The fact that it may actually deserve its success - for it’s a hip, clever comedy that doesn’t abuse the viewer’s intelligence -seems almost beside the point in this season of presold Events. The summer-movie phenomenon has become as surreal as the world of ““Men in Black,’’ in which nothing is as it appears to be. It’s not really movies we’re going to see, it’s marketing campaigns. ““What separates an event picture from a solid release is what you spend to create that intensity of interest,’’ explains Sony marketing head Bob Levin. ““Just to sit at the table this summer you have to spend at least $30 million.''
The spending works - up to a point. Hollywood can buy itself hits, but not necessarily the audience’s affection. Steven Spielberg’s ““Jurassic Park’’ sequel is a bona fide smash: it’s already grossed more than $200 million. Yet few people speak of the movie with any passion. It’s the blockbuster nobody loves. ““Batman & Robin’’ - almost unanimously blasted by critics - made a cool $42 million in its first three days, but people in the business worry that its audience will dwindle once it’s up against ““Hercules,’’ ““Face/Off’’ and ““MIB.’’ The quick drop-off of these hugely expensive summer flicks has executives sweating. ““Con Air,’’ which feels more like an advertisement for a movie than the thing itself, is losing altitude, while the dreary ““Speed 2: Cruise Control’’ is already dead in U.S. waters.
The failure of ““Speed 2,’’ however, seemed as preordained as ““The Lost World’s’’ success. The buzz, that mysterious amalgam of rumor, inside info and media gossip, proclaimed it a bomb months before its opening. In the old days, industry gossip stayed contained within the industry; now, in the era of instant infotainment, the buzz itself is the news, and it spreads like wildfire. Scarily, the buzz is usually right, adding to the sense that we are not really choosing the movies we want to see: even what we love has been decided for us.
You can feel the effects of the hype at advance screenings. Audiences are desperate to lose their hearts at the movies. At previews, the loudest cheers erupt when the lights go down - but you rarely hear cheers at the end. So far this summer, no movie has engendered the kind of communal good feeling that ““Independence Day,’’ that high-spirited mediocrity, did last year.
““MIB’’ may be one cure for moviegoers’ summertime blues. Part of what appeals about this lighthearted blockbuster is that it creates a refreshingly bizarre world out of seemingly familiar parts. Invent a ““Ghostbusters’’-like agency, add the poker-faced seriosity of ““Dragnet,’’ fill the screen with as many tentacled, slimy, bug-eyed aliens as were crowded into the ““Star Wars’’ cantina, dress your heroes in ““Blues Brothers’’ fashions and you get, paradoxically, something that almost feels new. Ed Solomon’s script is full of witty ideas. How do the Men in Black get their tips on alien activity? From the tabloids, of course (““best damn investigative reporting on the planet’’), with their lurid tales of alien abductions. One such abductee is Edgar (a hilariously Frankensteinian Vincent D’Onofrio), a big lug whose body is taken over by a giant cockroach with evil intentions.
The plot, which naturally involves saving the planet from imminent destruction, is the least important thing here. (So unimportant that it was radically simplified in postproduction simply by redubbing and subtitling three scenes to eliminate a once complicated backstory of alien warfare.) It’s the characters who delight: the inspired partnership of stone-faced, seen-it-all Jones, unruffled by the most astonishing visions, and cocky, excitable Smith, who blunders into every treacherous alien encounter with an entirely misplaced confidence. As his mentor reveals the mysteries of this alternate world to him, he has an epiphany. That weird third-grade teacher in Philadelphia, Mrs. Edelson: he had always known she was from Venus. ““Jupiter, actually,’’ deadpans Jones. ““Well, one of the moons.’’ Among the other resident aliens: Sylvester Stallone, Newt Gingrich and TV weatherman Al Roker. Who knew?
One prize gaggle of scene-stealing creatures (designed by Rick Baker) is a pack of tiny, wormy little guys who hang out in the alien immigration office smoking Marlboros, wearing shades and talking in some indescribable hipster language. Almost as funny is the very human, but rather kinky, Linda Fiorentino as a mordant coroner. ““I hate the living,’’ she mutters. ““MIB’’ has its big slay-the-dragon climax, but it mercifully doesn’t pummel you with knockout punches: it wins on subtler points. Almost alone among summer’s big contenders, it leaves you a little hungry, wanting more. The biggest danger ““MIB’’ faces may be the level of expectation it’s raised (fanned, it’s true, by stories like this). It’s a sprightly but modest $90 million entertainment, a light breeze in a muggy season.
