A reporter recently got me to play the voice of doom for the summer releases. The role comes naturally, since I favor black in my personal attire, so I spent a few minutes expounding upon the likely demise of the big-budget movies that are now beginning to turn theaters into an elephant graveyard.

Actually, they’re all pretty easy calls. But I got thrown by the last question: What do I expect to be the surprise hit of the summer?

Personally, it feels to me like asking the undertaker if he has any repeat customers. Besides, if you could guess, then it ain’t a surprise. The best answer I could think of was something about the usual teenage sex comedy. Thanks to the success of The Hangover, I am now officially a prophet.

OK, there are no teenagers in this film — the characters are more like aging, over-the-hill teenagers. But my point remains. In a stunning reminder that H. L. Mencken knew what he was talking about when he said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people,” The Hangover has converted a $35 million dollar budget into a $105 million dollar binge at the box office — proof again that mixing booze with hormones will result in far greater success on the screen than it ever does at a bar.

There really shouldn’t be any surprise to the success of The Hangover. Despite claims to the contrary, sexual crudeness is a longstanding American cultural tradition. There was once a study made of the calls done in late nineteenth century square dancing, where they discovered that many of the calls were outrageously and explicitly sexual in nature. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that square-dancers became concerned about cleaning up their act.

Granted, not every successful modern comedy requires the crudeness of Hustler magazine. Paul Blart: Mall Cop converted its meager $25 million dollar budget into a global return of $178,836,178 — which means that it easily beat out the strangely similar (and infinitely edgier) Observe and Report, which was barely able to limp its way into an early release at the DVD bargain bin. And Paul Blart was able to do this with a family-friendly veneer so clean it made a Baptist convention look almost smutty by comparison (though the Baptists can get pretty smutty when they are riled – which is often).

But most of the successful movies in this vein are all about sex (Porky, American Pie, There’s Something About Mary), and mostly in the crudest, nastiest, most demeaning forms (and if possible, maybe with some flatulence involved). Likewise, these movies make their money in the Bible belt heartland of the country. I am not interested in taking this contradiction to its overt political conclusion, but I’m reminded of what a literary critic once said about certain bestselling novels — they’re all designed as pornography for the wives of Methodist ministers.

Of course, now it’s pornography for the kids of Methodist ministers. That means it has to be crude enough for a farmer, salacious enough to please a traveling salesman, and just enough happy-go-lucky but hapless horniness to appeal to the kind of guy who actually pays attention to the Smilin’ Bob ads on late night TV. And hapless is a key ingredient. The main character has to be a sexually hapless, nerdy kind of guy, which allows the largely hapless and nerdy audience a chance to feel both sympathetic and, just slightly, superior to the hero. Remember, half of the audience secretly suspects that Smilin’ Bob might really work despite what the FDA says.

Strangely enough, these films are a showcase for the dubious concept of post-feminist feminism (or whatever the heck they now call it) — part of the audience to these movies is made up of young women. They are not crude, they are liberated. That’s why they can now exploit their sexuality in a manner resembling an old Frank Tashlin flick as part of their liberation. Personally, I’m not sure what the difference is, but you’ve got to factor that in. This means that the demographics are an almost ideal mix of male/female 20-somethings.

Much like a modern horror film, the budget for these comedies has to ideally stay within the $15 to $20 million dollar range (The Hangover was pressing its luck just a bit on this one). Fortunately, you don’t need stars — Tom Green, Andy Dick and Joe Flaherty have been the closest thing to stars normally seen in these movies (and Flaherty is the only one who can act). And at least one of these guys is better known for his mug shots than his movies.

So yes, we have now seen the surprise hit of the summer. It’s all pretty predictable. It doesn’t exactly fit the model that Hollywood thinks it’s supposed to be doing at this moment. That, too, is pretty predictable.

Now the summer may return to its regularly-scheduled imploding of big-ticket items.

– Dennis Toth

There are several major kinds of secrets in life. There are the secrets that everybody knows but is not suppose to talk about (e.g., the bunker underneath the vice president’s mansion).

Then there’s the stuff people won’t tell you about because they expect you to learn on your own (e.g., parenthood). There is the legal mumbo-jumbo such as the fine print in any financial document that exists primarily to give lawyers a reason to live. Then there is the secret of a movie’s budget. This is the most elusive secret of them all.

There are two versions of the budget of any film. There is the official version that can be (normally) found through either Variety or the IMDb site. These are good figures. They are extremely solid, reliable figures. Occasionally, they are sort of accurate (give or take a few zeros).

