Being cast against hype

The Australian mainstream media is run by a handful of really big players who own or have shares in film studios or cinema chains - or both.
The biggest player of them all - the Dirty Digger (aka Rupert Mudrake) - also has a monopoly on the daily major newspaper scene in Brisbane - and just about all the suburban papers as well.
The man is in the business of making money out of show business, so it would be understandable if he or his editorial minions fell prone occasionally to the temptation of pushing product that comes out of his own or associated film studios and into his own or associated hardtops before filtering through to his own or associated video stores and then into his own or associated cable networks.
The hype shovelled onto some films even before they reach our shores - pre-release feature articles, etc - can be a little bit overwhelming. Suffocating, almost, in that there's often nowhere to turn to get a counter view of a film's worth, apart from the journos' review columns which thankfully retain their independence.
Remember that dreadful Star Bores: the Phantom Meandering? Is it any wonder it did $30 million plus in Australia; it got about that in free publicity for months and months before it premiered. Methinks Rupe shared in the distribution lolly in some way.
Then there was that painful Eyes Wide Shut. It got enough free plugs to keep Tom Cruise in designer platform shoes for life, yet while a few mainstream reviewers went over the top and gave it maximum stars, there were plenty who didn't.
The Bug took in the Melbourne premiere at the Crown cinemas a few weeks back, and by the way the crowd streamed silently out as soon as the lights came on, you'd be forgiven for thinking they'd just remembered they'd left the gas on at home.
It would have been a very interesting exercise to have recorded the views of all those people who had just spent three hours in the dark with Kubrick's final masterpiece. My heartfelt guess is that Eyes Wide Shut would have struggled to get a pass mark, and that's with everyone there free-loading! The results might have given poor-old Stanley a heart attack!
The hype around movies rolls on unabated.
There's been a million and one words written in recent days about the magnificent chemistry between Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. It's so magnificent that the monied world of Hollywood took 10 years after Pretty Woman to find them a new vehicle in Runaway Bride which is really quite insipid (see review, this issue).
About as many words have been spent hyping up what Rene Russo has done for the older actress by baring not-quite-all in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair. That hype at least has some substance to it, on the condition that it doesn't tempt Rosanne Barr to follow birthday suit. (see review, this issue).
And we can only wait and cringe with fear about the eggbeater they'll be putting through Adam Sandler's Big Daddy in the weeks ahead. As they've done already with American Pie.
How come it's still some weeks away from opening here in Brisbane yet somehow we already know that American Pie is going to be the greatest thing since, well ..... sliced apple pie?
It's not important who told us so – maybe it was the Curious Snail or some quality daily broadsheet, some glossy magazine articles or the entertainment channels on Foxtel – but we've been bombarded in recent weeks with the news that American Pie with its cast of fresh young faces will be:
A. the most vulgar thing to hit our screens since There's Something About Mary, only 10 times worse (the people behind the flick swear that's true); and
B. incredibly funny because it shows some pimply-faced adolescent poking his pecker into an apple pie. The poor horny lad can't wait to see how it feels with the real thing, and I refer, naturally, to a custard tart.
Now the movie trailer has arrived to keep the hype flowing: beautiful young faces, and of course, that scene with the pieman giving his mother's freshly baked, filled pastry the rounds of the kitchen, so to speak. At least it's good to see a young man who crusts his partner implicitly.
Now, despite all the hype, who out there in Bugland seriously believes that this movie is going to be anything more than just okay. It's got two bugs smeared all over its you know whatisit?
Are we being unfair just because some Hollywood mogul suddenly wised up to the fact that the young kids brought up on a diet of Dawsons Up The Creek and Family of $500,000 an Episode have never heard of Philip Roth, let alone know that poor old Portnoy's complaint was a family meal of liver that tasted a bit funny?
No.

- Don Gordon-Brown