Film industry people - do you know you're making a bomb?

[tours_of_Gregory]

@Bryan_Ekers

And then there was the 1938 musical trainwreck Daddy’s Boy, which abruptly ended in mid song when the crew refused to continue.

Where did you read that, if it’s a book I must have it.

[Moonshine]

@guizot

Actually, no. Most jobs are paid a set amount per day, and a “day” could be up to 15 or so hours, depending on how things go. (Of course these were non-union productions).

Just to reinforce this point, not intended as a hijack. I have only had one brush with the industry, working as a safety diver on a photo shoot set in a swimming pool. I had no idea what was going on and wondered who signed off on all these huge lights set up at the edge of the swimming pool. Turns out it was supposed to have been me.

I arrived at 6.30am and we finished at nearly midnight; I got paid £50 for my work, plus some pizza. Late in the evening the photographer’s greasy assistant oiled up to me and said he liked my work, and if I played my cards right there would be plenty more where that came from. Gee thanks, there’s a parking meter out front that earns more than that.

[Smid]

@nearwildheaven

I just looked this up. That didn’t really happen; it’s part of a Spinal Tap-esque “re-enactment”.

It was a parody. At first I thought it was Family Guy, but it in fact came from The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmit.

Daddy’s boy

[Horatio_Hellpop]

I’d heard that nearly everyone involved with the first Star Wars movie was pretty sure it was a bomb, since there was no precedent at that point for successful science-fiction movies. At the time, Logan’s Run and Planet of the Apes were kind of high water marks for the genre.

I am not a filmmaker.

[terentii]

@Ethilrist

I’ve spoken with friends of people who worked at Lucasfilms while they were making The Phantom Menace. The project was so huge that any one part of it, built by an entire team of people, might only have a few seconds of screen time. They were given specific instructions for what they were supposed to do and how it would interact with the rest of the things happening around it, and it was all so disjointed and compartmentalized that they usually didn’t have any idea what was going on in the movie until they had worked on it for months and months. Apparently there was a certain amount of slack-jawed horror when they saw how things were not really pulling together as well as they had hoped… by which time there was no way in hell to fix it.

There’s another recent post on this site with a link to just how bad Menace was (an analysis of sorts). Upon seeing the finished film, Lucas himself finally realizes it and moans about everything they did wrong.

[OneCentStamp]

Sometimes they do. One of my good friends was a director’s assistant/general roustabout while going to school in L.A. While working on the film Solo (1996), he realized in the middle of an driving errand that the reels on the front seat next to him were the original and only copies of the scenes they contained. The film was fairly close to completion at that point, and he reflected that he might be doing the world a favor if he accidentally drove his car off a bridge and into the river.

[Mahaloth]

@Ethilrist

I’ve spoken with friends of people who worked at Lucasfilms while they were making The Phantom Menace. The project was so huge that any one part of it, built by an entire team of people, might only have a few seconds of screen time. They were given specific instructions for what they were supposed to do and how it would interact with the rest of the things happening around it, and it was all so disjointed and compartmentalized that they usually didn’t have any idea what was going on in the movie until they had worked on it for months and months. Apparently there was a certain amount of slack-jawed horror when they saw how things were not really pulling together as well as they had hoped… by which time there was no way in hell to fix it.

If you watch the making of on the Menace DVD, it’s clear that most of the crew assume they are making a great Star Wars movie. I mean, certainly Lucas knows what he is doing. Hey, Liam Neeson even read the script and agreed to be in it.

The script is so over-packed with “stuff happening”, it is very hard to tell how bad it is during production.

@Horatio_Hellpop

I’d heard that nearly everyone involved with the first Star Wars movie was pretty sure it was a bomb, since there was no precedent at that point for successful science-fiction movies. At the time, Logan’s Run and Planet of the Apes were kind of high water marks for the genre.

I am not a filmmaker.

Certainly, 2001 was a high-point as well.

@terentii

There’s another recent post on this site with a link to just how bad Menace was (an analysis of sorts). Upon seeing the finished film, Lucas himself finally realizes it and moans about everything they did wrong.

I assume you mean Plinkett’s review, which does a great job showing how badly made it is. The reviewer is a film-make(small time) and he really does a great job analyzing it.

The moment you reference is from the Menace DVD. You can tell people are unsure what to think when they see the rough cut, not the final version of the movie. Lucas says, “I think I may have gone too far in some places.” He and the others pretty much agree that way too many events are happening in the climax of the movie.

Despite being a terrible movie, I credit the editor for making the final 30 minutes make sense. It is very hard to edit together so many separately occurring scenes and he did a great job.

I’m amazed they allowed the documentary covering the making-of to be put on the DVD. It’s a great little movie and is more interesting than the Phantom Menace itself.

Lucas should not have been allowed to advance to the filming stage with a script as complex as it was.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@tours_of_Gregory

Where did you read that, if it’s a book I must have it.

