[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

Too much of a good thing is wonderful.

Mae West

 

Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that
is not true.

H. L. Mencken 

 

Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.

Robert J. Sawyer

 

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, but raptors are pretty dang
scary.

Devin J. Monroe

 

Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet
reminds you of someone else.

Ogden Nash

 

Skiing consists of wearing $3,000 worth of clothes and equipment and driving
200 miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and drink.

P. J. O'Rourke

 

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11 Movies That Made Less Than $400 at the U.S. Box Office

 

When talk turns to Hollywood's biggest box office turkeys, the final tallies
for such cinematic stinkers typically fall somewhere in the seven- to
eight-digit figure range. But John Travolta's newest film-The Fanatic,
directed by Fred Durst-will be lucky if it even makes that much. Experts are
questioning whether the film, which has already been labeled the biggest
failure of Travolta's career (it made less than $10 in some of the 52
theaters where it's playing), will even cross the $15,000 mark.

 

While it's the most spectacular studio failures that seem to bear the brunt
of the financial scorn, there also exists a legion of films that have made
so little impact at the box office that they've hardly been deemed worthy of
mention at all. Here are 11 of them.

 

1. ZYZZYX ROAD (2006) // GROSS: $30

 

If this film's looks-like-a-typo title (it's pronounced ZYE-zix, by the way)
wasn't enough of a turnoff, its tagline-"Dead Ahead"-should have served as a
harbinger of the box office doom that would eventually befall it. To be
fair, the thriller-which stars Tom Sizemore and Katherine Heigl-only played
in one theater (the Highland Park Village Theater in Dallas). But it played
in that theater for an entire week! By the time its run had ended, six
people had seen it for a grand total of $30 in ticket sales, making it the
lowest-grossing movie of all time (yes, even still today). This dubious
honor became a key part of the marketing plan when the title was acquired by
GoDigital for distribution in 2012, when the company's marketing director
told The Hollywood Reporter, "I am confident it will make us more than $30."

 

2. STRORAGE 24 (2013) // GROSS: $72

 

While box office analysts pointed to The Lone Ranger as 2013's biggest bomb,
Johannes Roberts-writer-director of the British sci-fi flick Storage
24-would have been happy with just a fraction of that big-budget clunker's
ticket sales. Heck, he'd have been happy to just crack the $100 mark. But
triple digits weren't in the cards for this flick, which-like Zyzzyx
Road-played in one theater for one week. "You take the film for what it is;
we had no money," co-writer/star Noel Clarke told IndieWire. "And we were
ambitious."

 

3. DOG EAT DOG (2009) // GROSS: $80

 

After winning a slew of awards and nominations at film festivals and other
key industry events around the world-including a World Cinema Grand Jury
Prize nomination at Sundance-you would think that Carlos Moreno's Colombian
crime world drama Dog Eat Dog would have the legs to sustain a single-cinema
theatrical release. And you would be wrong.

 

4. THE OBJECTIVE (2009) // GROSS: $95

 

Since co-directing The Blair Witch Project-the indie movie whose success all
other indie movies attempt to recreate-in 1999, Daniel Myrick has kept a
relatively low profile, directing just a few other films. But in March of
2009, IFC Films gave this sci-fi flick a limited theatrical release. Very
limited. It spent a week in just one theater in New York, where it earned a
grand total of $95. But there's a little bit of conflicting info here: While
sources like Box Office Mojo list this as its only box office take, IMDb's
stats show that it earned slightly north of $2 million when it was released
in L.A. one month later.

 

5. THE GHASTLY LOVE OF JOHNNY X (2012) // GROSS: $117

 

"Ghastly" kind of says it all. This 1950s-inspired sci-fi musical-which
stars Creed Bratton (a.k.a. Creed from The Office)-may have nabbed five
awards on the American film festival circuit, but it only managed to scare
up $117 during the week it spent in a single theater in Kansas City, Kansas
in October 2012. Maybe that's because it had screened at the Kansas
International Film Festival less than three weeks earlier? In the spring of
2013, Johnny tried again, placing the movie in six theaters over the course
of four weeks. While it managed to break the $1000 mark in revenues when it
showed in two theaters in L.A. ($1356 to be exact), its total run earned
back just $2436 of its estimated $2 million budget.

