Hawking Stephen (and Other Ideas on How Movies Can Bring In Frozen Assets)

Today, as a companion piece to its new live-action Cinderella, Disney is releasing a seven-minute animated short, Frozen Fever. This is, of course, a spin-off of the 2013 megahit Frozen, using the same characters and talent to rake in more moolah from little girls—and big ones—who can’t get enough of  Anna and Elsa. A recent business-section article in the Los Angeles Times (titled “Disney Works to Keep ‘Frozen’ Hot”) explains that the spunky Nordic sisters are so popular with consumers that “ retailers don’t want to let them go.” Today you can buy Frozen-themed dolls, dress-up wigs, iPhone cases, and adult-sized lingerie. There are also Frozen T-shirts, dental floss, notebooks, and (for all I know) frozen peas. The challenge for Disney is to figure out in advance the point when demand for all this Frozen merchandise starts melting away.

Disney has always been great at dreaming up marketing tie-ins: remember the Davy Crockett Cap? And the aggressive merchandizing of movie megahits has been with us at least since Star Wars. But even in the  late 1960s, studios were trying to exploit their hot pictures in the commercial marketplace. In 1968 the new Century City Shopping Center (located on what once had been the back lot at Twentieth Century-Fox) held a week-long promotional event celebrating Bonnie and Clyde. Thousands of potential shoppers turned out for a Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow look-alike contest, a Tommy gun display, and storefronts decorated with simulated bullet holes. I’m sure many Bonnie berets and mid-calf skirts were sold. It’s surprising that another big hit of the era, The Graduate, never attempted to capitalize on Mrs. Robinson’s sexy animal-print jackets, skirts, and unmentionables. But the makers of Camelot launched an ambitious loungewear line featuring romantic Queen Guenevere peignoir sets, a Lancelot “mini jumpsuit,” and Court Jester two-toned culottes. Too bad Camelot was an expensive flop—and no one bought the clothes.

 Cut to 2014. No, this wasn’t a huge year for runaway prestige hits. The makers of comic-book movies featuring Spider-Man, the X-Men, and others of their ilk know all about selling to their built-in audiences. But the films that made it to the top of the heap on Oscar night have been a modest bunch. Most could definitely use some extra revenue. As a Roger Corman veteran, I’m always alert to unexpected financial opportunities, and so I offer up (tongue very much in cheek) some free marketing suggestions for the year’s Best Picture nominees.

   

 For the Stephen Hawking biopic, The Theory of Everything, the obvious tie-in is with a medical supply house. But there’s also an early bit of romantic business involving Tide detergent. Sounds like a marketing opportunity to me. Boyhood? Cameras make sense, given the lead character’s choice of vocation. And how about hair clippers? Selma is a tough one—but possibly (given the role of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the film) dental bridges? The Imitation Game, all about code-cracking, could be linked to decoder rings for the kiddies. But since the material is very adult, how about a brand of apples? (Those who remember how Alan Turing died will surely see the connection.) Whiplash has a natural tie-in to drum kits, but also to band-aids (to protect bleeding fingers). The Grand Budapest Hotel is easy: travel packages and a patisserie that delivers its goodies in pretty pink boxes. Birdman seems ripe for an action figure, and how about the brand-name tighty-whities worn by Michael Keaton in Times Square? And then there’s the year’s box-office champ, American Sniper. An opportunity for a branded shooting range franchise?

OK, I’ll stop now.
 

Forget Me Not: The Elusive Lines of Michael Gambon

Sad news on the theatre front. Sir Michael Gambon, one of those magisterial British actors who do so well in part that require innate dignity, is retiring from the stage. Moviegoers best remember Gambon for taking over the role of Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films, following the death of Richard Harris. But he’s been making movies since he played a spear-carrier in Laurence Olivier’s 1965 cinematic adaptation of Othello. I remember him in Gosford Park and in Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut, Quartet.

                                    

Yet the classically trained Gambon, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, was first and foremost a stage actor. Over a period of 53 years, he’s performed the plays of Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Samuel Beckett. Simon Callow, a fine actor himself, has hailed Gambon for his ability to conquer the enormous main stage of Britain’s National Theatre: “Gambon's iron lungs and overwhelming charisma are able to command a sort of operatic full-throatedness which triumphs over hard walls and long distances.”

Recently, though, Gambon has butted up against a problem that is death to any stage performer. Now in his seventies, he suffers from short-term memory loss that has made him struggle to remember his lines. In 2009 he twice succumbed to panic attacks during rehearsals, because the words just wouldn’t come. Extensive medical tests cleared him of any sign of Alzheimer’s, but that didn’t make his plight any easier. He tried to avoid stage roles requiring massive amounts of dialogue, and finally went so far as to try wearing a prompt ear-piece while rehearsing a West End show. As he put it, “There was a girl in the wings and I had a plug in my ear so she could read me the lines. After about an hour I thought, ‘This can’t work.’ It’s a horrible thing to admit but I can’t do it. It breaks my heart.”

