View From the Phlipside - Mega-cast Movies

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

There’s an interesting argument going on these days about whether or not the age of the “film star” is over.  What’s meant by that is the ability for a single actor to make a movie a hit just by being in it.  There’s evidence that it may be true.  Or not.  There’s a fine old tradition to deal with times like these however.  Don’t rely on just one star.  Get several.  And in case you think you’re still not covered, get a whole bunch more.

We’ve had two recent examples of this trend.  This past summer brought us “The Expendables” which starred just about every major action movie star of the last 20 years including Stallone, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, and even had cameos from Bruce Willis and the Governator.   It may not have been a critical favorite and it’ll never make a Top 100 list but it did make almost a quarter of a billion dollars world wide.  Right now you can check out the movie “Red” which stars Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, Richard Dreyfus, John Malkovic and a boatload of others (even Ernest Borgnine!).  The movie has only just opened so it’s hard to say how it will do.  Opening weekend wasn’t bad.  It earned just under half of it’s production costs in a single weekend.

The mega cast doesn’t always work out.  1963’s “Cleopatra” was a massive failure despite Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Roddy McDowell, Rex Harrison, Martin Landau and more.  Over the entire lifetime of the film it’s only barely made a profit.

What brings all this to mind is the latest rumor in Hollywood that a bunch of big name stars want to work together.  Martin Scorcese, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, and Robert DeNiro are talking about doing a, big surprise, mafia movie together.  

In the end a lot of these movies suffer from a simple problem.  When you’ve got that much star power and that many egos on the screen how do you keep them all happy?  In the end the movie gets run by screen time needs rather than story needs.

That of course is the real ticket to box office success more often than not.  A great cast can only do so much with a rotten script.  But a great script?  Well that’s what turns actors into stars.  I’ll take a “Mystic Pizza” or “Juno” over “Batman and Robin” or “Ishtar” any day.  Keep the stars, just don’t lose the story.


Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010