Pink Cadillac
There was another movie to be released alongside Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at the end of May, but very few would be keen on remembering it. Especially the film's star: Clint Eastwood.
Much like Spielberg, Clint Eastwood was in a bit of a slump at the box office and he was also, like Spielberg, about to enter into one of the more interesting eras in his long career. Pink Cadillac, however, is definitely from the chapter of the book that Eastwood would want to forget.
After Sudden Impact in 1983, Eastwood was largely hitless. Tightrope under performed. City Heat was an abject failure. Pale Rider and Heartbreak Ridge garnered some good critical notices, but the films could translate those reviews into boffo box office and both fell only slightly in line with Warner Brothers' expectations. In 1987, Dirty Harry Callahan got his send off in The Dead Pool, which yielded modest gains despite being the least in the series and not exactly setting the world on fire at the box office, and was probably better known for showcasing smaller roles from future megastars and the uncanny use of Guns N Roses' Welcome to the Jungle.
Eastwood's personal life was also a shambles in this period. His then wife Sandra Locke was about to file a $70 million palimony suit against him, claiming infidelity with numerous women, including his soon to be Pink Cadillac co-star Frances Fisher. It was a long, drawn out battle that was fought in a very public forum. The saddest moment of the whole affair probably came when Locke publicly admitted to having two abortions while married to Eastwood.
Eastwood wanted to do something light before pursuing what was then his labour of love, the thinly veiled John Houston "biopic" White Hunter, Black Heart. Pink Cadillac was a script that had been pushed on him for years with little interest, but now that Dead Pool director Buddy Van Horn was on board, Eastwood felt the familiarity would do him well if he were to take on the project. That's probably a good thing because Clint was about to be very much out of his element.
Pink Cadillac was intended to be a silly sort of throwback to the kind of films Eastwood made with Clyde the orangutan, only instead of a primate, the audience gets stage legend Bernadette Peters. Clint plays Tommy Nowack, a bounty hunter hired to hunt down Lou Ann McGuinn (Peters), who is on the run from her counterfeiter husband, in the titular stolen vehicle, who has managed to run afoul of a gang of white supremacists known as The Brotherhood.
How is any of this funny, one might ask? Because Tommy is a mater of disguise. Throughout the course of the film Eastwood adopts silly voices (with his already very distinct rasp) and even sillier costumes to play everything from a shock jock DJ to a casino high roller to a racist redneck (no Gran Torino jokes, please). Not relying too heavily on comedy, the second half of the film feels like more of a throw back to Clint's previous film The Gauntlet and becomes a typical shoot-'em up. That has to count for something, right?
Having such a can't miss premise means Warner Brothers had nothing to worry about with Pink Cadillac and could have focused on the vastly more troubled Lethal Weapon 2 and Batman.
Yeah, that was sarcasm.
Business (all figures unadjusted)
Opening Weekend: $6 million
Total Domestic Gross: $12 million
Screened in Toronto at Hollywood and Uptown
What the Critics Said
"Pink Cadillac is a mess and not for fans who prefer Clint Eastwood straight up. Though overlong (122 minutes) and tonally uneven, never quite getting its tonal shifts quite right, it is not unentertaining, and Eastwood is relaxed, even attempting comedy." - John Harkness, Now Toronto
"It is the laziest sort of action comedy, with lumbering chase scenes, a dull witted script, and the charmless pairing of Mr. Eastwood and Bernadette Peters." - Caryn James, The New York Times
"As a deeply personal work about free-floating existential identities, this film has the kind of grit and feeling that few action comedies can muster... interesting and unpredictable throughout." - Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Andy Says:
I remember last month, a friend of mine bought the huge Clint Eastwood Warner Brothers collection chronicling 35 of the films he made for them. I remember remarking how the set came with a free coaster since City Heat and Pink Cadillac were housed on the same disc. While neither is the worst film he has done (that's still Paint Your Wagon), they are really worthless.
The tone of the film is all off. Eastwood, for what it's worth, is having fun playing the clown, but it often feels like your crazy uncle has infiltrated your family barbecue and is off his meds again. Peters is clearly a stage actress and ever so barely stays afloat here. The subplot involving the white supremacists is as insipid as it sounds and the climax is far too dark for such lightweight material. Also, this in no way needed to be 122 minutes long.
It should be noted that this film features an actor who could have pulled off the role of Tommy better than Clint. Fellow Dead Pool co-star Jim Carrey, who made a very positive impression on Eastwood, has a bit part here. The script would still need work, but Carrey as a wisecracking master of disguise? That is something with potential to be a summer blockbuster.
