Nathan Rabin's ' My Year of Flops'columns for 'The Onion'have been compiled into a book. JOE GRIFFINtalks to him about three years of fiasco-spotting
Joe Griffin: What's the one thing you've learned from spending so long watching commercial failures?
Nathan Rabin: More than anything, I've come to realise that historic failure and epic success come from the same place. They're the product of filmmakers giddy with ambition, audacity and conviction, the creative progeny of bold souls willing to dream big and fail big. The same impulse that led Roberto Benigni to triumph with Life Is Beautifulled him to imagine the world needed a balding, 50-year-old puppet-boy in Pinocchio.Similarly, the same crazed genius that inspired Michael Cimino to shock the world with The Deer Hunterinspired the overreaching mess that is Heaven's Gate.
JG: Your essays include a lot of expensive comedies: Ishtar, Land of the Lost, Pluto Nashand more. Why do you think filmmakers throw so much money at the most cost-effective genre?
NR: For my generation, few comedies are as iconic or as influential as Ghostbustersand The Blues Brothers. It would be hard to think of two more expensive comedies. Ghostbusters'massive, almost unprecedented success infected studios and filmmakers with the delusional notion that comedies benefit from expensive special effects and big budgets when comedies – more than any other genre – live and die on the strength of their scripts and performances.
JG:What's the most commercial or surprising flop you discussed and why do imagine it failed commercially?
NR : The Rocketeerand Last Action Heroare probably the most commercial flops in the book and they were both the victims of bad timing. The Rocketeer, which I love, had the misfortune to go up against T2: Judgment Daywhile Last Action Herowent toe-to-toe with Jurassic Park. They're both shameless blasts of popcorn escapism but The Rocketeerbenefits from filmmakers with a clear, beautifully realised vision: to do for superhero movies what Indiana Jonesdid for adventure serials; while Last Action Herois what some call "a feathered fish", an unfeasible hybrid that's not quite action, not quite comedy but something confused and unsatisfying in between.
JG:Do you think knowing too much about a film's finances works against it?
NR: Definitely. With films like The Cable Guy, Ishtarand Waterworld, the films' budget overruns became the story instead of the films themselves. They become ripe targets for schadenfreude among people horrified by the waste and creative bankruptcy behind so much of what Hollywood unleashes on an unsuspecting public.
JG:Do you think films are sometimes punished for being ahead of their time?
NR: I do . Scott Pilgrim Versus the Worldis an excellent example. It's groundbreaking in its use of CGI to erase the lines between video games, comics, cartoons and live action, but it appealed to a cult, niche audience despite boasting a blockbuster budget. Another good example would be Mickey One, an Arthur Penn-directed Warren Beatty vehicle that tried to import the French New Wave to American shores two years before Bonnie & Clyde.
JG: Some movie stars have a nose for a hit (like Cruise and Hanks) while some gravitate towards flops (like Stallone and Travolta). What's Cruise doing that Stallone isn't?
MR: Couch-jumping and Scientology-espousing aside, I think Cruise is incredibly smart in the way he's managed his career. He works with the best filmmakers in the world and regularly challenges himself with roles like Collateralor Magnolia, whereas Stallone has allowed his ego to destroy his career (pre-comeback of course). Stallone is notorious for script-doctoring every film he appears in, and the sad reality of Hollywood is there aren't too many great roles for marble-mouthed senior citizens with creepily unlined faces.
JG: Why did big studios throw so much money at such strange (but sometimes admirable) projects as Pennies from Heaven, Freddie got Fingeredand Battlefield Earth?
NR: Sometimes an executive takes a risk because he believes in a project whether it makes sense commercially or not. Pennies from Heavenis such a film but there was a certain method to the studio's madness. After all, the film was based on source material that had already proven extremely successful, albeit in a much different medium [TV]. Battlefield Earthwas at once a passion project for John Travolta and an attempt to create a Star Wars-like franchise ostensibly based on a bestselling sci-fi classic, and Freddy Got Fingeredwas actually a fairly smart gamble for the studio. It was a modestly budgeted vehicle for a ubiquitous cult TV personality [Tom Green] with a built-in following. It's utterly surreal but on paper at least it doesn't look like that crazy a move even if it led to that crazy a film.
JG: How many flops do you think a movie star is allowed to make before they're finished? Am I right in thinking that different rules of failure apply to different actors?
NR: Some actors have such a ferocious, strong bond with the movie-going public that they can appear in bomb after bomb and still headline one big-budget studio picture after another. Bruce Willis and John Travolta are two such souls. They've earned so much goodwill through their iconic performances in movies like Pulp Fiction, Die Hard, The Sixth Sense, Saturday Night Feverand Greasethat we'll always love them. So it's hard to pin down exactly how many strikes you're afforded. There's a very tricky cultural arithmetic when it comes to flops I'm still trying to figure out myself. Give me another four years of flopspotting and I will get back to you on that one.
My Year of Flopsis published by Simon Schuster
