Gawker: defamer, sahara

Octomom, Mormons to Destroy Traditional Television

Richard Lawson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 10:40:04 EDT

Today is: Gay Utah finds a new prom queen, Non-Gay Utah hates freedom, Sahara continues to hemorrhage money, Twilight newz!!, and frigging Octomom.

The Sundance Film Festival has a new director. John Cooper, a 20-year veteran of the festival who worked in programming, has been moved up to the top spot. Cooper is responsible for instituting many of Sundance's new technological pursuits, including releasing indie shorts on iTunes, Netflix, and for the Xbox 360. Asked how he feels about those particular initiatives, festival founder Robert Redford smiled strangely, nodded his head, and said "Well... sure. Those." [Variety]

Though it's been in the can for four long years, the movie Sahara is still losing people money. Clive Cussler, the author of the novel on which the tale of a swashbuckling adventurer named Matthew McConaughey who's looking for a Civil War warship in the Sahara desert with the help of a lisping Spanish lady and that dude from Out of Sight is based, sued the movie's production company, Crusader, awhile back, claiming that they didn't give him final script approval as promised. Crusader sued back saying that Cussler had lied about the sales figures for his series of books, which they had hoped to turn into a franchise. Crusader won the suit in 2007, the jury awarding them $5 million. Now Cussler has been ordered to pay for their legal fees as well. All summed up, the total cost of Sahara for Cussler? $27 million. A fair price to pay for foisting that film's miseries upon the world. [Variety]

Juan Antonio Bayona, a young apprentice of Guillermo Del Toro's, might be directing the third movie in the Twilight fuckmeplease vampire series, creatively titled Eclipse. It's about an enchanted Mitsubishi that a girl and her sparklenaif undead boyfriend dry hump in and then he gets mad at her and then she eats mushroom ravioli and then he smolders and jumps into trees and then she falls down because she's clumsy and then he smiles and then—I'm sorry little girl, would you like some coffee with that cream? [THR]

Like ants who keep crawling into your house every year to complain a lot, Mormons are once again angry with the current best show on television, Big Love. This time it's because the show is going to depict a sacred, and secret and magical, 'endowment ceremony' in an upcoming episode. It's a long held tradition that the particulars of the ceremony, which prepares you and other people for the eternal afterlife or some such nonsense, be heavily guarded. HBO states that "it was not our intention to do anything disrespectful to the church." Hah, really? Have you seen your show, HBO? Frankly, I don't give a shit what the Mormons are whining about. Actually, I'm going to start sending money from this state into their shitty, wasted desert of a hellhole in an effort to get MORE endowment ceremonies depicted on every TV show possible that has anything remotely to do with Utah. Then I'll laugh at them and ask them how it feels to be meddled with. [THR]

Oh angel Moroni, make it stop. We're just making Nadya 'Octomom' Suleman more powerful. Her two-part appearance on Dr. Phil's Program for Shut-Ins brought the daytime hamfest a 14% rise in ratings. Oprah Winfrey's show for secret alcoholics and lonely gay men living in Coral Gables saw a 22% bump when she showed up for an interview. Feeding off of and growing from this buzzing success, Suleman is next expected to destroy downtown Tokyo. [Variety]

'Sahara': Deep Inside The Budget Of An Epic Flop

Mark — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 14:17:23 EDT

It's hardly a secret that big-budget Hollywood moviemaking is perhaps the most financially wasteful of human endeavors, with each prospective blockbuster production lavishing hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not millions) in perks to ensure the constant comfort of its above-the-title talent, who can only practice their craft if their demands for individual pedicurists for each toe and a double-wide equipped with a spa-tub that bubbles forth perfectly chilled Cristal at the touch of a button are fully met. Sunday's LAT featured a must-read Special! Report! revealing the budget of high-eight-figures loser Sahara "confidentially" submitted as an exhibit in the ongoing lawsuits between author Clive Cussler and producer Philip Anschutz, two fierce combatants in the process of suing the living shit out of one another (we apologize for the use of that highly technical legal jargon) in an attempt to figure out who bears the majority of the blame for the movie's profound failure. After the jump, we've excerpted some of the budget's highlights; the Times is careful to disclaim that "actual expenses may have varied from budgeted items," leaving some hope that impenetrably accented actress Penelope Cruz's dialogue coaches, who would have been woefully underpaid at the stated $125,804, ultimately received substantial additional remuneration for bravely performing one of the most dangerous and thankless jobs in all of show business:

