Death at the Box Office – pt 1

Death at the Box Office and the Age Old Formula to Making Blockbuster Hits

Introduction

Transcript

Hi, I’m Tom Laughlin and I’m here with some discerning, very discerning news for everyone us who makes their living in the motion picture business – everyone who loves going to movies.

A cancer has developed in our business.  It’s infected our business and is threatening the lives of everyone who makes a living in this business.  Everyone, everyone who loves movies or makes a living in the movies is in great danger from a deadly, deadly cancer.

Now if that sounds too over the top, too exaggerative, wait till you see the facts and figures that our research has uncovered as to why our picture business is in danger.

This cancer is so deadly that today the disastrous failure of movies to sell tickets to see at the box office is so incredible, that movie theaters today are empty – they have empty seats Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and half of Friday.  There’s nobody there!

And so desperate are theater owners to sell those seats during the week, they are opening their theaters  now and renting them out to sporting events, concerts, operas, sales conventions, even as churches of worship, churches that are new and don’t have their own building.  Anything – anything! – to sell a ticket.

And Delores and I, using our very unique market research investigation polling technique, a technique still not used by any studio or major polling organization in the world today, have discovered how serious this failure is, and how deadly, how dangerous it is to all of us who make our living in the business … from the star who makes $20 million to the costumer, to the cinematographer, the editor, to the theater owner who makes millions of dollars, to the concessionist, to the usher who is earning a living to go to college.  Everyone of us, and everyone who loves going to a movie.

This is now going to be fatal, unless we can correct it.

And that’s the great news of this essay.  We have found the answer!  We have found why pictures are failing at the box office, and we found how we can change that.  How we can once again have people line up in droves to see our movies.

Once before we proved to the world that we had an idea that would change the business.  Most people don’t know this, but Delores and I – Delores Taylor is my wife in real life – we invented the open wide mega multiple blitzkrieg advertising method of distributing pictures.  Up until our day, major studios with their big big pictures opened it on only one theater in each city, 50 prints, 75 at the most.  Only one theater, the downtown battle wagon, the Palace, and then when it played out there, they then it moved it out to the rich deluxe neighborhood theaters, and then they went out to the neighborhoods and drive-ins.

Well we found, our research, the same research that is still not used by any studio or market research firm in the business today, still unique, has found just as it found what it is that people need to make movies people want to see again, just as it did, we found that by opening up in 1000 theaters – we opened on 1200 on the same day and date – we would make much more money.  And we made possible …  no studio would do it.  We tried for three years to get the studios to do it and they wouldn’t listen to us.  So we took our own money, we took $7.5 million dollars and we opened up in 1200 theaters on the same day.

We made $30 million that first month in theUSalone.  That was more than 20, 25 pictures only in the history of their life time – Gone with the Wind – had earned that kind of money.  We forever changed it, making it possible for the first time ever for films to do $100 million at the US box office, 200, 300, 400, 500 – even 600 Titanic made.  And this was incredible, incredible.

In those days, back in that day, the top grossing movie of the year was Dirty Harry that did $18 million film rentals.  And the top grossing star was Jack Lemmon in Save the Tiger – he made $250,000 a picture.  My son and daughter always says kiddingly, all of  you who are making $20 million a picture, or $5 million as a director, and all you theater owners who got those multi-plexes, you all owe us  tip of the cap and a thank you for making it possible for movies to start grossing hundreds, 300, $600 million in the US alone.    And the same technique of distributing was copied overseas, which makes now overseas equal to, and if not most of the time, even more incoming than you get in domestic.

So once again we have come up and said, “hey, we have a better way!”

The same research has now discovered why people are failing to buy tickets at the box office, year after, for 20 years, and more important – the most important – is what we can do.  We found the secret as to once again make movies that people will want to buy to see – they’ll flock to line up at the box office.  And that’s on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday … every day of the week.

Now I’m going to share with you what our unique market research discovered in our exhaustive investigation as to why pictures are failing and what we can do about it.

