101 BAD reviews Battlefield Earth see Battlefield Earth FAQ updated 14May00

Title: Battlefield Earth trashed by "MEAN" Magazine
Author: jdrake_deja@dejanews.com (John Drake)
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 11:12:43 -0700

This text is from MEAN magazine, Vol 1, Number 5, Sep-Dec 1999.
See also the MEAN magazine website: <http://www.meanmag.com/> by Mark Ebner

When Quentin Tarantino resurrected John Travolta in his pop pastiche, Pulp
Fiction he had no idea what a gluttonous monster he was re-releasing.
Although Travolta subsequently scored in a hat-trick of hit films playing
had guys (Broken Arrow, Get Shorty, and Face/Off), there are still the
mind-numbing Phenomenon and the miserable Michael to account for. Primary
Colors and A Civil Action did not meet box office expectations, and no
doubt Travolta, distributors and the public would like to forget the
dreary race-based drama White Man's Burden. Those so-so showings--plus
Travolta's insulting turn as a retard in Mad City, and his storming off
the set of Roman Polanski's The Double (in effect, shutting it down) all
should have put the porcine actor out to pasture.

More recently Two-Ton Travolta bailed on his commitment to star in The
Shipping News, and the much-hyped, misogynistic melodrama The General's
Daughter bellyflopped--its first week box office barely enough to cover
the star's salary and that of his retainers and go-fers. Yet Travolta
still commands $21 million a picture. Too bad his extreme largesse has a
way of killing his own best plans.

Standing Room Only, the biopic story of lounge singer Jimmy Roselli, was
to begin shooting in April '99 with Travolta starring as the Sinatra
contemporary who refused to be co-opted by the mob. The star¹s real-life
wife, Kelly Preston, was also on board as Roselli¹s spouse Donna.
Following up his ill-received Psycho remake, the ever-eclectic Gus Van
Sant was to direct the risky project for which Disney had cautiously
ponied up only $23 million--again, an amount barely covering the star's
salary. Travolta's longtime handler/producer Jonathan Krane had allegedly
raised an additional $25 million, bringing the budget to a nearly-workable
$48 million.

Still, as the start date loomed, the SRO production team was caught short;
they needed at least $64 million to produce this show on a 50-day shooting
schedule. According to sources, they went back to Krane and Travolta, hat
in hand, hoping that the actor would defer maybe $8-10 million of his
salary towards getting his pet project rolling. They apparently figured
that since Travolta was dying to sing and dance in a movie again (he had
rehearsed with composer Marvin Hamlisch for nine, hours nightly), he'd
pitch in some coin.

Travolta wouldn't budge. Not a dime more than his contracted $1
million-deferred was going into this production. Yet for one day of test
shooting, the star acted as if he'd actually get to scene-one/take one,
and he ate like there was no tomorrow.

Travolta began the test-shoot work day with a pick-up at his Brentwood, CA
estate, by his $3600- week driver in an $1100-a-week rental on the $70,000
black Lexus star car. Once he arrived on set, before he talked to anyone,
before he rehearsed or even blocked the shots, Travolta had to eat
breakfast. Alone.

Imagine Howard Hughes crossed with the equally eccentric L. Ron Hubbard
and you've got Travolta in his luxury trailer at a table set with silver,
scarfing eggs and caviar prepared by his personal $32/hour craft services
guy, Peter Evangelitos. While Travolta brunched, the director and crew
waited for him to finish as the clock on the star's contracted maximum
ten-hour work day ticked painfully.

After breakfast, an engorged Travolta waddled to the set, but he still had
several hours of prosthetic "aging" makeup to sit through. So, Travolta
spent the first two to three hours of his ten-hour shift sprawled in a
makeup chair getting ready while the crew waited again. And waited,
until... Lunch time! This was on a four-hour test shoot where no lunch was
planned for the crew. But that didn't bother the lipidinous star.
Travolta's personal chef had $49 worth of filet mignon delivered to be
ground into hamburgers. The first burger served was not rare enough. On
the second, some thing was wrong with the mayonnaise. Luckily, the third
burger met Travolta's exacting culinary standards. Almost fifty dollars
worth of meat was thrown away because--well, he's John Travolta.

