MEMO - To: ALL. RE: "Gays in There"

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you because you already know the movie by heart because it’s your favorite, but one of the crucial plot points in Jerry Maguire is Jerry’s decision to write and disseminate a heartfelt memo about getting back to the company’s roots and focusing on personal relationships. The memo wins him a slow-clap from his agency’s staff, but eventually leads to him getting fired, just like that asshole Jay Mohr predicted. What many people might NOT know is that that fictional memo in Cameron Crowe’s movie was inspired by a real memo Jeffrey Katzenberg (then head of Disney, current CEO of Dreamworks) sent around to his fellow Disney executives in 1991.

LettersofNote have gotten their hands on the original memo, and above all else, it’s super long. 28 freakin’ pages worth. Based on every exec speech or communique I’ve ever heard, it seems like the key to success in business is being able to stretch a two-word thought into ten and repeat it at least six times. Nonetheless, it’s interesting, and I’ve tried to excerpt some of the more poignant/relevant/ironic parts.

Back in 1984, our initial success at Disney was based on the ability to tell good stories well. Big stars, special effects and name directors were of little importance. Of course, we started this way out of necessity. We had small budgets and not much respect. So we substituted dollars with creativity and big stars with talent we believed in. Success ensued.

With success came bigger budgets and bigger names. We found ourselves attracting the calibre of talent with which “event” movies could be made. And, more and more, we began making them. The result: costs have escalated, profitability has slipped and our level of risk has compounded. The time has come to get back to our roots.

It used to be that there was a reliable criterion for a film’s success — whether or not it had “legs.” Studios would toy with different strategies for opening a film, all with the goal of helping it develop “legs” through positive word of mouth. Now the term “legs” has all but disappeared from the Hollywood vocabulary. Thanks to the dictates of the blockbuster mentality, the shelf life of many movies has come to be somewhat shorter than a supermarket tomato.

Sadly, relying on big opening weekends has only gotten worse since then. Though to Katzenberg’s credit, Dreamworks’ Puss in Boots only dropped 3% from its opening weekend this weekend, one of the smallest second-weekend drops anyone can remember. Yet somehow I doubt that’s a result of seeking out creativity at the expense of special effects…

On ticket prices:

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...Mom?

I’ve been excited for Shawn Levy’s robot-boxing movie, Real Steel, ever since Levy said of the project, “In a movie filled with these mechanical warriors, at its core ‘Real Steel’ is an incredibly human story.”

Now it’s got a full-length trailer, and against all odds, IT LOOKS EVEN MORE RIDICULOUS THAN WE COULD’VE IMAGINED!  Keep in mind as you watch this that Spielberg and Co. over at Dreamworks already have plans for a sequel based on how well it played to test audiences.

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Don't let the aliens butt probe me, James Bond

Cowboys and Aliens, the second release (after I Am Number Four) under the newly-reshuffled Dreamworks arrangement, from director John Favreau and the writers of Lost, Iron Man, and Star Trek, opens July 1st.  The new, extended trailer hit late last night, and man, between this, Sucker Punch, and Your Highness, 2011 has been a great year for 13-year-old’s wet-dream movies.

DUDE! What if COWBOYS fought ALIENS!

YEAH! And then JAMES BOND was there!

YEAH! And INDIANA JONES!

YEAH! And then what if James Bond had amnesia! And kept gradually remembering what a badass he is, LIKE JASON BOURNE!

YEAH! And what if amnesia Jason James Bond Bourne had to kill the aliens WITH ROCKET HANDS!

LIKE IRON MAN!

YEAH!  (*lights frog on fire, shoots it out of potato gun*)

All I’m saying is, one of these aliens better have three tits.

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In six months, Dreamworks is scheduled to release Real Steel, a film from Hugh Jackman and the director of Night at the Museum about robots with mohawks who punch each other in the balls and box.  For some, this would be a time of much worry and hand-wringing, wondering if the $80 million they spent on a robot-boxing movie would earn out.  The heads at Dreamworks, on the other hand, believe this to be such a surefire winner of a concept that they’ve already hired a writer for the sequel. 

I’m told the studio has commissioned John Gatins, who scripted the first film, to start on the second installment. It’s unusual to see that occur so early, but I can recall it happening when Warner Bros commissioned a Hangover sequel after early tests showed the movie was going to be a big hit.

DreamWorks has gotten strong response to internal screenings of the film, and at a CinemaCon presentation of footage in Las Vegas. The film is a Rocky-meets-Transformers tale of a prize fighter whose pugilistic skills are rendered obsolete when human boxers are replaced by robots. The fighter (Jackman) becomes a boxing promoter and finds a discarded robot that wins and wins. The fighter also discovers he has a 13-year old son, who comes along for the ride as the robot heads toward the top against scary competition. [Deadline]

Rocky meets Transformers.  Do not nut-punch your robot, you indeed read that correctly. Though if you ask me, it sounds like another Stallone classic, Over the Top.  Specifically the old Norm MacDonald car crash sketch from SNL (included below), where he’s ripping on Stallone for making Over the Top.  “Did you actually read the script for Over the Top and say ‘gee, that’s a good one.’  You combined the the drama of a child custody hearing with, uh… arm wrestling.”

I can’t wait until Real Steel comes out, combining all the touching drama of male-abandonment issues with… uh… robot boxing.

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The top half of the banner picture comes from Cracked, who the other day had a great list about actors who make the same face in every movie, one of them being Eddie Murphy.  This led us to wonder: Was Eddie Murphy the original model for Dreamworks Face™?  I say no.  Not toothy enough.  But it’s definitely his “I wonder if that’s a tranny” face.

-thanks to AJ for the eyebrows heads up.