Hollywood
Inc
BBC
TWO, June 2002
Hollywood
Inc. takes you inside the dream factory that is the American film
industry, and reveals the process that takes a film from concept,
through production, to opening weekend - blockbuster… or bust.
Box-office profits and lucrative spin-off have made Hollywood a
£20 billion-a-year industry and inevitably everyone wants
a piece of the action. Hollywood Inc. explores the elusive recipe
for success to discover why so many films fail.
This
three-part series strips away the gloss of the opening night and
exposes the struggles, infighting and determination required to
see a film through to completion. Interlaced with film extracts
are exclusive interviews with Hollywood’s major players, including
Ridley Scott; Pierce Brosnan; Oliver Stone, Bill Mechanic, Fox Studio
Chief 1996-2000; Bryan Singer, director of The Usual Suspects and
X-Men; William Nicholson, writer of Gladiator and Shadowlands; Wes
Craven; Denzel Washington; John Malkovich; Peter Guber, former Head
of Sony and producer of Batman and Batman Returns; Dean Devlin,
producer of Independence Day and Godzilla; Akiva Goldsman, writer
of A Beautiful Mind; and Tim Burton.
Shut
it Down
Shut
it Down examines the nightmare of movie production, looking at the
roles of the key players in the production process - the star, the
writer, the producer, the director. Making movies is one of the
most dangerous investments with only one film in ten succeeding,
and it is in production that it is most likely to fail. If a studio
has to close down a movie, then heads will roll. From Titanic to
Charlie's Angels, Gladiator to Dr Dolittle, X-Men to Scream and
Jurassic Park, Shut it Down explores the production process with
exclusive first hand accounts by those who were there.
Many
films march into production before they are ready - without a completed
script as illustrated by Gladiator; or in the case of Bryan Singer's
X-Men, without a leading actor. Once sets have been built and extras
recruited, the juggernaut is on the road and the studio is losing
hundreds of thousands of dollars by the day. The pressure is then
on the director to work through and produce a hit. Ridley Scott,
with the aid of writer William Nicholson, was able to do just that
in the face of great adversity on the set of Gladiator.
The
studios often use stars as insurance, they can mean the difference
between a hit or a flop. Often it is the star's name that got the
project green-lit in the first place. However their involvement
can cause multiple problems. For the remake of Dr Dolittle with
Eddie Murphy, Fox were presented with an unusual problem: "The
first thing that we find out is that Eddie's afraid of animals…
we have half this movie where he's in scenes with animals…
so a lot of the animals that he interacts with aren't real, and
there's a lot of cutaways," says Bill Mechanic, former-Head
of Fox.
Behind
the scenes difficulties arise with disagreements between the studios
and directors; both sides threatening closure of the set in a war
between box office certainty and artistic integrity. The hit movie
Scream was not without its production problems: Bob Weinstein, Mirimax
Studio Chief, objected to the use of the ghost face mask - now synonymous
with the film's success - insisting that that Wes Craven re-shoot
the opening scenes with seven different masks until he decided on
the one he liked best.
"I
just said how dare you be so disrespectful to the man who basically
invented the (horror film) genre?… Here’s another idea.
We cut together the first sequence of the movie and send it to you.
And if you think we suck after that you can fire us all," says
Cathy Konrad, Producer of Scream. On receiving the footage Weinstein
was thrilled and gracious in his sanctioning of the production.
Lightning
in a Bottle
"More
and more now I’ll get the script before the filmmaker will
get it or I'll be involved in hiring the filmmaker. I guess the
more you move up the ladder the more they come to the actor first.
I just got an offer last night on a film for Paramount, and there's
no director attached and they want to sit down with me and see who
I'm interested in," Denzel Washington.
The
primary rule in Hollywood is that stars sell movies. The second
part of Hollywood Inc examines the impact that big names can have.
Producers reveal how their choices have shaped films, and how they
discover the major league players of tomorrow.
Every
year the studios pursue a handful of stars to front their major
summer blockbusters. However, even with this firepower, success
is not guaranteed. Columbia chanced its luck on Charlie's Angels
which, in addition to a top cast, was a recognisable brand due to
the iconic television series. The problems began in pre-production
with the surprising appointment of an unknown pop-promo maker as
director, McG, who had never before worked on this scale. Rumours
abounded of squabbles on set amongst the leads, and with 18 writers
added to the mix, the outlook was not good. That aside, Columbia
threw money into the advertising campaign, and the movie was saved.
As
author and journalist Kim Masters observes: "When you see that
many writers you sort of go, woo, something's wrong. And yet they
pulled it out, which only proves the point that Hollywood is an
insane business which is completely unpredictable. I mean there's
this goofy movie that sounded so dumb, and had so many problems
and so many writers. And commercially it really worked."