"The guy [Travolta] just eats and eats, he's like one of those geese who
get force-fed foie gras. He eats in almost a panic, shoveling food into
his mouth," remarks one SRO crew member. "He is so corpulent and bloated,
his already huge head is watching his gut catch up." The same source says
that for his on-camera costuming, Travolta insisted on wearing the Donna
Karan tuxedo he wore at the Academy Awards because "it covered up his
massive girth."

One way to lose a day of shooting is to offend Travolta's sense of smell.
A set must not only be fully sanitized for this compulsive movie star, no
outside odors can interfere. To avoid having the star walk off the set at
a club where they were shooting, a team of production assistants was sent
scrambling to mask the scent of a nearby kitchen. And as a bonus
expense--whether his shit stinks or not--Travolta demands that his trailer
be pumped nightly, an unheard of request even amongst the most pampered
celebrities.

In addition to his private chef and personal driver, Travolta had at least
a dozen more people in his on-set entourage during the test shoot. Few
know what they did besides collect production pay checks. "He, doesn't pay
them a dime," said a production source. "The studio pays them. Their
contracts are boiler plate and they are paid way shove union scale." His
staff also has to sign a non-disclosure agreement that is "as thick as a
phone book."

Travolta apparently felt that the right to have him sing and dance in a
movie was an exclusive, premium opportunity that no one has had since
Grease (Tarantino only got the fancy footwork in Pulp Fiction). For
Standing Room Only, Travolta reportedly believed that he should not have
had to take a deferred payment in exchange for a once in-a-lifetime chance
for any studio or producer. Even if this was a project close to his heart.

No financial entities really wanted to gamble heavily on the paunchy
song-and-dance man after the less-than phenomenal box office returns from
his last two films. Disney had agreed to only $23 million for the right to
distribute the picture in North America. And before the movie was shut
down, the $25 million that a company called Interlight Pictures promised
for foreign sales had quickly slimmed down to $20 million.

The only money Krane had definitely secured was a paltry $1 million
advance, from QVC (that's right, the shopping network) for the soundtrack
album. But of course JT's manager, Krane, could not admit that he was
losing control of any hard and fast financing. Instead, he hung Gus Van
Sant and producer Danny Wolf out to dry--blaming them for imaginary budget
overruns and spiraling costs.

Krane apparently couldn't risk having his star client mad at him, so he
took the traditional finger-licking, ass-kissing chicken's route out
smoke-screening the truth with a rain of blame. And spin. On the cover of
the April 12 edition of Variety, Krane claimed that "the numerous musical
numbers and elaborate staging had lengthened the pre-production and
production [schedules]." The bottom line: Krane couldn't raise the money.
[Jonathan Krane did not respond to MEAN's interview request, and Travolta
passed on the same through his publicist].

By mid-April, rumors floated that a financier named George Litto had
offered Jonathan Krane substantial funding for Standing Room Only.
According to a source close to the production, Litto "guaranteed the cash
in the bank through his line of credit with Chase Manhattan Bank." Krane's
apparent concern was that Disney had expressed relief when the show shut
down, and wasn't certain that the Mouse House would stand behind the
original $23 million offer; thus there would be no American distribution.

Adding further conflict is Travolta's other pet project, which he's been
developing for six years: Battlefield: Earth, based on the doorstop novel
by deceased spiritual flight attendant L Ron Hubbard. As MEAN goes to
press, Battlefield has pushed their start date back to August 5.
Consequently, if Standing Room Only really did see funding, BE's earliest
completion date would be August 10, threatening the intended Memorial Day
2000 release of the film Travolta has called 'the passion of his
professional life¹."

Krane's latest idea is to push for Standing Room Only to begin shooting in
October. Theoretically, Travolta could then hibernate and burn off fat all
summer, while getting his skills up or the musical numbers. But instead,
the former Sweat Hog is apparently suiting up on stilts to play the
10-foot ruthless alien "Terl" opposite Saving Private Ryan sniper Barry
Pepper in Ontario and Quebec. Those stilts and the film that goes with
them could permanently hobble tubby Travolta's career.

