May 2008 Archives

Hey everybody.  I gotta make this quick because I'm writing this week's blog from Mia Cybercafe at Jan van Galenstraat 190 in Amsterdam and I only have enough money for ten minutes.  Plus there's a skinny, tattooed guy wearing eye makeup staring at me.
 
I cannot possibly tell you in this short time how I came to be in this city at this time.  As you know, last week I was at the Cannes Film Festival.  After my hotel room was robbed, things went downhill for me.  Left with no more films to see, I found myself on a drinking binge.  Wearing only my Hall and Oates t-shirt, I crawled from bar to bar.  I threw barstools through windows.  Puked on a Belgian publicist.  I got into a fight with some gay guys and they busted me up good.  Split lip and black eye. 

I ended up in a fetal position on a cobblestone street Sunday night, and was helped to my feet by a glowering, swarthy man, smoking a Camel and holding a festival award.  He introduced himself as Nuri Bilge Ceylan, a Turkish man who I came to understand won Best Director for something called "Three Monkeys",  which I assume is about monkeys.  He said he was on cloud nine, absolutely bristling with energy, and he asked me to take a "spirited ride with him, to anywhere and everywhere, a journey of self-discovery!"  My mother always taught me never to turn down a ride from a Turk.  It offends them deeply.  So I accepted.
 
He drove at top speed through provincial French towns and villages, smoking like a refinery, popping amphetamines and shouting about Turkish persecution, familial disclocation and Eva Longoria.  Oh, what he would do to Eva Longoria.  Through the dreamlike haze of smoke, all I could see was his close-cropped spiky hair, his wild, deep-set eyes and jutting, purposeful chin.  He said something about my bush being a "keeler".  He said, "Your bush has keeled so many!  Your bush is a lowlife keeler!"  I have no idea what the hell he was talking about.  I don't have a bush.  Then he made me drive while he had intercourse with a hooker in the passenger seat, whom he dumped at the Netherlands border, screaming something about the truth of existence.
 
In Amsterdam, we smoked joint after joint, knocked over bike riders and climbed steeples, from which we hocked loogies.  But his loogies were better, because they were in Turkish.  The last I saw him, he was swimming the length of a canal, weeping, crying out for someone named Hatice.
 
And so I find myself here at the Mia Cybercafe.  Skinny tattooed guy asked me how much I wanted for my t-shirt.  I sold it to him for 6 Euros.  Now I am shirtless.  And his friends are chanting, "Manboobs, manboobs..."
 
Umm, let's see.  I understand "Indy 4" took in $151 mil domestic and $311 global.  Net looks to be considerable.  I sold the foreign rights to Manka Highbrow's "The Reticence of Butterflies" for a buck and a half on a street corner in Grasse.

Greetings, you bumps on a blog!  I have the privilege of writing this week's entry from the exciting Cannes Film Festival.  I wasn't originally supposed to be one of the Manka reps on the Croisette this year, but after a food poisoning outbreak ravaged the acquisitions department early last week, I was selected to round out the team, a real rarity for a Junior VP in the P&P division.
 
What a whirlwind it has been since my arrival.  We are feverishly sifting through the product here for a gem that Manka can pick up for a song and make a bundle on.  Acquisitions overall are running a disappointing 22% less than last year, while product availability is, by all accounts, up by 36%.  Distributors so far are spending on average $750,000 per deal, 67% of which is straight to DVD fare.  My team leader Nick Wolcott has kept me hopping from screening to screening.  I viewed a powerful film from Algeria called The Slaughter of the Annaba Children, an intense movie from Oman titled Murbat Puppy Death, and the much-anticipated seven hour opus from Finland, The Frozen Nuns of Tampere.  I thought there was some good stuff there, but Nick said they wouldn't play with the Juno crowd.
 
Fortunately, I was able to bring a guest with me to the festival (at 20% off the airfare).  I've had a cute little "developing" relationship with the girl who lives two townhouses down from me named Carina, this way hot latin bartender from the karaoke place I frequent.  When I asked her to come with me to Cannes, she became so ecstatic I thought she was going to hyperventilate!  Manka Bros. put us up at the Hotel Des Parfums, in some place called Grasse, a little further out that you would like, but bloggers can't be choosers.  The smells of rotting brie and sweat in the lobby didn't put me off, but Carina became nauseous then cried for 20 minutes.  We dropped our stuff in the room (small and musty, but charming) and hightailed it for Cannes. 

At the Carlton, I left Carina at the bar while I quickly met with Nick and the team.  By the time I got back, Carina was making out with Gael Garcia Bernal.  They disappeared onto a yacht and I haven't seen her since.  When I got back to the Des Parfums, I discovered the room had been burglarized (a Cannes rite of passage, apparently), including my laptop and a gold watch my dad gave me.  There was a drunk chanteuse wailing outside my window all night, all I have to wear is my old Hall & Oates t-shirt, and I paid $16 for a banana, but I'm in Cannes, Goddamnit!  Eat it, all you f-ing Junior veeps!!
 