I wonder if Martin Davis and Paramount CEO Frank Mancuso Sr., at the height of their animosity with Warner Brothers, shot up and said "Fuck yeah! Indy killed Pink Cadillac! In your face, bitches!" He might of, but I am almost positive Warner Brothers could have given a shit less either way. This was a film that seemed never destined to succeed.
Conclusion
There is no real explanation as to why Warner Brothers chose to counterprogram an Indiana Jones film with this. Was it in hopes of luring in the older crowd. Sometimes there just is no reason. That is a perfect example of counterprograming that doesn't work.
Clint would get his wish to make White Hunter, Black Heart, but after that film and Pink Cadillac, he would never take any big risks as an actor again. Whether the roles in his films were good or bad is up for debate, but all the roles he took post 1989 were safe bets. He would eventually take more chances as a director, but a huge part of Eastwood the actor died with Pink Cadillac.
To make matters worse, Cadillac made six times what the costlier White Hunter, Black Heart would make, forcing Eastwood to atone by directing and starring opposite Charlie Sheen in the buddy cop picture, The Rookie. His settlement with Locke would eventually come from the profits he made from his true comeback with Unforgiven in 1992.
The Also Rans
The week after Last Crusade and Pink Cadillac was a quiet week with two new releases that did very little to set the market on fire. The New Line Cinema (who was then still a fledgling independent biding their time until Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child dropped at the end of the summer), Columbia Pictures, World Wrestling Federation co-production No Holds Barred debuted at number two behind Last Crusade. If you ask Vince McMahon or Hulk Hogan, they will tell you they almost beat Indy for the top spot (if by almost, you mean made $18 million less in second place). The film quickly sank. Universal also released the buddy cop action film Renegades, starring Keifer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips to thunderous silence and a fourth place debut. Neither are entirely worth mentioning except out of curiosity and the need to be a completist.
Star Trek V: Where Few Men Have Gone Before
Let me start by saying that on a personal level, I have only a passing interest in the Star Trek series. I have done my research (and I could have done far, far more, but many texts involving the making of the films can not be easily accessed on short notice), but if I say anything that grossly contradicts something you have heard in terms of series canon (which I have no interest in discussing at the moment), please feel free to tell me or to, you know, keep it to yourselves. Matt Brown will be along later in this segment to nerd out with you guys. I'm just here to present the facts and context.
The Star Trek series of films seemed to defy the law of diminishing sequel returns. The fourth film in the franchise, The Voyage Home, was the first film in the series to cross the hundred million dollar mark domestically in 1986. The notion of a fifth film wasn't much of a stretch, but getting it made proved harder than originally forecast by Paramount. The again, thanks to the heel dragging of Star Trek's captain James T. Kirk, the making of the fourth film wasn't the easiest thing, either.
Leonard Nimoy was tapped to direct Star Trek IV based on his success helming the third film in the franchise. Depending on who you believe and who is actually telling the truth, William Shatner held up the filming of the fourth film due to extended contract negotiations. Ask anyone at Paramount and they will tell you that Shatner was jealous of Nimoy always getting what he wanted despite the fact that without Kirk you can't have a Star Trek film. Ask Shatner, and he will say that he was fighting alongside his fellow cast members in a battle for a greater cut of profits and residuals. Ask Nimoy, and he will tell you that he blasted Shatner in the press before the start of production on The Voyage Home. Ask Shatner about that and he will say Nimoy was in on the fix the entire time.
One thing about the whole "he said, she said" affair that is true is that in his Star Trek contract, Shatner had what is known as a "favoured notion clause." Essentially, that just means that whatever any of his fellow cast members get as perks, he also has to get. Apparently since Nimoy had now directed two films in the series, this now somehow entitled Shatner to ask to direct his own film in the series. Getting Paramount to agree to his request to write and direct a fifth film was surprisingly easy. Shatner cornered Paramount CEO Frank Mancuso Sr. at the premiere party for The Voyage Home and simply asked. Mancuso said yes on the spot, probably thinking that it would appease Shatner and that keeping the franchise largely in-house was the best idea.
Shatner, influenced by the rise of televangelists Jimmy and Tammy Fay Baker, set about to create a story about the crew of the Enterprise running afoul of a holy man named Sybok who claims to be the Messiah. Shatner and long time series producer Harve Bennett (who almost quit after having to deal with an increasingly demanding Nimoy on the fourth film) hashed out a story that went through the wringer more than several times. The actual scripting duties fell to David Loughery (Dreamscape, Flashback) who had to rush his job several times due to an ongoing writer's strike. By the end of the writing process, little remained of Shatner's original ideas (including the film's title which was changed from An Act of Love to The Final Frontier), and the story now centred on Sybok taking Federation hostages to a "holy land" known as Sha Ke Ree and hoping to find God. Oh, and Sybok also turned out to be Spock's brother. Late spoiler alert.
