Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (38 page)

“While others may argue about whether the world ends with a bang or a whimper, I just want to make sure mine doesn’t end with a whine.”

—Barbara Gordon

This marks the end of an era—our final George W. Bush quote page during his presidency. (Please lower the toilet paper to half-mast.)

“And Karen is with us—a West Texas girl, just like me!”

“My job is a decision-making job. And as a result, I make a lot of decisions.”

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

“Reading is the basics for all learning.”

“I think that the vice president is a person reflecting a half-glass-full mentality.”

“It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber.”

“As you know, my position is clear—I’m the Commander Guy.”

“The public education system…is where children from all over America learn to be responsible citizens and learn to have the skills necessary to take advantage of our fantastic opportunistic society.”

“I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer questions. I’m not gonna answer your question.”

“You know, there are all these conspiracy theories that Dick Cheney runs the country, or Karl Rove runs the country. Why aren’t there any conspiracy theories that I run the country? Really ticks me off.”

“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.”

“I would still invade Iraq even if Iraq never existed.”

“Well, I think if you say you’re going to do something and don’t do it, that’s trustworthiness.”

“More than two decades later, it is hard to imagine the Revolutionary War coming out any other way.”

“I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn’t here.”

“It’ll take time to restore chaos.”

Monopoly, Risk, and Uno are classics, but what board games do board game enthusiasts play? We asked our friend, Merry Vediner at
funagain.com
,
to recommend some, and here’s what she came up with
.

B
LOKUS
(Mensa’s Best Mind Game 2003). The players take turns placing their colored tiles on the 400-square board, beginning with their home corner. Every piece set down has
to touch at least one other piece of the same color. The goal: dominate the board with your color.

TICKET TO RIDE
(Germany’s Game of the Year 2004). This game simulates the 19th-century railway boom. Players draw cards that give them longer trains and claims to train routes connecting cities. Points are awarded by connecting two distant cities and for the longest continuous railway.

LOST CITIES
(International Gamers Awards, Best Two-Player Game 2000). In this two-player card game, players draw cards to determine what “lost cities” (including “Neptune’s Realm” or the Brazilian Rain Forest) they will explore. On the adventures, players draw cards that reveal resources and obstacles.

BUYWORD
(
Games Magazine
’s Game of the Year, 2005). In this cross between Monopoly and SCRABBLE, players “purchase” letter tiles, each with a monetary value, which are used to spell words. (Hard-to-use letters like Q, X, and Z are worth the most.) The player who makes the most money wins.

PUERTO RICO
(International Gamers Awards, Best Strategy Game 2003). Each player assumes the role of Settler, Builder, Mayor, Prospector, or Trader as they compete to build buildings, grow plantations, and amass wealth in 1540s Puerto Rico.

THROUGH THE DESERT
(
Games Magazine
’s Best Family Strategy Game Runner-Up, 1999). Each player is a nomadic tribe (represented by a camel game-piece), fighting for the control of a desert. Players gain points by establishing caravans and taking control of oases and food sources.

Now we focus our attention on the plethora of producers and their many tasks—including the most important one: divvying up the money. (Part I is on page 116.)

F
ROM ASSOCIATES TO EXECUTIVES
Once the shooting script is finalized, the producer begins putting together the production department. That includes producers, executive producers, associate producers, co-producers, and line producers. But what do all of these people actually
do
? Their tasks often overlap on the same project, but not only that—people with the same title on another project often have completely different duties. For this reason, the Producers Guild of America (PGA) is currently working to streamline these terms and make the duties more consistent.

•
Producer.
A movie will have several producers; the one in charge of all the others is simply called “producer.” Although he or she wears many hats, the primary duties consist of staying with the film from development to release, making sure that every department has everything they need in order to complete their jobs. For a more technical definition, the PGA states: “A producer initiates, coordinates, supervises, and controls all aspects of the motion-picture production process, including creative, financial, technological, and administrative.” More and more big-name directors and actors want to be producers as well, allowing them more control (but not all) over how the story will be told.

•
Executive producer.
He or she oversees all the business and legal aspects of the film—negotiating contracts, securing rights, insuring the picture, hiring the core filmmaking team, and sometimes even financing the movie. The creative work can’t be started until this process is complete. On some projects, the writer/creator is given an executive producer credit, even though they didn’t do a lot of work on the actual film. In other cases, the studio heads who secured rights and approved financing of a film may be given executive producer credits.

•
Associate producer.
He or she works at the producer’s side, doing the legwork that the producer doesn’t have time for. A mentor/student relationship often results, as most associate producers are working to become full-fledged producers themselves. This is also one of the most common “gift” credits given out as favors to stars or financiers who in reality performed no producer duties at all.

