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By Steve Mason
August 10, 2006
Will World Trade Center Be Hurt By The Gandhi Effect?
Back in 1993 when Sir Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (Columbia) expanded to 734 screens, distribution execs were looking for a big number. It generated only $2.7 million that weekend (on its way to a total domestic gross of $53 million). That weekend was dramatically below expectations.
Prior to Gandhi's wide release, everyone was talking about it. This was the most important and decorated film of the year. It seemed like it was the movie to see. At cocktail parties and country clubs from coast-to-coast, people were raving about Ben Kingsley's performance. At water coolers everywhere, there were discussions about the importance of non-violence. The buzz never paid off at the box office despite 11 Oscar nominations and eight wins including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor.
The bottom line is that it was really the movie to say that you saw. If you were an intelligent person – or you wanted to be perceived as an intelligent person – you were forced to pretend that you wanted to see or had seen Gandhi.
The Gandhi Effect is fairly common. For example, everybody seems to like The Charlie Rose Show on PBS, but nobody can tell you any of his guests last night.
Paramount has positioned Oliver Stone's new World Trade Center as patriotic, inspirational and uplifting. But does anybody really want to relive the horrific events of September 11, 2001? Does it make for a night of entertainment on a summer weekend just a month before the five-year anniversary of this American tragedy? Sure, people say they're going to see it, but will people really "pick this awful scab" and experience 9/11 in a movie theatre no matter how well-made the film is?
This is really the first film of the new regime at Paramount. "Gail Berman and Brad Grey made the exact film that Oliver Stone wanted to make," says Paramount Executive VP and Sales Manager Don Harris. "People think that Oliver is coming from a different place, but this film is patriotic and emotional."
And controversial – but not in the way that Stone films like JFK, Nixon and Natural Born Killers have been. The notoriously liberal writer/director is putting a smile on the faces of right-wingers from George W. Bush to Sean Hannity by making an explicit link between 9/11 and the Iraq War. In fact, conservative firebrand columnist Cal Thomas calls World Trade Center "one of the greatest pro-American, pro-family, pro-faith, pro-male, flag-waving, God Bless America films you will ever see."
It is this red-state, Fox News Channel appeal that will overcome The Gandhi Effect. With Iraq devolving into a potential civil war, Israel and Lebanon on the brink of a broader conflict and Iran and North Korea refusing to dismantle their nuclear programs, Americans are looking for a positive message from the rubble of lower Manhattan.
"World Trade Center is made to be entertainment," says Harris. "People want to laugh, cry and be provoked. This picture moves people and that's what movies are all about." He says his oldest daughter was living in Manhattan on that fateful day and her boyfriend had an apartment facing the World Trade Center. Despite the trauma, she arranged to see an early trade screening. "She wanted to see it as soon as she could."
When World Trade Center was positioned for this week on the calendar, Paramount execs decided that it wasn't respectful or smart to open on Friday, August 11. After all, this isn't Friday the 13th or The Omen taking advantage of 6/6/06. Plus the feeling is that, with a Wednesday opening, the film has a couple of days to build some positive word-of-mouth and overcome any lingering Gandhi Effect.
Paramount will be very happy with a five-day opening of $20 million. It's a tough film with some marketing challenges to overcome. But the tracking is apparently very strong with 36% Definite Interest and 85% Awareness. Plus all four quadrants – males under 25, males over 25, females under 25 and females over 25 – look strong.
I say that World Trade Center surprises to the upside in a big way. It will top $30 million and could even see $35 million for the five-day. For Friday-Sunday, it should generate $20-$23 million. That'll be enough to place second behind the still-strong Talladega Nights.
World Trade Center – By The Numbers
Top 5 Oliver Stone-directed Films - Domestic Box Office
Platoon - $138,530
Any Given Sunday - $75,520,000
JFK - $70,405,000
Natural Born Killers - $50,282,000
The Doors - $34,416,000
Top 5 Nicolas Cage Films – Domestic Box Office
National Treasure - $173,008,000
The Rock - $134,069,000
Face/Off - $112,276,000
Gone In 60 Seconds - $101,648,000
Con Air - $101,117,000
There are three other new wide releases this weekend, but only one of them will do any real business – Buena Vista's Step Up directed by Anne Fletcher. This is a teen-driven dance film with an attractive young cast including Jenna Dewan (Take the Lead) and Channing Tatum (She's the Man, Supercross).
