Bombs Over the Holidays
Christmas wasn’t exactly a bonanza for the city’s movie exhibitors. While Hollywood continues to churn out scores of new movies to fill the burgeoning number of screens locally and nationwide, the quality of many of these films and Chicagoans’ interest in seeing them seem to be diminishing, at least judging from this holiday season. Many of 1989’s big Christmas star vehicles ran out of gas early, according to local exhibitor Bene Stein, who has tracked film grosses with a passion for years. Back to the Future Part II was one of the biggest disappointments. “It had a good first week,” says Stein, “then plunged into oblivion.” Other flicks didn’t even have a week or two of big business in them. Stein labeled such releases as Family Business, Tango and Cash, and She-Devil flat-out “disasters.” Ditto Blaze and We’re No Angels. Another loser was Always, Steven Spielberg’s latest, rather mawkish effort. What did perform at the box office? The only boffo pic from Stein’s perspective was The War of the Roses, Danny DeVito’s savage comic satire about the breakdown of a marriage, starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation pulled in some bucks too, as did Disney’s The Little Mermaid, a hit with the kids. And Look Who’s Talking with John Travolta, a film that opened three months ago, continued to do decent business right through the holidays. Some observers of the local movie scene think the glut of screens, combined with the flood of mediocre-or-worse films, means more and more bargain movie houses will open in the metropolitan area. Already the suburbs are dotted with multiplex houses charging no more than $1 or $1.50 for films that didn’t last long in their first-run engagements. Whether the trend will move into the city, where costs are higher, remains to be seen.
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Rich Gets Nasty, Hare Goes Next
Score one for the Next Theatre Company. Next has won the right to present the American premieres of two one-acts–The Bay at Nice and Wrecked Eggs–by the noted (albeit controversial) British playwright David Hare. Hare’s decision to grant the rights to Next appears to stem in part from the company’s successful production last season of Hare’s seldom-seen Knuckle. The dark drama ran for 14 weeks in Evanston and then moved down to the Theatre Building for another two months. Hare’s choice of the Evanston-based company to mount the two one-acts might also have something to do with recent developments in the Big Apple. Hare has been the focus of much controversy in New York theatrical circles in the wake of a heated exchange of letters last fall with powerful New York Times theater critic Frank Rich. Hare accused Rich of writing harsh reviews that were crippling New York’s theater industry.
