The week of May 29, 2007
Keith Richards talks, Disney cringes, Pirates, uh, fails?
ABOUT CHRIS | E-MAIL CHRIS | TEN MINUTE GUIDE ARCHIVE | PAGE 1 | PAGE 2 | PAGE 3
 Also in this column:
• The studios want your mom to have an affair
• Movies are now premiering outside the United States
• Great quotes in Rescue Me
• Getting inside the corporate ownershup structure of Seinfeld
• Five Things I Learned while Researching this Column
Disney Prohibits Keith Richards from Talking About Pirates... In Other News, Keith Richards states, "I Snorted My Father's Ashes"
In case you missed it, Rolling Stones guitarist and notorious partier, Keith Richards mentioned in a recent interview with NME Magazine that, several years ago, he mixed his father’s ashes up in his cocaine and then did a line or two. Stated Richards, "The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared... It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."" Normally, even with their squeaky clean family-friendly image, Disney could care less about these now somewhat expected, eccentric, barely coherent Richards ramblings. However, since Richards has a cameo as the father of Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) in the Disney blockbuster, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (Pirates), their ears perked up immediately upon hearing of this quote. The situation almost sounds like a hypothetical, worst-case scenario for Disney: how do you sell a film as being safe for children when one of its attractions is talking about getting high by actually snorting his dad? Soon after the interview ran, the LA quoted one of Disney’s senior vice presidents of publicity as saying, "When [someone] forwarded the story to me… I thought, ‘How are we going to
spin this?’" Complete separately of Disney’s attempts to right the situation and in no way connected to the company’s desire to make the comment go away, Richards’ manager (and later Richards himself) soon came out and expressed that the whole thing was a joke. Stated Richards’ manager: "Richards’ comments were said in jest. I can’t believe anyone took him seriously." Some quick facts: Richards has… • been arrested for possession of illegal narcotics on multiple continents (and was once sentenced by a judge to play two free concerts in Canada as punishment) • been unable to tour in certain countries because of his drug history • made headlines for deciding that it would be a good idea to climb a palm tree while on vacation (and then memorably fell out of said tree and being hospitalized) • stated that he wrote the Rolling Stones big hit "Satisfaction" while sleeping • claimed that he once stayed awake for nine days in a row while doing speed, then finally went to sleep standing up, fell down and broke his nose • filmed his scenes in Pirates so drunk that director Gore Verbinski had to physically hold his legs steady,  Given these tidbits of information, how could anyone ever believe that Richards could do something as crazy as snorting a line of dear ole dad? Joking or not, Richards isn’t going to be doing any more promotion for Pirates. "Keith won’t be doing a lot of publicity for this movie," Disney said, in the understatement of the year thus far. Interestingly, though Pirates pulled in almost $113 million during its opening weekend, the headlines Monday morning were anything but positive. Despite the fact that the Jerry Bruckheimer producer actioneer debut with the fifth best opening of all time, the World Entertainment News’ headline Monday morning read: "Pirates Fails to Claims Box Office Treasure". Welcome to the world of the super blockbuster. I suppose this is to be expected, particularly given that LA Weekly writer Nikke Finke is reporting that the budget for Pirates was well over $300 million. That figure doesn’t include print costs (the film is estimated to be shown on over 11,000 screens in the United States alone) or marketing. With this in mind, it is more than conceivable that Disney spent upwards of $500 million on Pirates.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
THE QUESTION: I’ve never understood this. Seinfeld was originally broadcast NBC, which is owned by Universal. How is it being released to DVD by Sony? How does this work? Lou E. (via e-mail)
THE ANSWER: The question is even more quizzical than it initially appears because after some cursory digging, I realized that not only was Seinfeld broadcast on the Universal owned NBC, but it was produced by Castle Rock Entertainment, a company that is owned by Warner Brothers and it was shot at the Viacom (read: Paramount) owned CBS studios. Yup, it’s true, NBC’s biggest television hit ever was filmed on its rival’s lot. Attempting to understand why certain television shows are released to DVD by different studios is a headache inducing exercise to be sure, but it all has to do with who owns the distribution rights to a given show.  Sometimes, everything seems to work out okay: Fox television’s critically acclaimed series’ Arrested Development, The Family Guy and The Simpsons are all released to DVD by Fox… which makes perfect sense. Fox also releases its F/X subsidiary’s The Shield and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Things start to get a little confusing though when shows that are broadcast on Fox and F/X (like Rescue Me, for example) end up released to DVD by other studios (like Sony, for example).
To best figure out how this DVD releasing system works for television shows–and specifically for Seinfeld–one needs to ask more pointed question: why does Sony own the distribution rights to Seinfeld? The answer to that, while slightly confusing, explains all. First some history. When Rob Reiner, Alan Horn, Martin Shafer and two other partners formed Castle Rock Entertainment in 1987, they did so with Columbia Pictures as a "strategic partner". Though the exact definition of what strategic partner means is up for interpretation, my best guess is that Columbia ponied up some start-up cash in return for a first look distribution deal with Castle Rock and a percentage of their profits. In 1989, Castle Rock decided to take a stab at television production and wound up producing an esoteric sit-com about nothing called Seinfeld. As far as I can tell, Seinfeld was Castle Rock’s only successful entry into the world of television production. After Seinfeld, Castle Rock only produced a handful of truly dreadful shows including The Single Guy, The Michael Richards Show, something called Bliss (?) and Reunited (?). Castle Rock Entertainment and Castle Rock Television were then bought out by Time-Warner in 1994, a transaction that gave Warner Brothers Television the actual rights to the Seinfeld show. However, thanks to a distribution and syndication deal that Castle Rock had signed with Columbia-Tristar prior to the Time-Warner sale, Columbia-Tristar owned the home video and syndication rights to the show. When Sony purchased Columbia-Tristar, these distribution and syndication rights transferred over to Sony, hence the fact they are releasing the show onto DVD. If it seems a little confusing, it’s because it is. So confusing, in fact that not even the studios are exactly sure what’s going on. In an article in TVWeek, representatives for both Warner Brothers and Sony said that the responsibility for enforcing the copyright for Seinfeld fell into the lap of the other company. Season 8 of Seinfeld is available on DVD on June 5, 2007. E-MAIL YOUR OWN QUESTION
|
