BY BEN WINTERS
This
continues to be an unprecedented season of good news for the National
Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Late on Oct. 27, the House-Senate conference
negotiating the appropriations bill for 2004 agreed to increase the NEA's
budget by nearly seven million, to $122.5 million. Newly minted NEA chair
Dana Gioia, clearly delighted, called it a 'special budget increase' and
deemed it the start of 'a new era at the NEA.'
'Congress'
action was not merely a budget vote,' said Gioia, 'It was a vote of confidence
in the value and the vision of the agency.' That vision has lately included
the Challenge America initiative, a favorite of Gioia's, which is designed
to spread the arts, like so many apple seeds, through America's poorer
communities.
The
best part is that the appropriations increase is in addition to the 2004
Defense Appropriations bill, which last month gave a million bucks to
the NEA to bring the Shakespeare in American Communities program to military
bases.
Don't
worry, European readers'your countries still spend much, much more (on
average) on arts and culture than ours does.
Passion
Play(Ing In A Theatre Near You)
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Jim
Caviezelgives a shocking performance
in Gibson's Passion |
Mark
your calendars for Feb. 25'unless you're Catholic, in which case your
calendar was already marked for Feb. 25'that's Ash Wednesday. It is also
the date that Mel Gibson's much-talked-about Jesus epic, Passion, will
open at last in theatres, so we can all see for ourselves if Mad Max really
is a big anti-Semite. It took Gibson some doing to find a distributor
for the picture, not surprisingly considering the subject matter and the
controversy it has already generated; ultimately it landed with Newmarket,
says the Associated Press, 'an independent distribution company that specializes
in publicizing and securing theatres for such art-house films as Memento,
Real Women Have Curves, and Whale Rider.'
The
other big Passion story was that the movie's assistant director Jan Michelini
was apparently struck by lightning not once but twice in the course of
filming. He's fine, suffering only singed fingers and the humiliation
of having been dubbed 'lightning boy.' The second bolt'which also grazed
Passion star Jim Caviezel'caught Michelini when 'the crew was on a remote
location a few hours from Rome [and] a storm rolled in and Michelini'carrying
an umbrella, was standing beside Caviezel on top of a hill.'
Moral
of the story: Îf you're going to make a movie claiming to represent
the word of God, don't stand on top of a hill in a lightning storm carrying
an umbrella. The coincidence of the release date and the lightning story
generated this marvelous headline, for the site Movies.com: 'Passion Attracts
Distributor, Lightning.'
Screamers
Re: Screeners
It
has long been accepted practice in Hollywood to send out 'screeners,'
or video copies, of movies to people who need to see them in advance and/or
at home and/or more than once. People like the people who vote for the
Academy Awards, for example. A studio with a nominated films obviously
has a vested interest in making sure all the Oscar voters see it. But
what about members of the Hollywood Foreign Press association, who vote
for the Golden Globe awards? What about members of the Screen Actors Guild
(SAG) and Director's Guild of America, and the Los Angeles Film Critics
Association, all of whom give out their own annual prizes? Do all these
jokers need free copies of the new movies, especially with film piracy
an ever-more-pressing issue?
The
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) now says nope.
The
opening salvo in the screener war was fired by MPAA chief Jack Valenti,
who claimed in Entertainment Weekly that 'My antipiracy department experts
saw that of the 68 titles sent out [last year], 34 were pirated, and all
of them were traced back to screeners.' At the tail end of September,
the MPAA announced a ban, to the great displeasure of people who like
to get free movies sent to their house'and in Los Angeles, that's a sizable
lobby.
SAG
and the DGA voiced their outrage at their screeners being yanked, and
a coalition of independent filmmakers released a joint statement arguing,
'This last minute policy change will seriously diminish the diversity
and quality of independent films immediately, and the mainstream film
industry in the long run; Oscar consideration is a primary motivating
factor behind the funding of riskier films, those of more serious content,
films with ambitious narrative aspirations. Lacking Oscar potential, these
films will not be made.' Signees to this seemingly dubious statement included
luminaries like Robert Altman, Steve Buscemi, and John Waters.
About
a month later (after the Los Angeles Film Critics Association canceled
their annual awards'anybody notice?) the MPAA backed down, though really
just enough to get headlines saying they had reached a compromise. They
said that Oscar voters, and Oscar voters alone, could get their screener
rights returned'no dice for the critics associations, artists unions,
and other once-privileged communities that will now have to go see the
damn things in the theatre with the rest of us losers. What this outcome
creates, at least according to the Hollywood reporter, is 'the prospect
of dividing the film community between screener haves and have-nots.'
But the fact that the MPAA is 'favoring the Academy over other awards
groups' shouldn't be surprising'the Oscars is obviously the most prestigious
and talked-about awards'but there is sure to be lingering resentment from
everybody else.
For
example, the resentment expressed towards Valenti in an open letter from
SAG, reprinted in part in the New York Times: 'The implication of your
action is that you regard SAG members as less trustworthy than academy
members.' The worry from folks like SAG is that smaller movies will have
a tougher time getting noticed'or, as The Writers Guild of America (WGA)
West president argued in a statement, the screener ban 'tilts the playing
field from small to large.' Of course, as the Hollywood Reporter article
points out (kind of meanspiritedly), the WGA was one group that never
really got screeners in the first place.
Le
Millionaire
The
return of 'Joe Millionaire' answered one of the questions that some people
have been wondering'and have been annoyed at themselves for wondering'for
months: how are those brilliant, misogynistic scumbags at Fox going to
pull off this trick again?
The
answer was right there all along: go to Europe. You probably didn't watch
the first episode of Next Joe Millionaire: A Foreign Affair. (I'd say
probably because most people didn't: 'In its most surprising twist yet,
the second outing of last season's biggest new hit opened with a paltry
6.6 million viewers,' reported USA Today). Fox had to go to the Continent
to find 14 lucky ladies who had never heard of the original series, and
they went so far as to give the Eurotramps lie detector tests to be sure.
'The
women know Smith is a cowboy but think he has recently inherited $80 million,'
summarizes Vince Horichi in the Salt Lake Tribune. 'In reality, and what
the winner will be told in the end, is that he really makes about $11,000
a year.' (That's last year'next year he'll make at least 10 times that
in endorsements'if people start watching this thing, anyway.)
ArtsLine has a great idea for a reality show: watching Fox executives as they decide which unknowing population of females will have a fake millionaire foisted upon them next'Martians? Zoo animals?