Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops by Tim Robey

Three rules to avoid movie failure. Rule 1: Don’t choose a title that’s boring, misleading, or hard to pronounce. There’s more to this failed romantic drama than just the title lily (2003), starring Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, wasn’t helped by the fact that moviegoers weren’t sure whether they should ask for “two Gigli tickets.” Synecdoche, New York (2008) and Hudsk Agent (1994), more people took out their dictionaries than their wallets. But what if the title has nothing to do with the story?

Which brings us to rule number two: Never give the director carte blanche. William Friedkin after winning Oscar French connection (1971) and broke box office records The Exorcist (1973), Paramount almost let him off the hook and even chose the title for his next film, which he titled wizard (1977). Not bad, fans think. something similar The ExorcistMaybe, mix evil power with exciting gore? Well, no. The film turns out to be a remake of a classic French thriller the price of fear (1953). There is no wizard.

Friedkin happened to be listening to a Miles Davis album wizard It was a lot at the time. He just liked the word. He later recalled, “I thought anything I did at the time was going to work.” As a result, half of his crew fell ill with amoebic dysentery during a harrowing shoot in the wilderness of the Dominican Republic , gangrene or malaria. The man lost his producer after his wife told him she would divorce him unless he quit. Unfortunately, later that year, Star Wars came out and sucked up all the remaining oxygen in the market.

Rule Three: Avoid water and cats. Is there something wrong with the water? This is unpredictable, which can cause costs to rise dramatically. witness water world (1995), in which Kevin Costner plays a man with gills, or pirate gibberish cutthroat island Starting from the same year, or Speed ​​2: Cruise Control (1997), which also violates rule number one: its title is boring. In fact, it’s worse than boredom. It’s really puzzling. “Speed” speaks for itself. But “cruise control”? This is a safety feature. They might as well call it Speed ​​2: Autopilot.

Is there something wrong with the cat? It’s more mysterious, but feline failure in box office poisonTim Robey delivers an exciting tour of some of the biggest financial disasters in Hollywood history. they return queen kelly (1929), this abnormal giant turkey ruined Gloria Swanson’s career. There’s a scene where her co-star Xena Owen gets tired of being naked and is handed a cat to cover her breasts. The cat started scratching her. Must wear white gloves on its paws.

One of the joys of this book is that it provides an excuse to rewatch or capture some of the shenanigans for the first time. My ten year old son and I enjoyed double the bill Speed ​​2 (surprisingly slow) and strange transfers catwoman (2004), a superhero fiasco in which Halle Berry was drowned by bad guys, then randomly resurrected and given feline powers and addictions by a magical cat. In one scene it’s impossible to unsee, Berry is handed a dollop of catnip and she rubs it into her face in ecstasy.

Yet the mothers of these movie monsters are cat (2019), an adaptation of the hit musical, has no redeeming qualities. Who would have thought something could happen that would make you feel sorry for Andrew Lloyd Webber? Yet one can’t help but pay homage to the old Louvet, whose kitschy masterpieces were wrung by Hollywood fools. The experience was so horrific that he bought himself a Havanese puppy named Mojito as an emotional support dog. When he explained in an email to an airline that they should make an exception to their no-dog policy and let him travel with a mojito because of “what Hollywood did to my musical,” cat”, he received the sympathetic reply “No need for a doctor’s report.

Note that these three rules are not taken from box office poison. They are built from the materials it provides. In fact, my main criticism of this generally enjoyable book is that, despite the author’s vast experience over a quarter of a century of film criticism, daily telegraphhe offers little in the way of an overarching thesis. Some of his twenty-six choices sound terrible: Nothing but trouble (1991) and supernova (2000), for example. Others are considered underrated masterpieces. Robbie has time wizardFor example, he described it as “Peak Friedman.” He reveres the tragic story of Charlie Kaufmann Synecdoche, New York: “I stumbled into sobs when I first saw it and couldn’t calm myself down for hours.”

This all makes for some welcome changes in tone. Yet if even a great movie can destroy a studio, we’re inclined to agree with screenwriter William Goldman’s sly Socratic observation that, albeit somewhat disappointingly, this may be the most important thing about the movie industry ever The most quoted line: “No one knows anything.” ‘