The Summer of Whodunit

Before the summer began, the entertainment media were awash in stories forecasting the season’s big films by A-list directors such as Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton and Michael Bay. But who could have predicted that the summer box-office heat would be fueled by films made by a string of unsung directors such as Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, Rob Cohen, Lawrence Guterman, Joe Johnston and Robert Luketic?

Don’t recognize their names? Then maybe you’ll recognize their movies: Adamson and Jenson directed “Shrek”; Cohen, “The Fast and the Furious”; Guterman, “Cats & Dogs”; Johnston, “Jurassic Park III”; and Luketic, “Legally Blonde.”

All told, their five films have already pumped $743 million into the domestic box office, and that doesn’t count the overseas market. The success of these largely obscure filmmakers points out a glaring fact of life in Hollywood: pre-season hype can go only so far.

“In a way, the summer is viewed by the media as a lottery, the Irish Sweepstakes, big jackpots, who’s gonna win?” observed Cohen, whose tire-screeching adrenaline rush “The Fast and the Furious” was virtually overlooked going into the summer, but now has taken in $140 million to become one of Universal’s most profitable films ever.

“They whip up the froth in these summary stories: ‘Here’s the summer movie to watch out for!’ ‘Here’s Entertainment Weekly’s top 10!’ and all this sort of classification before anyone has seen anything,” Cohen added. “So, what you’re buying is a set of credits, a concept of a film and a kind of profile of the amalgamated team involved. The interesting thing about the movie business is that none of that matters--ever--and never has mattered. It has always been the ‘American Graffiti’ that comes out of nowhere, or the ‘Jaws’ that no one thought would be successful.”

Who knew, for example, that “Shrek,” co-directed by Adamson and Jenson, would debut with $42.4 million in ticket sales and go on to gross a staggering $260 million to become not only the summer’s but the year’s biggest-grossing movie to date? Or, that Guterman’s “Cats & Dogs” would open with $21.4 million, edging out “Scary Movie 2,” which, going into the summer, nearly everyone thought to have a lock on the No. 1 spot.

Or, that Luketic’s “Legally Blonde” would gross nearly $80 million in its first five weeks in release? By comparison, one of Hollywood’s top comedy directors, Ivan Reitman, has seen his new film, “Evolution,” gross a mere $38.3 million.

Some Hollywood observers say that what they are seeing this summer is the audience embracing films made without stars and by directors who are not exactly household names. “It’s become a summer phenomenon,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co. “The pedigree is not as important as the movie.”

Not only are Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Jim Carrey and other top stars missing from movie lineups this summer, but the bigger movies are being made by lesser-known directors or, in some cases, novices in the world of feature films.

Before its release by MGM, “Legally Blonde” was viewed as a real underdog--even by its director.

“You know how scary that is when [the studio] distribution [department] shows you a big chart on the wall and there is ‘Legally Blonde’ and all around it is Julia Roberts [in ‘America’s Sweethearts’] and ‘Planet of the Apes’ and the dinosaurs and ‘A.I.,”’ Luketic said. “It’s just absolutely petrifying.”

But “Legally Blonde,” which stars Reese Witherspoon as a not-quite-so-dumb blond-haired Harvard law student who overcomes adversity with a healthy dose of cheerful optimism, touched a chord among moviegoers.

What clicked? Luketic believes that first and foremost it was Witherspoon’s character, who was “loveable and sweet and a breath of fresh air.”

“Legally Blonde” was Luketic’s first feature film and the significance isn’t lost on him. “You think, ‘I will be happy if this goes to video,”’ he joked. “You don’t think it’s going to make $80 million.”

So, has life changed for him?

“What it’s done is given me an opportunity to get my hands on material I wouldn’t be able to get my hands on before,” he said. “I’m not going to rush into anything. First, I carried the burden of make-or-break. Now, I carry the burden of great expectations.”

“Cats & Dogs” was also Guterman’s first directing venture. The film, which combines live-action with computer wizardry to make animals appear to talk, didn’t have the benefit of big stars on the marquee or a previously existing franchise, but he believes that moviegoers embraced the movie because there is something innately funny about imagining a high-tech war between cats and dogs.

