One of the questions surrounding Orion Pictures' financial troubles is what would happen to Woody Allen, who has an unusual and longstanding relationship with the studio, if Orion goes under?
Charles Joffe, Allen's longtime producer, said that he has been assured that Orion currently has enough financing to distribute Allen's next movie, "Shadows and Fog," which features Madonna. The company recently received a much-needed cash supply, he noted.But he acknowledged there is talk in Hollywood, or perhaps wishful thinking among rival film companies, that Orion might not be able to finance Allen's next movie, which has been penciled in for shooting sometime this fall. "We should know in a few weeks or so whether they can afford to make the movie," he said.
Joffe says that "while Orion is alive, I've avoided talking to anyone about this," but that doesn't mean studios haven't gotten in touch with Joffe. Three studios have come forth seeking Allen's talents - but Joffe would only acknowledge TriStar Pictures as one. He said that the Walt Disney Studios had approached Allen a while back, but observers said Disney would never give the director the freedom and control he has at Orion.
Allen's ties to Orion are unusual in a town used to rapid realignments. Allen goes back 25 years with Orion's chairman emeritus, Arthur Krim, who formerly headed up the late United Artists, which released two of the director's best-known movies, "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan." After Krim formed Orion in 1978, Allen followed when his UA contract ended.
Joffe said the three studios have offered Allen the creative control he now has.
"No one reads Woody's scripts at Orion, except maybe Krim," Joffe said. "Should there be a parting of Allen and Krim, it would be a wrenching experience for both of them." - DAVID J. FOX
In "Prayer of the Rollerboys," which opened Labor Day weekend, the United States has fallen into economic disarray. Los Angeles looks like the capital of a crime-ridden, Third World country. The city's homeless are crammed into huge metropolitan centers, cut off from the world by chain-link fences. Prostitutes and drugs are on every corner. And a fascist gang of youths on in-line roller skates has taken over the city.
Japan, however, remains a dominant economic power. (Germany too: That country has just bought Poland.) Harvard has been moved to Tokyo - the first of America's Ivy League colleges to transfer to Japan. And it's clear that most of America's gems have been sold off to foreigners. When the leader of the Rollerboys gang says he wants to "buy back America," a Japanese arms dealer snarls, "Who'd want it?"
An interesting plot made more interesting by this little fact: Three Japanese companies - Gaga Communications, JVC and TV Tokyo - footed the bill for half of the $2.4 million movie. But from what producer Robert Mickelson could tell, his Japanese investors were more interested in the film's in-line skating action scenes than its political themes.
"The fact that (in-line roller-skating) was an American fad made it more appealing," says Mickelson, who showed potential investors a video of local in-line skating competitors as well as W. Peter Iliff's script. In the film, Corey Haim stars as a rogue and skillful in-line skater who wages his own war against the fascist Rollerboys and their Aryan-looking leader, played by Christopher Collet.
The Japanese were supportive of the project - even through some tough times in the early financing stages, when two other American partners dropped out - and gave director Rick King completely free rein, Mickelson adds.
Tetsu Fujimura, the Gaga Communications executive who helped pull the Japanese financing together, agrees that the action made "Rollerboys" an attractive investment. "We didn't want to fail in the motion picture business and this seemed commercially viable," primarily because of its youth appeal, Fujimura says, adding that the "Rollerblades are a symbol of youth and fashion."
He also noted that the script was "easy to understand."
It's not surprising that the Japanese would feel at home with the film's themes. The political moral of "Rollerboys" is in keeping with an increasingly influential school of thought in Japan: That America is digging its own grave with its lax economic and social ways. Japanese Parliament member Shintaro Ishihara and Sony Corp. Chairman Akio Morita recently earned a large following in Japan - but ruffled feathers in the United States - with "The Japan That Can Say No," a book highly critical of shortsighted U.S. business practices.
