First, a quick quiz: Can you name the movie director pictured on the CD cover?
The answer appears at the bottom.
A chilly art-house summer? While the megaplex owners are revving up their popcorn machines for the crowds they expect to stampede into “M:I-2,” “The Perfect Storm,” “Me, Myself and Irene” and “Nutty Professor II: The Klumps,” the operators of the smaller specialty theaters are fearing that the summer’s dog days may last all season.
If you count the surprise smash “The Blair Witch Project,” last summer was a gangbuster year for indie releases. If you don’t count it, the season was OK, with a few art-house hits and a fair amount of theatrical road kill.
Judging by what’s on the release schedule for this summer, much of which has been previewed at festivals such as Sundance and Toronto, some exhibitors are concerned that they’re going to get steamrollered by the more heavily hyped releases.
“Is there a `Run Lola Run’? A `Buena Vista Social Club’? A `Red Violin’?” asked 3 Penny Cinema programmer Dave Sikich. “There’s definitely more art screens now vying for this stuff, and it’s become very competitive, and I’m worrying that this summer isn’t even going to live up to last summer in terms of quality of product.”
Music Box programmer Brian Andreotti agreed. “I think our lineup is strong, but I don’t see any breakout hits like `Run Lola Run,'” he said, noting that his theater’s summer schedule includes Takechi Kitano’s “Kikugiro,” the Chinese film “Shower” and a week of Stanley Kubrick films.
The lack of surefire art-house hits comes at an especially bad time for Landmark Theaters, which opened its seven-screen Century Centre Cinema in March and plans to launch its five-screen Renaissance Place in Highland Park on June 30.
“The market’s really soft as far as what product’s out there,” said Brian Ross, the Century theater’s general manager. “How do you launch a new theater, like in Highland Park and this one, without a whole lot to give it any punch? Honestly, I don’t know of any big, big picture coming out.”
The Century’s record so far is mixed. It collected the nation’s highest grosses for “High Fidelity,” but business on several of the other screens, which have shown lower-profile indie and foreign-language films, has been middling.
Last weekend the heavily promoted “The Big Kahuna,” starring Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito, grossed a lackluster $5,900 in an exclusive run at the Century, while the Israeli film “Kadosh” opened to $3,700, much less than it drew simultaneously at the Wilmette.
But the worst was the energetic British rave-scene comedy “Human Traffic,” which collected a measly $2,088 over its opening weekend. Popular in the U.K. and hyped out of last September’s Toronto International Film Festival, this Miramax film opened with very little promotional support after dying similar deaths in New York and Los Angeles.
“It was pretty much a dump-and-run,” Ross said of the distributor’s apparent attitude toward the movie, which didn’t even hold over for a second week at the Century. (Miramax’s Heather Graham comedy “Committed” has fared even worse, opening two weeks ago to a pitiful $881 at the City North 14 before dropping to $564 last weekend.)
Ross said the problem isn’t too many specialty screens but not enough “strong” films. “We’re still new,” he said. “We have to devote more energy to marketing our films, making that a priority.”
Another indie falls short: “American Psycho” won’t be paying dividends to any Internet “investors,” after all. As a publicity stunt, Lions Gate Films promised that if the movie were to gross $20 million within its first four weeks of release, the company would divide a pot of $20,000 among those who bought play-money shares of “American Psycho” on the Hollywood Stock Exchange Web site. After five weeks, the movie has plateaued at under $14 million, which, nevertheless, is a figure that most independent films would be more than happy to collect.
$&@! swearing: Asked for their opinions on movie profanity, “Behind the Screen” readers have responded that that they’re darn sick of it. Here are some replies:
Rick and Dorothy Graton, Hebron: “Yes, the on-screen language in the current movies really turns us off. We don’t even try to go to movies anymore as they are so totally offensive. Having heard how `great’ `The Blair Witch Project’ was, I bought the video, but it was so foul-mouthed, we didn’t even watch the entire movie. Why does the movie industry try so hard to offend people? All they accomplish is the loss of business.”
Lisanne Freese and John Hinkle, Chicago: “On-screen swearing is totally offensive. What are moviemakers trying to prove? That they have a grasp on `real’ life? Do all people swear in real life? No. Do all poor people in ghettos swear? No. Do only people with limited imaginations and vocabularies swear? You betcha . . .
“An actor ought to be able to convey their sense of character without a barrage of foul-sounding words. And movies that have make use of non-stop cursing should come with warning labels.
“There’s a reason we like to rent foreign films: They have actual plots, there are no scenes of mass mayhem, and no one swears in them!”
Patty Kirlin, Naperville: “On-screen swearing is not the problem. Rightly or wrongly, adeptly or ineffectively, certain films use obscenities to emphasize specific points or even to accent humor. The problem, especially for parents with impressionable children, is to determine which films contain these obscenities.
“The ratings system is not an effective way for parents to determine the content of films. Some PG-13 films are fine for pre-teenagers to watch and include no major objectionable subject matter. Other films, `Big Daddy’ for example, are also PG-13, are marketed toward youngsters, and truly do contain questionable language.
“An adult can decide to reject the offensive language; a youngster will sometimes choose to experiment with it. Censoring this language is certainly not the answer to dealing with obscenities in film; providing the public with adequate information about the films is.”
Harold Baxter, Wadsworth: “Gratuitous vulgarity does not enhance a script or scene; it weakens it because it suggests that the character is not intelligent enough to come up with an expressive equivalent. For centuries, writers have communicated powerful feelings without using them, and their points were made clearly.
“When I hear a character (such as in the recent `The Insider’) swear or use vulgar language, I can accept it, even if it is offensive, because I understand the moment. But when I watch a film by David Mamet (`Glengarry Glen Ross’ comes to mind) or Quentin Tarantino (anything), I am given the impression that everybody talks like this, and I simply do not accept that as realistic. Yes, I teach at a Christian university (Trinity, in Deerfield–film, by the way, among other things), but even in my home neighborhood, not everyone has a bad case of `pottymouth.'”
And the answer is: The masked nude model on the cover of Redd Kross’ 1990 album “Third Eye” is none other than Sofia Coppola, director of “The Virgin Suicides,” which, by the way, has been doing robust business at Pipers Alley. (She was dating one of the band members at the time but now is married to director Spike Jonze.)
———-
E-mail: mcaro@tribune.com