The first thing we discovered is how scary, how terrifyingly bad the pictures are failing to sell at the box office.  Far worse than anything any of you,  however expert you are in this business know.

Secondly, and more important, we found out why they are failing to sell year after year for 20  years.  And more important if you haven’t found out why they are failing, you can’t find out how to cure it.  So the next discovery we made, which we’re going to share with you, is how we can change that.  How we can once again restore people, movies, restore movies so people want to go and pay money to see them at the box office.  That’s crucial.

And once we discovered what we can do to change it, the only certain way we can make people once again want to go to the movies because they are movies they want to see and they want to pay for them, once we do it, we’re going to share with you, show you, how you do what we found.

More important, we’re going to show you that to  those of us who God has given the privilege to be able to make movies, we are to  make movies for more than making money, and movies are for more than making us famous.  We are giving the privilege to make movies to make a difference.   To make some small change, somewhere in the world, and that is one of the key elements to making a repeat business picture.  Because the movie has some purpose, something in it that enlightens, enriches, empowers people, and I’m going to prove that to you  in a moment with a series of very convincing, overwhelmingly convincing, scenes that I’m going to show you in a preview, a sneak preview we’re going to give you of how to do this.

Combining explosive, electrifying, exciting ideas that enrich, empower, enlighten with super heroes and super heroines is absolutely the key to making the new film.  And I’m going to show you in a moment, we’re going to give you a  preview of showing you how we’re going to combine these things – these two elements, the explosive, even controversial ideas with incredible heroic action, super hero action.  And we’re going to do that by giving you a sneak preview, a series of the way we’re going to combine them in the new Billy Jack film in which, in our new Billy Jack sequel, we’re going to combine explosive ideas, electrifying ideas with explosive, super hero and heroine action in a way that we believe has never been done before.

This cancer is so deadly that the three major powers that make up this business – the studios that finance and distribute the picture; the theater owners that play the pictures in the theaters; and the super power filmmakers – are all battling in a bitter, bitter fight against each other.

The fight has become so bitter that our most powerful and respected filmmakers, people like James Cameron, Peter Jackson, Michael Bay, Kathryn Bigelow, Michael Mann and 23 others have resorted to taking full page ads in newspapers condemning the studios for pulling their movies out of the theaters prematurely – called Video-On-Demand – selling them to people at home before they are played out in the theaters.  Before the theater owners have had a chance to recoup their investment in the co-op advertising and their up front costs and their overhead; before the stars who got profit shares, even those who get gross participation, before they ever get a chance to realize all the profits they earn from their movies playing out at the theaters – they are pulling them.  And the stars are furious.  It’s an unbelievable battle because all three of these groups desperately – indispensably – need each other.

This is a terrible tragedy that unless we find the answer to it, it’s going to ruin the ability for all of us to make our living, and for all of you who love to see movies.

Unfortunately as our unique market research clearly shows, the studios are wrong.  Pulling pictures prematurely out of the theaters and putting them on Video on Demand or selling them on DVDs is not the solution.  The solution is to find out why pictures are not selling at the box office.  And to change that.  To make pictures that people once again want to see.

Please go to Part 2.

Go back to Billy Jack home page.  (click here)

Death at the Box Office – Part 2

Part 2 – The Exciting Discoveries we learned from our unique Market Research

 Transcript

Back in the 1990’s Delores and I were puzzled that no one that we know of in the motion picture business, not studio, no researcher, had ever really, exhaustively, investigated as to why people go to one movie and not another.  Why do they stay away from a movie even though they know it is $100 million budget and the biggest stars, and the biggest action, or sex.  Why do they go to another movie, say a Four Weddings and a Funeral, or a Rocky, or a Billy Jack, that has no stars and is made for pennies?  Why?

Well we discovered there are 9 reasons, and only 9 reasons that people go to a movie.  And we wrote a book about them called the “9 Indispensable Ingredients,” which we are now changing to writing, “Screenwriting, a Manual of Craftsmanship.”  It’s still a bible.

