OFF-CENTERPIECE : MOVIES : Should You Have to Like Chaplin to Like ‘Chaplin’? Ask Bugsy

On the surface, at least, comic Charlie Chaplin and gangster Bugsy Siegel had nothing in common except for a predilection for female flesh and a lust for living well.

The biopics based on their life stories . . . well, now that’s another story.

According to several industry sources, “Chaplin”--TriStar’s big Christmas movie--may face the same marketing dilemma that the same studio’s big 1991 Christmas movie, “Bugsy,” was cursed with. Says one source: “The problem the movies have in common is this: How can you get a mainstream audience to identify with a jerk?”

Such worries, sources say, have come to light after two reported “Chaplin” screenings in London. “It’s not that the audiences didn’t like the filmmaking, they just did not like the man about who the film was about,” says one source close to the production, which was directed by Sir Richard Attenborough and features Robert Downey Jr. in the title role. “Chaplin in his private life was not that funny, for one. For two, he was rocked by scandal after scandal.”

Similar gritty “downer” subject material, say the sources, is what kept last year’s “Bugsy” from becoming a blockbuster. It only sold $50 million in tickets domestically, a figure most agree was disappointing. “This was not typical holiday fare,” says one source. “People want up stories at Christmas. They don’t want movies about guys you wouldn’t let date your daughter.”

“Bugsy” was sold with the catchphrase “Glamour was the disguise.” “Warren Beatty brought a lot of flash and dash to the picture,” says one industry marketing source. “He is a known presence and that is what made an unlikable character intriguing, initially at least. But Robert Downey Jr. is not Warren Beatty.”

TriStar Chairman Mike Medavoy was quick to clarify matters. “First of all, I don’t know how people can call ‘Bugsy’ a disappointment when it earned $50 million domestically and $50 million foreign,” he said.

As for the idea that a film with a non-good-guy lead doesn’t sell in this day and age, he responded: “Well, if audiences were only looking for squeaky-clean characters, then Clint Eastwood’s movie (“Unforgiven”) wouldn’t have been such a success, would it? I think this rule that successful movies have to feature completely likable characters is too general. Listen, there are no rules. Do audiences always want an ‘up’ ending? I don’t think so. Do they want satisfying endings? Yes, and ‘Chaplin’ has that.”

The ending of the $40-million “Chaplin” is a tribute to the last public appearance made by the Little Tramp. After a 30-year exile, he returned to the United States in 1971 to receive an honorary Academy Award. The re-creation of the event--which Medavoy calls “tearful and emotional”--shows a humbled Downey in old-age makeup, clutching his statue and saying to himself, “I never was able to get it right.”

Although Medavoy calls “Chaplin” “a terrific film,” he says the studio has not yet crystallized a marketing/advertising strategy for the movie and thus he could not comment on how TriStar plans to sell it to the masses.

“I can’t say ‘Hey, this is going to be an easy film to market,’ because it ain’t,” said Medavoy. “But if you see the entire movie, as I have, I don’t think you end up concerned about matters of character likability. In the end, a movie either works or it doesn’t and this one works.”