…dropping a penny in a beggars cup and then patting yourself on the back for being so magnanimous

It the Hollywood executive feel-good movie of the summer.

Hollywood executives aren’t exactly up on non-profitable social conduct. Generally. A few faux-pas are to be expected.

Expect to see “Perception” cancelled tho.

While I am by no means defending the Hollywood execs here, I’ll say this: years ago I worked in the theatrical distribution group at Warner Brothers (the group that handles collecting all the money from theaters when a movie opens) and a move like this is probably about the best one could expect from these folks in such a short time. Considering the records for an opening weekend that Dark Knight Rises was expected to set, and since distribution execs live to gloat over setting such records, for them to give it up even for one weekend is kind of a big deal in that world.

I’ve also read that the studio has been working overtime to re-edit quite a few TV spots for DKR and to yank the trailer for Gangster Squad, which has a scene in which gangsters with tommy guns shoot up a crowd at a movie theater. Again, these seem like obvious moves, but when you’ve got several thousand prints of a trailer attached to several thousand prints of a movie all over the country, it’s a lot of work in a very short amount of time while under a lot of pressure, and you might be damaging future profits for that movie by taking its trailer out of circulation on a big weekend. I remember working on a team that had to pull the trailer for Collateral Damage (featuring a terrorist bomb killing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wife and kid) the day after 9/11, and the execs were calling us about every ten minutes to confirm we had pulled it from every theater in the country. So the studio is not just contenting itself with this box office numbers reporting thing.

And that’s the first and last time I will probably ever defend Warner Brothers for anything.

Well, I kinda figure a) they have to do something, and b) there’s not a hell of a lot they, practically speaking, could have done given the timeline, so I’m fine with this. Honestly, even if there was time to, say, pull the whole movie out of theaters, I don’t think I’d support it-that’s kind of acquiescent to the killer, don’t you think?

Is it hypocritical of them to get all solemn after making money off of so many shoot-em-up action flicks? Well, I guess, if you think that violent art creates real-world violence. I don’t, personally.

Fair enough.

It just seems like a weird thing to do and if they didn’t do it, nobody would have said a thing. Holding it out as something admirable is just kind of off-putting.

It’s Hollywood, man. The Santa Ana’s are going to start blowing soon and all kinds of peoples are gonna be losing their minds, fingering the blade and regarding the nape of their partner’s neck…..

Like Charlie Pierce said earlier today (quoting Chris Rock): “What do you want, a cookie?

Hey. We haz Haboub. Big time.

An act of reverence? I don’t suppose the concern that lots of people will stay home out of fear, making their weekend numbers look bad, has anything to do with it then.

Oh, man, I was just typing somewhere else that “Red Wind” has a legendary opening line and a quietly devastating powerhouse ending that makes it my favorite Marlowe of all. You must have read my mind, like, four hours ago.

Hee – it’s in teh wind, cher, in teh wind….

And for those of us in the land of Haboub, Santa Ana’s, sandstorms, all of that … we’re raised on Marlowe and have him in our blood. Our sandy, gritty, beige blood…..

An act of reverence? I don’t suppose the concern that lots of people will stay home out of fear, making their weekend numbers look bad, has anything to do with it then.

DING DING DING!

Melanie!

God, I forgot how adorable she was. Nice hippie-dippy song, delivered to the straightest Dutch audience in captivity.

Tbogg, I didn’t think you were that old…

Today’s Non Sequitur was unfortunately timed. I wonder what Sunday’s Foxtrot comic will be: typically it would reference the movie, and there isn’t enough time to pull it, with the Sunday insert printed in advance.

Yes. immisopus’s rationale sheds a little more light but a pretty opaque gesture, all in all. In fact, it would be more instructive and honest if they did announce the millions they had made on the (reportedly very dark) film (said to promote or at least countenance vigilantism) this weekend.

A real gesture: shutter the theaters for a few days, etcetera.

Allow me to play the Devil’s Advocate. It’s unclear (to me, at least) how this tragedy will affect ticket sales. I can conjure a decent argument that it will suppress sales and also a decent argument that it will drive sales up. I think that means that we don’t know what effects to expect.

Given the very high expectations for this movie’s opening weekend, it’s possible that Warner decided not to disclose the weekend take to avoid embarrassment on the down side.

Interested folks who can do subtraction to figure out the opening weekend sales after the year’s results are announced.

I don’t see how multiplexes survive.

Not because of the shootings at the Aurora theater. But because a lot of people have huge screens at home with surround sound and such, and video on demand. Why go to a building with a bunch of people you don’t know, especially when you don’t have to?

