Thompson On Hollywood

Grindhouse Stays One Film in U.S.

Contrary to various reports, the Weinsteins will not slice and dice the two halves of Grindhouse in the U.S. Last weekend the distributor quietly experimented with advertising Planet Terror and Death Proof's individual show times (without separating the films) in several markets including Memphis and San Antonio. The three-hour 11 minute movie is playing best in New York and L.A. and fair in the top ten movie cities, but is dying everywhere else. The experiment failed. Both movies performed exactly the same as they did in other flat markets.

From here, the Weinsteins are launching a longer version of Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, to be enhanced by some 10-15 minutes, at Cannes next month. The two films will be released around the world in June and July. If they succeed as separate pictures, there remains a possibility that the company could consider a later limited art-house release. But the likely scenario is that they will look to recover their investment through DVD sales.

Weinsteins Face Grindhouse Setback

Rather than dive into the well-plowed turf of Grindhouse's dismal b.o. prospects, the NYT's Michael Cieply uses the double-feature's misfire as a hook for a story that carefully sifts through the Weinstein Co's financial situation, yet gives Bob and Harvey the benefit of the doubt. This piece is a classic example of how a major mainstream newspaper can at the same time gain access, report the hell out of a story, yet remain fair and objective enough to keep the subjects from wanting to kill the messenger. The final piece does not read, as many stories about the Weinsteins do, as though they succeeded in spinning the writer. You can be sure they tried. The NYT is taken seriously by all their Wall Street investors.

While I have been dismayed by many of the Weinsteins' moves in the past few years, I'm encouraged by a sense that they are returning to their roots as champions of films they actually care about, even as they've been distracted by trying to build a strong business to support them. (I have suspected them of being too big for their britches, a tad grandiose in their reach.) But nothing is going to work if they don't succeed at producing and distributing those films. Yes, their investment in the homevideo company Genius was a good move, but do they want to make movies that only succeed on DVD? I don't think so. They still want to win an Oscar or a Palme d'Or or two.

Now that Grindhouse will go out as two movies in all foreign markets, not just English-language territories, and likely in the U.S. as well (something the NYT story does not address), Robert Rodriguez's half, Planet Terror, will have a shot at playing to the horror crowd. And I have many cinephile friends, many of them women, who were put off by the gross-out flick and will now flock en masse to Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof. Let's see what happens.

A slice of the NYT piece is on the jump:

Rodriguez Talks Grindhouse to Siegel

Just because Grindhouse is floundering at the boxoffice doesn't mean it's all over. Just because it didn't work as w wide-audience commercial release doesn't mean that discerning cineastes shouldn't still FLOCK to see it, because Grindhouse is a whole lot better than all the other crap out there. (I for one, continue to be dumbfounded by the positive attention that Paul Verhoeven's Black Book is getting. This movie is a tonally warped, over-the-top, misguided take on World War II Holland under Nazi occupation.) The photo above from Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof captures some of the great energy Grindhouse has; here's some video of Robert Rodriguez talking with ABC critic Joel Siegel about how he and Tarantino learn from each other.

Grindhouse Disappoints

Grindhouse did not, as they say, open. It came in fourth with a $11 million gross on 2624 screens with a running time of three hours and 12 minutes.

What went wrong? Let's list the ways. Grindhouse was a cult concept, with a cult following. It was the kind of movie critics praise (Metacritic gave it a very good 78) but it was beat by Ice Cube's execrably reviewed comedy Are We Done Yet? (Metacritic ranking: 39). Many audiences said: "I don't have three hours." The Rodriguez half of Grindhouse was for horror fans, and was far too gross for women, who might have liked the Tarantino half, which is a total female empowerment flick. My friend in Chicago who eagerly took a pal on opening day reported about 30 people in the theater. Not a good sign.

The whole point of this exercise was TO DO IT CHEAP! The movie probably cost far more than the Weinsteins' claim of $53 million. With total P & A costs the movie probably sneaks close to $100 million. What happened is what happens to all movie companies when name talent have the clout to hold their financeers for ransom. That is, the two directors spent beyond their combined $40-million budget because they wanted their movies to be as good as they could be. Performance anxiety trumps prudence. Rodriguez spent to make his trashy send-off of grade-B horror flix as gruesome as possible (he also melted down over the breakup of his marriage and the production had to shut down for a month; the Weinsteins ate that cost). And Tarantino shot and shot and shot to score the best possible car chase finale. Marrying those two movies into a digital internegative and final film print at the last possible minute wasn't cheap either.

Ideally, the Weinsteins would have been at the top of their game, with a lot of clout behind them, and insisted that the directors file two movies at one-hour each. Which is what they were supposed to do in the first place. Doable. The movies would have been cheaper, easier to watch and sell.

But in their current guise, without a slate of hits behind them, the Weinsteins had no choice but to let the filmmakers do what they wanted. Both Rodriguez and Tarantino gave them a lot over the years and stuck with the brothers after they left Disney. The filmmakers wanted the movie to go out through Dimension and not MGM; they wanted the Weinsteins to book and sell and market and care, deeply, about making the movie work. There was plenty of awareness of this movie. That's why it tracked so well. But on Easter Holy weekend, Ice Cube was a bigger marquee draw inside his market niche than an ensemble of stars few have heard of in a violent R-rated splatterfest homage to movies few ever saw--Kurt Russell was the biggest name of the bunch.