To the press jowly John has commented, "Because Battlefield: Earth is one
of the biggest-selling science fiction novels of all time we could be next
summer's Star Wars." Of course, not all big-selling science fiction novels
translate well to screen (Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers comes to
mind), and reviews of Hubbard's lengthy sci-fi tome have been far from
kind. The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction gave Hubbard's 1000-plus page
opus a ranking of "zero stars", while The Economist called the it "an
unsubtle saga, atrociously written, windy and out of control...The plot
clanks along like a giant, lumbering engine."

Travolta has managed to secure the services of director Roger Christian,
who, after a string of unnoticed flicks in the mid-'90s, shot the second
unit (action) footage for Star Wars Episode 1 The Phantom Menace. The
screenwriter on BE is an unknown quantity; Corey Mandel has no produced
credits.

Travolta has always been more appealing as a bad guy--witness Carrie,
Face/Off and Broken Arrow--than as a protagonist. He exudes menace and
charm in bulk, fine qualities for a villain, but the adipose actor has a
few hurdles in BE that not even the four-foot stilts can help him cross.
As Terl, the evil leader of the aliens, the actor's familiar rubbery
features will be disguised. Enthused Travolta about his Mardi Gras-style
drag ensemble, "It will be my face, but I'll be wearing an elaborate
head-dress. I'll have talons for hands and amber eyes." And if
pre-production reports are to be believed, a giant furry egg head.

The make up is the least of the problem. Battlefield: Earth is
sub-standard sci-fi fare: evil aliens, good humans. In Hubbard's turgid
space opera, the humans must save earth from the nefarious
halitosis-ridden "Psychlos." In a clear sci-fi elaboration of his personal
ideology, Hubbard semantically linked the bad guys with his personal
bugabears, psychiatrists, who he felt were out to enslave and destroy
mankind. The removal of psychiatrists from planet Earth is a basic tenet
of Scientology, the multi-level marketing religion Hubbard founded some
thirty years before Battlefield: Earth was originally published.

Barry Pepper, who debuted strong as the Bible-quoting sniper in Saving
Private Ryan, has been cast as "Jonnie Goodboy Tyler," the human who is
captured by Travolta/Terl and goes on to save humanity through his bravery
and brains. Forest Whitaker, who appeared in Phenomenon, is also on board
the wacky spaceship. In other words, cliche doesn't even begin to describe
the ennui that will hit the screens next year.

And theaters will not be the only outlet for Travolta's megalomaniacal
magnum opus. If things go as planned, toy stores will be filled with
action figures from BE. Author Services (the Scientology owned and
operated literary agency whose only client is the late L. Ron) is
reportedly in for a piece of the merchandising, since they hold all the
copyrights on Battlefield: Earth and the sequels and prequels that make up
Hubbard's Mission: Earth series--a book package that one review referred
to as "a door stop." Battlefield: Earth was originally published by St.
Martin's, but is now owned by Bridge Publications, whose catalog includes
(surprise) all the works of the late L. Ron Hubbard.

Reports from Cannes had BE's director Roger Christian arriving with set
drawings, animations and production notes, hoping to raise the lacking $40
million needed to save Earth from the murderous Psychlos. Will Travolta
kick down some of his bulky paycheck to cover costs? Don't bet on it,
because his track record indicates that even if he wants a picture made,
he wants the fatted $21 million purse even more.
Travolta's behavior--the overpaid entourage on 24-hour call, the
compulsive-face stuffing--are the Emperor's haute couture disguising
slobbering greed and pathological insecurity, overshadowing any artistic
integrity. While his Scientological counterpart Tom Cruise--who clearly
travels the same cosseted universe--only does maybe one movie every two
years and carefully chooses the directors he'll work with, Travolta seems
eager to sign on to any project that will lay out the cash for him and his
pampering employees. One insider speculated, "He's so afraid that the
bottom's going to drop out, like it did after Saturday Night Fever, that
he's going to make every penny he can."

Travolta is a gross example of what's causing Hollywood's current downward
spiral. He has no compunction about damaging our already fragile film
economy by taking the Battlefield: Earth production to Canada. Now, of
course his fifteen-per-center, Jonathan Krane, can argue that runaway
production is a sound business decision, but how can he defend the
obscenely obese fees paid to his client and his personal staff? When stars
reap such ridiculous numbers, the studios cut below-the-line expenses. And
as studios fiercely slash those below-the-line costs, they are paying less
to crews while working them harder. And union guys who used to make tidy
six-figure incomes are putting their homes on the market or figuring out
other ways to tighten their belts.