Then there are the “real” figures. Despite the title “real,” these figures are more like a mystical beast that is rumored to lurk within the darkest depths of the forest. Occasionally, there are reported sightings as it allegedly slithers through the shadows. The rest is a mix of circumstantial evidence and mere hearsay. In truth, there is more evidence to support Roswell than the typical Hollywood financial report.

Take, for example, the recent release of Drag Me to Hell (the title sounds like a GOP convention). As countless articles proclaimed, the film marked the return of Sam Raimi to his glory days as a low-rent but fun director of cheap, gory, but pretty lively horror films. It has repeatedly been referred to as a low-budget, then semi-low budget, production.

But nobody actually knows what the figure is (or if they do, they are very quiet about it). Raimi (who is an extremely interesting filmmaker) has the distinction of easily going back and forth between the genre movies that he truly loves and the big honker productions that have made him a marketable director. Within a short space of time, he was able to vary between making Spider-Man at $140 million and The Gift for a mere $10m. He can take the high road or the low road and have a good time either way.

But just how low budget is Drag Me to Hell? The base reported budgets for the most recent set of similar horror films produced by Raimi have averaged around $20 to $32 million dollars (The Grudge 2 and 30 Days of Night), so we can guess that this represents the current base average for Raimi. Then with Drag Me to Hell, he is both producing and directing. So hey, what producer doesn’t feel like being generous with himself as the director? So let’s up it to somewhere between $35 and $40 million.

Of course, the movie is now way outside the rational parameters of what can be expected in revenue for a modern horror movie. As I argued in a previous piece, you’ve got to keep these things averaged around $10 to $15 million if you really want to have a smooth ride to the bank, especially since you’ve got the MPAA rating bind. No self-respecting horror movie wants anything less than an R rating (it’s the gore meter guarantee). But if you’re looking for a wide-spread, mall-based audience, you’ve got to get a PG-13. Actually, the PG-13 seal of parental approval is kind of pointless for a horror film. Who the heck wants to see a horror film that their parents might go to? But if you’re hoping for a broad audience, you’ve got to have it.

What the PG-13 rating suggests is that somebody at the studio was worried about trying to pull in as wide of an age range as possible (as well as setting the stage for the eventual release of the Unrated Director’s Cut on DVD). It’s a move that smacks of desperation — a kind of desperation that might mean that the budget drifted toward the $45 to $50 million mark.

So is this really a low-budget production? In the real world, not exactly. By Hollywood standards, it’s sort of lowish. To paraphrase Bill Clinton: How do you define “low.” With an opening weekend of $15.8 million, they’re going to want to sell a lot of DVDs real soon. Privately, it sounds like another argument for budgetary restraint. Either way, this is not a low-budget movie.

And once again, the legendary critter called Budget slips back into the misty folds of the dark hills of Hollywood.

– Dennis Toth

Boxoffice.com interviews Dennis Toth on whether Land of the Lost marks a temporary slip or downward slide for Will Ferrell’s boxoffice appeal. Read the story by Christian Toto, “Ferrell’s Next Step.”

General George S. Patton once opined that Americans can’t stand a loser. He may have been right. Too bad. Sometimes failure is the perfect path toward learning. Certainly it is part of life’s learning curve.

In some ways, losing is what the entire film industry is all about. Sure, nobody will express it that way.

The whole industry lives in denial. Every movie is a hit and everyone is a winner. Too bad a lot of people are losing their shirts on a lot of expensive flops at the moment. Must be due to sunspots or something.

But let’s take a lesson from that great American philosopher, Casey Stengel, when he described his own team with that immortal summation: “The Mets have taught me more ways to lose than I ever knew existed.”

Now that is a real American. Because losing is something that, quite simply, happens. Everyday. It just does. And in the film business, it happens about every five minutes. Which is why anyone working in the movie industry has to be prepared to lose. If you are braced for that, success just might happen.

This has been the real flaw to virtually every system ever designed to map financial outcome in the movie industry. Basically, they have all been designed to predict what will work. From Magic Eight Balls to Ouija Boards to spreadsheets and databases, they have all strived to forecast the strange and wondrous path to box office success. The result is like a visit to a fortune teller: we will all meet tall handsome strangers. It’s as if there were never any short people around. By the way, that should tell you right off that maybe you shouldn’t be listening to fortune tellers (especially if they are short).

But you can’t predict movies this way. There are just too many wild card variables. An audience will give their hearts (and hard-earned cash) to the damnedest movies at the damnedest times for all of the damnedest reasons. And I’ll be damned if anyone can predict the whole damn thing. That is one of many reasons why movies are an art form.

