News + Notes

EW Presents...

Pop Culture News

ANOTHER OPEN-AND-SHUT CASE

THE MOVIE 'IT'S PAT' GOES SPLAT AFTER A SAD-SACK OUT-OF-TOWN TRYOUT

More

The most embarrassing part is that Disney was going to open it in Houston and Minneapolis,'' Julia Sweeney says with a laugh. ''But I said, 'Oh, no, open it in Seattle. It's my hometown. They'll come out and support me.''' Disney took her advice and opened It's Pat, a big-screen comedy based on Sweeney's maddeningly androgynous Saturday Night Live character, on just 33 screens in Houston and Seattle on Aug. 26, but even her hometown fans didn't show. Which means that unless you live in one of the college towns where Disney will make one more stab at releasing the film, It's Pat will not be coming to a theater near you: As with other films that fly outside the cultural radar of New York/ L.A. media, its next stop will most likely be late-night slots on cable TV and back shelves of video stores. It's Pat's plunge from Saturday-night sensation to object of Monday-morning quarterbacking makes it the latest victim of what the industry delicately calls the ''regional release''-a dumping that occurs when a studio lacks enough faith in a film to invest millions in a national opening and ad campaign. Another dumpee-in-waiting, Orion Pictures' There Goes My Baby, a four-year-old comedy-drama about high school kids during the '65 Watts riots, probably won't run nationally since opening to a lackluster gross of only $690 per screen in a few cities in the South and West on Labor Day weekend. And Warner's one- theater-in-Seattle test of Arizona Dream, a comedy starring Jerry Lewis, Faye Dunaway, and Johnny Depp, also fell flat. Films generally get dumped when test screenings and focus groups predict disaster. So why does Hollywood even bother releasing them? ''If we get to the point where testing is 100 percent accurate, it's going to be a whole different business,'' explains Jeff Blake, Columbia Pictures' head of U.S. distribution. ''But I can't imagine making an investment in a film and then never giving it a shot.'' And on rare occasions, that shot can pay off. Tim Burton's Pee-wee's Big Adventure took the regional route back in 1985, and did well enough for Warner to invest in a national release, at which point it became a $40 million hit. More recently, Triumph Releasing rolled out Chuck Norris' Sidekicks to a tidy $17 million gross, after a flurry of business in Texas. Such success stories are the exception. More often, a regional release is a vote of no confidence. ''When studios test things regionally, they don't really believe in the movie,'' says Baby producer Robert Shapiro. But until a film makes that final transition to video, hope still springs eternal. After a good review in Variety, Shapiro is looking for a possible L.A. release to prolong Baby's theatrical run. Sweeney is also keeping the faith, hoping her gender-blurring hero(ine) will find a home on the midnight-movie circuit and realizing it could have been worse. ''Do I wish I had a national disaster or a regional disaster?'' she muses, not bothering to answer. ''I feel like Dresden after the war. But I can't blame Disney-they were running 19 TV commercials a day. I think we just hit the crescendo of bad feeling against SNL-character movies. The only thing I can hope for is a backlash against the backlash.'' *