Doth Lucas Protest Too Much? : Today’s Preoccupation With Movie Revenues Is, Well, Gross

In reading accounts of George Lucas’ press conference Monday at the Cannes Film Festival, I was stopped by one particular comment attributed to the megastar producer. Defending his 1986 extraterrestrial fowl film, “Howard the Duck,” Lucas said it was a tragedy that America’s movie press has become preoccupied with big budgets and high grosses.

I can understand why people who live in Marin County think the rest of us worry too much about money. I can even accept his parental bias in liking “Howard the Duck” (I believe it was Jack the Ripper’s mother who said, “He was always a good boy”). As an alumnus of the dreaded Movie Press, the news in Lucas’ statement was that the failure of “Howard the Duck”--and of “Willow,” should it suffer the same fate--is partially my fault!

This is too much responsibility for me, George. I haven’t been perfect as a film journalist. I’ve eaten a few donuts on movie sets. I’ve kept a few of the T-shirts I’ve been sent. And, yes, when Daryl Hannah was having her breasts made up with gold glitter on the Carribbean set of “Splash,” I did not avert my eyes.

But reporting that “Howard the Duck” cost about $36 million to make and that it earned less than $10 million in domestic grosses is not something I will carry to the grave.

It is a multiple irony that Lucas would make that comment in that setting. Here’s the Wunderkind whose “Star Wars” began the obsession--first with the film industry, then with the media--with box-office grosses and inadvertently launched the current recession in quality Hollywood major studio movies.

Lucas deserves credit, if not half of Northern California, for creating phenomena as commercially successful as “Stars Wars” and its collateral merchandise. The story may have been as ancient as Homer’s last poem, but it was brilliantly executed and by almost any measure a better film than most of the “ahrt” assembled each year for competition in Cannes.

What I wonder is whether Lucas was as offended when the media reported that “Star Wars,” which cost less to make than a government truck, had just outgrossed the Industrial Revolution.

Lucas is not the only movie mogul upset by the media’s preoccupation with finances. Producers are businessmen, good producers are successful businessmen and no one who produces a failure enjoys having the net losses itemized in print. It’s like having an expensive facelift go south.

The news also causes some careers to go south. Studio bosses in today’s profit-or-perish Hollywood operate more like casino pit bosses than guiding creative lights. They’re expected to keep the cards and dice and wheels moving and to make sure the house wins. If the house doesn’t win big, they turn in their pinkie rings and go back to driving cabs (the local euphemism is “independent production”).

The serious movie media is preoccupied with budgets and grosses because that’s what the American film business is about. The alternative, considering the dearth of issues grappled with in films, is to cover the stars--to listen to Paul Hogan gently hype “ ‘Crocodile’ Dundee II” by recalling, once again, how he became a star in mid-life by winning some TV talent contest in Australia, or to fathom the mysterious depths of Sylvester Stallone, as Barbara Walters gamely attempted, on the eve of “Rambo III.”

The truth is, everyone associated with movies is obsessed with budgets and grosses. I haven’t met a studio executive who couldn’t quote the real costs and actual grosses of every major movie released by his studio in the last year.

(Frank Price, when he was head of Columbia Pictures, once produced a list for me that showed on one side the costs and income of films that he had turned down, and on the other side, the costs and income of those he had greenlighted. You can guess which bottom line was most attractive.)

And despite all the reports about Cannes Film Festival prize winners “Pelle the Conqueror” and “A World Apart,” I will bet that the topics that dominated the conversations of many American journalists along the French Riviera this month were how well “Willow” would open and which of the summer’s other box-office favorites--”Dundee II” or “Rambo III”--will finally ring up the biggest season total.

These may not be very challenging issues for the media to ponder. But geeze, George, since “Star Wars,” what has there been?