At the Cash Register, Springsteen Tour is Boss

The concert industry’s annual road trip has reached the halfway mark for 2000 and this is the week it gets its progress report--Pollstar magazine’s tally of top-grossing tours and analysis of ticket-price trends. And the winners will be. . .? A sneak peek shows Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band will rate as the top moneymakers after grossing $45.2 million on their reunion tour, while two other veteran acts, Tina Turner and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, are close behind, with $42.7 million and $42.1 million, respectively. CSN&Y; racked up their numbers with the steepest ticket price--an average ducat of $76.32. Ticket-price inflation has been the dominant concert-world trend in recent years, with the average cost jumping 30% among the Top 50-grossing tours between 1998 and 1999. That’s leveling off, says Pollstar editor-in-chief Gary Bongiovanni. “You knew that kind of increase couldn’t continue, and through the first six months of this year the average price was up about $1.17 over 1999.” What are the other interesting tidbits among the half-year numbers? The popularity boom of Latin music landed four acts among the Top 50 tours--Ricky Martin, Luis Miguel, Marc Anthony and Shakira--up from just two last year. And the award for biggest disappointment goes to the Diana Ross & the Supremes reunion tour, which was viewed as a potential blockbuster venture but has played to several half-empty venues along the way. The combined grosses of the Top 50 provides a rosier picture--they project out to another record year for the concert industry, topping last year’s mark of $1.5 billion. “It’s all upbeat and positive,” Bongiovanni says. “Diana Ross aside, it’s very healthy news.”

‘Scary Movie’ Cranks Up Raunch Factor

As spoofs go, “Scary Movie,” opening Friday, could be the raunchiest ever released by Hollywood. It also could be one of the most popular. Already, the advance buzz is good for the Dimension Films release, with some box-office observers predicting it could be a sleeper hit this summer. The film, directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans and starring a young cast of upcoming talent, not only parodies teen horror films like “Scream,” “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and “The Blair Witch Project,” but also tosses spitballs at “Amistad” and “The Matrix” for good measure. Employing graphic sexual gags to harvest laughs (a burly female gym teacher with testicles is merely one example), some contend “Scary Movie” deserves an adults-only NC-17 rating rather than a less-restrictive R. The film’s gross-out humor is aimed directly at the teenage boys and young adults who flock to see horror thrillers. From “Blazing Saddles” and “Airplane!” to “Hot Shots!” and the “Naked Gun” series, parodies of famous films have long been a Hollywood staple. But turning a spoof into box-office gold requires more than outrageous sight gags. Ask Mel Brooks or Leslie Nielsen. In 1974, Brooks’ riotous Western spoof, “Blazing Saddles,” grossed a then-staggering $119.5 million, but “Spaceballs,” his 1987 takeoff on “Star Wars,” made a lackluster $38.1 million. Nielsen became a comedy cult figure as Lt. Drebin in the “Naked Gun” movies, but audiences seemed to tire of his too-familiar bumbling routine in “Wrongfully Accused,” his 1998 parody of “The Fugitive,” which grossed only $9.6 million. Picking the right movies to parody is key to making a hit spoof. “You can only make a spoof if the films were popular in the first place,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box-office tracking firm, Exhibitor Relations Co.

Three-Hour Marathon for Canceled ‘Freaks’

“Original summer programming” continues to be a popular catch phrase at the major networks, especially with “Survivor” setting audience records on CBS. Still, most of those “all new” episodes amount to leftover installments of shows that have already been canceled or series that programmers deemed too miserable to air during the official TV season, which ended in May. A case in point would be “Freaks and Geeks,” the high school drama NBC will memorialize with a three-hour marathon Saturday. For the networks, burning off these episodes at least allows them to recoup some of their costs, at the same time throwing a bone to critics and fans who watched the series by providing some closure--a small bone, in the case of “Freaks and Geeks,” since three more completed hours aren’t scheduled for broadcast. For the most part, viewers have been savvy about recognizing original summer fare for what it is, as demonstrated by Fox’s dismal ratings for “new” episodes of “Time of Your Life,” the Jennifer Love Hewitt showcase. The “Freaks” cast, meanwhile, has been in demand and scattered to other projects, including a role for John Daley, who played little brother Sam, on ABC’s upcoming Geena Davis sitcom “Geena.”

--Compiled by Times Staff Writers