A similar theme of America-in-decline is at play in Michael Crichton's upcoming book, "Rising Sun." But in this murder story, the Japanese are portrayed as more insidious: They have infiltrated America to the point where they are able to exert political, economic and even public-relations influence on such key sectors as the press, the police and technological academia.
Contrary to recent published reports, sources say, neither of Hollywood's two Japanese studios - Matsushita Electric's Universal Pictures or Sony's Columbia Pictures - bid on the book when it recently went out for auction. Executives at Universal, which bought Crichton's last book, "Jurassic Park," for $1.5 million, talked about making a low-ball bid but never came through. Columbia executives didn't like the story enough to make an offer.
The only bidder was Fox Film, run by Australia's Rupert Murdoch, which paid $350,000 to option the book with a guarantee of another $1.5 million if a film is made. Several directors - including John McTiernan and Robert Zemeckis - expressed interest in the project, but Fox has hired Philip Kaufman ("The Unbearable Lightness of Being," "Henry and June") to direct. - NINA J. EASTON.
- Call it "Bonfires of the Vanities" syndrome, call it '90s sentimentality, but stories about greed in the '80s appear to be losing some of their luster in Hollywood.
Case in point: Columbia Pictures planned to make a movie of "Barbarians at the Gate," the best-selling account of the buyout of RJR-Nabisco by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. But studio chief Frank Price recently decided to pass on the project, even though it was being produced by his longtime associate Ray Stark and featured a witty script by Larry Gelbart, who wrote the Tony-winning musical "City of Angels."
Price declines comment on "Barbarians." But sources close to it say the studio chief was concerned that there were no characters to root for in the script. Columbia even toyed with the idea of making F. Ross Johnson - the deposed chief executive of RJR who started the ugly episode - more heroic. (The absence of positive characters was one of the problems in attracting directors for "Bonfires of the Vanities," which Brian De Palma ultimately turned into a black comedy that bombed at the box office.)
When Columbia cooled on "Barbarians," Stark took the project to HBO Pictures, where a spokesman said the company "is very excited about it." If the project - now in development - goes forward on cable, the likely director would be Brian Gibson, who just won an Emmy for his direction of HBO's "The Josephine Baker Story."
"Columbia would have liked to make `Barbarians at the Gate' but they wanted to soften the story and make it more accessible to a broader audience," Stark says. "Our desire was to be as faithful to the story as possible. . . . To satisfy a studio, we would have had to refashion it for a younger audience, creating artificial dramatic highlights as well as a sympathetic hero. This is not a story for the `Hot Shots' and `Boyz N the Hood' audiences."
With tighter budget constrictions at HBO, Stark won't be able to attract the kind of stars that would likely be cast in a major studio film. But he notes that the cable-TV production stands to draw a far bigger audience than a theatrical release. The Josephine Baker movie, for example, was seen by more than 12 million people - the equivalent of a $70 million draw at the box office. - NINA J. EASTON
- Make way for Mr. Bean.
Who?
He's that guy you may have seen at your local theater, the unexpected attraction who's drawing laughter at nearly 3,000 movie theaters in a six-minute featurette being distributed by 20th Century Fox.
British actor-comedian Rowan Atkinson plays Mr. Bean, a bumbling, fumbling fellow, who finds himself in ordinary situations that become unexplainably complicated thanks to his own behavior.
"He's a little Charlie Chaplin, a little Peter Sellars," said Roger Birnbaum, 20th Century Fox president of worldwide feature production. "This is a guy who doesn't have to speak. He's Everyman.
"And internationally, people will respond to this type of physical humor," Birnbaum predicted.
The current "Mr. Bean Goes to a Premiere" will soon be followed in theaters by a sequel, "Mr. Bean Takes an Exam."
Atkinson is the star of "The Black Adder," one of the most popular TV series in England. (It aired on A&E cable in the States.)
Birnbaum said the Fox office in London "alerted me to Atkinson's talent, and on a trip to London, (20th Century Fox Film Corp. Chairman) Joe Roth and I met him.