However, what you can figure out are the flaws. You can examine missteps, outright mistakes and numerous misbegotten efforts to get some idea about what you shouldn’t do. This is the magic moment when failure is truly divine. Mistakes tell us many important things with a depth that rivals the mysteries of the ancient world. Success merely breeds bad attitudes. Just look at James Cameron. First he directs the most successful film in the history of the cosmos, and now he just tinkers around and thinks he has discovered Jesus (I mean, he really thinks he has discovered Jesus, family and all).

From a financial perspective, what you need to plan for is something close to failure. Certainly, you need to plan using the basic minimal projected results as your guide. Sure, this gives proof to the old adage that economics is the dismal science. But it is a type of science (except at the University of Chicago, where it has become a fundamentalist belief system). It also means that you are prepared for the acceptable worse. Everything after that is a vast improvement, and you don’t need to hunt for any tall handsome strangers (unless that is really your thing).

It also gives you a more realistic basis for analyzing the commercial possibilities of your production. A standard system used in Hollywood is the magic fix theory of filmmaking. If the script sucks, get some one to tweak it. If the characters are weak, get a big name actor to star. If the director of photography is blind, do it all in 3D. Whatever the problem, just pump up the budget.

This is the rough equivalent of a drunk dangling car keys and telling everybody he will drive them home. It is simply another name for failure, but a lot of people are convinced that it is really the road to success. And since nobody has bothered to consider the bottom basics, everything begins to spiral upward and out of control. Budgets expand faster than a producer’s ego as the production begins its inexorable march toward Tent Pole Fiasco-land (a hot and loathsome place further south than Hades).

The bottom line is the only hard reality a movie has to offer. By that I mean the really hard and fast production bottom line. In other words, the blasted cost of making the whole silly thing. How much can you afford to lose? That is the single major question that a person must ask him or herself before starting any production. Once you figure that out, the rest is easy. You plan accordingly. Success might even be possible. With luck, you might even have a hit. At worse, you are prepared.

This really isn’t a new idea, but it is an idea that has been forgotten through many years of voodoo economics, new accounting and various forms of post-modernist capitalism. Quick fixes, dancing decimal points and convoluted deals that would start a mob war if you tried pulling such stunts with the “Family” have become the norm, and the results have been simply gawd-awful. And this is what currently passes for success.

So embrace the road to failure. Find your flaws, discover your weaknesses, and learn from there.

– Dennis Toth

The YouTube movie is coming, sort of. Actually, the YouTube movie is already here, with the most recent proof coming in August. The impending release of District 9 by Neill Blomkamp is, in part, a tribute to the increasingly pivotal role played by online media access.

Blomkamp is a 3D Animator who has worked primarily in TV and advertising and was able to focus his striking, if gritty, sense of fantasy by directing two of the most expensive-looking short films (Yellow and Alive in Joburg) ever to hit the web. The surprisingly strong cult popularity of these two films caught the attention of Peter Jackson, who produced District 9, a feature-length extrapolation of Alive in Joburg. Truth be told, Jackson liked Blomkamp’s hard-edged vision in Alive in Joburg and wants to throw him into the pre-production grinder called Halo. District 9 is a modestly budgeted ($30 million) work designed to “establish” Blomkamp as a filmmaker.

Not that District 9 is likely to be a huge success. A pseudo-documentary that uses a science-fiction metaphor as a means of analyzing the legacy of apartheid in Blomkamp’s native South Africa is going to have a slight problem with an American audience that is more geographically challenged than the average beauty contestant. But the movie doesn’t have to do big. The budget and PR approach is similar to the Cloverfield model, with a reasonable shot (at the very least) of making around $80 million in US release (double that overseas). The mid-August release date will most likely be an advantage, since most of the summer’s mammoth productions will be resembling a debris field by then. District 9 may prove to be the closest thing to a surprise hit that the year currently has to offer.

And everybody saw it first on YouTube. Blomkamp found his perfect platform right next to dancing birds, ticked-off housewives in the middle of nasty divorces, amateur music videos, and phony UFO films. The YouTube madhouse bears proof to Ray Bradbury’s statement about the Internet (“It makes tyranny impossible and democracy unbearable.”). It is also one of the last screening rooms for short independent films, which in turn is a crucial space for young independent filmmakers.