The production of the film itself was not only troubled because of the writer's strike, but because of a Teamsters strike just as the film was to start shooting. Scabs were used to make sure things got going on schedule, but when a production truck blew up on the Paramount lot the day before shooting was to commence, people seemed to take notice. The shoot began with tough exterior shooting at Yosemite National Park where everything that could go wrong did, from heat to trucks that were constantly breaking down. When the shoot switched to sound stages, it didn't go any easier thanks to cut rate practical effects courtesy of the notoriously tight fisted Mancuso, who was sinking most of his production budget into Last Crusade. It didn't help that Shatner was a bit of a hard ass on his cast and crew, constantly pushing them to the breaking point, especially in the early days of production.
The troubled production saw no solace in post production, either. The film was in need of heavy editing that Shatner could not bring himself to objectively oversee himself. Most of the film ended up being recut by Bennett to bring it down to a studio mandated running time of two hours or less. Making matters worse, the preferred special effects house for the past two Star Trek films, Industrial Light and Magic, was unable to accommodate the film. The ILM A-squad was busy on Last Crusade, while the B-team was heavily invested in Ghostbusters 2. The effects rendering was sent off to a much smaller company in Hoboken, New Jersey that had never attempted anything on this scale before.
Despite all the grumblings and the final push (meaning, rush) to complete the film, Paramount positioned Star Trek V with a pretty enviable release date between the juggernauts of Indiana Jones and Ghostbusters 2 with hopes that the film would do great business in it's important opening weekend and then clean up with overflow from the larger releases over the next few weeks. Who cares if the film tested poorly when it was put before test audiences? A brand name has to count for something, right?
Business
Opening Weekend: $17.4 million for first place
Final Domestic Box Office (at the end of the summer): $50.5 million
Screened in Toronto at The Uptown (70mm, which it was actually shot in for the most part), Hollywood (70mm), Sheraton Centre
What the Critics Said
"There is a large amount of alcohol being consumed on screen. Everybody seems to be getting sloshed. Maybe they read the script." - Gene Siskel, Siskel & Ebert
"Star Trek V: Shatner's Folly (the subtitle is mine) handily takes the hollow crown as worst in the series. It's bloated, bombastic, and maddeningly pretentious." - Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
"Mediocre at best, but possessing some odd gay subtexts. Very strange, extremely laboured, and William Shatner is no director." - John Harkness, Now Toronto
Matt Brown Remembers
The destruction of Star Trek V at the box office is the most credible example of how the Summer of the Sequels could spell the death of crap movies. Star Trek V was, bear in mind, the direct successor to the most successful film in the franchise right up until the release of the 2009 reboot, 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Nowadays audiences tend to be a film behind – look at the ludicrous box office on Hangover 2 – but they caught up a lot quicker back in 1989. I was pretty new to Star Trek that summer, having only come aboard with The Voyage Home and the tail end of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but I plainly remember Star Trek V being a bizarre, offputting experience from nearly start to finish. Remember, I was twelve years old, and me and my best friend (also a Trek geek) were sneaking Playboys into his back yard for thorough perusal that summer… but nothing was more necrotic to our burgeoning interest in naked ladies than that horrific sequence of Uhura dancing nude on the sand dunes of Nimbus III. Lookit – don’t get me wrong – as an adult, I think Nichelle Nichols to this day is one of the three or four most beautiful women alive. But mixed into the creepy, creaky mire of Star Trek V, she was part of an outright flabbergasting failure of a film to do any of the things I wanted it to do.
Andy Says
I'm really not the person to get into a pissing contest with over Star Trek minutiae. In truth, other than the films, I have very little to say about the series as a whole. Some of the films work and are very entertaining. Some of them don't. Star Trek V really doesn't work, but I can see some idea of what could have been an interesting topic for a film. It is a film that ultimately feels out of touch with its core audience and seems to be reaching at themes that its novice director just couldn't pull off.
