Posted 10:00pm, Monday, July 12, 2004
From
my In-Box:
From: Paul Carek
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 06:29:28 -0700
To: Ron Lim
Subject: Is this weird, or what?
Ron,
I think this image speaks for itself, though I'm not entirely sure what
it's saying.
Paul
That's
Ann Coulter at Joe McCarthy's grave. Spooky... Oh, and the tombstone
is weird too.
Also
had
to post this e-mail I got from an editor I work with on a regular
basis...
From: connort@(removed).net
Subject: Dumb As Dog Shit
Date: July 11, 2004 11:56:43 AM PDT
Last week my Dad, a 35 year veteran
of the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office was having lunch
with John Daly, an attorney
in the Los Angeles
City Attorney's office, and some other old cronies. John told
a story about his late friend Joyce Valdez back in 1978.
Joyce was a very
talented and respected Republican fundraiser in California
at the time. Joyce told John that she got a call from George
Bush Junior
(as George W. was known then). John said, "I didn't know
George Bush had a son." This was about the time that George
Senior was the director of the CIA. Well, George Junior was
exploring a
run for office and wanted to have lunch with Joyce and talk
about fundraising.
A couple of weeks later John ran into
Joyce and asked her how her lunch with George Junior went. Joyce
said, "I'm not
going near that kid. He is as dumb as dog shit."
-
Connor
Keep
in mind that this is not some sort of bullshit viral rumor started
anonymously. Connor told me this story at lunch last week and I
asked him to
write it out in an e-mail so I wouldn't screw up any of the details.
Isobel
Sanford, the Jeffersons' Weezie has passed away Friday. I could not
resist reposting the headline from Defamer:
WEEZIE
MOVIN' ON UP TO THE DELUXE APARTMENT IN THE SKY.
Salon
has a story about the upcoming documentary on the Fox New network, Outfoxed.
(Available for under $10 at the link).
In
the story, they point out an interesting fact I didn't know. Fox's
way around actually lying about a story is a simple phrase designed
to protect them legally:
"Take
the network's 'some people say' mantra.
I had watched plenty of Fox News without ever noticing this --
it's a way of introducing commentary, and specifically the reflexive
right-wing views of the presumptive
Fox core audience, into what is supposed to be news coverage, while
appearing to
not quite endorse it. "Some people say that criticizing the war
at a time like this is letting down our men and women in uniform," or "Some
people say Richard Clarke is a political operative who's trying to
sell books." (Or, yes, "Some
people are saying that John Kerry looks French!" -- uttered with
a peculiar mixture of consternation and delight. Gosh, what a weird
idea!
But now that you mention it ...!)"
So the right-wing asshole I usually argue with on my
political group made a post about Farenheit 9/11's supposed diminishing
box office returns. Below is his post and my reply, which I took great
glee in writing....
grandval@(removed).com
wrote:
6/28
Initial weekend 23.9Mill 868 theatres
7/6 Gross down 7.9% theatre count more than doubled to 1725
7/11 Gross down 32.4% while Theatres showing it increased by
286 for a total of 2011
Seems
to be sinking fast even as more and more theatres are added to
bouy it up. In two weeks he's more
than doubled
his coverage while
losing over 1/2 of his initial revenue. Another 2-3 weeks
and it will
rotate into the $1 theatres....
-
RGL (Gary)
My reply:
From: "Ron Lim"
Date: Sun Jul 11, 2004 9:15 pm
Subject: Re: Tracking F9-11
Anyone
who knows ANYTHING about box office numbers knows this is perfectly
normal behavior. For God's sake,
Spider-man 2 is down 47%
from its
first weekend. Are you calling that a bomb as well? Typical,
acceptable drop is around 40% for the second weekend. F911 fell
well under that benchmark.
F911
cost $6 million to produce, $10 million to market. That's $16 million.
It has grossed
$80 million in 3 weeks. In it's third week,
it had a higher per theater average than King Arthur which just
opened Friday.
On
it's opening day, it's per screen average was $41,961. By comparison,
Spider-man 2's opening day per screen average was
$9,741. NOT A
TYPO.
It's
grossed more than each of the latest films by Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks,
Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell. Not bad for a fat
documentarian from Flint, Michigan.
By
ANY measure, F911 is a blockbuster. It's already made 13 times
its budget. This is before
home video, television rights
and
foreign sales.
I don't know anyone who would turn down that sort of
return (except for Michael Eisner who should be raked over the
coals
by Disney stockholders for his boneheaded play).
The
distributor Lion's Gate has been written up in many industry pubs
as an up and coming
studio to look out for. They are
now the de facto
hip studio of choice for indie filmmakers looking to make
their mark.
F911
will probably rotate into the budget theaters around the end
of August, which is totally to be expected, considering
that Moore
has
not exactly made it a secret that he wants F911
on DVD in
September
BEFORE the election. Theaters booking F911 know
this going in. They've signed up to make their dollars now.
Gary,
this is perhaps the dumbest post in a line of dumb posts you've ever
made
in pursuit of a bullshit conclusion.
This
makes you look
petty and idiotic. Truly.
-RL
©2004 Ron
Lim unless noted |
