Hollywood’s Good, Bad and Strange

I had a very scary thought a few months ago. It came to me at the height of the Weird News blitz, when all of the stories about Donna Rice, Jessica Hahn, Jim and Tammy, and Spuds MacKenzie were blending like various liquids at a toxic dump.

Somehow, the corrosive effect of that congealed information triggered a freakish neutron blast in my brain.

The thought was this: What if Donna Rice is signed to play the title roles in “The Past Lives of Shirley MacLaine” and I am assigned to do a location story on it?

In reality, I got to go to Borneo to do a story about a movie being made with head hunters, and everything was fine. But in Hollywood, where today’s headlines are often teasers for tomorrow’s movies, you do have to pay attention to pop phenomena and emerging news stars.

Donna Rice did come to Hollywood and get an agent and start looking around for some film or TV roles. There was, in fact, talk of her playing herself in a movie, sort of like World War II hero Audie Murphy did in “To Hell and Back.”

Playboy reportedly paid Jessica Hahn a six-figure fee to tell her version of her affair with televangelist Jim Bakker, and to pose topless for essential graphics. Playboy makes movies now and then. Maybe we’ll see a remake of “Elmer Gantry,” with Hahn in the fallen choir girl role played by Shirley Jones.

If someone announces a movie called “Party Dog,” starring Bud’s Spuds, I won’t be surprised.

It was a strange enough year in Hollywood.

Colorization continued in the news. In 1986, the colorizers--the folks who take black-and-white films and use computers to turn them into mostly orange and blue films--argued that they were not fiddling with the film makers’ original works.

This year, they argued before a federal copyright commission that they were making significant enough creative contributions to the films to warrant fresh copyrights. In a decision sure to turn brown eyes blue (and vice versa), the Library of Congress Copyright Office agreed, and black-and-white films will now be routinely color-kitsched, as the market will bear.

The Motion Picture Assn. of America’s ratings board was the year’s biggest bully. Its six paid parents kept English director Alan Parker in the editing room until he clipped out every single frame of what they found offensive in “Angel Heart” before giving it an R rating.

Critics and others who saw the unacceptable 10 seconds of film in Parker’s original version of “Angel Heart” were dumbstruck by the board’s conservatism. Several influential critics admonished the board for the “Angel Heart” fiasco and called for changes in the ratings system to allow serious adult films to enter the market without censorship.

MPAA President Jack Valenti, who fought against, but now embraces the ineffectual PG-13 rating added in 1984, said no changes will be made in the system.

For those who think running studios is easy, here’s an object lesson.

On the same weekend last February, films starring Sylvester Stallone (“Over the Top”) and Andrew McCarthy (“Mannequin”) opened across the United States. The McCarthy film, about a window dresser who falls in love with an Egyptian princess whose spirit has taken over a department store dummy, made more money than the Stallone film in half as many theaters.

When they were finished, “Mannequin” made about $30 million. “Over the Top” made about $16 million.

“Over the Top’s” setting, an arm wrestling championship in Las Vegas, may have been even goofier than romance in a department store window, but Stallone ought to be able to whip Andrew McCarthy at the box office.

A second test of Stallone’s popularity was postponed when script and production problems pushed “Rambo III” onto the 1988 calendar.

It was a good and bad year for some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

It was bad for Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman, who sullied themselves with the misfired $45-million comedy “Ishtar.”

It was a good year for Richard Dreyfuss, who won rave reviews for performances in two Disney/Touchstone comedies--”Tin Men” and “Stakeout”--and the current courtroom drama, “Nuts.”

It was bad for Sean Penn, who spent 60 days in the slammer for punching a photographer. (It could have been worse. The judge could have made him watch Madonna’s “Who’s That Girl” four or five times.)

It was a good year for Cher, whose three 1987 roles included the box-office hit “Witches of Eastwick” and the current “Moonstruck,” which seems sure to land her an Oscar nomination.

It was bad for Michael Cimino, whose gangster saga “The Sicilian” sank faster than a stiff wearing cement shoes. (Cimino deserves the Takes a Lickin’ but Keeps on Tickin’ award. No sooner had the director of the “Heaven’s Gate” disaster delivered the “Sicilian” disaster when it was announced he would make “Santa Ana Winds” for Nelson Entertainment.)

Canadian Garth Drabinsky was the year’s most self-ingratiating movie showman. Drabinksy’s thriving Cineplex-Odeon has contributed greatly to the general upgrading of theaters across the U.S. But when Drabinsky compared his new 18-theater Universal City complex with Radio City Music Hall, he sounded like a man who had been kicked in the head by a Rockette.

The big news for people concerned about the overall economy of the film business was the upsurge in ticket sales. If recent predictions prove correct, the total 1987 U.S. box office will top $4.2 billion.

This is better news for investors than people who love movies. To keep things in perspective, “Beverly Hills Cop II” was the year’s box-office champ, and another bad Eddie Murphy movie, the 1986 holdover “The Golden Child,” was No. 4 on the 1987 list.

The top 10 grossing pictures of 1987, according to the Hollywood Reporter: “Beverly Hills Cop II,” “Platoon,” “Fatal Attraction,” “The Golden Child,” “The Untouchables,” “The Secret of My Success,” “Stakeout,” “Lethal Weapon,” “The Witches of Eastwick,” and “Three Men and a Baby.”

Condoms showed up about as often in movies this year as Coke cans. Tom Hanks reached for one in “Dragnet,” Martin Short and Annette O’Toole discussed using one in “Cross My Heart,” Holly Hunter popped a pack of them into her purse in “Broadcast News,” and a schnauzer, I believe it was, ran off with one in “Wish You Were Here.”

The heads of the Coca-Cola Co. kept Hollywood safe from reform when they decided to merge Columbia and Tri-Star operations and send Columbia Chairman David Puttnam packing.

The new company, the worst idea out of Atlanta since New Coke, will be headed by Tri-Star Chairman Victor Kaufman, who reportedly once scolded his production people for making movies that were too sophisticated.

Happy New Year, Vic. If you want to steal that idea about Donna Rice and “The Past Lives of Shirley MacLaine,” it’s all yours.