Gross Out. - Review - book reviews

Reason, Oct, 1999 by Steve Kurtz

That The Gross was a lightly edited rush job is suggested by its annoying repetitions. For instance, on pages 20 and 21, then later on page 298, Bart notes that Paramount's Sherry Lansing can be both very sweet and very tough. On page 94, Warren Beatty says, "Bulworth is certainly the most controversial movie I ever made, yet it was the easiest to set up and it was the only one that stayed at the same studio throughout its life." One hundred pages later, Beatty opines, "The irony...was that Bulworth was my most controversial movie by far, yet it turned out to be the only one that I didn't have to switch from one studio to another."

Bart notes thrice how it was feared that the release of two meteor films would be a fiasco similar to the release of two volcano films the year before (pages 39, 81, and 88). He states twice that Francis Ford Coppola won an $80 million judgment against Warner Bros. over a version of Pinocchio he never got to make (42, 247). And that Ed Limato, Mel Gibson's agent, advised Gibson not to make Lethal Weapon IV because the series was tired (115, 303). And that Warner Bros. was reeling by 1998 from flops like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and The Postman (42, 116). And that director Michael Bay accused Dreamworks' spies of stealing from his movie Armageddon (170, 211). Just reading this book once gives you a feeling of deja vu.

Such slovenly repetition is not as distressing as the outright mistakes. Bart claims, for instance, that Warren Beatty directed Love Affair; in fact, it was Glenn Gordon Caron. Six Days, Seven Nights is called Six Weeks, Seven Nights. He says The Horse Whisperer grossed $7.4 million on its first weekend when he means its third. And when you write a book called The Gross, you better get the numbers right. But Bart says Titanic made $1.3 billion worldwide, when the correct figure is $1.8 billion. (He later gets this right - was he revising as he went along or was this just a typo?) He claims Down and Out in Beverly Hills grossed $38.6 million in the United States when it actually made more than $60 million. He also claims Home Alone grossed $188.9 million worldwide when in fact it made more than $285 million domestically.

Then there's Bart's general failure to offer context in discussing the numbers. He'll list the opening weekend figures for a film and pronounce them good or bad without explaining where the expectations came from. Thus, Bulworth's $10.6 million is "drab" and The Avengers' $10.7 million is "dismal" while The Negotiator's $10.4 million is "solid." A Perfect Murder's $16.3 million is "respectable" but "hardly... spectacular" and The Horse Whisperer's $14 million opening is "respectable" but not impressive, while Hope Floats' $14.6 million is "buoyant" and There's Something About Mary's $13 million is "encouraging." Mulan's $23 million is "respectabl[e] but unspectacular" while The Mask of Zorro's $23 million is "very respectable."

The expectations game is based on a number of factors, including the cost of the movie, the breadth of its release, and its genre. Hence, an opening take of $12.7 million for an action flick like Out of Sight is in fact "dim" while $11.8 million for a movie geared to black and female audiences such as How Stella Got Her Groove Back is indeed "impressive." A knowledgeable reader may (and then again, may not) understand what's going on, but a novice looking for a clear explication of the grosses will likely be at a loss.