Monday linkage and self-pimpage
The Monday after Thanksgiving is what the sports world calls a “bye week” for “Snide Remarks,” also known as “I didn’t write one.” Who can work when he’s surrounded by adorable nieces and nephews and vaguely appealing siblings and parents? The only part of me that got anything done last week was my digestive tract.
We do have a new edition of Eric’s Time Capsule at Film.com, however, featuring “Beverly Hills Cop,” which was released 24 years ago this week and became a smash hit in spite of not being very good.
And hey, look at this — an article at E! Online about the “Twilight” phenomenon quotes me! I’m huge!
December 1st, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Huge? Must have eaten too much over the holiday.
December 1st, 2008 at 11:32 pm
I got the article in my Google alert & when I saw your name I said “Hey! I know that guy!!” No one believed me though……
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:27 am
Eric, my new reason for living, how have I not found you before now? A friend referred me to your Twilight screenplay (”You’re imagining things”) and while searching around your site, I read your Prop 8 article… and you sing too? AND you live in Portland?
Dude, you’re cool. Props from your neighbor across the I-5 bridge.
December 3rd, 2008 at 6:03 am
Hollywood is like a dozy policeman who gets jolted awake and says, “Yeah, I’ll get right on it” and then promptly falls back to sleep. What is amazing to me isn’t how much money they forego by refusing to make movies aimed at demographics other than teenage boys, but how much money they LOSE by continuing to do so.
The execs always blather on about how it’s “the non-US market” (and repeat ticket sales and DVD sales) that is the key to a successful movie. But I’ve never heard any of them explain how teenage boys around the globe can be assumed to be attracted to exactly the same things but American teenage girl movies would only be of interest to teenage girls in the USA.
Of course even J.K. Rowling made her main character a boy — as most publishers of children’s books will tell you, girls will read books with a boy hero but boys won’t read books about “bossy” girls.
December 7th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
My memory is a bit vague on this but I seem to remember “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Die Hard” being the first (popular) cop movies that weren’t just about car chases and gunfights. I think that the current craze of epic battle movies badly needs Beverly Hills Cop or Die Hard equivalent. Battle movies are in the same boring “its all about the action” place that cop movies were at in the 80s. I want a hero with more interesting personality than just “the bad guy killed my wife/son/dog and I want revenge”.