Matthew McConaughey:
Salary: $8 million
Perks: $833,923
Entourage travel: $179,262
Makeup artist: $150,223
Stunt double: $124,740
Colorist: $72,800
Trainer: $67,977
Personal chef: $48,893

Penelope Cruz:
Salary: $1.6 million
Perks: $835,561
Entourage travel: $227,515
Hairstylist: $135,550
Makeup artist: $135,550
Dialogue coaches: $125,804

Steve Zahn:
Salary: $2.2 million
Perks: $264,153

Miscellaneous fun:
Story and rights:$14.1 million
- Clive Cussler: $10 million
- Writers: $3.8 million

Composer Clint Mansell: $800,000
Director Breck Eisner: $750,000

$78 million of red ink? [LAT]
Previously: Casting An Inevitable Bomb: How 'Sahara' Wound Up As A Matthew McConaughey Vehicle [Defamer]

Casting An Inevitable Bomb: How 'Sahara' Wound Up As A Matthew McConaughey Vehicle

Mark — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 21:55:05 EST

While it's no secret that movies—especially the huge disasters—rarely go before the cameras with a director or producer's first choice in talent, it's always fun when the divide between a production's lofty, A-list dreams and disappointing B-list reality is somehow exposed. In presenting the highlights of producer Karen Baldwin's testimony in the ongoing, alternately messy and hilarious trial in which novelist Clive Cussler and Philip Anschutz's Crusader Entertainment are trying to determine who is most responsible for the historic bombing of Sahara, the LAT lays out how Paramount wound up in the thoroughly fucked position of having to spend $130 million on a Matthew McConaughey vehicle:

Many top-tier actors were considered for the lead role of the swashbuckling Dirk Pitt, among them Tom Cruise, Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Owen Wilson, Heath Ledger and Christian Slater. [Producer Karen] Baldwin testified that in a telephone conversation with Cruise, the actor "indicated that he was a fan" of Cussler's books and "excited" about the project.
But Cruise passed on the script, and Baldwin's team turned its attention to Jackman. Paramount executives were "adamant that we move off" Jackman, Baldwin wrote in an e-mail produced in court.

"Hugh Jackman was doing a Broadway play," Baldwin testified. "So it wasn't that they didn't like Hugh, but they didn't want to wait for him."
Crusader Entertainment wanted Christian Bale but ran into opposition from then-Paramount chief Sherry Lansing.

"Sherry said she can't believe we like Christian.... " Baldwin wrote in an e-mail. "I told her, 'I am not trying to be difficult. I honestly do like him a lot.' She said we will ruin the franchise."

Lansing favored McConaughey for the leading role. But [original director Rob] Bowman, who had directed both Bale and McConaughey in "Reign of Fire," objected.

"Rob liked Christian ... and he didn't like McConaughey," Baldwin said.

After performing a screen test to satisfy Paramount, Bale was offered the role but turned it down.

Producers turned to McConaughey, who had been pursuing the part for years.

Wrote Baldwin: "As you all know, Matthew would crawl on his hands and knees to do this part."

One shudders to think of the casting nightmare that might have resulted had McConaughey not been willing to grovel for Christian Bale's sloppy seconds, forcing Paramount to slide a rung further down the star ladder; on the other hand, scaling back the production to a twenty-five day Romanian direct-to-video shoot with Jean-Claude Van Damme might have saved the studio tens of millions of dollars in eventual losses.

Jurors hear tales of studio maneuvering [LAT]