In fact it was so accurate, the things that were in it that made a hit movie, that if you had two of these ingredients in it you would do $25 million US; if you had 3, you’d do $35-50  million; and so on up on the line.  If you had 6 of them you’d do $150-200 million.  If you had all 8 – 7, 8, 9 of them – you’d be among the list of the all-time box office champions.  And we tested it.  If that’s true, then it would follow that every one that’s on the all-time champion would have 7, 8, 9 ingredients – and they do!

Year after year, every single year for over 20 years, for over a generation, tickets failed to sell less and less tickets at the box office.

Let me give you an example, in the 1990s there were 3,331 films released by the studios.  Of those 3,331, a mere 7% – only 7% – managed to earn $20 million in rentals in the US.  If that happened to a car or a cereal, they’d go out of business. Only 7%!  And it gets worse!

Almost ½ – ½! – of all the pictures released in the 1990s, did not draw 1.5% of the population into the theaters.   That’s staggering.  And it gets even worse.

14% of all the pictures released by the big studios, with the biggest stars, big directors, big budgets, they did not even sell $400,000 in rentals, US.  A mere $400,000 in rentals in the US!  That is staggering!  And yet today if you have a star you get a movie made.  If  you have an idea you can’t get a meeting, but if you have a star they still foolishly, foolishly, finance anything with a star.

Yes, stars have a tremendous value in getting you pre-publicity to open a picture, they are extremely valuable.  And they have an enormous value in selling your film overseas.  Overseas markets believe in stars even worse than Hollywood does.  But the truth is that stars do not sell pictures.  They help open it, but on Monday morning the word of mouth whether the picture is good or bad – in fact, to day with the internet ,and all the communication, the word of mouth on a film goes out even before it opens.

And this year it’s not any better.  This year they are down 20% … I’m talking about the year 2000 to 2010, they are down 20% – and this quarter is down 24% from last year!  This is a terrifying, destructive catastrophe that is descending on this business, and we’ve got to change it. And thank God, we’ve discovered why tickets are not selling, and more important, how – we discovered, our research has showed us the secret reasons that we can once again learn how to make pictures that people want to see, not only want to see in the theaters, but want to see – because all the auxillary – the DVDS, the home video, the television – everything depends on what it does at the box office.

Terry Semel, the great genius who was the co-head of Warners for 20 years, told me once “Give me a great opening weekend and I’ll make money.”  Now that’s the key.

So what happens at the box office effects all the ancillary sales, and therefore the income of all of us, and all of us who have … any stars, directors, producers … who have a piece of the action, it effects everybody.

So here is why the pictures are failing, and here a most precious piece of information we discovered with our research is what we can do to cure that, to change it, so people once again line up every day of the week to buy a ticket to see movies in the theaters, and then all the ancillaries, the DVDs, the videos, everything else is huge numbers, huge.

Our research has showed us that the real reason that pictures are failing at the box office was said brilliantly in a front page story in the LA Times recently – and this is the front page, not the front Calendar section, but the front page.

Ben Fritz, a very, very smart guy who knows about the motion picture business reported that the real reason that pictures are failing at the box office – studio head and theater owners at a recent convention in Las Vegas agree and made this joint announcement – the real reason pictures fail to sell tickets at the box office is because pictures stink.  They agreed on that.

And they are right.  They are deadly right.  These movies made today are just beyond stink – trash – some of them are just so God awful embarrassing trash.

Now please, don’t misunderstand me.  Every year, every year since “The Great Train Robbery” there have been always an exceptional picture or several made every year – but the overwhelming majority of the pictures used to be those that were worth the ticket price, they entertained you, they were really valuable, they were worthwhile.  And there were some stinkers.

But today, the overwhelming majority of pictures made today are trash, they are awful.

The Los Angeles article that so inflamed us and terrified us is on the inside and continuing the story, the headline is “Hollywood takes some blame for the slump.”  Some blame?  All the blame!  Every bit of the blame!

