MTV, which helped shape pop culture in the 1980s with its frenetic music videos, is taking its act to the big screen.
The music channel next month debuts “Dead Man on Campus,” the first live-action film produced by the network’s movie division. The film, starring Tom Everett Scott and Mark-Paul Gosselaar, tells the tale of two college freshmen and their desperate measures to boost their grades. It will be distributed by Paramount.
“MTV has a great trademark,” said Alan Cohn, who is making his directorial debut after years of directing such MTV shows as “Real World” and “Pirate TV.” “This is a great opportunity to reach the same market, teen agers. It’s a natural for them. They have a great outlet for publicity.”
MTV’s first film was the animated “Beavis and Butthead Do America.” The live-action “Dead Man on Campus” cost $13 million. MTV previously put out the film “Joe’s Apartment,” but that was independently produced this is the first film actually produced by the music network.
Despite a rocky start, the annual Hollywood Film Festival is back for its second year, running Aug. 5-10. Last year’s festival ended in a scandal when a French producer disappeared after writing a rubber check that was supposed to pay for a $30,000 dinner at L’Orangerie restaurant. “It bounced,” said festival co-founder Ted Kotcheff, who directed the first Rambo movie, “First Blood.” “They went after the one who has bigger pockets, us, but it wasn’t our responsibility. This apparently happens all the time. A cheapjack producer always cheats somebody.” This year, the festival, which did not make any money last year, is being underwritten by The New York Times, the Hollywood Reporter, US magazine and Northwest Airlines. “Our outlook,” Kotcheff said, “is better.”
“Godzilla,” the limping lizard movie with the disappointing box office, isn’t getting any help from the merchandizing experts.
“They kept everything secret,” said Ryan Brookhart, the editor of Go Figure!, a trade magazine devoted to action figures. “There is a three- or four- week window before a film opens where you make most of your money, but with all the hype, nobody had anything to display. It was stupid. There was nothing in the stores.”
Brookhart doubts that even die-hard fans will rush to buy the new Godzilla merchandise. “Nostalgia fans will buy the old one,” he said.
Playboy magazine Editor-in-Chief Hugh Hefner says he wants to get back together with his wife, Kimberley, but so far the couple seems to be moving in the opposite direction.
“We are formalizing the separation,” Hefner said. “We remain close but hopeful, but the reconciliation is on hold. There is a lot of feeling there, but things don’t happen overnight.”
Kimberley and her two young sons, Marston and Cooper, remain next door to the Playboy Mansion West in an estate once owned by Arthur Lett, the British-born founder of The Broadway stores. Lett also owned the house that became the Playboy mansion.
“We didn’t separate because we didn’t love each other,” Hefner said. “Our mutual interests began to wander. It’s a complicated thing. Right now it is one day at a time.”
Robert Redford’s Sundance Channel, which is devoted to independent filmmaking, is now available in more than 400,000 homes in the Los Angeles area. The channel began operations locally on April 1 on cable systems operated by Century Communications. Sundance is in talks with Time Warner Co.’s cable arm and Media One, both of which serve the greater Los Angeles area.
Reports that Disney ex-patriot Michael Ovitz is buying the priciest apartment on New York’s Westside aren’t true. A partner of the New York investment house Goldman Sachs got the pad for $9.5 million. Ever since Ovitz took over the Broadway theater company Livent, there has been speculation that the former chairman of Creative Artists Agency and ex-president of Walt Disney Co. would head east, for good.