Guterman, who studied physics at Harvard before attending USC’s film school, said it was a thrill just to see a giant poster of his movie plastered on a wall outside Warner Bros. alongside all the studio’s other summer movies. “It’s amazing to do what I’ve always dreamed of doing,” he said.

One would normally not think that a Spielberg franchise would be a dark horse, but before “Jurassic Park III” came out, there were many in Hollywood who scratched their heads and asked, “Do we really need another dinosaur movie?”’

Director Johnston said he heard such comments “endlessly” before the movie’s debut. “I was even wondering that myself a couple of years ago,” he recalled.

Johnston said that when he first met with Spielberg to discuss plans for “Jurassic Park III,” the Oscar-winning director told him: “The critics are not going to like this movie. The critics hate the ‘Jurassic Park’ movies. Forget about that. You’re making this movie for the people.” Johnston’s reply? “OK, whatever.”

Ironically, the film succeeded (it’s grossed $168.3 million domestically so far) even though it didn’t really have a script going into production.

“We had elements of a script and we had pages that were constantly being rewritten, but we never really had a document that we could say, ‘Here’s the movie’ from beginning to end,” Johnston recalled. “In a way, that gave me a little bit of freedom. I could decide how and when I was shooting the movie, what I wanted the characters to do. It’s not the way to do a $100-million movie and I never want to do it again, but it sort of worked out.”

Johnston, a veteran filmmaker with credits such as “October Sky,” “Jumanji” and “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” said he didn’t know how well “Jurassic Park III” had performed at the box office for the first eight days because he had trekked into a remote area of Montana on--what else?--a dinosaur dig.

“I totally forgot about the movie for eight days and it was fantastic,” Johnston recalled. Now, Johnston said, it would suit him just fine if he could continue to avoid the limelight for awhile.

“Anonymity is a wonderful thing if you can hang on to it,” he observed.

“I live out in Pasadena where we try to keep the movie people out,” he added with a laugh. “We discourage them from moving in our neighborhood and if they do we burn effigies on their lawns .... I don’t have plans to do anything. I’m going to take as much as a year off. That helps the anonymity, too. If you take a year off, they’ll start asking, ‘Whatever happened to that guy who made ‘Jurassic Park III? Oh, he died on a dinosaur dig. They’ll unearth him in a million years.”’

The biggest story of the summer, however, has got to be “Shrek.” Adamson and Jenson believe that “Shrek” succeeded because it had a compelling story that everyone can identify with and characters with heart.

“It has a message all can relate to: being accepted, being stereotyped and not fitting in,” said Adamson. “Those are things everybody goes through in their life.”

Added Jenson: “I think everybody walks away from it feeling good. It’s kind of the underdog who makes it. Love and happiness are found despite all of that.”

Both Jenson and Adamson are now developing other projects. “It’s been a pretty interesting summer,” Adamson said. “I can’t complain too much about it. It can be quite derailing and overwhelming, but it is nice to be overwhelmed in a positive sense than in a negative sense.”

What all these films had in common was a diminished sense of expectations going into the summer, and that actually can be a good thing for a director.

“Had ‘The Fast and the Furious’ flopped,” Cohen remarked, “they would say, ‘Well, you know, Universal put it in the summer, it had nobody in it, it was a car movie. If it did $60 million, that’s pretty good .... But if it had been, ‘Oh, this is going to be one of the top 10 films of the summer’ and then it didn’t hit, it would have been so much worse.”

To a degree, “Godzilla” suffered this fate when it was released over the Memorial Day holiday weekend in 1998. The film opened to $55.7 million, but because of the massive marketing campaign that preceded it, many felt even that good an opening did not live up to the enormous hype.

“When you expect an event as a viewer, you’re going to be let down because movies are great, but they’re movies,” Cohen said. “You can enjoy them, they can get you going, but the way they are pitched is like they’re going to be life changing.”