When
confronted with a failure, a studio will quietly release the movie
and bury it a few weeks later. A notorious example of this is Town
and Country with Warren Beatty. Failure, though rarely discussed,
hits everyone in Hollywood. "It's a massive rejection and you
do personalise it, especially guys like me who are very passionate,
we’re suckers for that," says Oliver Stone.
Without
a winning story, even a star cannot make a film shine brightly.
To guard against this, film-makers tend to look for established
source material - books, comics, video games, television shows -
on which to base their scripts.
The
second most successful animation film of all time, Shrek, was presented
to John H. Williams at DreamWorks by his young son. It is at this
stage, the pitch, that writers and producers have to persuade studios
to part with millions of dollars to realise their dreams. There
are occasions when the perfect script arrives at their door - Alan
Ball’s script for American Beauty at DreamWorks; and yet other
instances when even multiple writers cannot salvage the story -
Paramount plumbed the depths of script hell with Lara Croft: Tomb
Raider.
Bill
Mechanic recounts the highs and lows of his time as Studio Chief
at Fox when he oversaw some of the most successful movies of recent
years, but this was to end with Fight Club. It began life as a low
budget art movie, on which he and the producer Laura Ziskin took
a risk - they knew if it were to fail that would spell the end of
their time at the studio. A fight was on against budget, and their
boss's disapproval of the subject matter. It proved a box office
flop, and the writing was on the wall.
"It
really made me conscious of the fact that every movie you make you
may get sacked, so you may as well get sacked for something you
believe in," says Bill Mechanic.
Battle of the Blockbusters
The
measure of success of any Hollywood film is its opening weekend.
Battle of the Blockbusters examines how careers can be lost, and
fortunes made, in just two days. With so much at stake, millions
of dollars are spent releasing each studio picture.
"You
start to get numbers back from the East Coast about midday on Friday.
And you know right then. It's crazy how early you know if you’re
in good or bad shape. You spend two years writing, prepping, working,
shooting, cutting, designing this film. And then it's a matter of
two or three hours and you know if you have a hit or a turkey,"
says McG, director of Charlie's Angels.
It
is the summer blockbusters where this pressure is most intense -
these films are seen as funding for the rest of the studio's output
each year, and failure is not an option.
"Hollywood
is a very ruthless, competitive jungle and if you perform well and
your film performs well everybody loves you, but the second you
fail you are spat out like everybody else. It is a lot of pressure,
but that's why I like it in a way - there's a kind of adrenaline
about risking everything on a huge budget," says Simon West,
director of Tomb Raider and Con Air.
The
final programme explores the marketing campaign for these releases.
Following the testing, star-studded premières, merchandising,
and parties, Hollywood Inc illustrates the lengths that the studios
will go to ensure that their movie hits number one at the box office.
"Marketing
geniuses at the studios will tell you (that) you can absolutely
buy an opening weekend if you’re willing to pay for it,"
says Charles Fleming, author.
Testing
is a key part of the production process before a film emerges fully
in the public domain. Ronald Bass, scriptwriter of Rain Man and
Entrapment, acknowledges the benefits of this process, particularly
in light of his experience with My Best Friend's Wedding: "A
lot of writers are very hostile to the testing process - and I was
for years. The older I get the more I like the testing process,
because the more I learn how much smarter the audience is than the
rest of us… (The results of the testing for the film) weren’t
bad, but not like we were hoping for. We were hoping for this monster,
fabulous movie that everybody would adore. My God, we had Julia
Roberts, how could we hope for anything less?" The test audience
reaction precipitated changes being made and scenes added, which
led to My Best Friend's Wedding being a huge hit.
Once
a film is ready for release, a glittering première is staged.
With Pearl Harbor, Disney left nothing to chance… "So
they’ll send you a first class ticket and invite you to go
to Hawaii, Pearl Harbor… What did they spend on that? Was it
$5m just on the publicity junket? I mean that used to be what you
paid for a movie… It was outrageous. But they expect something
back for it," says Mike Walker, columnist for The National
Enquirer.
Other
highlights of the final programme include Ridley Scott viewing the
Hannibal posters for the first time; Robert Rodriguez explaining
the benefits of a fast food chain backing for his film Spy Kids;
what went wrong with the campaign for The Mexican starring Brad
Pitt and Julia Roberts; and how films and stars weather the reviews.
To
accompany the series, BBCi Films shows exclusive clips of the programme’s
interviewees alongside an interview with the series producer/director
Phil Day. Other highlights include top blockbuster film facts and
information on the series.
Notes
to Editors
www.bbc.co.uk/hollywoodinc
goes live from 29 April.
A Darlow
Smithson production for BBC TWO.
Series Producer/Director: Phil Day.
Executive Producers: David Darlow and Nick Ware.
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