The first review is in on "Dick Tracy" and it's not a rave. But as Maggie Thompson, co-editor of the trade publication Comics Buyer's Guide, notes, the review is based on an early preview screening - not the final cut. "We make that clear in a special precede."
Free-lance contributor Christopher Snowden underlines the point in his review, which surmises, "The movie's just OK, but the villains are fantastic. That's why I'll be seeing it again."This despite calling the picture "a counterfeit `Batman' - from the love-distracted crime-fighting hero to the freakish villains right down to the Danny Elfman score" (Elfman also scored "Batman").
Snowden also took shots at the square-jawed copper, played by director Warren Beatty, calling him "dim" and "boring" and "not even a very sharp crime-fighter." And he blasted the film's pacing - "almost every sequence drags" - but predicted it will be tightened before the film's June 15 release.
In fact, admits a Walt Disney studio insider, the meticulous Beatty was "tinkering" with the picture as recently as last week - the result of preview screenings at various California theaters and at the studio for buyers and bookers.
Meanwhile, the folks at Comics Buyer's Guide plan a special "Tracy" issue June 22. - PAT H. BROESKE
-Roll of the Dice:
HOLLYWOOD - MTV may have "banned" Andrew Dice Clay for life - for sprinkling his live MTV Video Music Awards performance last September with a string of obscenities - but the video channel is willing to run paid advertising for "Adventures of Ford Fairlane," the Dice-starring vehicle due out July 13 from 20th Century Fox.
Contradictory?
"We aren't doing anything with `Fairlane' that features Andrew Dice Clay in our programming," says an MTV spokeswoman, insisting that the ban is still in effect. "And we won't be running any contests or promotions involving the film." She adds that MTV has been airing a video of Billy Idol's "Fairlane" sound-track hit "Cradle of Love," but "we made it clear to Fox that in order for us to play the clip it could not have footage of Clay in it."
Why is MTV willing to run "Fairlane" trailers that prominently feature Clay?
"We had internal discussions over `Fairlane' advertising," says the MTV spokeswoman. "But we value our relationship with Fox and decided to keep our decisions about advertising separate from decisions about programming."
Fox marketing president Bob Harper calls the two-edged policy "stubborn and hypocritical."
"If Dice is banned," asks Harper, "then why make an exception if we're willing to buy airtime to promote him? We will advertise the movie, but we give less credence to the importance of MTV advertising these days. We just don't think they deliver the audience or set the trends like they used to." - PATRICK GOLDSTEIN
-`Knee' Surgery:
HOLLYWOOD - Noted author Michael Herr ("Dispatches," the just-out "Walter Winchell") has signed on to rewrite "Wounded Knee," which producer Christopher Mankiewicz at one time hoped to have in theaters by Dec. 29. That's the 100th anniversary of the infamous confrontation between the 7th U.S. Cavalry and Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation, which left 153 Indians dead, many of them women and children. But the Writers Guild of America strike and other circumstances intervened, and Mankiewicz says that he'll now be happy to be in production by that date.
Tab Murphy (who co-wrote "Gorillas in the Mist") wrote the first script, telling dual stories: the 1973 occupation of the historic battlefield by American Indian Movement militants, who were under siege by government troops for 71 days; and a risky airlift of supplies to the stranded activists by a bunch of "average white guys" from Chicago.
Mankiewicz calls Murphy's draft "a first-rate action adventure script" that needs a more serious, socially conscious tone - Herr's task. "We're trying to use the overall structure of Murphy's script but emphasize the Indians' story ... re-balancing to the Indian point of view. It's a drama of a culture trying to survive and maintain its identity, a struggle that continues today."