Art house theaters and suchlike will probably always be around, but I’m guessing the movie theater is going the way of the drive-in.

And that’s the first and last time I will probably ever defend Warner Brothers for anything.

Brings to mind that old Wilson Mizner quote: “Working for Warner Brothers is like fucking a porcupine. It’s a hundred pricks against one.”

Yes. Marlowe. And, that’s the Hollywood Hills.
I live in Sylmar, just near the Pacoima Dam, where the winds come through from the desert to the Valley.
You have to be here to understand the Marlowe Santa Ana references.
Where woman turn on their husbands with the salad knife.
And, I worked for Warner Bros. too, until they laid me off ten years ago.
It was fun to work there in the 80′s.
yeah.

Thanks for posting the Melanie clip. I’d never seen that particular performance before, it rocks! A reminder of a time when hope and a desire to change the world for the better really meant something.

Your points are well taken. But thanks to our cynical host’s link, I made the mistake of wandering over to Breitbart’s BigMistake the day after the shooting to read the comments. It appears that, aside from the usual hysteria about terrorists, blather about the mainstream media favoring “libruls,” and Obama’s plan to repeal their 2nd Amendment rights, quite a few of the wingnuts think that WB should give a percentage of the take on DKR to the families of the dead and wounded–as a gesture of…whatever money is a substitute for in their skewed world. This smacks more of the legal department’s CYA.

oh, that song brought back memories from my high school days, when I and my friends explored sexual relationships along with interracial ones…. and when you got beat up, threatened to be kicked out of your high school and home for who you date…. well, you really do bleed inside each others wounds. We also dealt with a death – a younger sibling of one of our friends sister died of sickle cell. That event actually did help open the eyes of some of our parents and teachers…. made then rethink what was really important. We were just trying to survive and grow up.

My boyfriend and some of my circle of friends were also singers and musicians, and this was one of the songs they did. It was an intense time – we laid it on down ….. AND we stood our ground.

This song meant a lot to me. It was far more than adorable, and we got past hippy-dippy in record time back there in the early 1970s.

I feel exceedingly neutral about what Warner Brothers does or does not do about this matter. What depresses me is that millions of words will be generated in print, on TV and in the blogosphere about “what this all means.” And nothing will happen. We will go through all of this again when the next heavily-armed maniac kills a lot of people. And the next. And the next. Politicians of all stripes are so afraid of the NRA that no one will do anything.

I enjoy it, myself. I don’t own a big screen TV/top-notch speakers or anything like that, but whenever I’ve watched a movie at a friend’s house or whatever, it’s just not as fun as going out to the theater.

I honestly don’t think so, and it would be moot anyway. Box office numbers are also tracked by a couple of independent outfits, and that data is available to other studios. WB could massage the numbers a little, try to make them look a little higher (which they probably would have done anyway), but they wouldn’t hide them completely just to avoid the embarrassment. Believe me, they have had high-profile movies under-perform badly enough on opening weekend. You make your excuses in the press Monday morning and move on.

No, these are unusual circumstances, and much as it pains me to admit it because I hate that place, they probably genuinely believe that it would be crass (or at least look crass) to put out press releases about these numbers.

It really doesn’t. The numbers will be reported eventually, for posterity, when some of the emotions of the moment settle down. All the studios share that info with each other, and even if WB wanted to, there is no way they can keep the numbers secret forever. Like I said, independent outfits track them as well as the studios. As for the Breitbarters, nuts as they are, I bet the studio and perhaps the theater chain as well (Cinemark) do set up some sort of fund to help the survivors. The legal department might be thinking about lawsuits already, but they are not going to suppress the opening weekend take just on the off chance they have to go in front of a jury years down the road.

And actually, I just read up on this a little more carefully, and the numbers are all getting released on Monday anyway. The studio just is not announcing Saturday and Sunday numbers as they roll in today and tomorrow. So I think this is more Hollywood.com and Paul Dergarabedian (that dude has been around forever) patting the studios on the back, not the studios themselves doing it.

Santa Anas? Not before September. The wind prefers months with ‘R’ in their names.

And over on this side, we almost got thunderstormed the other morning.

They could have donated some of the profits to charity. But box office numbers? Who gives a shit except the studio. Of course, when it’s all about them 100% of the time, giving up a smidgen, like say box office numbers, really hurts, you know?

I’ve also read that the studio has been working overtime to re-edit quite a few TV spots for DKR and to yank the trailer for Gangster Squad, which has a scene in which gangsters with tommy guns shoot up a crowd at a movie theater.