Fortunately for the rest of us, Gambon plans to continue on with his stellar film and television career. His situation accentuates some key differences between stage and screen performance. Movies are made in fits and starts: you rarely speak more than a few snippets of dialogue at a time, and when things go awry, do-overs are always possible. What’s exciting about live theatre is its continuous flow. Stage actors shaky in their lines can’t stop and correct themselves, nor look to someone in the wings for help. Yes, there are moments when even the most experienced performer “goes up”  (as the British say) on his or her lines, but such flubs must be overcome without the audience realizing that anything’s amiss. No wonder that actors find the stage so exhilarating, and also so scary. It’s a high-wire act, which is why some of the greatest performers of all times have suffered from debilitating stage fright. Gambon’s problem is sadder still, in that it seems to be physical as well as psychological. But at least we’ll be able to enjoy him in a medium that often depends more on powerful close-ups than on the ability to master long strings of polysyllabic words. 

Speaking of movies, one of 2014’s oddities is the fact that writer-director Alejandro González Iñárritu chose to shoot Birdman as though the entire film were one continuous take. This required meticulous rehearsal, and a cast committed to seizing the moment. Featured actress Emma Stone describes the process: “There was no luxury of cutting away or editing around anything. You knew that every scene was staying in the movie, and like theater, this was it, this was your chance to live this scene.”

Lullaby of Birdman (aka Gone Guy)

Two of today’s most talked-about films, Gone Girl and Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), both focus on the hot topic of media celebrity. Gone Girl dramatizes the way members of the viewing public, egged on by TV commentators with biases of their own, choose up sides when faced with scandal or crime of a particularly heinous nature. If you’re unlucky enough to be featured on a TV news broadcast, you’ll inevitably find yourself typecast as either a villain or a victim. And you’ll discover along the way that changing public perception is by no means easy.  

Birdman – which appealed mightily to my sense of humor and sense of wonder – concerns itself with the world of actors. It belongs in the category of movies (including everything from Forty-Second Street to Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway) that chronicle the staging of a Broadway play, taking us behind the scenes to meet actors with large egos and larger insecurities. In Birdman, there’s a priceless performance by Ed Norton as a cocky Broadway Method actor, and an appealing one by Naomi Watts as a fading Hollywood beauty both thrilled and alarmed at the prospect of making her debut on the Great White Way. 

But Birdman belongs to Michael Keaton, whose long career includes outrageous roles in two early Ron Howard comedies (Night Shift and Gung Ho). Also in the 1980s, he starred in the popular role-reversal comedy Mr. Mom, then put on the cape and mask for Tim Burton’s Batman. The latter film surely helped prepare him for Birdman: in it he plays a former Hollywood he-man who, having once walked away from the fourth film in a popular superhero franchise, now wants to revive his reputation by presenting himself as a serious New York actor/director/playwright. His stage adaptation of a grimly realistic Raymond Carver short story couldn’t be more different from the films in which he made his name. The joke is that, though Broadway insiders scorn Keaton’s character as an over-the-hill interloper, the public still considers him royalty. That’s why they’re ready to respect anything he does, however misguided. It seems that playing a caped crusader on the big screen is clearly a form of godliness.   

I won’t go into the many surprises that grace Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film, except to praise the way he balances magical moments with the nitty-gritty of the New York theatre world. We see a lot of an actual 44^th Street theatre, whose cramped backstage hallways and grimy dressing rooms belie the glamour most of us associate with Broadway. The script, which convincingly portrays the tangle of emotions most actors know all too well, also has fun with insider references  ranging from Robert Downey Jr.’s superhero chops to Meg Ryan’s plastic surgeon.

 In this context it’s worth noting that the number of Hollywood legends who look for legitimacy on the Broadway stage continues to rise. In the recent past, Scarlett Johansson has trod the boards in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Tom Hanks just starred in an original called Lucky Guy. Daniel Radcliffe, trying to shed his Harry Potter mantle, has done everything from a musical (How to Succeed in Business) to a take-your-clothes-off drama (Equus). Michael Cera is currently wowing critics in This is Our Youth, but not every Hollywoodite receives serious critical respect. The public, though, remains starstruck.

During the annual Tony Awards ceremony, honorees continue to imply that acting on a  Broadway stage is somehow far more noble than mere movie-making. Still, Hollywood celebs sell tickets, and New York seems happy to let their stars shine bright.