 

6. PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME (1998) // GROSS: $211

 

The 1996 Yugoslavian film Pretty Village, Pretty Flame proves that hit films
don't necessarily translate from continent to continent. While it received
plenty of favorable reviews from American film critics, Pretty Village,
Pretty Flame only managed to attract $211 worth of business when it received
a one-theater/one-week release on January 16, 1998. A far cry from the
nearly 800,000 moviegoers who caught it in Serbia (which was close to 10
percent of the country's total population at the time).

 

7. PLAYBACK (2012) // GROSS: $264

 

It's one thing when a movie starring relative nobodies and playing in one
theater crashes and burns at the box office. It's another thing when the
lowest-grossing movie in a single year has a recognizable name in it. Okay,
so it's Christian Slater. But even before Mr. Robot, people knew who he was,
right? Apparently not enough to merit this rip-off of The Ring-which cost
$7.5 million to make-even a nicely rounded $300 in its one-theater run. Oh,
and we should mention that the first $252 was made in its opening weekend,
meaning that it earned just $12 in the week that followed.

 

8. INTERVENTION (2007) // GROSS: $279

 

One theater. Three days. $279 in 2007. That's pretty much the full
theatrical story of Mary McGuckian's tale of addiction, which won the
director a Best Feature Film Award at the 2007 San Diego Film Festival-and a
Best Actress honor for Jennifer Tilly, who is just one member of an enormous
cast that includes Andie MacDowell, Colm Feore, Rupert Graves, Charles
Dance, and former Baywatch babe Donna D'Errico.

 

9. TROJAN WAR (1997) // GROSS: $309

 

Two years after she became a series regular on Party of Five, Jennifer
Love-Hewitt starred in this rom-com turkey that could roughly be considered
a teenage version of Martin Scorsese's After Hours: A kid (Boy Meets World's
Will Friedle) gets beat up, mugged, and arrested on his quest to find a
condom so that he can score with his dream girl (played by Marley Shelton).
Nope, not even the vast American population of hormonal teens could save
this $15 million Warner Bros. production from being pulled from its one
theater less than a week after its arrival.

 

10. THE MARSH (2007) // GROSS: $336

 

Less than one month after he accepted a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal
of Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, Forest Whitaker was making news of
a different sort when the supernatural thriller he starred in alongside
Gabrielle Anwar was released in one theater for three days and recouped less
than .005 percent of its $7 million budget. As the film's tagline stated:
"You can bury the past, but sometimes the past won't stay buried ..."

 

11. APARTMENT 143 (2012) // GROSS: $383

 

The financial failure of this Mexican horror flick certainly isn't a result
of shoddy marketing materials; its U.S. distributor, Magnolia Pictures, even
earned a Golden Trailer Award nomination for Best Horror Poster. The film
currently holds a 17 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes (though 22 percent of
the audience liked it).

 

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In 1954 the Pennsylvania coal mining communities of Maunch Chunk and East
Maunch Chunk merged and adopted a new name in honor of a famous athlete.
What was it?

A: Jim Thorpe, after the great Oklahoma Indian athlete. The renaming was
part of a plan to establish the town as a shrine to Thorpe, who was buried
there.

 

What are school teams nicknamed at Jack Benny Junior High, the school the
citizens of Waukegan, Illinois, named after their most famous son?

A: The 39ers--39 was the age comedian Benny claimed for more than 39 years
of his life.

 

Ninety six percent of American children can recognize who?

A:  Ronald MacDonald

 

Forty three percent of Americans do what regularly?

A:  Attend church

 

Dover is the State Capitol of which U.S. state?

A: Delaware

 

Which American State flag has a UK Union Flag on it?

A:  Hawaii