FINCHERBOMB'D

Yesterday I told you about the email fight (sort of) between New Yorker critic/scarf enthusiast David Denby (left), and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo producer/chocolate enthusiast Scott Rudin (right), over Denby’s decision to run his Dragon Tattoo review a week ahead of the “embargo” date he’d agreed to. Rene Rodriguez of the Miami Herald asked David Fincher what he thought about it, and that seems important because Fincher directed the thing. As an aside, Rodriguez also points out that Denby once wrote a thoroughly scathing review of Fight Club, which is about what you’d expect from a dude in a fancy scarf who gets excited about Stephen Daldry movies.

Fincher didn’t remember Denby’s Fight Club review when I mentioned it to him (“Have you read Alexander Walker’s review?” he asked.) But he did have something to say about the [embargo kerfuffle].

Another aside here, you should totally check out that Alexander Walker review. It makes that Fox News segment about The Muppets being liberal brainwashing seem logical and carefully reasoned by comparison.

“I think Scott [Rudin]‘s response was totally correct. It’s a hard thing for people outside our business to understand. It is a bit of a tempest in a teapot. But as silly as this may all look from the outside – privileged people bickering – I think it’s important. Film critics are part of the business of getting movies made. You swim in the same water we swim in. And there is a business to letting people know your movie is coming out. It is not a charity business. It is a business-business.

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INTELLECTUALS BE BEEFIN, Y'ALL!

Okay, the full email exchange I’m about to post below is a little long, and probably a lot inside baseball, but it’s still an interesting glimpse into how movie studios market themselves during awards season. The exchange was between the New Yorker‘s David Denby and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo producer Scott Rudin. They’re both pictured above, and go ahead, try to guess which one is the New Yorker film critic and which the movie producer. Hmm, is the New Yorker guy the one with the intellectual glasses and affectatious scarf, or the fat, bald Jewish dude with a five o’clock shadow looking uncomfortable in a suit??? OH I BET YOU’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO GUESS! (Seriously though, these guys could be on flash cards that said “NYC Film Critic” and “Movie Producer”).

Anyway, their beef stems from Denby’s decision to break embargo on his Girl with the Dragon Tattoo review. Basically, when films screen for critics, we generally have to agree not to run our reviews before a certain date as a condition of attending. Denby got to attend an early screening (hosted by the NYFCC, the organization Armond White used to chair), and agreed to an embargo date of December 13th (FYI, I still haven’t gotten my screening invite, but my embargo date will most likely be a full week after that). Denby and the New Yorker decided to break the embargo and run the review early, and Sony and Scott Rudin are reportedly “pissed.” The Playlist was able to get a hold of the ensuing email exchange between Rudin and Denby, and what ensues is an online dork fight of the inhaleriest proportions.

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If you’re not a part of the snooty New York theater scene, you might not have been aware that South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Book of Mormon musical has been playing to rave reviews and sold out shows on Broadway for about a month now.  That may or may not be a huge accomplishment considering their competition is stuff like Legally Blonde and the U2 Spider-Man play, but they did create it with Avenue Q‘s Robert Lopez, and I can confirm that Avenue Q is amazing.  Now several sites are reporting that Book of Mormon could be coming to theaters, and I mean the American kind, with popcorn and Coke, not those fruity pinko ones with the programs and the intermissions.  So why the question mark in the headline?  Well, here’s the quote at the crux of the reports, from Deadline’s Mike Fleming:

So what will happen when producer Scott Rudin inevitably shops the Broadway musical to become a movie musical? “We’ve learned in our careers that as long as something is successful, they will give you money for it,” Parker tells me. “They just want to make money in Hollywood, they don’t really care. As long as the musical continues to do well, I don’t think it’s going to be hard at all.”

So… does that mean Scott Rudin actually is shopping the Broadway musical as a movie musical?  Uh… maybe?  That’s the way most sites are reporting it.  As we’ve seen before, sometimes it’s hard to tell what the f*ck Mike Fleming is talking about.  In any case, there doesn’t seem to be any reason it couldn’t become a movie.  Also, it sounds awesome:

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^{Weinstein and Rudin tied for first in the Les Grossman Lookalike Contest}

So despite the fact that studio head Harvey Weinstein (left) and producer Scott Rudin (right) are basically the same person, they’re in the middle of a big fight.  At issue is The Reader, a movie Billy Elliot director Steven Daldry did for The Weinstein Company.  The film was first delayed 8 weeks by Nicole Kidman’s pregnancy, then faced another, even sexier delay when they had to wait for one of the actors to turn 18 so she could shoot a sex scene.  Even though it started shooting four months behind schedule, Harvey still wanted it finished in time for awards season (deadline is in November), despite that the director, who officially had creative control, said that was basically impossible. Rudin, who backed the director, claims Weinstein explored a number of sleazy options for forcing him to finish earlier, including claiming recently deceased producers Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella “would have wanted” the movie finished in 2008 (I use that strategy with chicks all the time).  But this is all backstory.  You can get the full rundown here.

Today’s news is that Weinstein offered to give $1 million to charity if someone could produce the supposed email in which Rudin accused him of mistreating Anthony Minghella’s and Sydney Pollack’s families.  It seems a charity is in luck, because Nikki Finke just published it:

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