Whatever You Do, Don’t Say the ‘A’...

Whatever You Do, Don’t Say the ‘A’ Word

You remember Patrick J. Buchanan. He’s the pundit-turned-politician who boisterously champions full privatization of the arts. Zero out the National Endowment for the Arts and stop spending any taxpayer money on culture, which the Republican presidential wannabe has said merely pads “the upholstered playpen of the arts-and-crafts auxiliary of the Eastern liberal establishment.” So when the contentious former candidate was denied a speaker’s slot at the upcoming Republican convention in San Diego, where did the Buchanan for President committee decide to hold its alternate rally? At the California Center for the Arts in Escondido, a 2-year-old facility for theater, art and music housed in a city-owned building on publicly owned land. Last year it received one-third of its $7.8-million operating budget from public sources. Recently, the city even stepped in to replace the private operating foundation that had come up fiscally short in programming the center. Sunday’s 5 p.m. cocktail reception, which will be followed by a Buchanan speech in the 1,500-seat auditorium, “is our highest-profile event to date,” a center spokesman said, predicting a sell-out crowd. The spokesman declined to speculate on the final rental bill for Buchanan’s group--and there’s no word yet on whether the candidate will again denounce public arts funding in his speech.

Summertime, and the Schedulin’ Ain’t Easy

As summer begins to wane, studios are maneuvering to make the most of the last few weeks by shuffling their remaining movies around like a deck of cards. One of the prime “shufflees” arrives Friday, when the Robin Williams comedy “Jack” opens after having first been switched from Wednesday to last Friday. But the story of a 10-year-old with a genetic disorder that accelerates the aging process was moved again, to this Friday, to avoid going up against the closing weekend of the Olympic Games, industry insiders said. Also “Tin Cup,” starring Kevin Costner as a low-life golfer, was moved from this Friday to Aug. 16, as was “Car Pool,” a slapstick comedy starring Tom Arnold. Box-office watchers attribute all the jockeying for position going on this month to the Olympics, a generally heightened sense of competition and also a last-ditch effort to capitalize on the dying embers of summer before kids head back to the classroom. “Between school opening in the middle of August in some parts of the country and the Olympics, it’s screwed things up a bit,” said John Krier, president of Exhibitor Relations. And when one film switches opening dates, it creates a domino effect, with several following suit. “Matilda,” an adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic children’s book, was moved up from its original date Wednesday to last Friday to avoid competing for the same family audience as “Jack.” By jumping ahead, it got a head start on that key youthful audience. “It’s the last gasp of summer,” said Dan Marks, vice president of sales and marketing at Entertainment Data Inc., which tracks box-office receipts. “Once the kids go back to school, business isn’t as good.” (There’s no truth to the rumor that the studios will try to persuade Congress to abolish school.)

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Festival

New York’s inaugural Lincoln Center Festival 96, a three-week extravaganza of cutting-edge arts events directed by former culture critic John Rockwell, closes Sunday. The eclectic East Coast affair has inspired this question: “Hey, didn’t we used to have something like that?” Indeed, our own Los Angeles Festival--a citywide multicultural arts explosion that took place in 1990 and ’93 under the direction of the once-ubiquitous Peter Sellars--is not happening this year. In an offshoot of the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, Sellars was to direct three summer celebrations at three-year intervals--and the last would be gearing up right about now had plans not been derailed in 1994 by a dismal local economy and even more dismal arts fund-raising climate. (Economic weakness hit the L.A. Festival hard, since the egalitarian Sellars was determined to provide mostly free events.) Sellars says that the economy has not perked up sufficiently to allow any planning for a revived festival or to predict any future events. “Everything is really just completely on hold; the next moves will depend on the financial climate here,” he says. Meanwhile, the peripatetic Sellars is working with installation artist Bill Viola on an exhibition planned for the Whitney Museum of Art in 1998. He’s also directing Igor Stravinsky’s opera “The Rake’s Progress,” which is being performed as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Paris residency beginning late next month. So Sellars remains ubiquitous, everywhere but Los Angeles. We’ll leave open the question of whether the Los Angeles Festival should rise again, but, gosh, we miss you Peter, you little imp.

Do You Know Where Your Programs Are?

Now that the Olympics have come to an end, let the prime-time scheduling games begin. Trying to get a jump on the new TV season and capitalize on all those splashy (and widely seen) on-air promos, NBC will vault a number of its shows into new time periods beginning this week. The revised lineup includes Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt’s “Mad About You” shacking up on Tuesday, “Wings” flying over to Wednesday and “3rd Rock From the Sun” beaming down Sunday. Not to be outdone, CBS will get in the act by making some key moves this week as well, with “The Nanny” taking up residence on Wednesday and “Touched by an Angel” winging to Sunday. CBS hopes the latter can reclaim the divine ratings “Murder, She Wrote” once garnered in that slot. Confused yet? That’s what worries some network schedulers, who are gambling that viewers will find their relocated favorites in reruns before the season officially begins in September. NBC’s “Boston Common,” meanwhile, opens its second season Thursday and continues with original episodes Sunday in its new study hall.