#5 TALKING POINT
PREACH THE GOSPEL TRUTH ABOUT PATCH ADAMS. Yes, Virginia, as it says in the ads for the new Robin Williams dramedy, there really is a Patch Adams. A med student in the late '60s, the real Adams clashed with his teachers over his belief in the restorative powers of a sense of humor. He later founded the Gesundheit! Institute, a community medical clinic in West Virginia. Needing dough to construct a building for his institute, Adams wrote a book and sold the movie rights to producer Mike Farrell (B.J. Hunnicutt on M*A*S*H). Adams' only stipulation: "Please don't make it a goofy doctor." Guess someone forgot to tell that to the people who put the big red clown nose on Williams in those billboard and newspaper ads.
#6 TALKING POINT
SPIN YOUR OWN OSCAR BUZZ. End of the year means critics' awards and Golden Globe nominations (see page 8), portending Oscar nods to come. Many of the movies won't open wide until early next year, so you can impress your friends by hinting: Gwyneth is worthy of a Best Actress nomination for Shakespeare in Love; Robert Duvall gives a custom-made supporting-actor performance in A Civil Action; the comedy Rushmore is courting nominations for screenplay (Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson) and supporting actor for--get this--Bill Murray (right); A Simple Plan has a Fargo-esque vibe; and no one knows if Oprah's stunningly rejected Beloved or Fox's The Thin Red Line will be feted in any major category.
#7 TALKING POINT
EXPOSE ADAM SANDLER AS SATAN. The argument is self-evident to those who think pop culture needs an exorcism after The Waterboy made a dumbfounding $130 million plus and "The Chanukah Song" went back into incessant radio rotation. But New Line's winter-'99 comedy Little Nicky takes the point seriously: Sandler, playing the spawn of Satan, is forced by his father to take over the family business with the start of the new millennium. Why are execs possessed by Sandler? "He's a nice Jewish boy, and he generates his own material," says Mike De Luca, New Line production prez, who recently inked Sandler to a two-picture, $35 million deal. "Plus the girls think he's really cute."
#8 TALKING POINT
BRAD PITT: OVER? Meet Joe Black opened at $15 million--respectable, but not Adam Sandler respectable--then dropped precipitously, marking another quick fade for the golden boy and deepening a career groove worn in by Seven Years in Tibet. But share this piece of conventional studio wisdom: This is not a vision of Christmases yet to come for Pitt. "He's built up such a huge foundation," says one casting exec. "There are plenty of people who still would sit and watch him for eight hours." Hollywood will likely keep on believing in Pitt's box office potential, especially since his next film, Fight Club, reunites him with director David Fincher, responsible for one of Pitt's biggest hits to date, the $101 million-grossing Seven.
#9 TALKING POINT
CRUNCH THE PRINCE OF EGYPT NUMBERS. Whatever this animated biblical epic grosses its opening weekend, behave like a box office prophet by divining that DreamWorks has already sold an estimated 500,000 tickets via a retail-chain gift pack, which includes a CD, a storybook, and either two or four movie tickets. This insta-gift (selling for $19.96-$29.99 at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club) is not just a moviegoer's bargain, it could also be a potential boon for Egypt's grosses. It's up to theater owners how to report these presold tickets. If they're counted as adult admissions, Egypt gets a lift to reaching the $100 million mark. And if they're judged as complimentary passes? It'll be a slower crawl to the promised land.