I have always had a theory as to why Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was the biggest box office success of the franchise. It has nothing to do, as some might think with the impending start of Star Trek: The Next Generation (which was already in its second season when Final Frontier was released). From the works of directors like Cronenberg (with Videodrome and The Fly), Cameron (with The Terminator and Aliens), and Verhoeven (with Robocop), science fiction films of the 1980s were very much films about the horrors of technology rather than the wonder that can come from advancement. Sci-fi enthusiasts who didn't want to feel bad about themselves at the end of the day really had no place to turn other than to the more genial adventures of the Starship Enterprise. Combined with a decidedly left wing environmental message that also resonated with the crowd that would appreciate the darker sci-fi of the era, was both something different for audiences and a return to familiarity.
For a series that seemed to pride itself on being light and thoughtful entertainment, maybe making a film about the nature of God wasn't the way to go. I have a feeling few people were clamouring to have their science fiction and religious speculation played out on screen with some of their favourite characters. Shatner's inexperience as a writer and director shines through at every turn as he is trying desperately to seem erudite, but cram in as much of the off beat humour that made the previous entry a success. This film hold fast to my belief that any film that features a sequence where character sing "Row, row, row, your boat" is a bad one.
Conclusion
It might not have been just the content that killed Star Trek V. It was more likely than not the release date, as well. The series had previously been released for Thanksgiving and with the change in date, more of the familiarity with the series went away. The film did do better on home video and led to another ancillary gain for Paramount. The film ended up becoming profitable thanks to series and canon completists, but one would be hard pressed to find many defenders of this film.
Dead Poets Society: Carpe Diem
In 1985, Disney was no longer considered a major studio. It might seem hard to believe, but when Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg came over from Paramount in the early part of that year, the House of the Mouse was on life support. The company had been largely spinning its wheels, making almost all their money off the home video market (from catalogue titles, not new releases) and their theme park. The theme park was eating up so much money there almost wasn't anything left over for film production. With parks in Europe and Japan on the way and an $800 million investment to finish Epcot Centre, film wasn't exactly a high priority for the once mighty family film distributor.
Disney's market share had dipped to an all time low of just 2.8% by 1983, behind the bankrupt MGM and the soon to be bankrupt mini-major Orion. Large amounts of money were lost on costly failures like Tron and The Fox and the Hound (which to date is the lowest grossing "proper" Disney animated feature). Disney was also partly responsible, alongside Paramount, for the costly Robert Altman bomb, Popeye. Their long in gestation and deeply troubled animated epic The Black Cauldron was about to be released to confusion, mild outrage over its violent content, and almost deafening indifference by audiences. Even their television branch was fledgling, with their newly launched Disney Channel operating at an average loss of $28 million a year for the first five years it was on the air. There was, however, one inspired angle on the side of Disney's production side.
In 1984, then Disney CEO Ron Miller created the subdivision Touchstone Pictures (pretty much as he was on his way out the door). The goal of Touchstone was to start creating more adult based fare that could not be released under than corporate figurehead's name. The first film released by Touchstone was the only hit Disney had in 1984, the Tom Hanks comedy Splash. When Katzenberg (president of film and television) and Eisner (Chairman and CEO) came on board, they saw increased production on the Touchstone side as a way to turn the company around. Their short term goal was to make about 10 to 12 films a year under the Touchstone banner and 3 or 4 family films under the Disney brand, which had become tarnished by the bland and dull output from the past few years. The biggest obstacle for this plan to work was that Disney had so much money tied up in their theme parks that there was no money left to produce that many films.
Katzenberg and Eisner raised the money almost on their own through limited partnerships they called Silver Screen Partners. By 1988, these partnerships were raising almost $300 million a year for film production. By as early as 1986, things were turning around, and by 1988, Disney became the comeback story of the decade by claiming the highest percentage of market share for the year on the strength of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Good Morning, Vietnam, Cocktail, and the late 1987 holdover Three Men and a Baby. The common element of all those films? All of them were Touchstone productions.
Tom Schulman's script for Dead Poet's Society would reach the desk of Katzenberg in 1986 and was optioned almost immediately. The script was loosely based on the first time screenwriter's experiences with a teacher who inspired him growing up in Nashville and included some pretty hefty literary references that Eisner was always concerned about. Eisner gave Schulman two options to leave the script in development at Touchstone, either cut all the references or move the action to a Northern private school where audiences would be more likely to believe students talking about mythology and transcendentalism. Schulman changed the setting without much arm twisting and the process of finding a star and director began.
Shortly after his success with the film Academy Award nominated box office smash Witness, Peter Weir was approached by Touchstone to make what was to only be his second major studio picture. Many critics who were more familiar with Weir's early work in Australia (Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Year of Living Dangerously) thought the subject material was beneath the director, but in truth it was a film that Weir could deeply relate to. Weir grew up going to such an academy and he put a lot of his own personal experience into the film.