It's also telling that the loud internet chatter didn't translate at the box office. Young men and film fans are the easiest to reach on the web, but Grindhouse needed more. It should have opened in fewer theaters and built up an audience. But at that negative cost, the Weinsteins needed to go wide selling their brand-name directors--who were playing strictly to their core, with no crossover. The movie will plug along for a while, but the Weinsteins will have to make their money back overseas (where the films will be separate) and on DVD, where the running time won't be an issue. In the digital home movie universe, more is more. UPDATE: Femme Fatale reacts to the opening, as does everyone and their mother on The Hot Blog. Other theories, anyone?

Here's the WSJ story on the Weinstein's $53-million marketing gamble (subscription required, see paste below).

Grindhouse Wrap-Up

Check out the comments on Glenn Kenny's fun, Grindhouse-inspired blog post.

Rotten Tomatoes has info on where Grindhouse is premiering Thursday night in 13 cities. And early reviews are running at 87% on the tomatometer. That's damned high! We'll see what Friday's reviews bring.

Here's IGN Film Force's interview with Planet Terror's Michael Biehn and Jeff Fahey.

Talking Grindhouse Trailers

Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth, Rob Zombie and Robert Rodriguez talk to Rolling Stone about the Grindhouse trailers.

McCarthy Reviews Grindhouse

I've been waiting to read Todd McCarthy's review of Grindhouse all week. Because of various embargos, it didn't post online until last night. Here's a sample:

The 1970s exploitation movie gropes, bites, kicks, slugs, blasts, smashes and cusses its way back to life in "Grindhouse," a "Rodriguez/Tarantino double feature" that lovingly resurrects a disreputable but cultishly embraced form of era-specific film production and exhibition. A pair of pictures devoted to re-creating their progenitors' grubby aesthetics and visceral kicks, but with vastly greater budgets, higher-end actors and a patina of hipster cool, they part company when it comes to talent and freshness. The numerous marketing problems for this bizarre pop-culture artifact begin with the three-hour-plus running time and young auds' unfamiliarity with the format. But the B.O. strength of "Sin City" and "Kill Bill" alone suggests the helmers' loyal followings will produce a very potent opening frame, with fairly steep fall-off thereafter in the manner of most horror films.
The United States may be the only territory, however, where the whole shebang will come out as one feature, as each picture will be released separately in slightly longer versions overseas.

As genre rehabs go, "Grindhouse" is more daring and audacious than most, partly due to its conception as an entire program complete with two pictures, four tailor-made trailers and various for-real interstitial bits, but more so because of its stylistic fidelity to its source material. Hollywood cinema, from "Jaws" and "Star Wars" onward, is filled with B-movie material served in A-picture bottles, but Robert Rodriguez's "Planet Terror" and Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof" mean to reproduce the shot-on-the-run look and feel of genuinely down-and-dirty pics of 35 years ago, all the way to scratchy prints and missing scenes. One certain difference: Neither early George Romero nor the original "Gone in 60 Seconds" had seven-minute end credits scrolls listing things such as director's chef and greens gang bosses.

UPDATE: The NYP's Lou Lumenick adds some Grindhouse links and questions the Weinsteins' print campaign.

Tarantino's Beverly Grindhouse Program Review

Dennis Cozzalio reports from L.A.'s Beverly Grindhouse series.

New York's Own Grindhouse

In honor of Grindhouse, Rodriguez/Tarantino's hommage to schlock houses, Lou Lumenick tracks down the real deal: a NY grindhouse.

Grindhouse Premieres in L.A.

After all the Comic-Con build-up and rumors about length, rating and rushing to the finish line, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino delivered their salacious, leering, gross, disgusting, violent B-movie splatterfest in the nick of time to screen it Monday night at L.A.'s downtown movie palace The Orpheum. The movie hits theaters April 6.

The audience groaned and screamed and ducked in their seats with sheer pleasure throughout the three-hour running time. At the tent party afterwards the debates ranged on which trailers were best, was Rodriguez better than Tarantino, etc. It all depends on your own taste. You could argue that red-blooded males will love both, while more discerning males and women will vote for the Tarantino. But who knows?

The movie is broken into two 85-minute halves; one trailer (Machete) unspools in front of the first and three more (Rob Zombie's Werewolf Women of the SS, Edgar Wright's Don't and Eli Roth's Thanksgiving) in front of the second. Rodriguez's film, shot digitally, is a wild careening episodic crazy zombie flick with tongue planted firmly in cheek, artificially scratched and mauled to resemble the crap B-movies he and Tarantino are honoring. That the scene in which a mutating dripping gloppy Tarantino attempts to rape peg-legged femme fatale Rose McGowan (who comes off well in this flick, as does her stalwart gun-toting swain, Freddie Rodriguez) passed with an R-rating not only surprises me but Tarantino and Rodriguez as well. Check out their interviews on MTV.com. "Did you forget about the melting penis?" they ask incredulously.

As grungy and entertainingly gross as Rodriguez's Planet Terror is, Tarantino's Death Proof is sleek and 35 mm gorgeous, smartly written and paced. It delivers a satisfying female empowerment pay-off as Kurt Russell plays a bad guy who makes Snake Plissken look like a wimp and stuntwoman-turned-actress Zoe Bell (above, with the directors) delivers the goods in an extended (dangerous-looking) live-action chase sequence that leaves Thelma and Louise in the dust.

Print reviews should start breaking by week's end.

[Photo by Wireimage]