The 100 Dumbest things Hollywood's Done Recently

51. Joe Pesci was given the lead in a serious film.

52. Tom Selleck starred in three films in one year.

53. Barbra Streisand and Madonna were given $60 million deals.

54. Hundreds of actors got tattoos.

55. Hollywood, the predatory sex capital of the cosmos, busily prepared a raft of movies about sexual harassment.

56. 20th Century Fox unloaded Hoffa, Toys and Used People on 1992's innocent holiday filmgoers.

57. In the new era of , austerity, Carolco paid $2 million for the script to Cutthroat Island, Imagine bought The Sea Wolf for $1 million, Paramount paid $1 million for The Cheese Stands Alone, Largo paid $1 million each for The Ticking Man and Texas Lead and Gold, Warner Bros, paid $1 million for Wasteland, and Touchstone paid $1 million for Ultimatum --and none of these movies have been made.

58. In the new era of austerity, Icon Productions bought Forever Young for $2 million, Morgan Creek bought Stay Tuned and Freejack for over $750,000 each, Geffen Company bought The Last Boy Scout for $1.75 million, and Cinergi bought Medicine Man for nearly $3 million--and these movies actually got made.

59. Jeffrey Katzenberg criticized the industry for thinking too much about profit.

60. Director Luis Valdez was forced to shut down production of his movie about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo after the protests over his casting of Italian-American (and Kahlo dead ringer) Laura San Giacomo. Meanwhile, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close and Winona Ryder were cast as Latinas in the adaptation of Chilean Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits, a project being directed by the Danish Bille August.

61. Long-in-the-tooth Robert Redford got cast in two big romances, Havana and Indecent Proposal, while romantic figure Tom Cruise got cast in a chaste courtroom drama, A Few Good Men, and a legal thriller, The Firm. Go figure.

62. No one figured out how to make Andy Garcia into a star. And nobody managed to get him to stop swallowing his dialogue, either.

63. Moral giants such as Barbra Streisand and Liza Minnelli supported a boycott of Colorado for passing an amendment that deprives gays and lesbians of civil rights, but no one ever thought to demand that their records and films not be sold there.

64. Movieline put Bette Midler on its cover.

65. Entertainment Weekly put Nina Siemaszko on its cover.

66. Shadows and Fog.

67. People in the industry became guinea pigs in an experiment to see whether cellular phones really cause brain cancer.

68. David Lynch made "Twin Peaks" into a movie.

69. Dustin Hoffman was cast in Billy Bathgate.

70. Dustin Hoffman was cast in Hero.

71. James Woods and Dolly Parton starred together in a movie.

72. Woody Allen decided to have an affair with his lover's adopted daughter.

73. Eddie Murphy retroactively erased whatever anyone used to like about him by making The Distinguished Gentleman.

74. Hollywood didn't appreciate Batman Returns.

75. CAA, overly impressed with its I.M. Pei architecture and massive Roy Lichtenstein, developed the habit of letting the biggest names in the business sit in their cavernous lobby for insulting lengths of time.

76. TriStar hired Richard Attenborough, director of the disastrous movie version of A Chorus Line, to direct the upcoming movie version of Les Miserables.

77. Warner Bros., two producers and director Martin Brest all let Al Pacino wear a Mafia don haircut for his role as a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel in Scent of a Woman.

78. Lorraine Bracco was given the lead opposite Sean Connery in Medicine Man.

79. Before the picture had even started filming, Francis Coppola predicted that Frankenstein, which he is executive-producing, would make over $200 million.

80. With full knowledge of what Barry Levinson did the last time he got to make a pet project (Avalon), Joe Roth let him make his ultimate pet project--Toys.

81. Shirley MacLaine, Kathy Bates, Marcia Gay Harden and Jessica Tandy were all cast as Jews in Used People.

82. Ellen Burstyn, Diane Ladd and Olympia Dukakis were all cast as Jews in The Cemetery Club.

83. Jim Belushi.

84. Gerard Depardieu's dialogue was not subtitled in 1492: Conquest of Paradise.

85. Final Analysis.

86. Sylvester Stallone was paid money to make Oscar and Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot.

87. The Marrying Man.

88. While making the WWII movie Shining Through, Melanie Griffith explained that she had no idea six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and commented, "That's a lot of people."

89. Sony Pictures spent a fortune developing movie ideas for Michael Jackson.

90. The studios installed phone mail in order to apply new technology to the old strategy of treating everyone like shit.

91. Range Rovers became the hottest studio perk for people who seldom stray more than 10 miles from their gym, The Sports Club-L.A.

92. Universal and Columbia allowed themselves to be bought by the Japanese.

93. Julia Roberts decided not to work for two years.

94. Debra Winger backed out of A League of Their Own and This Boy's Life and said yes to Leap of Faith, then thought it wise to be directed by Richard Attenborough in Shadowlands.

95. Hollywood forgot how to make romantic comedies, film noir, musicals and thrillers.

96. Woody Allen put out his best movie in years at the exact moment he committed career suicide.

97. Mel Gibson, who long ago was so good in Gallipoli and The Year of Living Dangerously, continued his more recent habit of giving profoundly inconsequential performances in ultimately so-what? movies.

98. Studios okayed more Death Wishes, Stakeouts, Look Who's Talkings, Weekend at Bernies' and Beverly Hills Cops, but not the one sequel that might have been good, Who Framed Roger Rabbit 2.

99. Despite the box-office bombs that have resulted from modern attempts to translate Jim Thompson's novels to the screen--The Grifters, After Dark, My Sweet--Largo Entertainment decided to remake Jim Thompson's The Getaway (which was a bomb back when Sam Peckinpah made it with Ali MacGraw and Steve McQueen), then cast the explosive two-some Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin, and topped it off by choosing as director Roger Donaldson, who recently gave us such box-office bombs as Cadillac Man and White Sands.

100. On the heels of the disappointment The Doors, Hollywood resurrected bio pics. The good Malcolm X was more than compensated for by the awful Chaplin and Hoffa. Now we are threatened with movies about Tina Turner, Janis Joplin, Harvey Milk, Chico Mendes, etc.

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