Certainly it gives the filmmaker a chance to make the movie quick and cheap, get it available for viewing by the public while not having to take any crap from distributors. Of course, it also requires a truly fanatical belief that you can get any one to view the stuff. YouTube is loaded with enough amateurish garbage to wipe out every landfill in New Jersey. In fact, I’m pretty sure you can find videos about landfills in New Jersey (I just checked and yep, you sure can).

But between the cute kitty cats and right-wing political loons, a potential new approach to film is evolving. A French 3D animator has been trying to raise capital for a science fiction movie by posting CGI scenes from his script as a kind of portfolio. The result is a semi-narrative spread out in short sequences that can be viewed either in the suggested linear order or at the audience whim. The result is a bit like Independence Day as if directed by Chris Marker.

Some people are moving toward a type of cinema verite that has a bizarre resemblance to John Cassavetes (minus the strong acting and booze-fueled inspiration). Any day, Jean-Luc Godard will be on YouTube (presumably doing long experimental diatribes against YouTube — but he would do it on the system just to force the irony). If he had lived long enough, Fassbinder would have been a natural for the form (it would probably be called The 13 Bitter Minutes of Petra von Kant).

It is not simply that YouTube is an alternative distribution system. It is an alternative, period. In a sense, that was already demonstrated by Cloverfield, which took its Godzilla-movie-as-9/11-metaphor and packaged it for the online sensibility. District 9 is taking the old movie Alien Nation and reframing it as a PBS Frontline special in order to create a political metaphor.

Granted, there is no profit to be made working this way. At best, any current online media system is somewhere between a vanity press and a student film festival. Much like the student movie Electronic Labyrinth became the feature film THX 1138. It still took George Lucas a few more films before he became established, but I have heard that he made some sort of name for himself.

And I have a strange suspicion that Snowball (TM) the dancing Cockatoo may yet get his own TV show.

– Dennis Toth

Yes, it’s official. This summer, everyone is a winner. Wolverine has clawed his way to the top. Star Trek has blasted into orbit. Angels and Demons soared into heaven. According to the major news media, the engines of fantasy are running full throttle and business is booming.

I don’t know why so many folks in the industry are sweating about the next round of layoffs. They should be getting more bonuses than the senior execs at AIG.

Unless you do the math. I mean the real math, not the bogus stuff put out each week. Let’s skip the well-founded argument that the figures reported in the business must be taken with a grain of salt (though any theater that truthfully reports its earning deserves to go under). Let’s look at the figures from a different, yet pertinent, perspective. If we were to look at earnings based upon the actual amount of showings per screen (in other words, how many screens a film got played on nationally), the highest grossing film last week end was…Summer Hours?

Yes, this French movie released by IFC Films is the champ, believe it or not. It played on two screens for an average of $24,742 per screen. By comparison, Angels and Demons opened on 3,527 screens for a paltry average of $13,100 per screen. When you look at it this way, it’s obvious that Tom Hanks ain’t gonna go to heaven.

Maybe we’re a tad too xenophobic to admit that the biggest grossing film (per screen) was a Frenchie. Besides, virtually no foreign film stands a chance of actually attracting viewers west of the Hudson River. Maybe that’s why the second biggest grossing movie (per screen) was The Brothers Bloom. This modestly budgeted independent production from Endgame Entertainment averaged $22,600 per screen and had a whopping total of only four theaters showing it.

Okay, Tom and Ron could try sending a lovely heart-felt card to the Pope and hope for the best with that mea culpa stuff. Their proportional average is looking a little shaky. It even suggests that some people may have actually paid money to see Angels and Demons only because they had no place else to go.

Which is the hard fact of modern film distribution. The blockbusters suck up more than just production funds — they also suck up a lot of theater space. In theory, this is to avoid long lines, but the result is that they block many other movies from ever seeing the light of day. Right now at a typical mall theater, two-thirds of the screens will be taken up with the same three movies. The remaining screens will hunker down with whatever teenage comedy or horror film is currently out. Then, maybe, there will be a 50-seat theater next to the janitor’s closet (it might even be his closet) that will be showing some kind of more serious independent film. Maybe. Sometimes the janitor has to use that closet.

Distribution is one of the major problems facing independent films. More precisely, exhibiting is the problem. The whole system has been taken over by the King Kongs and Godzillas of the studio system, and while the big brutes pound each other senseless, no one else can get into the ring. Basically, it’s a studio-rigged system operating with no coherent logic that necessarily benefits the business.

It doesn’t particularly work for the theater owners, who would likely be better off with a more diverse selection. It certainly doesn’t work for members of the audience, who have more choices at the concession stand than they do on the screen. It doesn’t even work for the janitor. He’s got work to do.