Psychology … Business 101 teaches you that the only way to make a profit is to make a product or service that people want to buy.  Well they don’t want to buy the films we’re making – because we are making them, no one else is making them.  Hollywood is making them!  So it is Hollywood to blame.

Years ago … and by the way we always have all the excuses – that the high price of tickets is what is driving people away, or the high price of gas at the pump – all of these phony excuses.  None of them are true.  In today’s economy with the depression in full scale, and people jobless and losing their homes, Avatar still does over $600 million in the US alone.  Why?  How come?  If it’s the prices, my God, they are charging not only $10-12 a ticket, they’re charging $2.50 to $5 for the 3-D.  People will still pay if it’s the movie they want to see.

Years ago we learned this lesson that it isn’t some other external factor that has caused your picture to fail or people to walk out on it.  Years ago when Dody and I, Delores, my wife, and I made our first picture, we played it at the Bruin Theater in Westwood – and people walked out in droves.  Now, we said … and people always say that it was the weather – it was such a beautiful day they went to the beach, or it was raining or it was snowing – or it was the picture it played with, or it was the neighborhood.  Always those excuses.  And we came up with the same excuse for our picture that bombed, the first picture we made bombed.  People walked out, wrote terrible reviews.   And so we blamed it was the Sundowners, the wrong kind … we used all the same excuses.

And then at 3:00 in the morning, in the night, I woke up and said “No, it’s my fault.  I am a filmmaker.  And a filmmaker is a magician, is a conjurer.  He makes imaginary situations and stories and people and language, and he creates a fantasy that people either like or they don’t like.  So if they didn’t like the picture it’s because I, as the filmmaker, as a conjurer, as the magician, as the one who deals with imagic … if I didn’t move them, then I failed, I was wrong.”

Once I got smart enough to say “I’m the fault.  I’m to blame,” and take responsibility for it, Delores and I went, we took the film and broke it down into dailies, and we went from scratch to rebuild it and remake it and make it work.  And we learned a second, extremely valuable lesson.  Just because you have found out why a scene doesn’t work, why they didn’t laugh when you wanted them to, or didn’t cry … and you know you are right, you correct, you find the real reason … and you change it, and you redo it – doesn’t mean that the way you redo it is going to work any better.  It may, or it may not.  Sometimes you have to redo it two or three times.  And that’s what we have to do now in the business.

Which brings us to the major reason that pictures sink today.  Start with the source.  They’re now getting their movies, their source material for movies out of cartoons, and comic books, video games – video games in which the kids cut the hearts out of prostitutes and hold up the bleeding … unbelievable trash!

Stanislovsky gave a tremendous principle – it’s called the “What if?” principle.  And this is crucial to every filmmaker – every writer, every producer, every director, every star – you’ve got to remember this.

What if … in this movie you are sitting watching a movie, and the person on the screen, the star you are identified with because that’s the key of movies, you get to identify with whatever is going on in the screen as if it’s happening to you.  If the person in the movie does something that you would never do if you were that fictional person, you immediately break – you leave the screen and you become aware of people eating popcorn around you.

For example, if a mother, if a woman, an actress in a film, is holding a baby in a certain way, and every woman in the audience, every mother especially knows you’d never hold a baby who had colic or was in trouble, never hold her that way – what if you were that woman would you hold her that way?  And if the answer is no, you won’t, then that’s it.  You break your identity, the illusion of being involved with what’s going on on the screen is over, and the picture’s done for you.

That’s happening all the time.  Some of our greatest super stars are violating this what if principle in droves!

Let me give you an example.  In the movie Knight and Day, two of our most brilliant superstars, Tom Cruise, the superstar, and Cameron Diaz, are in a scene, a chase scene, and they are on a motorcycle racing away from the bad guys, and she’s sitting facing him in the front, she’s sitting facing backwards looking over his shoulder as he’s racing away, and she has two guns.  She’s taken two guns and is shooting the bad guys with her pistols, not even holding on!  Anybody, anybody who has ever taken a pistol to a rifle range knows that if you’re 50 feet away from a barn you’re lucky to hit it with a gun, let alone hit a man, let alone have a precise … it is so absurd!

