The Movies of Summer--Hype Has Become an Event

Hold on to your yellow Fedora, fasten your two-way wrist radio, because those hungry monsters known as summer blockbusters have once again been unleashed. We’re not talking about mere movies. In what promises to be one of the biggest collections of cinematic mega-hits ever released, this is the season of the event.

In Los Angeles, the world’s film and pop culture capital, there is nowhere to hide. From now until Labor Day, expect an especially numbing blitz of promotions, billboards, TV spots, merchandising and any other method the studios can think of to make their movie seem as crucially important as good hygiene or a balanced diet.

None has been more ballyhooed than “Dick Tracy,” Walt Disney’s film version of the 59-year-old comic strip, starring Warren Beatty as the square-jawed cop and Madonna as the tempting Breathless Mahoney. The $30-million movie, which is estimated to have an ad budget of equal size, hopes to be in 1990 what the hugely successful “Batman” was last year.

“The whole thing is like a perfectly choreographed fashion wave,” said Brian Stonehill, an English professor who teaches a course in visual literacy at Pomona College in Claremont. “Hollywood tunes the culture to a certain pitch. At the moment the film is released, everything vibrates sympathetically.”

From trendy Westwood to working-class West Covina, that meant thousands of enthused fans this weekend stood for hours in block-long lines, snatched up pricey souvenirs and launched theword-of-mouth network that ultimately will determine how long “Dick Tracy” remains a part of the popular mainstream.

On Thursday night, it meant crowds of devotees paying from $12 to $20 each for an “I Was There First” T-shirt that doubled as an admission ticket to the midnight premiere. Friday and Saturday evening shows were jammed across much of Southern California, with one large downtown Los Angeles law firm renting an entire theater at Laemmle’s Grande for its staff.

At knickknack stores, such as Aahs! in Westwood, it meant moving aside the memorabilia of such marketing sensations as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Simpsons to make room for Dick Tracy pendants ($4.95), mugs ($7.50), dolls ($16) and lunch pails ($19.95).

On the streets of Hollywood, it meant hearing the spiels of bootlegging hucksters--”Dick Tracy, right here, man! Check it out! Listen up!”--as they tried to unload cut-rate buttons, stickers, comic books and caps.

In supermarkets, it meant watching for the 40 million boxes of Quaker Oats products that will be promoting the film. McDonald’s is already offering the Dick Tracy Crimestoppers Game, a lottery-style contest that allows customers to solve crimes, catch bad guys and win up to $1 million. And, for the true fan, there’s a 20-minute live musical stage show featuring the hawk-beaked gumshoe at Disneyland’s hip teen disco, Videopolis.

“You need a picture that has a dimension about it . . . that raises it above being just a new movie and makes it part of the contemporary culture,” said Martin A. Grove, film analyst for the Hollywood Reporter. “Batman carried that to the ultimate. Now, Disney, with Dick Tracy, is updating it.”

If you don’t believe the hype, just check out Dave Richards, a homeless man with a frizzy beard and shoulder-length hair who spends most nights curled up in a West Hollywood alleyway drinking himself to sleep.

Richards, 38, says he is a sucker for a premiere. So he gave up the bottle for a few days and spent his time panhandling until he collected $15 to buy the T-shirt that was his ticket to Thursday’s debut screening.

“Look, dude, if it weren’t for this, I’d probably be passed out on Hollywood Boulevard,” said Richards, waiting in a two-block-long line outside the Pacific Theater. “But I wanted to be part of the energy here tonight. This is what movies are supposed to be all about . . . the way Hollywood used to be.”

Some critics, however, don’t think this is what the movies should be about. The blockbuster mentality, they contend, discourages thoughtful, complex films in favor of infantile spectacles that appeal to the lowest common denominator.

“These events have taken on inordinate significance,” said Mark Crispin Miller, head of media studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “I was sick of Dick Tracy three weeks ago and it hadn’t even started yet.”

Friday, outside Pacific’s Crest Theater in Westwood, where the 8 p.m. and 10:40 p.m. shows had been sold out since midday, Lance Falk, a 29-year-old North Hollywood cartoonist, reacted in much the same way.

“This hype has the opposite effect on me,” he said, hurrying off to another film. “It just makes me think of a bunch of accountants scribbling away--soulless automatons scheming to get my money.”

But for every cynic, there’s always someone else all too eager to catch the latest wave.

“Dick Tracy--he’s, like, too cool,” said Mattie Cline, a 30-year-old airline ticket agent from Torrance who was debating whether to fork out the $20 for a Tracy lunch box.

“I’m not hyped, I’m psyched,” said Bart Morningstar, 26, an early arrival for the premiere in Hollywood. “Everyone on this line is lit up. I bet if you walked up to people here and got real close, you’d feel the heat.”

Carefully manufactured events have always been a part of the Hollywood experience. To celebrate the opening of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in 1927, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks took the novel step of sticking their palms in wet concrete outside.

In 1937, a nationwide talent search for an unknown actress to play Scarlett O’Hara kept “Gone With the Wind” on the front pages for months. To promote the 1946 film, “The Egg and I,” legendary press agent Jim Moran spent 19 days perched on an ostrich egg. And in 1974, there was a special drive-in premiere of Mel Brooks’ Western spoof, “Blazing Saddles,” just for moviegoers on horseback.

But something happened in the summer of 1975, when Universal Pictures turned a film about a blood thirsty shark into a national sensation. “Jaws,” which at the time was the biggest U.S. box office hit ever, was one of the first movies to successfully infiltrate the marketplace with T-shirts, belt buckles, swimsuits, sharks’ teeth jewelry and ice cream flavors such as jawcolate and finilla.

“Sharkmania seems to know no bounds,” gushed a Universal publicist at the time.

Last summer’s release of “Batman” catapulted the concept of the summer blockbuster into another stratosphere. Despite mixed reviews, the caped crusader brought in more than $500 million through U.S. box office receipts, foreign distribution and a thriving merchandise machine that has yet to subside.

So far, it’s difficult to know if “Dick Tracy” will be able to rival that. Box office returns for the first weekend won’t be out until Monday. Merchants say it is probably too early to tell if such items as Tracy shower curtains, walkie-talkies, trench coats, backpacks, drapes, lingerie and video games will end up as big sellers.

In coming weeks, other promotions will try to capture the same market for such films as “Die Hard 2,” “Days of Thunder” and “RoboCop 2.”

“If the movie’s no good, you can get by,” said Karl Kelley, 40, who was out on Hollywood Boulevard over the weekend hawking Tracy T-shirts and buttons. “But if they like the movie, you can sell stale bread and they’ll buy it.”

At the head of the line to get into Thursday’s premiere in Hollywood, Patricia O’Brien explained that, in the end, it wouldn’t really matter. The 21-year-old aspiring screenwriter from San Pedro just wanted to say she had been there.

“If the movie is incredible, then we’ll say we came for the movie,” she said. “If the movie bombs, then we’ll say we came for the happening. Either way, it’s a party.”