Among Fletcher's credits is the choreography of Halle Berry's physicality in Catwoman (that loopy film was choreographed?), but she's got a tried and true premise here. Boy from the wrong side of the tracks and some
dangerous dance moves meets prim and proper girl with a buttoned-down dance style. They combine skills to create a new kind of dance that is controversial at-first, but soon quiets all doubters. Oh, right. They also fall in love.
Step Up will play with females, especially the under 25's, Look for $11-$14 million.
Step Up – By The Numbers
Top 5 Dance Movies of the last 10 years – Domestic Box Office
Save the Last Dance - $91,057,000
Coyote Ugly - $60,786,000
Shall We Dance - $57,890,000
The Full Monty - $45,950,000
You Got Served - $40,363,000
Zoom, starring Tim Allen, will definitely break Sony's string of summer successes, which have included The Da Vinci Code, Little Man, Monster House and Talladega Nights. Allen plays a former superhero who is brought out of retirement to train a group of kids at a superhero academy.
This Spy Kids rip-off has virtually no awareness in the marketplace. I'm told that the Definite Interest number is just 16%. As with any kid-driven movie, the whole story doesn't show up in the tracking, so there are more warm bodies here than research indicates. But, it's crowded in the kid market with Monster House and Barnyard (plus Talladega Nights and Pirates 2 are still pulling in the younger set. I put Zoom at a meager $6-$8 million.
Zoom – By The Numbers
Top 5 Tim Allen Films – Domestic Box Office
Toy Story 2 - $245,852,000
Toy Story - $191,796,000
The Santa Clause - $144,833,000
The Santa Clause 2 - $139,226,000
Galaxy Quest - $71,583,000
Finally there's Pulse from The Weinstein Company. This is the sort of down-and-dirty horror flick that Bob and Harvey used to regularly churn out through their Dimension Films. Something has gone wrong here. Pulse doesn't have one.
The premise here is that dead people are suddenly able to get to us through our cellular phones and computers. (Maybe this is just a not-so-subtle way that the movie business is trying to get me to stop reading e-mail on my Blackberry in darkened theatres.) With a nondescript cast including TV's Veronica Mars, Kristen Bell, and pop star Christina Milian, this picture isn't moving the needle. I'm told that that the tracking shows Awareness at only 29%, which is considerably lower than the Awareness for last week's horror entry The Descent (Lionsgate). Pulse will miss the top five altogether with $5-$7 million.
Pulse – By The Numbers
Top 5 Horror Films of All-Time – Domestic Box Office
The Exorcist - $232,671,000
The Mummy Returns - $202,019,000
The Mummy - $155,385,000
The Blair Witch Project - $140,539,000
The Ring - $129,128,000
Order of Finish for Friday, 8/11- Sunday, 8/13
Talladega Nights - $28 million
World Trade Center - $22 million
Step Up - $13 million
Barnyard - $8 million
Zoom - $7 million
Can Quinceanera (Sony Classics) Play To A Latino Audience?
A quinceanera is a coming-of-age ritual for Latina girls when they turn 15. Think of it as a Latino version of the Jewish bar mitzvah/bat mitzvah. Its ancient roots are in Aztec culture – when young men went off to fight, their young wives were given a party to celebrate their coming into womanhood. As Mexico became a predominantly Catholic culture, the quinceanera became filled with Christian iconography and content.
Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland have co-written and co-directed Quinceanera (Sony Classics), which uses this Latina right-of-passage as both a backdrop for a soapy tale and as metaphor for a gentrifying neighborhood in Los Angeles. This sweet and honest film opened on eight screens last weekend and generated $11,900 per screen, only trailing Little Miss Sunshine ($25,000 per screen) and Talladega Nights ($12,300 per
screen).
The film tells the story of Magdalena, who is preparing for her quinceanera, when she learns that she is pregnant. Her deeply religious father kicks her out of the house, and she moves in with her great-granduncle Tomas and her cholo cousin Carlos, who has been kicked out of his house for being gay. This oddly-matched trio forms a makeshift family. When a gay, white couple purchases the property that includes the house where they live, it turns their lives upside down.
Previously, the Glatzer/Westmoreland duo made the modestly successful The Fluffer (2001), which was an outrageous comedy set in the world of gay porn. I asked Glatzer why so much time has passed since their last film. "Making independent film is never easy. You've got to come off of something really successful to line something up quickly. Although if we wanted to make another comedy about gay porn, we probably could have."