And my goddess … and this is Delores and ours … we worship Angelina Jolie.  She’s the most beautiful, most brilliant and the most incredibly caring, passionate, empathetic human being ever, she’s just incredible.  We adore this woman.  In a movie of hers, she’s in a store, and there’s a bad guy with a gun, and they have a shot of a fly – a fly! – hovering in space like it’s a hummingbird or a helicopter, and this guy shoots first one wing off the fly, and then the second wing off.  It’s ridiculous!  It is ridiculous.  And that’s what movies are down the line.

I can go down virtually every movie and give you – except the great ones, except the ones that are successful at the box office – and show you where they break the “what if’ principle and are just stupid beyond stupid beyond stupid.

So what is the cure?  We’ve identified that as the cause of the failures to sell tickets at the box office, but what’s the cure?

Please go to Part 3.

Go back to Billy Jack home page (click here)

Death at the Box Office – Pt. 3

PART 3:  The Exciting  Cure – The Age Old Formula to making blockbuster hits

Transcript

The cure is very simple.  First of all, movies must be entertaining – entertaining, entertaining, entertaining.  That’s it, no matter what kind of movie – if it’s a serious, if it’s a comedy – it’s got to be entertaining.  And what makes it entertaining?

Entertaining is made by emotions.  Emotions are the key to a successful movie.

Because emotions are the nuclear core, the ball bearing upon with the whole box office success of a movie depends, let me emphasizes it again.

Rosalyn Russell, the great super star of the 40s, taught me this lesson.  Emotions, emotions, emotions.  She was swamped – she was one of the great superstars and swamped with scripts every day.  And how did she pick which script she was going to do next?  As she told me, by emotions.

If the movie, if the script, had a great emotional scene, one, she’s interested, and she looks further.  If had two great emotional scenes, she’s very interested.  And if it has three great emotional scenes in the script, she’ll kiss the feet of the director or producer or studio to get the part.  Emotions, emotions, emotions.  And intelligence, ideas, making them about something with an idea or an ideal, that’s the way you evoke emotions.

A great movie is a movie that when  you see it it evokes emotions in you so powerfully that you can’t stop reflecting on it after you leave the theater.  And the more these emotions cause you reflect, the longer they do, the bigger the gold at the box office you’re going to make with that movie.

For example, if it takes a couple days later you’re still thinking about it – gold.  It’s a repeat business picture.  If it’s a month later and you’re still thinking – that is really a gold mine.  That’s the Victorian Oil Fields come in.

Billy Jack has people forty years later still writing to us and we have people writing to us because it impacted their lives so powerfully, and that by the way, Billy Jack is still the most profitable non-studio independent film franchise ever made.

What we discovered, and this is important to every one of you who is able to be involved in the privilege of making a picture, whatever your position is – the number one reason pictures are failing today is because they do  not evoke emotions.  Especially powerful emotions.  And the reason they don’t evoke the emotions any more is because they lack intelligence.

Ideas, ideals, these are the things.  Movies today in order to be entertaining, to evoke emotions, have to have intelligence – some intelligence of some kind.  Some message, some idea, some ideal, some way to evoke in us our intelligence so we identify with what’s happening to the people on the screen.  Only if what they’re doing is intelligent, is what we would do if we were in that situation, would we identify with it.

And this included teenagers.  This is why teenagers are staying away from the movies, because they don’t have ideals, they aren’t intelligent.  Teenagers, more than any other group, believe in ideas, and especially in ideals.  They haven’t had their idealism burned out of them by life’s brutal experiences.  They still believe in ideals, they hunger for ideals.  And they hunger for super heroes, super heroines.  ‘

If you combine great ideas, great ideals, a message – some sort of purpose, a meaning – with a super hero and a super heroine, you have the ultimate pure gold.  You’re James Cameron.  You’re Jerry Bruckheimer.  You’re incredible.  You’ve got to have ideals and super heroes, and we’re going to show you how to do that.  How you combine them.