And don't think the crew, from honeywagon driver to the grips and gaffers,
don't know that they're being worked like serfs. "The standard used to he
one third of the budget above the line, two thirds below," says a veteran
producer. "But that's changed now, and when one actor gets such a giant
hunk of dough, it makes the crew dissatisfied and unhappy. It gets a
little Marie Antoinette-ish."

Let them eat cake crumbs. Travolta and company will gobble the whole
bakery, courtesy of his private pastry chef. Hold the mayo.

[sidebar]
WHAT A TRAVOLTIN' DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
The screen adaptation of Hubbard's Battlefield: Earth was penned by
unknown scribe Corey Mandel: the film is to be directed by action director
Roger Christian. Anticipating a budget that could well top $120 million
MEAN thought it would be cool to play development executive for a day.

We took Mandel's screenplay and changed only the title page to read "Dark
Forces by Desmond Finch." Then we dropped it into Hollywood's time honored
development pipeline called ³coverage,² in which the screenplay was
subjected to expert criticism by professional Hollywood script readers.
Script Reader #1 is a male reader at uber agent Mike Ovitz's
management/production concern, Artists Management Group (AMG); Script
Reader #2 is a woman who reads for a busy television/feature film
production company.

Here's how the professionals assessed Battlefield: Earth.

From Script Reader #1:
"A thoroughly silly plotline is made all the more ludicrous by its
hamfisted dialogue and ridiculously shallow characterization. Functioning
only as the broadest of cartoonish stories, the script reads like a 1950¹s
Earth versus the Martians film with a bit of Conan-esque heavy breathing
mixed in. The premise is fairly standard genre stuff: sort of a poor man's
Independence Day. The storyline, however, is slow-moving, predictable and
obvious. The characters are overdrawn types who behave along no consistent
unified tone: some act like mad scientists while others seem
sword-wielding Xena rejects. The dialogue is laughable, at best, dwelling
heavily on the rather obvious irony of the premise.

"The storyline functions, barely, but its slow pace never entertains or
arouses much excitement as it pauses frequently to linger on its own
profundity. The opening scenes set a bizarrely, Conan-like tone as the
silent sword-wielding young hero defies the gods and his elders by leaving
the cave. This tone is quickly made ridiculous as hero Jonnie is revealed
not to be in some medieval underworld, but wandering around the San
Fernando Valley. Once he is abducted by the aliens, the tone shifts again
into its kitschy sci-fi talk as the aliens marvel at these stupid little
humans who are too dumb to speak and the ugliness of Earth's blue
Skies..., The aliens finally manage to figure out that humans are not
completely brain dead, and the humans learn not to live in fear of
superstitious myths of the gods, but instead to fight for freedom, The
quasi-anti-spiritual message is a laughable attempt at high seriousness in
the context of this schlocky story. The thrills and the fights are fairly
standard action sequences,...[and] the conclusion is a thoroughly confused
climax as Jonnie hatches an incomprehensibly complicated plot to defeat
the aliens."
Recommendation: PASS

From Script Reader #2:
"Planet of the Apes meets Total Recall with a touch of Armageddon and
Independence Day thrown in for kicks...a completely predictable story that
just isn¹t written well enough to make up for its lack of originality. The
basic story has been done before with a more interesting setting, stronger
characters and better dialogue. The [supporting] characters are all
straight out of Central Casting... Such miserably uninspired characters
are well-suited to this exceedingly uninteresting story. The dialogue is
dull, historical allusions painful, and the few laughs Finch tries to work
into the script fall horrifyingly flat. If that weren't bad enough, Finch
uses the "everything AND the kitchen sink" approach to plotting a
screen-play. Think of your least favorite cliche, and I guarantee you'll
find it in Dark Forces.

"Sadly, in the age of disturbingly derivative movies, a film with plot
points from nearly every science fiction flick ever made could reign as
king.... But as a screenplay, the patchwork quilt Mr. Finch is trying to
pass off as a movie is about as entertaining as watching a fly breathe."
Recommendation: PASS

For MORE on this see Battlefield Earth FAQ