Quinceanera is really a love letter to their Echo Park neighborhood in Los Angeles. It is where Glatzer and Westmoreland make a home together in a long-standing gay relationship. They previously lived on the edge of West Hollywood (near Melrose and La Brea). "It was cold and impersonal," says Glatzer. "We had neighbors with a driveway they never used, but if somebody blocked it, there'd be trouble." They moved to a little, predominantly-Latino cul-de-sac in Echo Park, and their neighbors were very different. "They were more social. It felt warmer. It went against every clichéd idea about Latino neighborhoods. We never saw gangs or violence. The neighbors are laid-back and easy-going." They'd regularly see chickens roaming around the neighborhood, and everyone on the block would take care of the neighborhood dog.
They were the first gay couple in the neighborhood. It was never discussed, but they assumed everyone knew. "We haven't run into any prejudice whatsoever," says Glatzer. To the contrary, the families in the neighborhood began to involve them in their lives. A 15-year-old neighbor girl was having her quinceanera, and they agreed to provide the photography.
This is where Richard and Wash began to develop their idea for the movie. "The quinceanera is a beautiful mix of the old and the new. It feels like an ancient ritual. It involves different generations coming together as a community," explains Glatzer. They were also impressed by how seriously the kids take it. They seem "LA street" but they learn, rehearse and perform waltzes and routines with real commitment.
On January 1, 2005, they conceived the film. They immediately found investors. "I've had the experience of looking for money for years, and never finding it. Everything on this project just fell into place," Richard says. They had the money and went into pre-production before they even had a script. "The investors would tell us, ‘Get it moving. We want our money back.'" Ultimately, the script was written in just three weeks. Many of the actors are non-professionals from the neighborhood. By January of 2006, the picture won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance.
From idea to the most-decorated film at Sundance in less than 13 months must be some kind of record. "It should have been a disaster" says Glatzer. "A month and a half to prep a movie. It takes longer to prep a quinceanera."
You would think that Glatzer and Westmoreland would have left Park City with a deal from a specialty distributor last January. After collecting their hardware, they thought they'd be inundated with offers. Instead, they were repeatedly told that their movie was a "tough sell" because of its gay content. The gay couple in the film have certain parameters in their sex life where three-ways are allowed, but separate affairs are not. Magdalena's gay cousin Carlos becomes entangled in this complicated relationship.
"Distributors asked ‘How do you sell it?'" explains Richard, "As a Latino movie? As a gay movie? As a teen movie? As an art movie?" In describing why they committed to Sony Classics a month after Sundance, he says, "Sony loved the movie exactly as it was."
Which brings us to my original question. Can Quinceanera play to a Latino audience? There is a stereotype that Latinos are more squeamish about gay issues than the general public at large. Yet, at Q&A events around Los Angeles on opening weekend (8/4-8/6), Glatzer and Westmoreland noticed a lot of Latinos. Glatzer called Sony Classics on Monday and encouraged them to open the film in some Latino neighborhoods as a test. This Friday (8/11), Quinceanera will open in the predominantly-Hispanic neighborhoods in greater Los Angeles - Commerce and South Gate.
I'm betting that Latino audiences will appreciate this little gem of a film in the same way that the arthouse crowd did last weekend. This isn't a gay movie or a Latino movie. Quinceanera is about a neighborhood that is changing through gentrification. What happens when a little corner of the world becomes more diverse – white, Latino, gay, straight, old and young? What does that newly gentrified world look like? Is gentrification necessarily better?
The central metaphor is the quinceanera. Echo Park – the neighborhood where Glatzer and Westmoreland live and where they made this movie - is going through its right-of-passage right now. Real estate prices are on the rise, new buyers tend to be wealthy and white, and longtime Latino residents will find it tough to stay on as renters.
Growing up is hard for teenage girls - and for gentrifying neighborhoods. It can be uncomfortable. Something is gained, but, also, something is lost. And, a certain sweetness can hopefully be preserved.
Quinceanera – By the Numbers
Recent Latino Coming-of-Age Films – Domestic Box Office
Selena - $35,231,000
Y Tu Mama Tambien - $13,839,000
My Family - $11,079,000
Real Women Have Curves - $5,853,000
Raising Victor Vargas - $2,078,000
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