It only works for the major studios. In order to justify the inflated budgets, they have to have a strangle-hold on the screens. The massive ad push (largely achieved through their strangle-hold on TV) is to psych you into wanting to see the movie. The limited selection guarantees that you don’t go sneaking off to something else. The result is a theater system that has become a closed shop.

The rationale is that people want to see movies like Angels and Demons (and they do, regardless of what the Pope thinks). But there are also people out there who would like to see lots of other movies as well. The potential market is extremely diverse. It’s the selection that has gotten small.

– Dennis Toth

The really fun thing about beating a dead horse is knowing that you can’t be doing any more damage than already has been done. This is the secret mantra of anyone who works as a regular film critic. The same is true of anyone trying to analysis this business. No matter how much you whack with the stick, the same nagging issues keep coming back.

Take, for example, the current weekend box office reports. I just spent a solid half hour Monday morning having my teenage fanboy son explain to me why the new Star Trek film is a hit. After all, it took in an estimated $76.5 million during its opening weekend. Oh whee!

Of course, this simply means that Star Trek will quickly go where many other films have gone before as it proceeds to drop (and possibly drop fast) in the weeks ahead. Yes, it is following the same pattern as Watchmen and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. This pattern will dominate the summer, and by next fall the hot media story will be the crash of the summer blockbusters. Entertainment Weekly will do an “insightful” report (with full photo spread), and numerous studio honchos will go to work re-inventing the same ideas (only different this time, like every other time). By next spring, the hot buzz will be the return of CinemaScope.

It’s no mystery why this is happening. Well, maybe it’s a mystery as long as we all continue to side-step a few basic facts.

One basic fact (as I have stated several times in these columns) is that the process of investing $150 to $250 million dollars in a movie in hopes of making $150 million back isn’t exactly a sound business model. It wouldn’t even work in Vegas. Especially since the backup to the box office is DVD sales. Too bad DVD sales are going to flatline (they’re headed that way already). That reason is also pretty simple.

We are in a state of depression. Not recession. Depression. Everybody is doing a funny little dance around the word. But, like the elephant in the room, it simply will not go away.

There are two prime indicators of when a nation enters depression, and we have basically passed both of them (not that you would know this from any news reports). The first occurs when a state of recession lasts for over a year. The idea is that when the economy goes into recession, moves must be immediately taken to pull out of it or else.

In one of the most under-reported major news stories of the past two centuries, the federal government finally announced early this year that the United States entered recession in December of 2007. This means that the federal government knew that we were in recession by no later than February of 2008 (and even that assumes that everyone at the White House and in Congress is a slow reader). However, this news was suppressed throughout 2008 (OK, they were hoping to suppress it through the whole election spin, but, well, a few major financial busts happened along the way). This is actually the worse case of criminal negligence since September 11. So it’s a good thing that no one seems too upset about it.

But it does mean that nothing was done to correct the situation, and the recession was allowed to fester its way toward depression. The belated panic reaction that went into high gear just before the election was, most likely, too late. The result is kind of like treating gangrene by popping the patient with Viagra.

The second indicator is having double-digit unemployment for over six months. Officially, the U.S. unemployment figure is at 8.9 percent. But this isn’t exactly the real figure. The unemployment figure is based on those who are currently on the unemployment rosters. Lots of unemployed people have remained unemployed long enough to have fallen off the roster (they are the ghosts in the system). They are not counted. As a general rule, you can easily add anywhere from 2 to 4 percent to the official figure (that was certainly true back in the 1980s and 1990s). Right now, you can probably double the figure. Either way, real unemployment is running anywhere from 14 percent to (maybe) as high as 16 percent. Either way, it’s a double digit and has been for a while.

So what does this mean to the movie business? For starters, fewer people are going to be paying to go to movies. Likewise, they are going to be increasingly reluctant to buy DVDs. They are even going to hesitate to rent DVDs. The market will go into a state of constriction. No technological gimmick or jazzy high concept will change this fact. For some people, it’s already a choice between Wolverine and food on the table. I live in Ohio. This has become a daily reality.

Then there is the other little issue that I have previously alluded to, and which I’m sure will need to be expanded on in the near future. A crisis period such as the one we’re now entering will result in a major change in audience taste and perception. The historical record is extremely clear on this issue. For the past three decades, we’ve lived with a cinema devoted to affluence. It was a period in which visual spectacle evolved to its most bloated but sophisticated level. It was an age of mindless excess and glorious feats of infantile fantasy.