•
Co-producer.
Another confusing term, this title is often awarded for different duties depending on the project and is mostly used in television. On a big-budget film, however, a co-producer credit may be given to a team of production executives who act as liaisons between the producer and the cast and crew.

•
Line producer/unit production manager.
These two terms are often used to describe the same job, depending on the project. What they have in common is that each is the keeper of the budget. If a film is financed for $40 million, the line producer will read the script and then figure out how to divvy up the money—line by line on a 100-page budget—so that every department will have the funds to carry out their duties. After that, it becomes the unit production manager’s job to tell the director that there isn’t enough money for, say, shooting at an exotic location. If the director insists, the line producer will break down the budget a second time and try to free up money from other departments to fund the location shoot. Compromises such as this are the norm. For example, if the visual effects look weak, it’s often because the studio had to pay the star more money than the initial budget could afford.

Here’s a very simplified version of how the money was spent on the 2004 superhero movie, one of the most expensive—it had a $200 million budget—and highest-grossing movies of all time.

Story rights: $20 million.
Marvel Comics owns the character and charged a hefty price to Sony, the studio that made the film. Marvel has since opened its own film division.

Screenplay: $10 million.
Spider-Man 2
went through many of the same kinds of story changes documented in the section on screenplays. In the end, the money was divided between the men who
created the character, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, plus a host of other screenwriters who wrote drafts. The bulk of the money, however, went to Alvin Sargent who (along with director Sam Raimi) finalized the script and was given the sole writing credit.

Producers: $15 million.
That’s only the “up front” money. According to Archie Thomas, the movie writer who compiled much of this information for
The Guardian
in 2004, “including performance-related bonuses, or ‘bumps’ from
Spider-Man
reaching box-office targets, producer Laura Ziskin is rumored to have pocketed over $30 million. The escalating fees paid to actors are often reported, but the producers are among the richest people on the set.”

Director: $10 million.
Bringing in Sam Raimi to direct the first
Spider-Man
movie was a risk, as he had directed mostly low-budget horror movies, but it paid off big-time…and he was able to negotiate for a much higher salary for the sequel.

Casting: $30 million.
(Tobey Maguire: $17 million, Kirsten Dunst: $7 million, Alfred Molina: $3 million, the rest of the cast: $3 million.) Negotiating these deals is often intense. Maguire—earning more than four times his salary from the first film—was reportedly fired during preproduction after showing up with a nonchalant attitude and complaining of a hurt back. When producers offered the part to Jake Gyllenhaal, Maguire’s reps had to convince the producers that Maguire was indeed ready for the role and would submit to medical tests to prove it. And along with their salaries, the main stars receive such “perks” as personal assistants, trainers, chefs, first-class travel and accommodations, and anything else their clout can get them. All of the expenses so far are what’s called
above-the-line
, paid to actors, writers, producers, and the director.

Production costs: $45 million.
Called
below-the-line
, this is the money that goes into paying and feeding the crew, renting the equipment, fees for location shooting, and all the raw materials needed for building the sets. This is the money that the line producer/unit production manager must divvy up. (On smaller films, this is also where the most corners are cut, starting with food and housing for the crew.)

Visual effects: $65 million.
Not only can this be the most expensive
part of big-budget movies, it’s usually the one that causes projects to go over budget. It takes an army of highly skilled programmers months to create, animate, render, and fuse the digital effects into the film. The more complex the shots, the more they cost. For example, one scene in 2007’s
Spider-Man 3
—when Sandman is “born”—took three years to complete and cost nearly as much as the
entire
effects budget for
Spider-Man 2
.

Music: $5 million.
Danny Elfman wrote most of the score, but after disagreements with director Sam Raimi, Christopher Young and John Debney were brought in to write additional themes. This is actually quite common. In addition to paying the composers, they had to pay an orchestra to perform the score. In addition to that, part of this budget goes to purchasing rights to songs used in the soundtrack.

Marketing and Distribution:
These costs aren’t usually added into the film’s budget—the studios take care of this and won’t disclose how much money is spent on promos and corporate tie-ins, but it’s usually in the tens of millions of dollars. The cost for “prints and advertising” on
Spider-Man 2
was reportedly around $75 million.

EXTRA HELP

A recent trend is to get advertisers to pay for a share of the movie in return for product placement. The modern era of product placement began in 1982 when sales of Reese’s Pieces skyrocketed after appearing in
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
. A company will now pay millions if the product is displayed prominently and in a good light. There’s even a new practice of tailoring the product to the country in which the movie is being shown. In
Spider-Man 2
, North American audiences saw a Dr Pepper logo behind Peter Parker when he got fired from his job; in Europe the logo was digitally replaced with Mirinda, a popular European fruit drink that’s also distributed by Pepsico.