I mentioned earlier that  Billy Jack is the most profitable independent film ever made.  It’s also sold more tickets than any … today, a major star, an A-list star, is lucky to gross $50 million, $100 million US box office.  Now at today’s ticket prices at $9, sometimes $10, that’s if he’s done $50 million he’s sold 5 million tickets.  If he’s done $100 million, he’s sold 10 million tickets.

Billy Jack, back at a time there were 150 million less people in the United States, sold 77 million tickets.  And the Trial of Billy Jack, in which we invented the mega-multiple, open wide release pattern in thousands of theaters, did over 67 million tickets.  That today means grosses of $500 and $600 million. That’s because they made such an emotional impact, they evoked suck powerful emotions and ideas – about racism, saving Indians in the White Man’s store – all of those type of things were so powerful that to this day, to this day 40 years later we still get letters every single week – literally – telling people how Billy Jack made a difference, impacted, changed their life.

From a Colonel who’s a Special Ops commander of special ops forces in Afghanistan, and how he uses Billy Jack for his troops today, to psychiatrists, to doctors on Indian reservations, to school teachers, to a 14 year old girl who has seen it for the first time on DVD and find it has the same incredibly powerful emotional impact on their lives.

Now, that’s the key.  To combine incredible ideas on a wide variety of subjects.  From ideas on religion, on spirituality, on psychology, on philosophy, on sexuality, and again, the difference between sex and Eros, which we’re going to have in our new Billy Jack film, most people don’t know the difference.  These are just some of the subjects.  It doesn’t matter, just so they’re electrifying.  And the more electrifying, the better.

In fact, even controversial films, if they are the right kind of controversy.

Controversy can be gold at the box office.  The idea that controversy now is poison, stay away from it.  Well, it’s correct if it’s the wrong kind of controversy.  It is deadly.  It is terrible poison.  If it is the right kind of controversy, it is goldmine, it is pure gold.  And in Billy Jack and Jean, just as we had in Billy Jack, we have the perfect kind of controversy.

Documentaries, rarely do $10 million $20 million at the box office — that’s a lot of money.  Fahrenheit 911, the most controversial political documentary ever made, did $135 million in the US alone — that’s colossal.  And Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ — a religious film, a very biased, intensely fanatic religious film — did over $400 million.

Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ didn’t get the right kind of controversy — it got universal condemnation.  And so is never even really released.  But the right kind of controversy.

The greatest, most profitable picture of all time is a porno film — Deep Throat — made for under $25,000.  It did over 600 million — not at first, it was just another porno film.  But Alan Dershowitz, a friend, got it banned by the Catholic Church, in one city after another.  And that banning made it the most controversial film, and made it huge.

DERSHOWITZ:  Deep Throat succeeded because the government went after it.

Making pictures that have super heroes, super heroines with credible, not two guns shooting … super credible with super ideas, explosive, powerful ideas, that is the way to make pictures that are box office and bring back the teenagers in droves as they come out for every picture that has these elements in them.

What’s important to point out, extremely important, is that every single kind of movie, every genre of movie, can have intelligence, can have an idea, or a meaning, or a purpose in it that makes it work.  And that includes comedies.

In my view the greatest romantic comedy ever made was Pretty Woman, which has the marvelous message in it that instead of just making another big mega billion merger, finding love, even with a prostitute, is much more fulfilling and rewarding.

Sound of Music … musicals.  Sound of Music, what a great one.  And in addition to that Mary Poppins!  Mary Poppins is again the message is again being a banker and making more money is not as important as loving his children.  Every kind of movie.

Shane, Red River,Bridge on the River Kwai, Zhivago, Shrek – every kind of movie!  Every kind of movie can have intelligence, and if it doesn’t have intelligence, it isn’t going to be a box office  hit because it’s not going to evoke the deepest emotions.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a comedy, if it’s a musical … it’s extremely difficult to have a picture have a purpose or a morality or spirituality to it, but if you know how to do it, it can be done.  The all time greatest musicals all have a powerful message in them.  South Pacific is perhaps the greatest against racism ever made.  Sound of Music, Mary Poppins even has a lesson that it’s more important to value your family than it is your bank and your money.  Chicago, West  Side Story … enormous number of great musicals all have great spirituality, morality, or a lesson, a life lesson that makes a difference.

