Word: cantonization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...find yourself in a money pit, try not to brag about it. It's one thing to wave off the corporate bean counters' attempts at cost control, as a studio source says Columbia president Mark Canton did last winter on Last Action Hero, but Canton and his boss, Sony Pictures chairman Peter Guber, were publicly cavalier about the mega-yen budget. A modestly priced Last Action Hero, Guber said at a conference in March, "would wind up being Last starring Arnold Schwarz." At the time, the line seemed funny...
...fact, try not to brag at all. "Canton was crowing, 'This is the big one; this is the best thing I've done,' " says an executive who has worked with Canton. "Well, he said that once before." That would be a reference to the disastrous Bonfire of the Vanities in 1990, which at the time Canton called "the best movie we've ever made...
...control your hubris, at least control your panic. What did Canton hope to gain by phoning the editor of Variety and ranting about the show-business paper's negative review of Last Action Hero? Columbia executives, crazed with anxiety in their corporate bunker, were peeved when the Los Angeles Times published a free-lance writer's lighthearted, thinly sourced account of a preview screening that the studio plausibly insists never occurred. But did they have to throw an embarrassing, no-win tantrum? Unless the newspaper agreed to keep the reporter from mentioning Columbia Pictures ever again, the studio said...
...moment, no surefire female stars; Julia Roberts is on sabbatical, Jodie Foster had a low grosser (Little Man Tate) between two hits (The Silence of the Lambs and Sommersby), and Sharon Stone is not yet bankable. "It's been a long time," says Columbia Pictures chairman Mark Canton, "since women have had any reliable impact on big box office." Decades, to be exact. In the '60s women were the top-billed stars in eight of the yearly box-office champs: West Side Story, Cleopatra, Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, Hawaii, The Graduate, Funny Girl and Love Story. But since...
...sake of its own survival, Hollywood must believe what Canton says: "If we put women in good roles in good stories, female audiences will come." If Hollywood cinema can explore the full range of emotion and conviction -- which means putting more women on both sides of the camera -- then maybe next year Oscar will really have something to celebrate...