Even Actors Find Out that the New Currency is Attention @9:30 AM
I am making less money upfront than ever and so is America's Sweetheart™ and potential This Weekend's Oscar© Winner Sandy Bullock, who only got $5 million up front for her dye job in The Barf Slide. Now more than ever, actors are working on an attention-based bonus system, in which the success of a film is what brings the big pay, and the huge names take "less" up front. (Setting aside the hilarious pay scale itself, in some ways this is not a great idea, as actors have the least to do with the finished product being watchable or miserable? And yet still.) In the future, though, I think we'll see that most industries will have switched to this system. Book publishing, obviously, is backwards and has known but not acted on the fact that past performance is no guarantee of future performance; and someday all writers will work on a scale that pays them just based on eyeballs. Also strippers and pole dancers all over the world have been working on such a straightforward system for centuries! They even improve upon this model, in which, while the customers stare at you, they also feed you money. Movie theaters could work like this too quite easily! It just makes sense, America. 5
It is true: the Mark Harris piece on awards campaigning in Hollywood is delightful. @4:00 PM 1
How To Un-Boring the Oscars @3:02 PM
Hero entertainer and thinker Ann Magnuson has some truly excellent suggestions on how to improve the Oscars. For one thing? "More clip montages! Tom Ford could present the Glamour Montage, Tarantino puts together A Bit of the Old Ultra-Violent Montage, Meryl Streep hosts the Accent Montage, Kristen Stewart and Christopher Lee present the Sexy Vampire Montage, and Jon Voight presents How Hollywood Liberals are Destroying the Country Montage." Oh, yes please. Also? Yearly themes! READ MORE 18
"I think some directors make films because they want to hang out with movie stars and be part of Hollywood. They want to be a star themselves. I'm not interested in that at all."
—The adorable Neill Blomkamp, director of District 9, whose next film is not a sequel but does "take place 150 years from now." @12:58 PM 14
Pauline Kael Would Totally Have Focus-Grouped 'Avatar' @2:00 PM
Do you like movies? Do you also like watching them? How about if I told you that you could get paid to watch them? Great news for the 55 60! newly-unemployed newspaper film critics of America: If you are a freelance (also known as "not-really-working") film critic, you can now get a whole hundred dollars per screening (that's like 1/2 to 1/3rd of what you'll get paid for a piece at a good website!). As long as you're willing to fill out the focus group survey after. Go on! Don't be ashamed. I'd take that $100 and buy a bunch of socks and food with it. 3
Just Like Wall Street, Hollywood Is Raking It In With Fewer Workers @2:30 PM
Even Nikki Finke is a neo-Marxist Keynesian hybrid up in her economic thinkings! "According to BoxOffice.com, 2009's domestic cume has already topped 2008's record haul of $9.626 million from January 1 to December 31, 2008," she writes today, asking: "So Why Is Most Of Hollywood Out Of Work?" You know why, girlfriend! All over America, it's easy to figure out this year that you can pay one person to do the work of two or three. Even best boys. 6
Rich People Things, with Chris Lehmann: Rich Enough for You? @10:10 AM
Okay, so this is pretty much the reason why we have a New York Times Sunday Styles section: to rally its readers in a time of raw, unknowing confusion; to dispense the essential information they need in order to make sense of a world seemingly turned upside down; to assure that the bare coordinates of consensual reality remain intact in a social order suddenly deranged by crisis. To grant its imprimatur, in short, to the term "Bling Ring." READ MORE 4
"But We Said 'No'!" @1:50 PM
"Hollywood publicists are so used to journalists kowtowing to their every request that they no longer understand what journalism actually is." I bring that up because I just always like hearing people say that out loud! So yes, this was even the case when John Ortved was writing about 'The Simpsons' for Vanity Fair. 16
DC And Warner Bros. Strike Back With "Restructuring" @2:55 PM
Oh snap! In the wake of the big HUGE Disney buys Marvel news, Warner Bros. has created DC Entertainment, a new division with Diane Nelson (who does all the Harry Potter stuff) serving as DCE president and Paul Levitz, president and publisher of DC Comics, to "return to his roots as a writer for DC and become a contributing editor and overall consultant."
Wow. Is it me or does it sound like he got shafted in the mix? I guess that's how comics rank in the Hollywood of the DC Universe. Sorta like how Superman is incredibly strong, can fly, and turn back time on planet earth but on his home of Krypton was just some dude. Whatevs, alls I know is, I hope they make a Commissioner Gordon movie with Gary Oldman and no Christian Bale because this version of the Batman cowl always makes Bale's face look fat and his "masked" voice sounds like he's choking on oyster crackers. 8
Everything Is Rotten In L.A. @7:57 AM
And finally, the ongoing feud between ex-friends Sharon Waxman (late of the Times and now the editrix of Starbucks-backed The Wrap) and Nikki Finke (the blogess of Deadline Hollywood Daily) has exploded. Because, really, how much more time would we have to spend considering ecology or our tiny lifespans if we didn't get to hear about this. It's reality T.V. except no one is filming! READ MORE 3