It is over. Period. Whatever comes next is, for now, a mere shadow around the corner. But it’s out there, waiting. It will be different, and no one in Hollywood will have a clue.

– Dennis Toth

Read Dennis Toth’s comments in a feature article by Christian Toto on Boxoffice.com, “Summer Staying Power.”

One thing I hate about the magazine Vanity Fair is how they allow George Clooney to use it to stalk me. I can’t even flip through the rag without discovering his mug somewhere inside just waiting to pounce out at me. I’ve taken this matter up with my attorney, but he has dismissed it as a sign of paranoia. So I now know that my own lawyer is part of the Clooney conspiracy.

However, the real reason that George, Scarlett, Nicole and all of those other happy-faced gods and goddesses of Hollywood are in those magazines is because they are Stars. If we are to believe their agents (and all of the talking heads on tabloid TV shows), they are the reason people go to movies. That is why they get the big pay checks that allow them to get the really bright whitening treatment at the dentist.

Of course, it’s all nonsense. Nobody goes to a movie only because of the players. OK, truth be told, I know a few elderly men who will go to anything starring Scarlett Johansson for reasons that would get them arrested if they went anywhere near a schoolyard. But that’s a different issue.

But what exactly does a “star” bring to the party — aside from cheap publicity and the occasional scandal? Let’s just do some crude number crunching and see what the figures look like.

Since independent filmmakers are often told that they need to get a name attached to their project, I thought we might take a quick survey of various figures who have either worked largely within modest budget films or who at least have spent time going back and forth between large and low budgets. I have taken both the budget figures for each name and the box office figures from the information available at IMDb.PRO web site, mainly because it is just about the most widely available source of immediate information. From these figures I have created base averages.

For example, both Nicole Kidman and Parker Posey have careers that, oddly enough, have some parallels based upon their mutual proclivity for doing films with large budgets (e.g. Posey was in Superman Returns) as well as pretty small movies (Kidman did not do Dogville for the money). Taking the budget figures for their most recent six films and averaging them, Posey’s average budget is around $63.67 million, while Kidman carries a tag of $83.64 million per film. Posey is definitely a cheaper date.

When it comes to the box office, however, Parker Posey is queen for the day. Her box office average is $46.12 million in contrast to Kidman’s mere $33.22 mil. And I can probably guarantee that Posey is a lot easier on the overall wardrobe budget.

But fair is fair — what about Kidman’s ridiculously famous ex? Tom Cruise is so blasted famous he has his own film studio to run into the ground and practically owns his own religion. So let’s really load the dice and compare his last four films to those of some smaller, lesser figure. Say some one like…Tyler Perry. Based on his last four movies, Tom’s budget averages about $88 million a flick while Perry barely gets on the chart with a mere $9.1 million.

But when it comes to box office, look out. Tom brings in a mighty $85.28 million dollars to Perry’s mere $50 million a film. Oops. Tom doesn’t even break even. Tyler Perry, on the other hand, is actually making big money while playing his gender-bender granny character. Why isn’t he doing Mission: Impossible? Certainly, Madea would have been a vast improvement in Valkyrie.

So how does my stalker stack up in this slightly (but only slightly) bogus comparison? Clooney has created an interesting career by routinely mixing up the deck between budget-busters and intensely serious but smaller movies, creating a production average of $47.83m with a box office return of $51.6m. Not too bad, though a lot of this average is weighted by the bulk of Ocean’s Thirteen. A comparable mix and match in budgets (and one shared superhero) is held by Christian Bale, who aces Clooney with a $52.8m/$110.2m average. Just to add to the battiness, both of these guys are aced out by Michael Caine, who comes in at $73.5m/$116.24m. And Sir Michael doesn’t even have to wear tights. He simply acts for a living.

Obviously, these comparisons are crude and only half-serious. But the same should be said about the whole star concept. Having a big name attached to a project does get attention for the movie. Most often, it forces the budget ever upward. The return on this investment is, at best, debatable. In the case of some actors, the effect is virtually detrimental.

Now excuse me. I’m waiting to see where George is leering at me this time in Vanity Fair.

– Dennis Toth

I’m not going to review the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival. I’m not even anywhere near the Tribeca Film Festival. I am not even close to New York, which is why I can’t get a decent espresso for love or money in my town. Unfortunately, you can’t get away from Tribeca, no matter where you go.

