TONIGHT, TONIGHT, WE'RE STAYING HOME TONIGHT...

Hold my hand and we're half-way there... to breaking
even. 

I don't know if it's a relief or pathetic that the biggest controversy in America today is
Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story. Depending on what side you're on, it's either the most wonderful movie of the year, a desecration of the original on par with Bible-burning, or just another racist production by rich, out of touch, old white guys. 

They wouldn't do it anyway because "it's sexist and
objectifying!"

For me, the problem is calling it a remake. If you consult The Ol' Fisheye Unread Dictionary, the definition of "remake" is "a new version of a totally original movie." West Side Story started as a Broadway show. By those lofty standards, then, West Side Story 2.0 is no more a remake than Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was of Willy Wonka and the You Know What. Somebody films a new version of Gold Diggers of 1933 with the same title and score, that's a remake. This kind of nitpicking is why I no longer receive dinner invitations.

There are more theories regarding WSS's initial dismal box-office results than there are members of the Sharks and Jets. The most upbeat explanation is that everybody's too busy with preparing for Christmas. Once things die down, the thinking goes, there'll be an uptick continuing into 2022.  As the old Soviet leaders used to say, Interesting if true. 

But it seems to me, as an amateur box office observer, that the people who really want to see a big movie go in the first week. The days of gradually building an audience, at least for studio releases with $100-million budgets like WSS, are as over as 35mm film. Something like the $5-million Nomadland can afford to take its time. (It ultimately made $39-million.)

Back in the day, Monogram Pictures would have made
Spider-Man as a serial for 20,000 bucks and change.

That's why Spider-Man: No Way Home made $50-million on its preview night, and could
earn $250-million by the end of the first weekend. WSS, by contrast, has made $44-million after its first week. Spider-Man's expected take also puts to lie the COVID excuse: Everybody's too afraid to go to the movies! Not if the lead character is part spider, they ain't.

Another theory ties in with COVID, i.e. only boomers want to see WSS and they're too old to go outside. If Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal column and her readers' comments are any indication, the only people going are the over-50s, even if the theaters are filled to only 10% capacity. By the way, did you ever expect to see a time when Steven Spielberg could put only a couple dozen fannys in theater seats? 

The time has come to lose $12-million.

The out-of-left-field Broadway success of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton made Hollywood believe that the kids were ready to sit through two-and-a-half hour movies where people break out into song and dance every 6 minutes. The total fiasco of Miranda's In the Heights this past summer pretty much made a hash of that idea. 

And by fiasco, I mean not only financially but in terms of promotion and controversy as well. Before the closing credits had even rolled, Miranda, had to apologize for "colorism" -- that is, hiring Afro-Latino actors who weren't dark enough. Coincidentally, the original West Side Story had a similar problem, only with white actors playing Latinos. Plus ça change, hunh?

But that likely wasn't the main reason In the Heights flopped. Because despite the mini-revival of movie musicals a decade or two ago -- one release every Christmas -- younger people just don't like them. Gee, if only they had read the Huffington Post puff piece that stated, "Here are all the reasons you'll want to see Lin-Manuel Miranda's "In The Heights" film adaptation." That was in 2016. Never declare a movie a hit four years before it's filmed.

Gee, looks like a musical to me.

Studios used to know the score (no pun intended). The trailers for The Producers (2005) and Sweeney Todd (2007) gave no indication they were musicals. There were even reports of walkouts at the latter by young people -- males, of course -- who thought it was a Tim Burton slasher film, only to discover -- ewww! -- Johnny Depp crooning!

West Side Story, though, is likely to find an audience once it starts streaming. Plenty of folks have gotten used to watching movies at home on their jumbo HDTVs and powerful sound systems, without having to pony up $25 a ticket for the privilege of sitting next to strangers yelling at the screen or talking on their phones. There's a place for us, alright, and it's on the living room couch. 

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