The Warner Bros. feature, one of a number of films in development focusing on American Indian culture, is not related to author Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," a project that Marlon Brando and others have tried unsuccessfully to turn into a film over the years. - JOHN M. WILSON
-Gore Galore:
HOLLYWOOD - Fangoria magazine has been sinking its teeth into horror films for 11 years - with reviews, interviews and behind-the-scenes coverage. So "it seems only natural," says publisher Norman Jacobs, for the magazine to try some movie making of its own:
-"Mindwarp," the first title in Fangoria Films' three-picture deal with RCA-Columbia Pictures Home Video, is in post-production, due at Halloween. Starring Bruce Campbell and Angus Scrimm, the post-apocalyptic picture was filmed for under $1 million by longtime Roger Corman associate Steve Barnett.
-"Children of the Night," about vampires, starring Ami Dolenz, Karen Black and Peter DeLuise, directed by Tony Randel ("Hellbound: Hellraiser II"), begins shooting June 11.
-"Army," about a genetic formula that replicates body parts, resulting in an "army" of menacing arms, is set to film in August with Damon Santostefano making his directorial debut. Casting's not set.
Co-executive producer Steve Jacobs - son of the publisher - says there are also plans for a fourth film to begin shooting in October. Actor Jackie Earle Haley ("Breaking Away") will write and direct "The Restless Dead."
All Fangoria films will feature plenty of special effects, traditionally covered with relish by the magazine.
Meanwhile, Fangoria is preparing to shoot a pilot for a horror-science fiction-fantasy trivia game show set in a dungeon. Title: "Gore Zone." - PAT H. BROESKE
-Clean and Sober?:
HOLLYWOOD - "Scout's Honor," the Corey Feldman movie due to start shooting July 9, will not deal with a group of wilderness scouts who find a cache of drugs and turn it over to the police, as first conceived, and as we recently reported. It's now a cache of illegal arms that gets Feldman and his camping buddies into trouble in the Wind River Productions film.
David O'Malley - writer, director and co-producer - says that the drugs were nixed, not because of Feldman's recent arraignment on two felony counts of possession of drugs for sale, but because drugs have become shopworn as a plot device. But O'Malley concedes that portraying Feldman as a hero in a drug plot might encourage audiences to "laugh us right out of the theater," and Feldman himself found the coincidence "ironic."
Feldman, 18, who faces a preliminary hearing May 29 after pleading innocent, recently passed an insurance physical - including an illegal-substance check - "with flying colors," O'Malley says. The actor has also completed a two-week drug rehab program, O'Malley adds, and Feldman's contract calls for periodic drug testing during production.
O'Malley, who has written and directed several features, says the stipulation is "the first" he's encountered in a star's contract and was demanded "because we felt we couldn't take a chance with any actor in an unstable situation." - JOHN M. WILSON
-Quibbles & Bits:
-At a press conference at Cannes to discuss "Wild at Heart," a woman asked film maker David Lynch, "Do you see the U.S. as a big tribe with wild animals and rock 'n' roll instead of tom-toms?" Lynch's response: "I do."
-Give us a S-E-Q-U-E-L: "Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders" will follow-up the 1974 sex-space parody "Flesh Gordon," which grossed a then-startling $65 million worldwide.
-Cinefile:
HOLLYWOOD - Mel Brooks plays a billionaire and Lesley Ann Warren is a bag lady in "Life Stinks." In the comedy - written by Brooks, Rudy DeLuca and Steve Haberman - Brooks plays a billionaire who bets he can live among the homeless with none of his wordly possessions for a month. The film, which Pathe will distribute domestically, begins filming in Los Angeles under Brooks' direction on June 11.
Stephanie Zimbalist has the title role in "The Norma Shearer Story," a film biography of the poised and elegant MGM star. Peter Riegert will portray her husband, producer Irving Thalberg, and Rose Marie will play Marie Dressler, the No. 1 box-office attraction in the country during the early '30s. Screenwriter Melvin Howard is adapting Lawrence J. Quirk's biography for producer Curtis Roberts. No director has been signed. Filming begins in Los Angeles in early September for C.G. Films and Ilro Productions.
In IRS Media's revenge spoof, "The Chair," Rod Steiger runs his own private electric chair. The black comedy-thriller was written by Charles Gale and will be produced by Randy Gale (brothers of Bob Gale of "Back to the Future" fame).