It can be a comedy.  Pretty Woman is one of the greatest movies, romantic comedies, ever made.  No greater film, romantic comedy, has ever been made.  It’s an incredible lesson, a lesson about how a man who values  money above everything finds love more important.

You have all kinds of films.  The great dramas … It’s a Wonderful Life … wow … Wizard of Oz, which shows you the difference between the front we put on, the fake front we put on, and the real person behind it, and you got to carefully learn to distinguish you’re dealing with … and this is falling in love.  There’s the persona they are giving you, and then there’s the real person behind it.  What’s the real person like?

From epic, epic masterpiece films, from Dr. Zhivago, Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of  Arabia, My Fair Lady, just endless … anything, anything can be made into a meaningful, intelligent picture.  Even the Harry Potters and the Twilights … they have intelligence in them.

So please don’t say it has to be a certain kind of film, or a heavy duty drama.  It can be any kind of drama, even Star Wars!

Star Wars has a powerful message in it.  It has the message of St. Francis of Assisi.  St.  Francis was the most beloved Saint by everybody – every religion everywhere in the world.  What was his message?  His message was that God is not just a force or an energy, or karma – God has a personal interest in you, and cares about you.  And if you believe in  him and love him and do the right rituals and prayers to him, God will protect you.  He’ll take care of what  you’re going to eat tonight, where you are going to sleep – He’s that concerned, that personally involved.

Well what is Star Wars?  Star Wars says to Luke Skywalker that if you do the right rituals, and do the right performance, the force will be with you.  The force will triumph.  God will take a personal interest.

Now I’m going to really get dismissed from the bar of reason by you by this next claim.

Go to Part 4. (click here)

Go back to Billy Jack home page (click here)

Death at the Box Office – Pt. 4

PART 4:  How the new Billy Jack Sequel takes advantage of these discoveries and will be unlike any sequel ever made

Transcript

Now I’m going to really get dismissed from the bar of reason by you by this next claim.

Not only is this new Billy Jack film we’re going to make going to show you as an example of how to combine explosive action with explosive ideas, we’re going to show you that we’re going to do it in a way that will make the new Billy Jack film unlike any sequel that’s ever been made before.  In fact, I’m going to go way over board, become totally dismissed, by saying it’s going to be unlike any film ever made before.

Now that is so egregisous, so over the top, so absurdly hyperbole, so Hollywood, that in a moment I’m going to prove it to you.  I’m going to show you the ways we’re going to do that, and why this picture is going to be unlike any film ever made.  And if you don’t agree, then of course you will dismiss me, turn this off, and never listen to me again.  And I agree with you, you shouldn’t.

But, I am going to prove it to you why it’s unlike any film ever made.  And how it combines super hero with incredible ideas.  Ideas that are electrifying in the fields of religion, on spirituality, on psychology, on such touchy subjects as abortion.  We’re going to show you a view point on abortion that’s never been seen in a film before.

We’re going to do it on religion, and politics.  Amazingly, touching politics in  movies has been poison beyond belief.  Well the way we’re going to do it is electrifying.

Now whether or not it’s good depends on how we execute it and what our ideas and what our super heroic action scenes are.   How we do it is going to depend … but we are going to combine these two things in a way that we believe is the paradigm, is the prototype, is the template for all the films that want to once again have people flock to see them at the box office in theaters and all the way down the line.

So here it goes.  Here’s how this film is going to be unlike any film ever made.

The first way it’s going to be different is we’re going to combine super hero, superheroine action, balls out action with electrifying ideas in a way that’s never been done before in a film.  And as I said, I’ll show you that in the preview scenes.