I just heard on the radio box that this effort was apparently not entirely successful, and some unpleasantly surprised moviegoers have taken their complaints to “social media”. Oh well…

I will also add an appreciative THANKS! for the Melanie video. Just a lovely bit of nostalgia for me. Lots of good music back then, although my very favorite musical period was a few years before that.* [Of course for others, YMMV... and probably does.]

Melanie’s Wikipedia entry says she self-describes as a Libertarian!** Shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, I guess; others from that flower child lot have also crossed over into that terrain, although my impression is more often as ‘small-l’ libertarians.

*At least where music is concerned, I’m with Terry Valentine, the villainous character in The Limey portrayed by Peter Fonda. [That linked movie quote may be one of the references to Easy Rider that are supposedly woven into that story.]

**The source Website linked by the Wikipedia page is currently down; don’t know if that is a temporary or permanent situation.

Warner Brothers releasing weekend box office numbers would have been seen as boastful chestthumping in a time of mourning. Warner Brothers not releasing box office numbers without an explanation of why would have lead to all kinds of speculation that might have been damaging to Warner Brothers.

Announcing their plan to withhold the numbers is reasonable, as is the plan itself. As other commenters here have noted, it’s not a huge deal, it’s an incredibly small and minor gesture, but it’s not cause for scorn, either.

that’s kind of acquiescent to the killer, don’t you think?

I’d have thought more a sign of respect for the victims. Unlike Dubya, I don’t think blithely continuing consuming is the best response to tragedy.

Of course, talking about “what it all means,’ is a great way to avoid talking about “what we should do.”

I caught the reference, but that’s just because I’ve memorized all the old Adventures Of Phillip Marlowe radio shows…

(That’s been my addiction the last few years. The amount of good radio detective series from those days is staggering.)

Mizner: “I’ve spend several years in Hollywood, and I still think the movie heroes are in the audience.” It would seem that he was right.

Melanie!

it’s an incredibly small and minor gesture, but it’s not cause for scorn, either.

Like Tom notes, it’s more *weird* than anything else. The studios knew they couldn’t crow – even they understand that would have been blood in the water. So they had to do this, a simple non-sociopathic business decision. It’s the talking about it that is weird. “Man Doesn’t Wipe His Ass On American Flag, Film at 11″. That some members of their business must have decency explained to them (“Gosh, why didn’t they print the numbers?”), doesn’t have really good optics, see?

I saw on the Book of Face that someone suggested the Christian Bale dress up as Batman and visit the victims in the hospital. I’m sure they want to see a guy in a black outfit and a mask more than anything else in the world right now.

Not releasing box office numbers until later is worse than a penny in a beggar’s cup. It’s worse than a button, even. May as well tip your hat to the blind people in a respectful manner instead.

That some members of their business must have decency explained to them…

I think the above statement captures the whole ‘not releasing numbers’ event perfectly.

But….. This is Hollywood. That they have acknowledged anything at all outside of Hollywood is cause for actual celebration. Hollywood is self-absorbed Wall Street – they barely realise that life exists beyond the Brentwood Country Market.

And then you get the commenters at news sites (I’m not going to anyplace really conservative) who are saying the shooter was using marijuana or that he was Someone Big in OWS, or that he had a partner of some kind. Without, as far as I can tell, any sources of any kind.

The comments wondering at the value of the cinema in the age of large screen home cinema brought to mind this scene from Season 2 Episode 4 of the Max Headroom television series, Dream Thieves.

EDISON CARTER [on camera, standing in front of an abandoned movie theater]: I want to show you something rare: this was a “dream palace.” Years ago, people came here for their pictures. To share dreams and adventures together. These were the days when people sat in groups and watched a single “movie”. Sometimes hundreds of people at one time. Must have been a weird experience. People watching the same screen and the same program.

MURRAY [his producer back at control]: I can’t use more than thirty seconds—nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

EDISON CARTER [to a bystander]: How about you—do you know what a movie was?

BYSTANDER: My Mum told me about it once– didn’t you have to pay for it or something?

SECOND BYSTANDER: Mm-mm– was it about standing in line?

EDISON CARTER: Does anybody else know? How about you?

PADDY ASHTON: It was a shared experience, Mr Carter. People gathered together in communal escapism to share adventure, excitement, laughter, romance. They shared these vicarious emotions together. But that was before they choked the talent out of this business, and gave us game shows and chat shows and news. Before the world became ratings and people became demographics and everything became the product.