The Wrap Media | Entertainment Industry Analysis, Breaking Hollywood News

Do I Really Have to Defend My Tarantino Post?

August, 31, 2009 11:51 am | Comments On #Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino

My blog post last Friday on Quentin Tarantino, The Weinstein Company and “Inglourious Basterds” seems to have set off a firestorm of controversy.

I’ve never responded to a reader (or readers) before -- heck, in 30-some years with Newsweek, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, I’ve never even read a “letter to the editor.” After all, why should I? What could you, back in Omaha (who got your knowledge of the industry from “Entertainment Tonight”!) know that I, who’s spent 25 years in the film business, don’t?

Rather, I saw my job as nobly trying to explain how the business actually works.

Fool.

It’s kind of like T.J. Simers, the sports columnist for the L.A....

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Is This a Wrap for Tarantino?

August, 28, 2009 5:07 pm | Comments On #Harvey Weinstein, Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino, The Weinstein Company

Is this a wrap for Quentin Tarantino?

That may sound bizarre, given the bluster Harvey Weinstein was spewing last weekend, but let’s examine the facts. Everyone has been proclaiming that Tarantino’s new, WWII monstrosity, which opened to an “unheard-of" $37.6 million, his “biggest opening to date.”

But wait a minute --

Every picture that “opens” breaks some record -- according to Harvey, “Basterds” is #1 in “the last two-weeks of August” (but only the #11 picture for all of August!). Consider, for example: “Pulp Fiction,” probably the best movie of the ‘90s. It opened on 1,300 screens in 1994 to roughly $9 million.

That was when ticket prices were $6! ...

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How Woodstock Saved Hollywood

August, 18, 2009 10:47 am | Comments On #HBO, Martin Scorsese, Steve Ross, Ted Ashley, the dark knight, Tim Burton, Warner Bros., Woodstock

Everyone "knows" that the space program yielded Tang -- not true -- and the personal computer -- true. (One could argue the Internet as well, but that's another story.)

Few people imagine, however, that without the Woodstock Festival -- which happened a mere three weeks after man landed on the moon (and was widely celebrated last weekend) -- we wouldn't have "Batman" (both Tim Burton's version and the newer "Dark Knight"), "Superman" HBO and "The Sopranos" and "Entourage," Time-Warner Cable (maybe the less said about that, the better!), AOL, People, Entertainment Weekly, all those Superbowl DVDs Sports Illustrated is always giving away, the CW (again, maybe the less said, the better) and, heck, just for the kids, the entire videogame industry as well as, well, Chuck'E'Cheese...

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