At various points Dustin Hoffman, Liam Neeson, Sean Connery (who back out due to Indiana Jones and was also approached for the role of Cybok in Star Trek V), and Bill Murray (who had to drop out due to production overruns on Ghostbusters 2) were all attached at one point to play the lead role of inspiring teacher John Keating. Touchstone then turned to the Julliard trained actor who gave them one of their biggest hits of the past few years, Robin Williams. Good Morning, Vietnam was the first film to make audiences take not of Williams' dramatic abilities while giving the audience the same kind of wackiness that they wanted. The film was a box office smash despite being rated R, and while the studio always pushed for Williams to take the role of Keating, it was Weir who was hesitant to cast him out of fear that he would ad lib and riff far too much for his liking.
Production on the film was not without its troubles, despite being an ostensibly modest production. Filming took place over Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks in late 1988 at several all boys academies in Middletown, Delaware. Weir was able to reign in Williams considerably and the two got along well enough that towards the end of the shoot, Weir gave Williams the ability to go back and add his own touch on certain sequences. The biggest trouble was that Disney has miscalculated the amount of time and money it would take to shoot the film. Weir, who wanted to make a good impression on the studio, was often trying to shoot 15 to 20 set ups a day towards the end of the shoot, nearly hospitalizing himself in the process. He never wanted to ask for help, so Disney simply gave it to him by increasing the budget by $5 million and giving him an extra 15 days to shoot and edit the film.
Disney knew very well what was on the line for the summer of 1989 and they had a different release strategy for all three of their major releases. Disney was also the only major studio to not have a sequel on their release slate (unless you count Orion's tepid offerings of UHF and Great Balls of Fire). With most of the film production budget sunk into the previous year's Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the upcoming animated film The Little Mermaid (which despite it's November release was already being heralded a return to form for Disney animation), Disney turned to Dead Poets Society and Turner and Hooch on the Touchstone side to bookend the summer, and the Disney produced Honey, I Shrunk the Kids to provide a family friendly option in a summer that was largely devoid of family friendly options.
Dead Poets Society was to get a platformed release in the summer in much the same way Academy Award contenders were released in the winter. The film would open on 6 screens on June 3rd and then expand gradually from there. The gamble was designed to appeal to people who would think that by this point, such a release was a sign of prestige. The gamble would ultimately pay off in what was to be the biggest sleeper hit of the summer.
Business
Budget: $18 million
Opening weekends: June 3rd weekend, on 6 screens: $1.6 million. June 9th weekend, on 687 screens, $7.5 million for third place behind Star Trek V (2,202 screens) and Last Crusade (2,320 screens)
Per screen average for June 9th weekend: $10, 976
Opened exclusively in Toronto at Hudson Bay Centre Plaza on June 3rd.
What the Critics Said
"Dead Poets Society is a trivial manipulative film hiding in the body of a serious one." - John Harkness, Now Toronto
"For all its formula, Dead Poets Society sure does feel like it comes from a sincere place" - Scott E. Weinberg, DVDTalk.com
"The movie deserves attention, respect, and finally graditude. Especially at the start of a sequel laden summer." - Richard Schickel, Time
Andy Says
I will come back to Dead Poets Society later this summer when we talk more in depth about programming for adult audiences while maintaining youth appeal, but I will give my own brief personal impressions of the film. While expertly crafted and well meaning, the film is at times overly dark and melodramatic, bordering on painfully obvious sentiment and featuring a bunch of subplots that don't entirely gel. The concept of a teacher as a performer was nothing new by this point and Schulman's love of Goodbye Mr. Chips shows through despite all of Weir's well thought out art direction and cinematography. It's not that the film isn't entertaining, it's just that it is a well worn and familiar concept. Having said that, there was something incredibly ballsy about releasing a film that heavily references Thoreau, Emerson, and Keats in the middle of the "summer of the sequel."
Conclusion
Remember in the introduction when I said that only one summer blockbuster was able to translate its success into Academy Awards nominations? This was that blockbuster, garnering nominations for Williams and Weir, the film, and winning for Schulman's screenplay. The film would continue to play well throughout the summer and saw a spike in business again towards the end of the season, just in time for school to start.
Prizes added to the prize cache:
1 DVD copy of Dead Poets Society
1 Blu-Ray Star Trek films box set
Next Time:
Too hot to handle, too cold to hold, they're called the Ghostbusters and they're in control. Briefly.
Sources forthcoming, but available upon request.
No comments:
Post a Comment