The whole situation is a little like the story of a friend of mine. Back in 1997, when the movie Titanic was sucking in all life on Earth, he took off for the most isolated small town he could find in the center of China in hopes of escaping any trace of Western influence. Instead, he was stuck for two weeks in a Chinese backwater where all the radios were blaring the love theme from Titanic.

Fortunately, Tribeca is no Titanic. For one thing, it is nowhere near as costly to produce, despite the hefty price of star power and the rambling screening schedule that runs people over more distance than the New York Marathon. But like the movie, it has reached the weird and wired point of wall-to-wall PR pervasiveness while still not being able to answer one simple question: Why?

So what is the point of the Tribeca Film Festival? Originally, it was suppose to help resurrect the New York art and culture scene after the 9/11 attacks. Obviously, after this attack the arts and culture crowd were on the verge of relocating to New Rochelle and something had to be done. Unfortunately, the first stage of planning for such a festival was already taking place before Sept. 11, so this may be a little bit of PR marketing hype.

OK, how about the idea that the festival helps to bring important attention to the urban scene of the surrounding area? Which it does, sort of. Too bad this kind of gets into the concept of gentrification and all of its negative consequences (where the arts are used to bring in major investors who spend lots of money building condos and lofts that no artist can afford to live in, and after a while, the upscale clients move in and really, can’t somebody get rid of those deadbeat artists who are still hanging around?).

Skip that one. How about networking for independent filmmakers? Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Again, sort of. But not by that much. Tribeca does showcase a tremendous amount of modest-budget productions, and their short film showcase is an incredibly valuable resource. If you have the money, the time and the subway schedule, it’s a fantastic screening resource. But it has yet to become a market for such films. It’s not a place where distributors go to buy movies.

The main festivals for marketing a movie are still Cannes (despite its ridiculously inflated prices for everything under the ample sun), Sundance (both in spite of, and because of, Robert Redford, depending upon what sort of mood he’s in), Toronto (despite its more mainstream feel), and Telluride (despite the most harrowing plane ride you will ever take in your life). These are still the places where people go to buy films for distribution. Tribeca is where you go to see emerging stars going to films. All stars, no deals.

Which is fine for the audience. But increasingly the function of most festivals is business, and this has been the strange weak zone for Tribeca. It seems determined to be all bustle but no hustle, which is ironic, since you would expect New York to provide ample servings of both.

– Dennis Toth

For the past several months, there has been the steady drum beat proclaiming that despite the current economic crisis, the film industry remains recession proof. The reason is simple…. Oddly enough, this is when the drummers go silent and start praying for the brass section to cut loose with a nifty fanfare.

Unfortunately, the brass section was laid off last week, and even the piccolo players are soused and drowning their sorrows with a bottle of the only proof that is currently holding steady.

Yes, the notion that the film industry is recession-proof is a myth. Much like Santa Claus, it is fun to believe in. Unlike Santa Claus, it will never inspire any cute poems or fun songs or sweet cookies. Instead, it simply obstructs discussion and makes murky some very basic issues.

The myth exists because of a deeply flawed understanding of history. During the Great Depression, the Hollywood studios pretty much survived intact and, seemingly, business boomed. Like all great half-truths, this is just part of the real picture. Too bad half-truths don’t add up to much.

In reality, the old Hollywood system was a vertical and horizontal monopoly that allowed it to operate with an extremely successful grip on the industry. Yet by 1933, film attendance dropped by nearly 40 percent. Suddenly, the old studio moguls realized there was a depression going on (they were actually oblivious until then). Ticket prices were lowered, dishware was handed out as a freebie, and movies underwent a radical shift as the flapper age of the 1920s gave way to the working class toughness of the 1930s.

So yes, Hollywood survived. But it also became very, very different.

Today, there are really no studios. Instead of a monopoly, we have conglomerates — vast, faceless, interlaced companies spread out across the globe with holdings in a wide variety of businesses. These media empires are suppose to sail through turbulent waters without a noticeable bounce. This is another myth — more like the Easter Bunny, only the eggs are not boiled and make for a heck of a mess when cracked.

The current economic crisis is affecting so many different sections of the entertainment industry at once that the conglomerate structure is proving more vulnerable rather than resistant (e.g. the way Fox is paying for the failure of its overseas television division, or even the way Disney is paying for almost every other part of its empire). Instead of providing reinforcement, the multiple components of the corporate structure have begun feeding off of each other in a desperate bid to survive. Meanwhile, senior executives and producers grab at virtually any gimmick in hope that it will provide the magic touch. Yesterday, it was the tent pole movie. Then the return of 3-D. Tomorrow, it will probably be movies produced and delivered through the human DNA structure (I’m not sure I’m actually making this one up).

