main characters,
“Woody”–note sexual reference–and “Buzz”–note drug reference–are
owned by a child in a single-parent household in which the father is
noticeably absent.  “Woody” and “Buzz” have equally disturbing toy
friends, including a sex-obsessed talking potato, a sex-obsessed Bo Peep
doll who cannot keep her hands (or lips) off “Woody,” and an Etch-a-Sketch
whose “knobs” must be “adjusted” to produce results.

As I seem to be saying with increasing frequency, you get the idea.

Silly, satirical, and clearly a spoof.  I sent it off to the listserv and figured a few people would get a giggle out of it, especially coming from a well-known yukmeister on the list.

Took 20 minutes for the first outraged response to echo back.  “These people have gone too far!  I’m sending this to everyone I know and telling them to write and tell them to get a life!” 

Oops.

I sent a disclaimer: yo, that was a joke.  Thought nothing more of it.  A couple of “aww, you had me going for a minute” replies, and then it was on to the next flame war.

Six weeks later, I received a private e-mail from a member of the listserv.  He was in Seattle, and he wanted to let me know the alterna-weekly there picked up my Toy Story spoof and used it in a blurb about the “controversial” movie showing at a revival house.  I asked him to fax it to me, and, sure enough, there was the “Buzz” and “Woody” stuff, verbatim. 

Cut to two years later.  I’m sitting in a Star Taylor theater waiting for a sneak preview of G.I. Jane to begin.  I’m reading Roger Ebert’s Questions for the Movie Answer Man until the lights go down, and, there on page 239, is this:

Q: A message from the Rev. Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Association, is making the rounds of the Internet.  In it, he attacks Disney, writing: “In Toy Story, rated G by the ultraliberal MPAA…”  [Yes, you get the idea.  Verbatim.]  Don’t you think this is carrying things to extremes?

A: [from Ebert] It sounded fishy to me, so I contacted the AFA, and its spokesman, Scott Thomas, said, “This message is a hoax.  It was sent by someone who doesn’t like AFA, and apparently doesn’t mind using others to express his view, since he has manipulated many (about one hundred so far) into writing us on his behalf.  The message purports to come from Don Wildmon, who doesn’t even have a modem, let alone an e-mail address.  Nor does the AFA maintain any electronic mailing lists.”

Well, shiver me timbers.  Much more fun seeing that than seeing G.I. Jane.

My 15-minute mental morning constitutional, quoted in a Roger Ebert book after cheesing off ”about one hundred” militant ‘toon fans with too much time on their hands. I felt like writing Ebert to clarify my intent to merely bring the funny, but then I figured the AFA’s legal team wouldn’t back off if I threatened to dial 1-800-CALL-SAM and shut my yap.

Needless to say, I peruse things like the “gay bands” website with a raised eyebrow and a grain of salt. 

(Although Nugent’s loincloth fetish was always kind of Travolta-in-Stayin’-Alive-y, not that there’s anything wrong with that…)

“Bands to watch out for”

UPDATE: As suspected, the site’s bogus.

Hours o’ fun!

I’m going to cop to having a man-crush on one of terrestrial radio’s great pleasures, Rob Reinhart’s Acoustic Cafe, which is produced up the road a piece in Ann Arbor.  Each week, Reinhart plays a tasty mix of sensitive folkie, alt-country and a few wild cards, and hosts an in-studio guest he interviews and coaxes into playing a few numbers live. 

The better news is that the show’s site streams each weekend’s special guest segment and offers an extensive archive.  I’ll warn you that if you’re into the kind of music the show promotes and this is your introduction, you’re going to be frittering away a lot of time playing catch-up.  Enjoy.

“Hi, I’m Art Buchwald, and I just died.”