Manka Highbrow is considering acquiring three titles from the midnight screenings, Eviscerated, The Gangreen Gang, and The Rabid Ferrets of Anal Creek.  Manka Highbrow's lone Cannes offering, The Bloody Stumps of Elsa Cry, has generated only passing interest from international distribution entities. 
 
(If anyone sees Carina, have her call me at the Des Parfums, room 408.)

  Well, the consensus among us industry bean counters today is that Speed Racer has pretty much ruined the movie business.  I received frantic phone calls from every one of my counterparts in town, and quite frankly they were astonished and scared.  I half expected to look out my window and see frogs falling from the sky.  Costing an estimated $150 million, Racer sputtered to a debut of just $18.6 million, down from the $20.2 million that was projected Sunday, taking third place behind that Kutcher-Diaz movie, which I understand was penned by Downs Syndrome kids.  Warners should have seen this coming.  The movie was only tracking 6.1 out of a possible 10 among moviegoers age 12-25.  Emile Hirsch has fired UTA.  The Wachowski Brothers are reportedly each looking for a new brother.
 
Manka Bros. passed on Speed Racer two years ago, and it looks like we dodged a bullet.  But since it was one of my favorite cartoons as a child and I had read the script, I was curious to see it.  So after a light lunch at Applebees in Hemet, California, I took my elderly mom to see the movie for Mother's Day.  She wanted to see Made of Honor but I convinced her that its ineffectual quality would cause a dangerous spike in her glucose levels.  Besides, I always equate watching the Racer cartoon with my mother, who would sit me on the floor in front of our old Zenith, fire up a Doral unfiltered, then vacuum the area immediately around me, ramming the vacuum head into my bare legs.  I could never hear the dialogue from the show, so I made up my own, which I repeated endlessly at the dinner table.  Mother, a Rob Roy in hand, would drown me out by humming "My Guy" over and over, staring at the ceiling, a crooked smile painted on her face.  The slam of the front door meant stepdaddy was home, and it was time for me to hide in the hamper.  But I had my Speed Racer action figures and cars to keep me company.
 
Well, mother didn't care for the film, or the poor air circulation, or the stale popcorn.  I would occasionally look over and catch her glaring at me, nostrils flared, lips pursed.  Afterwards, she grumbled all the way into the lobby, flagged down a maintenance worker, then beat my legs with his vacuum handle.  Needless to say, it was a tension-filled ride back to mom's single-wide mobile home.
 
Paramount is looking to have a record year at the b.o., with the healthy domestic and international returns on Marvel's Iron Man, and the high profile Indiana Jones 4 looming on the horizon. 

Manka Bros.' summer hopeful Cephalopod is tracking well in Finland and Burma, among other international strongholds.  Among teens it scored an awareness factor of 2.3, up from 2.1 last weekend.

Good to be back with you again this week!  I appreciate all the comments on last week's blog, and I shall endeavor to improve in the weeks ahead.  Of course, one comment in particular affected me very deeply, and I had to take Monday off to see my therapist and get my prescriptions refilled.  But I'm back and raring to go today.
 
Well, the talk in the contracts and residuals departments here at Manka continues to revolve around the SAG/AMPTP negotiations and the impending actors strike.  Word is the two sides are far from a deal due to SAG's unwillingness to adhere to the establised New Media framework, recommending as many as 70 changes to it, as well as a demand to double, yes double the existing DVD formula.  With production costs at an all-time high, acquiescing to these demands would simply increase these costs as well as decrease profitability for the studios.
 
Guild strikes have a far-reaching impact on all facets of the industry.  The 1988 WGA Strike cost the industry an estimated $500 million.  It hit many hard, including myself.  I had just dropped out of my junior year at Stanford to become a TV actor, because a frat brother told me at a kegger that I'd make a good "wacky neighbor on a sitcom."  I struggled for months, until I finally landed an audition as a dorky mailman on the hit series "Small Wonder."  The day before my appointment, the WGA membership voted to strike and the network cancelled the series. 

  My savings dwindling, I found myself trying out for Equity waiver theater just to get the $5 stipend.  I was cast in an all-nude production of "Johnny Johnson" at the Celebration Theatre.  There were 22 actors in it.  One night, it was so cramped backstage, I scraped my bare buttocks against a protruding nail, opening a five-inch gash.  Blood spurted on everyone's naked body.  Several male actors shrieked and fainted.  One of the actresses had the wherewithal to fashion a tourniquet through my ass crack to stop the bleeding.  I had to drop out of the show and I couldn't afford gas or Ramen noodles.  So many of us still bear the scars of that WGA work stoppage.  Just take a good long look at my left ass cheek.
 
In anticipation of a strike at the end of June, studios have ramped up feature production by 35% and decreased project development by 75%.  Manka has ceased production on many of its MBS programs, including the freshman series, "My Wife Left Me For Bucky Dent" (averaging 1.2 million viewers this season).  Also, Manka Bros. has officially severed ties with its longtime water deliver service, Sparkletts.