But what is really going to happen is very simple to guess: budgets will have to come down. Plain and simple. Sure, many in Hollywood still think that big budgets are the way to go, which in Vegas circles is called doubling-down. It never works, and merely means there are a lot of folks about to line up for a 12-step program. Personally, I hope to be running it — I hear these things are profitable.

The reduced budgets mean that increasingly movies will have to be smaller, not bigger, and just maybe will have to appeal to something more than 12-year-old boys. This means getting back to basics. Things like scripts (with actual plots, maybe) and actors (that is, people who can actually perform scripts), and maybe, just maybe, subjects that have some passing relationship to reality as we know it (though that may be asking for too much).

In many respects, I am describing the European model. Oddly enough, some of the financial players in the European system are the only ones who act as if they have read a newspaper lately. They’re looking at the market as extremely tight but manageable if approached in this direction. They’re looking at new models and, more importantly, they’re taking a focused, reality-based approach to the changes being forced upon the market.

On the other hand, Hollywood is still focused on big and bigger. That won’t work (it never does), but it’s the only current notion that’s given any credence — that and the near mindless drive to do remakes (oops, I mean re-imaging) of old TV series (it has just been announced that there will finally be a big-screen version of Father Knows Best — by the way, I’m quite aware that I’m one of the few people alive and cogitative who even recalls what this 1950s series was about).

It will change, but it will take time. Perhaps a very long time. Meanwhile, the ship of fools sails gaily against the historic wave.

– Dennis Toth

There are many ways to raise money for a low-budget independent film. Bank robbery is one. Unfortunately, the current economic crisis makes it one of the less rewarding ways (unless you happen to be a banker, in which case you are already engaged in this pursuit).

That leaves open the more painful task of begging. It is a tedious process that has been best described as comparable to crawling naked through a field of broken glass. And that’s a description I’ve heard from those who were ultimately successful in this pursuit. Those who are unsuccessful tend to vanish into a silent mist that softly hovers just above the abyss.

There are no easy answers and no sure schemes for success. There are many paths toward failure, some of which are well lit and promising. Sometimes the successful road resembles a dead-end back street that no one in their right mind would ever have thought of. Don’t forget, the old De Palma movie Obsession only got made because a group of high-flying dentists in Cincinnati needed a tax shelter for their loot.

So I can make you no promises that I have a clue as to how to raise money (if I did, I would do it for myself). But I have a few clues how not to fund a movie.

Credit Cards: Personally, I never completely bought the Robert Townsend story about how he funded the production of Hollywood Shuffle back in 1987. Sure, he may have maxed out some cards on lab bills and basic production costs. But ultimately, the monthly repayment schedules, high interest fees and rigid credit limits would make this approach nearly impossible.

Grant Money: There are a wide variety of grants available from state and federal institutions. They tend to be extremely limited in the amounts available and at best, are mostly useful as a means of finishing post-production work on a small film. The whole grant process was once summed up to me by a senior VP at PBS: “Every year we have one grant and 100 applicants. By the end of the process, we will have 99 people pissed with us and one ingrate.”

George Clooney: Actually, not such a bad idea. If you can get George (or someone like George) to sign with the project, you’ve suddenly got some contact room. However, George is not taking our calls. I suspect he will not be taking yours, either.

Write a Really Good Script and Shop It Around: Great idea; get in line. Even the kid serving you latte at the coffee shop has a script to show. Heck, some of the scripts are even pretty OK. But it doesn’t matter. Producers don’t like to read scripts. Bankers won’t read scripts. Directors only “quote” scripts. The only person in Hollywood who is known to actually read a script is (oddly enough) Kate Capshaw. She filters them for her husband. If you have to ask who he is, you need to get another form of employment.

The Detailed Presentation: To approach anyone for funding, you have to do a presentation. Legends abound about the perfect pitch (e.g. It’s Charlie’s Angels crossed with Bonanza), but in reality the high concept pitch only works for a few occasional highs. Details are essential, as long as they are not boring and don’t involve much explaining — and definitely no reading. So how about some visuals? Sam Raimi got funding for the original Evil Dead film by first shooting a super-8 version and using that as a preview reel. Currently, people are peppering YouTube with various types of scenes for proposed movies (a French-based special effects artist is virtually creating an abstract science-fiction movie in this manner). So far, there has been no major success story from this method. But eventually, it will happen.

– Dennis Toth