Daddy’s Boy was a fictional musical referenced (and briefly seen) in the tenth episode of the comedy series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt which I cannot recommend highly enough (especially if you liked 30 Rock and similar shows). There are some youTube clips of it, but they’re ripped out of context which I think undermines a lot of the humour.

[CalMeacham]

@Horatio_Hellpop

I’d heard that nearly everyone involved with the first Star Wars movie was pretty sure it was a bomb, since there was no precedent at that point for successful science-fiction movies. At the time, Logan’s Run and Planet of the Apes were kind of high water marks for the genre.

I am not a filmmaker.

You’re obviously not a science fiction fan, either. There had been plenty of science fictiuon films before, many of them critically and financially successful
The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Day the Earth Stood Still was well received by critics and is widely regarded as one of the best films of 1951.[20][21][22][23]

The Day the Earth Stood Still was moderately successful when released, accruing US$1,850,000 in distributors’ domestic (U.S. and Canada) rentals, making it the year’s 52nd biggest earner.[24] [Note 1] Variety praised the film’s documentary style, and the Los Angeles Times praised its seriousness, though it also found “certain subversive elements.”[16] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it “tepid entertainment.”[25]

The Day the Earth Stood Still earned more plaudits overseas: the Hollywood Foreign Press Association gave the filmmakers a special Golden Globe Award for “promoting international understanding.” Bernard Herrmann’s score also received a nomination at the Golden Globes.[26] The French magazine Cahiers du cinéma was also impressed, with Pierre Kast calling it “almost literally stunning” and praising its “moral relativism.”[16]

The Day the Earth Stood Still is ranked seventh in Arthur C. Clarke’s list of the best science-fiction films of all time, just above Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which Clarke himself co-wrote.[citation needed]

The Day the Earth Stood Still holds a 94% “Certified Fresh” rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes.[27]

The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Andromeda Strain

Box office[edit]

The Andromeda Strain was a moderate box office success. Produced on a relatively high budget of $6.5 million,[2][7] the film grossed $12,376,563 in North America,[4] earning $8.2 million in US theatrical rentals.[8] It was the 16th highest grossing film of 1971.

Critical response[edit]

The opinion of critics is generally mixed, with some critics enjoying the film for its dedication to the original novel and with others disliking it for its drawn-out plot. Overall, the film has earned a 67% “Fresh” rating from the film review site Rotten Tomatoes, based on 24 reviews.[9]

The Andromeda Strain (film)

Fantastic Voyage

The film received mostly positive reviews and a few criticisms. The weekly entertainment-trade magazine Variety gave the film a positive pre-release review, stating, “The lavish production, boasting some brilliant special effects and superior creative efforts, is an entertaining, enlightening excursion through inner space—the body of a man.”[13]
Bosley Crowther of the New York Times summarized, “Yessir, for straight science-fiction, this is quite a film—the most colorful and imaginative since Destination Moon” (1950).[14]
Richard Schickel of Life Magazine wrote that the rewards would be “plentiful” to audiences who get over the “real whopper” of suspended disbelief required. He found that though the excellent special effects and sets could distract from the scenery’s scientific purpose in the story, the “old familiar music of science fiction” in lush new arrangements was a “true delight,” and the seriousness with which screenwriter Kleiner and director Fleischer treated the story made it more believable and fun. Schickel made note of, but dismissed, other critics’s allegations of “camp.”[15]

As of 2012, the film holds a 92% approval rating at the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus being: “The special effects may be a bit dated today, but Fantastic Voyage still holds up well as an imaginative journey into the human body.”[16]

Fantastic Voyage

In addition to the aforementioned 2001, there were also the many SF films of George Pal (Destination Moon, Conquest of Space, When Worlds Collide, The Time Machine), Ray Harryhausen (*The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, It Came from beneath the Sea, 20 Million Miles to Earth, earth vs. the Flying Saucers,, etc.) and more, too numerous to mention. If these hadn’t succeeded, they wouldn’t have greenlighted the others.

To say that there was no precedent for a successful science fiction movie before Star Wars is absurd.

[Dewey_Finn]

@Bryan_Ekers

@tours_of_Gregory

Where did you read that, if it’s a book I must have it.

Daddy’s Boy was a fictional musical referenced (and briefly seen) in the tenth episode of the comedy series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt which I cannot recommend highly enough (especially if you liked 30 Rock and similar shows). There are some youTube clips of it, but they’re ripped out of context which I think undermines a lot of the humour.

Great. Let’s drop references from obscure shows in a thread in which people are otherwise talking about the real world. That doesn’t confuse things at all.

That was sarcasm, in case it’s not obvious.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Dewey_Finn

Great. Let’s drop references from obscure shows in a thread in which people are otherwise talking about the real world. That doesn’t confuse things at all.

