Reel Suite - June 3, 2008

There's no denying the impact the Sex and the City opening weekend grosses have had on the studio mindset today.  All-time romantic comedy record with $55.7 million, besting Hitch's $43.1.  The eye-opener: 75% of the audience was female, 80% older than 25.  Preliminary figures show the remainder of the audience consisted of 18% gay men, 2% gay women, 2% transgender, 1.5% seeing eye dog, 1% straight male, and .05% confused about sexual orientation. 

After perusing these numbers, I got right on the horn to the development department to see if Manka has any plans to cater to this once dormant, now vibrant demographic.  Sure enough, some languishing female-driven projects have now been moved to the front burner.
 
Kevin in development told me Robin Rafe just this morning greenlit a script called Fun and Dames, which follows the sexual exploits of four 70-something former beauty queens living in a retirement home.  In the film, a team of gay interns busts them all out so one of them can pledge her love to the man that got away, and the rest of them can hit on waiters. 
  In the heat of the moment, I couldn't help but pitch Kevin the female-driven screenplay I wrote back in '92.  I'm convinced now may be the time for it!  It's called Dolls of Pain, and it centers on a hard-hitting, tatooed all-girl Roller Derby team lead by the outrageous Niraa Death, who comes to blows with team rival Sheila Destroyu over the hunky Derby president Jerry Manhood.  When a bevy of high-end fashion models threatens to overtake the league and infuse it with glamour and mainstream sex appeal, Niraa and Sheila have to band together to uphold the goth integrity of the sport, spilling some skinny ass model blood along the way.  My agent at the Coralie Jr. agency hawked it around town for years, until he died.  After that I set it up with Phil Shoemeister at the Shoemeister Agency.  It was only after signing I discovered Phil was blind.  But he fought hard for the script he never read, until his untimely death.  For a while, it was repped by All Star Talent, until Rob, the head agent, called me in to wrestle with him in the alley behind the agency, which I thought was creepy, so I walked.  After my last agent was indicted, I decided to shelve the script for a while.  But are the planets now aligning?  Kevin??  KEVIN?!?!?!?
 
Since Manka Bros.' business policy precludes actresses from receiving any back end participation on feature films, the studio profit margin and ancillary prospects would be plentiful, should Robin Rafe choose to greenlight more female projects.  Films centered around the world of roller derby have traditionally opened to an average of $30.6 million.  Elements such as tattoos and models usually bump the b.o. by 22%.