The Chemistry Test

Recently I've been hearing about something called the "chemistry test". Naturally I thought it had to do with chemistry, as in bunsen burners and bubbling glass containers. But no, it's not that at all, it's something more abstract. 

It's about actors.

Apparently the producers and studios want to be absolutely sure that the lead actors have chemistry, otherwise known as attraction,  compatibility, comfort and any other vague quality that might translate to the movie.

Basically it's about how two actors relate to each other.

 Bogart and Bacall had it. Astaire and Rogers had it. Hope and Crosby had it. Sean Connery and Candice Bergen had it. And lately Owen Wilson and Marion Coitillard had it.

Harrison Ford and Karen Allen had it in the first Raiders of the Lost Ark. But in the sequel with Kate Capshaw didn't have it.

Chemistry with actors is difficult to define, and there are probably as many theories as there are actors. Simply put, it means that the two actors, usually leads, seem to fit like a perfect glove.

One of the best examples is the Thin Man series with Nick and Nora, played by William Powell and Myrna Loy, who were probably one of the first couples that looked and felt like they really were in love with each other. It's also fun to count the number of cocktails they could down in the course of an 80 minute movie.

So now there is a chemistry test. 

They take two actors, usually one is a big star and one is lessor, although it's not a rule. It's hard enough to learn lines but now to see if you get along and what's more, you can't really fake it. Chemistry is real, either it's there or it's not.

Johnny Depp and Angelina had no chemistry in The Tourist, just read the reviews. Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise had none, but Cameron and Jim Carrey had. And I'm sure Johnny and Angelina didn't test, they're too big. What it comes down to for you is this:

You enjoy watching them.

 It's a magic of sorts that works sometimes, sometimes not.  And the irony is that it has always been going on in Hollywood. They would test every actor together within the studio system, nobody was too big to not test, at least not for them. When a big star was tested, it was more likely for the actor who would play with them.

Testing seemed to disappear after the studios lost their actor talent to independent agents but it seems it is back.

Unfortunately, we don't have the caliber of actors we had in the 30's right through to the 80's. Watching most of the young "stars" now is less than exciting. Put Ryan Reynolds with Emma Stone and you have zero chemistry.

I'm sure there will be some who disagree but the movies show it. Some of the last few romcoms, Friends with Benefits and Crazy Stupid Love for example, took steep dives even with alleged "star power" of people like Ashton Kutcher and Steve Carrell whom some reviewers even remarked on the lack of chemistry between him and his female lead.

But the king of chemistry is probably Jack Nicholson, who seemed to work with all the actresses he worked with, Diane Keaton especially. He's one of those guys you always like to watch.

But there are fewer of them.

Nobody knows anything redux

As we wait for the Canadian producer produce his letters of commitment, I toss in my 5 cents (Cdn) on the Leno/O'Brien mess.  And again, screenwriter William Goldman's now famous slogan above, says it all. 

Jeff Zucker is coming off as the bad boy in this comedy of errors, he's the head of NBC/Universal and has been considered "teflon" through the 10 years he's been top dog, in the sense that nothing bad sticks to him. It's argued that most of his successes were from shows that were on TV already and all he did was renew them. Okay, he was also responsible for the "re-imagining" of that great classic Knightrider. The new show lasted a few episodes.

But somewhere in time, he decided that Jay Leno should "retire" at some point to let Conan take over the Tonight show, as Leno was getting older and his audience would want a hipper and cooler host like Conan. Even then I said it was a mistake. Most people in Hollywood said it was a mistake.

Why? Because they chose to dump Leno at the height of Leno's popularity, his show was #1 in late night. Conan took over and guess what -- they lost half the audience. 50% went to Kimmel and Letterman.


So where are we now?

Conan's out, possibly with a $40 million severance check (NBC says $25 million but other estimates by industry people are higher). And Zucker is mad as hell, mostly because almost everyone is blaming him. And they should. Even Leno is getting negative attention following the theory that when someone wins (Leno) and someone loses (Conan) and sympathy falls to the loser, the winner is seen in a bad light, greedy and selfish. Right now that's where it is.

Now let's go to Sandra Bullock. And a great article in today's LA Times. Her movie, The Blind Side is a hit movie, grossing $220 million and oscar nomination possibilities. It's the big hit she's needed for few years of flops. But it almost wasn't made.

First actor to read it was Julia Roberts, the Golden Girl, who turned it down. Executives then said if Julia turns it down, then we change the story to a man mentoring a football player. Otherwise nobody will go see it.

John Lee Hancock, the director, insisted that since the true story was with a woman mentor, it wouldn't be a good idea to cast a man instead. But since the studio guys can only focus on 16-year old boys going to their movies, they all passed.

And that's when a small practically unknown company thought they could finance it. And they did. And it has made $220 million dollars.

When Clint Eastwood wanted to make a movie about a trucker and an orangutan, the studio heads rejected it totally, as Clint's audience wants him to be the mysterious stranger who comes to town to kill the bad guys. In spite of their rejection Clint made it, Every Which Way But Loose, and it and the sequel were two of his highest grossing films ever.

So, getting back to nobody knows anything, how is it that studio execs are wrong more times than you'd think so?

What I think is this, the greatest movies in America were made in the 1930's to the mid 1970's and that was when studios were run on gut instincts by the guys who started and ran the companies. No research -- just instinct. You'd go into Jack Warner, say you got Bogart and Bacall, a good story and a budget and Jack would look at them and say "OK".

When they died off, college boys with business degrees took over. And they all came with the benefits of an MBA: research, studies, grosses, patterns and a whole busload of words and expressions. You know, like the banks and stock market guys.

And as a result we get sequels and remakes, movies that are made for $200 million but which draw a huge audience. What worked the first time will work again. No risk. And many times that's true.

Spiderman was a good movie, as was Ironman and a few others. And of course, Avatar is a huge success, but that was due to James Cameron, who had to show Fox a short demo of his effects before they committed. And this is the guy who made Titanic. He still had to show them a promotional short film.

Are there still good studio executives? Well,  logistics suggest there has to be, and I'm sure they are there, but big business has taken over the movie business like almost everything else and there is less and less risk and quality.

Same thing goes for TV. One of the guys who developed the "100-Channel package" for cable and satellite said that when they started, they figured it would be great, that there would be special interest channels for everyone as well as popular ones, that everyone would produce new and exciting programming.

But he now realizes that all that was accomplished was mediocrity, reruns show up on every channel rather than "new and innovative programming". They'd rather run Friends and Seinfeld and MASH, not that they're bad shows, but on 20 channels?  Sometimes at the same time.

Sometimes I wonder how I grew up on first 1 channel and as a teen in Windsor/Detroit, 5 channels.  Researchers say the average person watches about 17 channels of the 110 to 200 channels available on cable or satellite.

And ironically, with all those channels, it's harder to get a dramatic series on then it ever was. Why take a risk when Mash and Seinfeld is guaranteed an audience and costs way less.