FOR NO GOOD REASON: F/X PORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY

The Date of Dumb

While we’re in the midst of celebrating the Great Geek Summer of 1982, let’s pause to remember which legendary picture earned the honor of debuting in the coveted July 4th slot that year. In a season chockfull of behemoths (E.T., Poltergeist, The Thing, Star Trek II, Rocky III), sole ownership of the Independence Day holiday went to none other than…

The Secret of NIMH. On eighty-eight screens. It grossed $386,530.

An anomaly, right? Wrong. The big July 4th offering of 1983: Stroker Ace. 1984? How ’bout the all-timer trio of Conan the Destroyer, Cannonball Run II and Bachelor Party?

Though July 4th has always been synonymous with bombast (at least for the last 230 years or so), the industry used to approach the date warily. More often than not, it was a dumping ground of sorts for movies the studios either didn’t understand or just plain didn’t like. Back to the Future may be one of the quintessential summer blockbusters of the 1980s, but, despite the Amblin pedigree, it’s important to recall that Universal wasn’t convinced the movie had the breakout potential of the previous year’s Gremlins (especially since The Goonies was in the process of underperforming its way to a respectable but far from Spielberg-sensational $61 million domestic). As this was a good decade-and-a-half removed from the front-loaded release, a July 3rd berth was a cowardly-but-clever form of CYA: if the movie took off, no one would give a shit when it was released; if it bombed, the studio could always point to the historically difficult date*. While it seems moronic to set up a film verily exuding greatness to fail, Universal could afford a little bad publicity in the wake of an uncommonly solid spring (The Breakfast Club and Mask were both bona fide hits) and a late-May surprise in Fletch (which was outperforming a Bond movie).

Culturally, Americans have always flocked to the cinema over the July 4th holiday (i.e. since the advent of the summer movie season), but, for some reason, it took decades for the studios to harness the profit-making potential of the period. Back to the Future may have gone on to become the top grossing movie of 1985, but the following year saw the weekend once again utilized as a waste receptacle for non-starters like Big Trouble in Little China, Under the Cherry Moon (sometimes it snows in July) and Psycho III. In 1987, Warner Brothers was lightly chided for condemning the immensely entertaining Innerspace to early-July box office oblivion, but they knew exactly what they were doing; they never had any idea how to sell the movie (which lacked proven stars), so, rather than give the movie a prime release date and suffer the ignominy of not opening an Amblin production (as Universal did that year with Harry and the Hendersons), they cut their losses and concentrated on selling the R-rated The Lost Boys.

More than anything else, superstition motivated the studios’ reticence regarding the July 4th window; even when it appeared as though they’d figured out the date following the 1990 – 1993 run of Die Hard 2, T2, A League of Their Own and The Firm, there came the aforementioned 1994 five-film debacle and a whole lot of nothing in 1995 (Universal rolled out Apollo 13 on June 30th and went unchallenged until the underwhelming duo of First Knight and Species turned up seven days later).

It took not only the best marketing department in the industry to revolutionize the way studios approach the July 4th frame, but a movie bold and blissfully stupid enough to brand the holiday in its title. 20th Century Fox’s campaign for Independence Day was a brilliantly sustained slow reveal that knocked the traditional ebb-and-flow of the summer movie season completely off balance. 1996 was already a strange year: Twister was a gargantuan June release bowing in early May, Mission: Impossible broke Memorial Day records while (wrongly) becoming a lightening rod for everything that was ailing the summer blockbuster, while July and August were bedecked with a motley assortment of unsure things (A Time to Kill excepted). The entire season was about getting the fuck out of the way of a flick that had the audacity to destroy the White House in its teaser (ah, the good old days when murdering the POTUS was the stuff of wish fulfillment thanks to the vitriol of right-wing talk radio); if it missed, the studios would just settle back into their usual summer rhythm.

ID4 redefined everything. Theaters in New York City played the film around the clock, its $17 million Wednesday was unprecedented and, for all of its opening weekend bluster, it still fell short of Forrest Gump and The Lion King as the top grossing film of the 1990s to date. No one would call Independence Day "front-loaded" by today’s standards, but it was. Audiences enjoyed the movie, and kids went back for second and thirds, but everyone who saw it knew they were watching an Irwin Allen movie crossbred with Spielbergian awe. And, yet, none of that mattered. July 4th was the new Memorial Day weekend. In 1997, Sony staked its summer on Men in Black (I remember bolting work early to catch a 5 PM screening at the Ziegfeld); the following year, Disney parked its size-of-Texas asteroid on the big date. Will Smith, one of the more charming self-promoters of our self-promotional age, christened himself "Mr. July 4th", and enjoyed a string of successes on that most American of holidays (feel free to examine the racial implications of this). Even when the presumed tentpoles blew over (as was the case with the ho-hum 2001 crew of Cats & Dogs, Scary Movie 2 and Kiss of the Dragon), the studios would just load up for the next year’s barrage.

After an odd run of surely unintentional quality (Spider-Man 2, War of the Worlds and The Devil Wears Prada), the studios have at last reverted to favoring audiences with the brain-dead brand of filmmaking that has come to typify the summer movie season with Transformers. For years, kids have dragged their parents to overcrowded fireworks displays just to gaze dumbstruck at twenty-minutes worth of shit exploding in the sky. Now, there’s a viable, air-conditioned substitute. Shock and awe. "Ooh, ahh!" I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the compromised state of our nation than to be treated like mongoloids by multinational corporations.

For your edification (or my unwillingness to delete the list I made), here are your July 4th weekend releases dating back to 1982:

Is Hairspray Really the Next Grease?

Sadly, yes. It’s all falling apart.

*While it seems moronic to set up a film verily exuding greatness to fail, Universal could afford a little bad publicity in the wake of an uncommonly solid spring (The Breakfast Club and Mask were both bona fide hits) and a late-May surprise in Fletch (which was outperforming a Bond movie).