Remember Me Made More Money Than Water For Elephants!

Remember Me

Domestic Total Gross: $19,068,240 Distributor: Summit Entertainment Release Date: March 12, 2010 Genre: Romance Runtime: 2 hrs. 8 min. MPAA Rating: PG-13 Production Budget: $16 million  Worldwide:  $56,032,889

Water for Elephants

Domestic Total as of Aug. 4, 2011: $58,684,819
Distributor: Fox	Release Date: April 22, 2011
Genre: Drama	Runtime: 2 hrs. 0 min.
MPAA Rating: PG-13	Production Budget: $38 million Worldwide:  $115,115,125

I have decided to do a repeat financial analysis of Remember Me and Water For Elephants the way I did for Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Water For Elephants. Very interesting.

WFE has a worldwide gross of 115 million. I always round off and estimate so don't bother me with details, OK?

Remember Me has a worldwide gross of 56 million. 

Removing, subtracting production costs the "net" for both now is:

WFE: 75 million.

RM: 40 million. 

Hmmmmmm. It's getting very interesting now.

I think the general figure for promotion is usually equal to production costs? So let's subtract from WFE again. The new "net" ladies and gentlemen is:  roll of the drum please:

WFE: 35 million

RM: 40 million

RM had little to no distributor promotion from Scummit. Only word of mouth. So it seems to me I can get the promotion cost close to zero. We can give WFE another 4 million as I rounded off production and promotion costs upward from 38 to 40. The 4 million is for those who are always looking at the trees.

WFE:39 million

RM:40 million

And now you see how the Dominating Discourse of Hollywood obscures the secret of something. Both films had actors and actresses (I shall keep using the word actress instead of actor for the feminine as I have explained elsewhere. Ask me again if you want me to elaborate. I want to change the Discourse of PC Feminists on this word) who took far less than their usual fees to do this Francis Lawrence career move film. They were suckered.

Within the folds of the Dominating Discourse lies the secret of the money game. We have no idea of how much it cost to trot these trick ponies all around to world premieres in addition to all the trailers and other promotional brou-ha. But let's accept the generally accepted figure of its being equal to production costs as I have said above. I really believe they were much higher for this film.

And don't ever forget the hassle and time of the actors and actresses being used as trick ponies.

Remember Me made more money than Water For Elephants!

The Symbolic Order of Seduction:The Tree of Life - The Order of Production and Exchange: Water For Elephants

Please follow me. - Jean Baudrillard

I'm trying.

I saw The Tree of Life for the second time tonight. Not since Pasolini have I seen such images photographed with such love. The beautiful still face of Jessica Chastain. The no longer pretty boy face of Brad Pitt, but a face with a deep depth  of character, fearless, and the beautiful ravaged face of Sean Penn. Hunter McCracken as Jack the young boy is astonishing. Here are faces of such seductive beauty, such portraits, every one, of pure appearance.

 

 

Now consider how Francis Lawrence uses the face of Robert Pattinson as a prop in Water For Elephants. He has said the camera just loves him, and he has put Pattinson in every scene, close up after close up and you can feel Pattinson's uneasiness. Just as Lawrence has constructed a 1930's circus simulacrum as a prop and to pimp it for all its worth, he has used Reese Witherspoon and Waltz as props also. Not to mention Tai the elephant dragged to the city for a premiere to pimp her too. This is what Lawrence knows how to do: use the set and his actors as props. Pattinson's face is the message, the cliched content of the scene is secondary filler.

 

Terrence Stamp

Here are some Pasolini portraits from Teorema:



For this film go to http://www.netflix.com

Silvano Mangano

Walter Benjamin comments on using props in his seminal essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Robert Pattinson's face has been down this road before in The Haunted Airman along with numerous cigarettes. Or his face has led to effacement. Edward Cullen was a departure whenever Catherine Blabbermouth Hardwicke got out of the way. I suspect Cosmopolis will not travel the cliched path.

The Tree of Life and Philosophy: The Phenomenological Roots of Terrence Malick (co-edited with Vernon W. Cisney)
The aim of this project is to produce a volume of essays on Terrence Malick's 2011 film "The Tree of Life", working to draw out philosophical themes from this important piece of cinema.