"Box Office Poison" Costner Is In the Best Company
Nikki Finke has officially labelled Kevin Costner "Box Office Poison" because of "Swing Vote's" $6 million-plus take at a box office choking with summer franchise films last weekend.
I'm sure she didn't mean to, but Finke has put KC in the best company - with the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich and Fred Astaire. All of them wore the same label once upon a time - in 1938. Hepburn's story has been well-chronicled (Getting "The Philadelphia Story" made and going on to the partnership with Spencer Tracy). Crawford would go on to such successes as "The Women" and "Mildred Pierce." Dietrich would make "Destry Rides Again," "Witness For the Prosecution" and "Judgment at Nuremberg," among others.
The most interesting label from that year is Astaire, who had made his first full-length RKO film without Ginger Rogers - "A Damsel In Distress," with Joan Fontaine, George Burns and Gracie Allen. The film did not do well at the box office, but won an Oscar for choreographer Hermes Pan for dance direction, and the score and songs by George and Ira Gershwin are now considered classic, especially the standards "A Foggy Day" and "Nice Work If You Can Get It."
Meanwhile, Astaire would go on to make some of the greatest musicals of the 1940s and 50s, mostly at MGM ("Easter Parade," "The Band Wagon," "Royal Wedding," "Silk Stockings"), as well as 20th Century Fox ("Daddy Long Legs" and "Funny Face"), and set new standards for dance on film. He'd also get a Golden Globe nomination for the very non-musical "On the Beach," a 1959 film about the survivors of nuclear war.
Anyway, the moral of the story is what KC always says: Don't judge a movie today. Wait until tomorrow, and (with apologies to The Postman) tomorrow.....and the day after that! His movies will hold up well. Fifty years from now, no one will care how they did at the box office. They'll just put on whatever machine is operating, and watch.
I'm sure she didn't mean to, but Finke has put KC in the best company - with the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich and Fred Astaire. All of them wore the same label once upon a time - in 1938. Hepburn's story has been well-chronicled (Getting "The Philadelphia Story" made and going on to the partnership with Spencer Tracy). Crawford would go on to such successes as "The Women" and "Mildred Pierce." Dietrich would make "Destry Rides Again," "Witness For the Prosecution" and "Judgment at Nuremberg," among others.
The most interesting label from that year is Astaire, who had made his first full-length RKO film without Ginger Rogers - "A Damsel In Distress," with Joan Fontaine, George Burns and Gracie Allen. The film did not do well at the box office, but won an Oscar for choreographer Hermes Pan for dance direction, and the score and songs by George and Ira Gershwin are now considered classic, especially the standards "A Foggy Day" and "Nice Work If You Can Get It."
Meanwhile, Astaire would go on to make some of the greatest musicals of the 1940s and 50s, mostly at MGM ("Easter Parade," "The Band Wagon," "Royal Wedding," "Silk Stockings"), as well as 20th Century Fox ("Daddy Long Legs" and "Funny Face"), and set new standards for dance on film. He'd also get a Golden Globe nomination for the very non-musical "On the Beach," a 1959 film about the survivors of nuclear war.
Anyway, the moral of the story is what KC always says: Don't judge a movie today. Wait until tomorrow, and (with apologies to The Postman) tomorrow.....and the day after that! His movies will hold up well. Fifty years from now, no one will care how they did at the box office. They'll just put on whatever machine is operating, and watch.
posted by FlaFan @ 5:54 PM
1 Comments:
At 10:29 PM,
Anonymous said…
GREAT stuff Flafan!! I loved what you had to say here. And you are so right. In fifty years, people will still be watching Costner movies - but will anyone know the name Nikki Finke?
As usual, you've got all the right words.
Kim
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