I Love It. Now Make Me Hate It.

I was walking by the set the other day, and I saw a friend in the art department painting a sign. He was doing a really bad job, which was kind of surprising, since I’ve seen him paint some nice signs in the past.

I asked him about it, and he said it was supposed to look like it was done quickly and unprofessionally. Which it did. So, good job, then.

It must be an odd thing that sometimes you’re required to do your job badly. (Most of us do it on our own initiative.)

I once visited the set of the first Spider-Man. They were shooting inserts of Peter Parker designing his costume in one of the most ridiculous glossing over montages in film history. Anyway, on this occasion, I met Phil Jimenez, an accomplished comic book artist, who was doing the actual drawing.  (It’s his hands, not Tobey Maguire’s, that you see in the film.)

I asked him if it was easier not having to worry about drawing, you know, good. “Actually,” he said, “it’s really hard. I have to un-learn everything I’ve done over the last twenty years.”

I guess I didn’t realize how hard it is to suck, since I’m so naturally talented in that regard.

Economics 101

Fodd responded to yesterday’s post with this comment: “They are going to do some serious creative accounting at Warner Brother to make it look like Speed Racer made any money.” But the box office is not the only way it’ll make money.

After all the ancillary markets, it will break even, at least, but there’s more. Toys, games, flame throwers, all that stuff . My wife has a Speed Racer T-shirt. Plus, Warner Brothers owns the original cartoon. The movie is at the center of a marketing blitz to push those DVDs on both nostalgic baby boomers and ironic hipsters alike.

This is what people are missing when they talk about huge indie movies, like My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It cost $5 million, and made nearly $370 million, world wide. That’s a 7400% profit. Compare with Spider-Man, which had a mere 490% profit.

The thing is, you can’t take profit to the bank. Wedding netted $363 million, while Spider-Man netted $682 million. If you were the head of the studio, which would you prefer? (Not withstanding the fact that one stars a screeching harpy, and the other stars freaking Spider-Man.)

And don’t go thinking the Wedding’s success is scalable. You can’t make twenty-eight romantic comedies about foreigners and their funny accents, and expect them all to produce quadruple digit profits.

People love to point out failures like Speed Racer, but they forget that the reason these films are notable is that they’re rare. Dozens of $5 million movies are released every year, and very few make back their money. Dozens more produced, but never even released. (I know because I’ve worked on most of them.)  Blockbusters are just a safer bet.