Good Morning Hollywood, May 6: Selling Incompetence
In this morning’s roundup of movie news ‘n’ notes from around the web, Jerry Bruckheimer ruins Hollywood, but maybe awful isn’t so bad.
It may yet prove to be coincidental that the SUV used in the attempted terrorist bombing in New York City was parked outside the Viacom building, parent company to Comedy Central and "South Park. But the L.A. Times says that hasn’t stopped local police and sheriffs from stepping up security around entertainment studios in Los Angeles. And at the Santa Monica complex that houses Viacom-owned MTV (and also Lionsgate), uniformed guards have been funneling all traffic through one entrance, and inspecting vehicle trunks. (Los Angeles Times)
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Bilge Ebiri looks at the cult of so-bad-they’re-good movies, inspired by an upcoming documentary called “Best Worst Movie” and by the April anniversary of the first New York screening of Tommy Wiseau’s heroically inept cult classic “The Room.” (For the record: “The Room,” right, is not so bad it’s good. It’s so bad the
audience is good.) But he’s disappointed in the current batch of bad directors because they aren’t delusional enough, and they spend too much time on self-promotion. Apparently, and sadly, even incompetence has become a new Hollywood marketing hook. But I’m holding out hope that “My Own Love Song” (Renee Zellweger in a wheelchair singing Bob Dylan songs) is as bad as I’ve heard, because it sounds as if the Olivier Dahan melodrama might have what it takes to enter the pantheon of awfulness.
(Vulture)
text-autospace:none">Vadim Rizov uses his headline to advance a thesis:
“Jerry Bruckheimer broke Hollywood.” He immediately backs off a bit, but his point is that the veteran producer is one of the folks most responsible for the escalation of film budgets into ridiculous – and generally unprofitable – realms: “The much-lamented death of the mid-budget drama can be attributed in part to the ever-widening gap he and so many others created.” In other words, Jerry had a lot of help. And hey, movies like “Armageddon” may be grandiose piles of excess, hyperactivity and cliché-mongering, but I’ll be damned if they aren’t entertaining in a guilty-pleasure kind of way. (
The Independent Eye)
text-autospace:none">On the other hand, the May 28 Jerry Fest at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood (actually, it’s more pretentiously dubbed
) takes the big-budget ethos and applies it to movie ticket prices: while “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” premieres in the historic Grauman’s Chinese, five other Bruckheimer productions (“Armageddon,” “National Treasure,” “Top Gun,” “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Pirates of the Caribbean”) will simultaneously screen in the multiplex upstairs, with actors and filmmakers introducing the films to audiences that have paid $30 a ticket. I know that price includes popcorn and a soda, and the money goes to the American Film Institute, but haven’t everybody who’s interested in those movies already seen them a thousand times already on cable? (