Years ago Lew Wasserman, who was at the time the most powerful man in the motion picture business, the king maker, and a friend and mentor, told Delores and I that a secret reason, an invisible reason that Billy Jack was such a success – the love story, because ultimately it was a love story, first and foremost – a super hero, super heroine love story – and that’s the key.  And  he said the reason was because of the invisible love between Delores and I.   Now that presented a challenge for us.  And that presents a challenge, because in the new Billy Jack, Jean and Billy are going to be Obewon Kenobis, passing down the mantle to a newer, younger Billy Jack and Jean.  And casting those is going to be a challenge.

Another way that our movie is going to be unlike any other, in addition to the fact that in this movie we’re going to combine cinema verite, reality film, fictional film, documentary film in a way that’s never … with computer graphics and things in it never been done before. For example, remember in Forrest Gump Tom Hanks was talking as Forrest Gump?

Kennedy:  Congratulations, how do you feel?

Gump:  I gotta pee.

Kennedy:  Ha ha, I believe he said he has to go pee.

In our film Billy’s going to have extensive discussions like this with people like Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, Ralph Nader, Bill Clinton, Sarah Palin.  We’re gonna do that in spades in this movie in a way that’s just going to shock and stun you, and really challenge everyone out there, everyone who cares about America, and the content and the morality and the politics of it.

And we have found out that the way the positions we’re going to take, 85% of you, the overwhelming majority, are going to agree with, will be supported by and fulfilled by and enriched by and empowered by.  We’re going to do it in a way that’s never been done in a film before.  And you’ll see in a moment when I show you our sneak preview.

Another way it’s going to be different is we’re going to have our fictional characters in the screenplay, actually go and live and work with people who are doing the incredible work around the world.  And I’m talking about people like the remarkable Angelina Jolie, Ben Affleck, George Clooney, Sean Penn, Shakira … all of these stars that are working … Quincy Jones, the remarkable work he’s doing in Cambodia.  We’re going to have our actors go and spend weeks with them, film them, live with them and that’s going to be incorporated into our story.

Another way that this picture is going to be utterly different is you’re seeing it.  You’re seeing it right now.  It’s the way we’re going to pitch it.  Normally you pitch it you get a meeting, if you’re lucky enough, and you say you have a star, you get a meeting with a studio head or a private mini-studio investor and you go and you pitch your film with a great one line or two line and you say something.  And then you elaborate on it for 20 minutes and they decide whether they want to talk to y ou further and give you development money or not.

Well we’re pitching the film right now.  This is our pitch.  And we’re going to do it not only by this, but by our preview.  We’re going to show these scenes that are going to be in the picture.  That’s another way this has never been done before in a film.

And still another way is the concept of the film, the combining of ideas on religion, and spirituality, and politics, with the super hero/super heroine action.  That’s going to be unlike any film ever done before. And in a way that’s going to be pure box office gold.

And lastly it’s going to be marketed differently … just as radically different as we did before when we invented the open wide mega multiple release.  And, we’re going to have a year long campaign of free publicity on this picture that’s never been done before.  So these are the ways it’s going to be unlike any other.

And I’m now going to show you some sneak previews, some scenes, some samples.  In the new Billy Jack film we’re going to combine super heroic action with electrifying ideas, with ideas that will hopefully, like our other Billy Jacks, impact people’s lives, change people, make a difference … make a difference in some small corner of the world.

Now in addition to our using these principles we’ve discovered in the making our  new Billy Jack picture, Billy jack and Jean, we hope you will join us in whatever film you are making, in whatever role you play in making in our crusade for better films.  In our crusade to rescue the movie business, to resurrect it from the failure to sell tickets at the box office, to a resurgence of selling tickets at the box office.

Please please join  Delores and I, the Taylor Laughlin crusade to make better movies, to make movies people once again want to see.  That’s crucial to everyone of us a) who make our living in the business from the $20 million star to the teenage kid part time usher, to everyone who loves movies, whether to see them in theaters or at home on DVD – everyone of us.

Please, please join us in our crusade to make better movies that people once again want to see in theaters.

Thank you very much, and I really appreciate you giving me this much time.