There’s a passage in Dr. Dinosaur’s Time Travel Through the Back Door. The crazy dinosaur mastermind and his physicist prisoner were reviewing movies, and Man of the Century came up:
Gary: How did this get made?
Dino: It is a beautiful mystery.
Gary: I don’t mean that in a bad way, either.
Dino: No, it is a legitimate query.
Gary: Just, seriously, what did they have to pull to keep the studio from shutting it down every single day?
Dino: This is poetry. Ninety-five stars.
So I went looking for it, because I was interested.
And…
Moe: How did this get made?
Also Moe: It is a beautiful mystery.
Moe: I don’t mean that in a bad way, either.
Also Moe: No, it is a legitimate query.
Moe: Just, seriously, what did they have to pull to keep the studio from shutting it down every single day?
Also Moe: This is poetry. Ninety-five stars.
Box Office
Opening Weekend USA: $7,724, 31 October 1999
Gross USA: $34,857
Cumulative Worldwide Gross: $34,857
How does this happen? Seriously, how do you only make $35k on a movie?
I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY I HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS MOVIE BEFORE.
Lots and *LOTS* of movies out there you haven’t seen, Moe. Ever see “Head” ? **
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Why you missed this one .. most likely, the distributor had trouble getting it into theaters .. “who’d want to watch that?”
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(possibly there wasn’t enough profit motive for the studio to push to overcome distribution – which was (one of) the problem(s) “Head” *** had ..)
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Glad you found a film you like, that’s always #Winning .. in a non-tiger-blood way, of course!
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Mew
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** a.k.a. “The Monkees movie”, except it’s really *really* not ..
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*** The actors all took a cut of the profit, rather than a salary .. the studio decided that, without needing to earn back those salaries, they could go cheap on media, and .. nobody saw “Head” in theaters. Also, the plot is incomprehensible from the inside, you have to think on it a bit to get it.
I had forgotten about Head. Looked it up, did $16,111 in box office – budget was $75k.
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Head’s box office in 1999 dollars is just over double Man of the Century’s take.
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The Monkees failed too, but still out earned this movie. Weird.
Dropped a zero, Head’s budget was $750,000 – that’s a lot of coke and LSD to make a minimalist movie.
Surprisingly entertaining, although the goons’ profanity is really jarring compared with the tone of the rest of the movie.
Watched the first 8 minutes.
Got bored.
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I see lots of potential in the conceit, if it’s played straight. Just not any reason that I should care enough to watch more.
(Also, pop culture over the past couple of decades has trained me to expect Johnny to be the butt of an “ironic” humiliation conga. And I definitely do not want to watch such a thing.)
No! Johnny wins! He wins everything! He gets the girl, keeps his job, puts away the bad guy, they end with a big musical number! This entire movie was a giant middle finger, sure, but it wasn’t aimed at *me*!
I get that. It was clearly telegraphed. (Starting with the opening card calling him “our hero”.)
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But I still kept expecting the mockery to start.
It’s paranoid to think “they’re trying to lull me into a false sense of security before they unload”, because the smug gits can’t resist tipping their hand.
But even still…
Reminds me of the stuff we made in Film Production class. That is, the production values are decent if unremarkable, but no one could act or write to save their lives.