Take One (Mar-Apr 1973)

APews Paae The truth 24 times per second. First, the Bad News Dept.: Filmmakers (and others) who have been using the phone booth at the Post Office at 22 rue des St-Péres, Paris, to make long-distance calls without having to pay for them are hereby warned that the phone has been repaired. Gone is the film that was so divine Department: (1) Followers of the financial side of the film business may, over the next few months, enjoy the relatively rare sight of watching a film’s total gross actually go down from week to week. The Great Gatsby, which Paramount so proudly hailed as _ having earned back its negative cost even before release, has been doing — as anyone can tell you — _ less than spectacularly at the nation’s box offices. So unspectacularly, in fact, that negotiations are already underway by which Paramount will, in effect, be paying back to exhibitors some of the advances they made on the film’s anticipated revenues. Loews’ theatres in NYC, for example (according to Variety), paid Paramount a flat million for the privilege of showing the epic and the distributor’s share of the box-office has so far amounted to only slightly over a quarter of that amount. (2) Sign recently spotted in a New York store window: “Great Gatsby Sweaters % Price Sale!!!” Dean Martin Jr., 22, has pleaded guilty to charges of illegal possession of an anti-tank gun and a machine gun. He had originally claimed the guns to be part of a collection started, as a hobby, when he was a teenager. Is it true that Jane Fonda has two writers working on a script for her, tentatively titled The Patty Hearst Story? Gossip has it that one of the “hottest” scenes from Don’t Look Now — deleted from the final film — was showing up on the private Bel Air screens of so many motion picture executives that Warren Beatty finally had to come to the rescue of Julie Christie (star, with Donald Sutherland, of the movie and the scene) by calling up everyone connected with the loaning-out of the bit of film and telling them off in no uncertain way. Federico Fellini, speaking at a recent press conference, explained that he makes films because he gets advances and doesn’t want to have to give the money back. Oliver Reed has an unbilled appearance in Ken Russell’s Mahler. He plays a train guard who is on the screen for about two seconds — blowing a whistle to set the train in motion. Cornelius J. Ryan, author of The Longest Day (for which Twentieth Century-Fox raked in the largest grosses on record — $54 million — for a b&w film), was refused a print of the picture by the distributor and had to steal one. Spanish censors, having first refused to allow showings of The Getaway because McQueen and MacGraw actually make off with their loot successfully, are now permitting release of the picture with a voice-over that explains —just before the final fade-out — that the two were apprehended six months later. Largest share of the North American filmrental market in 1973 went to Twentieth Century-Fox (18.8%), with Warner Bros. and United Artists in second and third spots. In all, the top three cornered roughly 46% of the market. (Universal was in fourth spot, while Paramount — first in 1972 — slumped to fifth.) It’s All Rights, Ma: Dustin Hoffman has secured (for $80,000) the screen rights to No Beast So Fierce, a first novel by penitentiaryinmate Edward Bunker... Trade papers report fevered bidding for screen rights to Robert Wilder’s new novel, The Sound of Drums and Cymbals, the key character of which is said to strongly resemble the late Louis B. Mayer... Carlo Pointi has bought Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s one and only original screenplay... Robert Redford paid $450,000 for the film rights to Bob Woodward’s and Carl Bernstein’s account of how they broke open the Watergate coverup (Redford to portray the former in the film)... Levy-Gardner-Laven Productions have formed a joint venture and acquired the motion picture rights to Tom Swift. A feature set pre-World War I — is scheduled for late this year or early next... And Warner Bros. has paid a minimum of $250,000 for film rights to Norman Mailer’s next book, due September, 1978. The Mickey Mouse revival (coincidental with MM7’s 45th birthday last November 18th) continues with the release (by Buena Vista Distribution) of seven 1932, 1933 and 1934 cartoon shorts that haven’t been seen for quite a while, including The Mail Pilot. With some 15 international airlines now having switched their on-board motion picture projection equipment from l6mm to Super-8, indications are that the smaller gauge will soon become the standard for inflight movies. It has been estimated that, with Super-8 instead of 16mm on a 747, the weight reduction alone can save as much as $254,000 a year per plane. Production Notes from All Over: Production is to begin late this summer on John Milius’s The Wind and the Lion, with Faye Dunaway and Sean Connery (plot: in 1904 an American is kidnapped — with her children — by the last of the Barbary pirates)... Noel (Pretty Poison) Black has completed filming Marianne, which deals with New Orleans voodoo... Mel Brooks has likewise completed shooting Young Frankenstein and the picture is now scheduled for a Christmas release. ... Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson have been signed to star in Joseph Losey’s The Romantic Englishwoman, to go into production at the end of September. ... Before that, however, Caine will co-star (with Natalie Wood, in her first film in five years) in Fat Chance, an action-adventure story set in the Hollywood of 1948. ... Jacques (Les Demoiselles de Rochefort) Demy has been invited to shoot another musical comedy — in the USSR. ... Otto Preminger is starring Robert Mitchum and Cliff Gorman in his up-coming Rosebud, about the terrorist kidnappings (do we see a genre emerging here?) of five daughters of wealthy families. ...Robert Shaw, Roy Schneider and Rick Dreyfuss (in his first film since The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz) are the leads in Jaws (based on the best-seller), being shot this summer at Martha’s Vineyard under the direction of Steven (Sugarland Express) Speilberg. ... Milos Foreman has been inked (as they say) to direct One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, scheduled to begin production this fall. ... Apparently because of a political-religious controversy, the Moroccan government has banned all work on the $8-million Mohammed, Prophet of Allah, to have starred Anthony Quinn and Irene Pappas. The Saudi Arabians are said to be pressuring strongly for a resumption of shooting. ... Katharine Hepburn has signed to play against Laurence Olivier in a madefor-tv movie, Love Among the Ruins (under the direction of George Cukor), and against John Wayne. in Rooster Cogburn, the film sequel to True Grit. ... Serpico’s producer (Martin Bregman), star (Al Pacino), and director (Sidney Lumet) are scheduled to reunite for the making of Dog Day Afternoon, to be shot — probably on location in New York — this September. ... And William Friedkin will be making his next film at Universal. He won’t give out the plot, and doesn’t have a working title yet, but has said it will require another two years of research, and will deal with a subject that has never been portrayed on film before. He told The Hollywood Reporter's Marvene Jones that the project will be “the most important film I’ve ever made’. He also revealed that the French dubbing of The Exorcist is being directed by Jeanne Moreau.