Word: floppings
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Bankrolling a motion picture has always been half investment, half gamble: the percentage of flicks that flop is an astonishing 70%. In the best of times-which these are not-the lure of the long shot attracted enough moneyed players to keep the game alive. In recent years, however, recession, declining profits and rising costs have sent the movie industry into a dizzying downward spiral...
...hrer in a fishing boat with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Mussolini. Chamberlain puts out a line, patiently lights a pipe, and within two hours has landed a respectable catch. Mussolini jumps into the water and grabs a fat pike. Hitler orders the pond drained. As the fish flop about helplessly on the bottom, Chamberlain asks Hitler: "Why don't you scoop them up?" Hitler replies: "They have to beg me first...
Open Contradiction. For his opponents it was one flip-flop too many. Like other observers, acidulous London Times Columnist Bernard Levin stood agape at "the spectacle of the Leader of the Opposition denouncing his own Government's application to join the EEC, and rejecting as totally unacceptable the terms which a year ago he would have been proclaiming a triumph for its skill, patience and determination...
George Cutler, for instance, described his life as "A Complete Flop." Joseph Bransten wrote that his "business career has been one of complete nepotism." I would particularly like to meet the class's most flamboyant live wire, Serge Daniloff, who wrote...
MULTILEVEL PLATFORMS. Architect Michael Black was called in by Harold Slavkin, a Los Angeles molecular biologist, to plan a vacation house. He disposed of all furniture, building a complex of multilevel platforms covered with carpeting. Now guests sit, lie or sprawl, and flop from one tier to another as conversations catch their interest. "In a 10-ft. by 12-ft. area," says Slavkin's wife Kay, "we've had as many as twelve people in practically as many postures." Black also revamped the Slavkins' staid, traditional Los Angeles house. "The problem," he says, "was a cold, formal...