That was sarcasm, in case it’s not obvious.

Are you unfamiliar with the culture of this message board?

And that is NOT sarcasm.

[SpoilerVirgin]

I’ve read a number of books about people who were trying really, really hard to make a great movie as it fell apart around them. Some of them seem to know what’s happening, while others are completely oblivious.

Final Cut(about the making of Heaven’s Gate)
The Devil’s Candy (about the making of Bonfire of the Vanities)
Fiasco (stories of 15 Hollywood flops)

[TriPolar]

Luckily some bombs are recognized. I just noted The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened? in another thread. Other times it’s not so obvious, often midway through a film there will be people who think it’s going to be bomb, and they may end up right or wrong.

One thing that makes it easy to predict a bomb is a big budget. What really makes a bomb is a lack of profit. The more money that’s spent the harder it is to recover it. Some bombs have decent releases that would be successes for a movie that cost a reasonable amount to make in the first place. Some movies are completed and distributed knowing that they will bomb, Hollywood is a rat’s nest, a lot of people can make a lot of money from a movie that bombs. Someone will lose, and the winners aren’t the Three Musketeers, in Tinsel Town it’s All for One, and One for One.

[Dewey_Finn]

But a big budget doesn’t necessarily equal bomb. I remember dire predictions of bomb when James Cameron was making Titanic, and it turned out to be quite the opposite. It’s really hard to predict, which is why the business is so weird.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Dewey_Finn

But a big budget doesn’t necessarily equal bomb. I remember dire predictions of bomb when James Cameron was making Titanic, and it turned out to be quite the opposite. It’s really hard to predict, which is why the business is so weird.

Indeed, like no business I know.

[Voyager]

@Mahaloth

Certainly, 2001 was a high-point as well.

In Agel’s book he lists killing in 2001, and ends it with Clarke. “I’m not saying, but I did pretty well.” (quoted from memory).
2001 was an early movie that people went to see more than once (like me) and they could sell the seats in the very front of the theater to the stoned fans.
I think it was in the top ten grossing movies for a while.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

I’ve always wondered how some of those cheap creature feature films with the bad CGI get made—I think they mostly come out of SyFy. Certainly, many of them just go for the schlock appeal—the Sharknado series seems to have been quite successful in this direction. But others actually seem to try and take themselves seriously (I can’t really recall titles at the moment, but there was something involving an Indian burial ground and a monster made from bones, or something; I only briefly watched), that aren’t over the top enough to go for so-bad-it’s-good, but firmly stay in the so-bad-it’s-just-bad territory. And it’s obvious from even the briefest description that that’s exactly where they’re situated.

So is the hope here to just crank out enough of those to accidentally hit that sweet cult movie spot? Are those working on the project aware of that? I mean, it’s clear from the outset (I assume) that you’re not making something anybody would remotely consider a good movie, but it just seems that going for so-bad-it’s-good is a vastly risky endeavour (and probably not that much simpler than just trying to at least make a decent flick). So what’s the appeal in making those kind of movies?

[Gothic]

The Jaws documentary showed serious concern that the movie was over budget and a failure. I think Dreyfuss said it was awful in an interview before it hit the theatres.

Predator Bay

[TriPolar]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

I’ve always wondered how some of those cheap creature feature films with the bad CGI get made—I think they mostly come out of SyFy. Certainly, many of them just go for the schlock appeal—the Sharknado series seems to have been quite successful in this direction. But others actually seem to try and take themselves seriously (I can’t really recall titles at the moment, but there was something involving an Indian burial ground and a monster made from bones, or something; I only briefly watched), that aren’t over the top enough to go for so-bad-it’s-good, but firmly stay in the so-bad-it’s-just-bad territory. And it’s obvious from even the briefest description that that’s exactly where they’re situated.

So is the hope here to just crank out enough of those to accidentally hit that sweet cult movie spot? Are those working on the project aware of that? I mean, it’s clear from the outset (I assume) that you’re not making something anybody would remotely consider a good movie, but it just seems that going for so-bad-it’s-good is a vastly risky endeavour (and probably not that much simpler than just trying to at least make a decent flick). So what’s the appeal in making those kind of movies?

Those are usually made on such a low budget it’s hard to bomb. A lot of them are direct to video. They’re essentially paid for in advance and made to budget, usually with just a few days of shooting live action. The film makers risk nothing, the continued video sales are a little risky, but the losses can’t get that big. Occasionally a Sharknado comes out and it it’s a money maker.

[OpusThePenguin]

I remember reading that an interview with Alicia Silversone that the main cast of Batman & Robin knew they were in a bad movie but were contractually obligated to finish it.

And here’s a link to the memoirs of a film maker who in spite of his best intentions made a bad movie during the 80s. It’s an interesting read into the thought processes that went along with it.
http://www.stomptokyo.com/badmoviereport/making.html