PARTY OVER FOR THIN TEEN COMEDIES?
On Sept. 26, Columbia Pictures quietly released a youth comedy called “One More Saturday Night.†By the end of this weekend the movie will already have been pulled from the 23 markets where it debuted, having taken in only a fraction of its budget in ticket sales. Earlier this summer, Warner Bros. executives had so little confidence in “One Crazy Summer†that they refused to screen the comedy for the press prior to its opening.
Their instincts proved accurate: The movie performed poorly. And Paramount’s “The Whoopee Boys,†died a quick August death when the studio opted to open the picture in just nine markets.
The failure of these and dozens of other similar films suggests that one of Hollywood’s sturdiest, if raunchiest, genres in recent years is finally--mercifully--waning. The so-called “high-concept teen-exploitation comedy†has at times been a lucrative cash cow producing box-office megahits like “Animal House†“Risky Business†and the improbable blockbuster “Police Academy†series (Part IV is currently being shot in Toronto).
But an avalanche of poorly executed also-rans seems to have soured audiences on the genre. “They (the studios) may have killed the goose that laid the golden egg,†says Gene Quintano who wrote “Police Academies III and IV.†While evergreens like the “Police Academy†series will doubtlessly continue to be made as long as they bear profits, the gross-out game is finally wearing thin.
For the most part, even the box-office winners have been an embarrassment of riches that embarrass. “Porky’s†may have earned Fox millions, but it was hardly the kind of picture that earns studios Oscars. The main reason the studio released the film (it was a “pick-up,†meaning the studio only distributed it and did not finance production) was because of a contractual obligation to producer Mel Simon. But for every “Porky’s†there are scores of derivative misfires like “Mischief,†“Party Animal†and “Private Resort†that sound more like short stories written for Penthouse than feature films.
High concept movies are those where the story lines are so simple and the humor so physical that the entire plot can be quickly surmised just by gazing at the poster. It is a formula that gained enormous momentum in 1978 when Universal released “Animal House,†a comedy that cost $2.7 million to make and has taken in more than $200 million worldwide in ticket sales, cable and videocassette revenues.
While audiences could hardly consider “Animal House†a message movie, the forefather of them all brought a significant lesson to the marketing folks at the studios: A new ready-to-spend teen moviegoer had emerged and had yet to be fully mined. The studios would lure them into the theaters with movies about food fights featuring lots of playful nudity, jokes about sexual rites of passage and satires on obnoxious authority figures or any familiar but bothersome institution.
The institutional high-jinks comedy is by far the most popular and most widely abused subset of the genre. Just consider the attempts to poke fun at schools of one kind or another. There were the occasional well-made box office winners like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High†and “The Breakfast Club,†but there were also “Bad Medicine,†“Moving Violations†(traffic school satire), “Fraternity Vacation†and “Private School.â€
Columbia has “Stewardess School†in the can but on hold (no specific release date yet). Next summer Paramount is releasing “Summer School†and last summer we were treated to “Real Genius†and “My Science Project.†Others developed but not made: “Traffic School†(beaten to the gate by “Moving Violationsâ€), “Halls of Shame,†“Beauty School,†“Field Trip†and on and on and on. Says Doug Draizin, vice president of production at United Artists: “The problem is there are only so many institutions you can do. We passed on sewer school.â€
While the genre as a whole may be suffering, the “Police Academy†phenomenon shows no signs of letting up. Thus far the first three installments have grossed in excess of $384 million worldwide. Curiously, they have done even more business overseas than in America. “Buffoonery is buffoonery and police are an institution people like to laugh at worldwide,†says writer Quintano. “These are not jokes that get lost in the translation.â€
Surprisingly, two of the genre’s biggest hits, “Risky Business†and “Animal House†have never yielded sequels. According to producer Matty Simmons, a number of drafts have been turned in and there are still discussions with Universal about the project. “I still think there should be a sequel,†says Simmons. “It’s just something that hasn’t ever come together.â€
Producer Steve Tisch has been besieged with offers from screenwriters who wanted to write the follow-up to “Risky Business,†but he says he has resisted the idea from the start. “I never felt we needed to selfishly capitalize on the success of the movie by rushing out and doing a sequel,†says Tisch, who just finished producing “Soul Man†for New World Pictures. “The teen audience has finely tuned antennae for being hyped.â€
According to Tisch, the assumption by the studios that the youth market can be manipulated easily into the theater with jiggling girls and locker-room humor has been self-destructive. “The interest from the studios is waning because they could not design movies that worked for that audience. These movies can’t just be ordered like you order a pizza. It’s just as difficult to make a good teen movie as a good thriller or action movie.â€
Part of the problem also stems from an unavoidable generation gap. How does a grown adult create material for adolescents raised on MTV and David Lee Roth? “It’s easy,†says Quintano. “I just stick my head in the microwave oven for 15 minutes and start writing.â€
Screenwriter Andy Borowitz, a Harvard graduate who was working on a movie called “Scoutmaster,†says the material is not the issue. “S. J. Perelman wrote Marx Bros. movies,†he says. “The problem is there has been an inability to differentiate between a good youth comedy and a bad one because the people making the decisions were removed from the audience.â€
Among the creative community there is a general sense that while the studios will continue to pursue the valuable youth market, this phase of the cycle has bottomed out. “These formula films about guys trying to impress girls have pretty much run their course,†says Dana Olsen, who wrote and starred in “Making the Grade.†“And I don’t think they’ll be missed.â€
From a creative standpoint, the problem is that too often these kinds of one-note movies rely on situations in place of characters. In order to get the laugh, though, each new generation of low-brow comedy has to outgross or outshock the previous one in order to succeed with the target audience.
Instead of continuing to milk the trend, the studios now seem to be intent on hooking the youngsters with entertaining but perhaps slightly more intelligent fare. Says Borowitz: “A lot of the creative executives who have youth comedies are now saying, ‘Make it more like ‘Stand By Me’ (Columbia’s surprise hit about four youths who search for the body of a missing youth).†There is a wonderful and typical irony in that suggestion. “Stand By Me†is a movie that virtually every major studio passed on. All thought it would be too serious for the youth market.
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