At the helm of this funny movie is a very funny man named Barry Sonnenfeld, who began his career as a cinematographer for the Coen brothers (““Blood Simple,’’ ““Raising Arizona’’) and went on to direct two ““Addams Family’’ movies and ““Get Shorty’’ with bold, cartoonlike visual brushstrokes. He is not an alien, but he is, according to Ethan Coen, ““an urban neurotic. He wears his neurosis on his sleeve.’’ Highly strung, he did a lot of vomiting on the set of ““Blood Simple,’’ fainted while making ““The Addams Family’’ and has no compunction about crying copiously over good news or bad. On the set of ““MIB,’’ he burst into tears when he realized that Baker’s giant $1 million puppet of Edgar the Bug would not function properly for the big fight scene and had to plead to replace it with $3 million of computer-generated effects. Sonnenfeld was fond of shrieking throughout filming, ““I’ll give $400,000 to anyone who does one of two things: kill my mother or get me off this movie.''
Sonnenfeld has a habit, dangerous in Hollywood, of saying exactly what he’s feeling. As ““Get Shorty’’ producer Michael Shamberg discovered, ““Barry tells you anything that’s on his mind, which is both mortifying and fearless.’’ He was quoted in print saying that producer Brian Grazer (““Apollo 13’’) was an idiot savant without the savant part. ““It upset Brian at first until I explained it was a com- pliment - and he bought it.’’ Sonnenfeld’s friends remember the toast he gave at a dinner for his attorney. ““If I don’t have notes,’’ he began, ““I always end up talking about my penis.’’ He then proceeded to do a 20-minute riff on ““Bob,’’ his member.
Sonnenfeld’s exposed nerve endings got quite a workout bringing ““MIB’’ to the screen, a four-year process that involved 28 drafts of the script. ““The biggest fight on this film was to keep from defining “commercial’ as the lowest common denominator,’’ says writer Solomon. ““Barry is a very talented man. I thank God he made this movie.’’ This is a remarkable testament coming from a man who was fired five times - and hired back six - during the process. Other writers kept taking the story down darker avenues, and Solomon had to get it back on its original comedic track.
The key ingredient in getting the movie made was Tommy Lee Jones. No one wanted to make the movie without him. He had approval of the script and director, and everyone lived to please him. It was Sonnenfeld who first suggested Jones, but once the actor expressed interest Sonnenfeld’s own job was in jeopardy, because Jones had to OK him. And at the time, Sonnenfeld was considered a big risk - his last movie, ““For Love or Money,’’ was a flop, and ““Get Shorty’’ was still in the future. ““Tommy and Barry was the strangest marriage to try to make,’’ explains Walter Parkes, who, with his producing partner and wife, Laurie McDonald, first optioned the obscure Lowell Cunningham comic book called ““The Men in Black.''
The Texas-bred, Harvard-educated Jones has a reputation for being difficult and blunt. ““Tommy is like the original cactus,’’ says McDonald. Sonnenfeld, with characteristic candor, remembers watching Jones give a TV interview once. ““When it was over I turned to my wife, Sweetie, and said, “Thank God, as long as I live I will never, ever have to work with that jerk’.''
Perhaps apprehensive about playing comedy again after going mano a mano with Jim Carrey in the unfortunate ““Batman Forever,’’ Jones fired off a blistering six-page critique of the script. It wasn’t funny. Why did it have to be funny? Why Men in Black? Why not Man in Black? Further complications arose when he was offered $8 million to play the Sean Connery part in ““The Rock.’’ To keep him, the $5 million he was offered was sweetened to $7 million. But it was only when Spielberg committed to being executive producer that Jones signed on for keeps. ““I had to put my name on the movie,’’ explains Spielberg, ““so Walter and Laurie could get the money they needed to make it.’’ He also gets 5 percent of the grosses for his trouble.
From the start, Sonnenfeld usually found a way to get what he wanted. The studio and the producers were pushing for Chris O’Donnell to play J. ““No,’’ said Sonnenfeld, who always defers to his wife. ““Sweetie says Will Smith.’’ (This was before ““Independence Day’’ made Smith hot.) But how to nix O’Donnell? ““I had dinner with Chris,’’ the director recalls. ““He said he was concerned that the script wasn’t right yet. And I said, “Well, Chris, you’re right to be concerned. I’m a little frightened myself.’ So the next day we found that Chris had decided not to do “Men in Black’.''
Sonnenfeld’s philosophy of directing this picture was simple. ““All I try to do is get the actors to talk quickly and never acknowledge they’re in a comedy.’’ He adds, ““The thing that makes Tommy a perfect comedy actor, except he doesn’t know this, is that he’s got a large head and a small body, and Tommy talks faster than anyone on the planet.’’ For his part, Jones says it was a very happy set. ““There’s lots of laughing, lots of jokes. I think Barry has a theory that it can’t be fun unless you have fun.''
Still, there were tense moments. Former Sony executive Barry Josephson recalls the night Jones, after waiting hours in his trailer, walked up to his director and said, ““You know, if you were smart, you wouldn’t say any of this,’’ crossing out a block of dialogue. ““Rather than argue with him at 3 a.m., Barry turned to him and said, “You know what, Tommy? We have a problem. I’m not that smart. We’re going to shoot it just like it’s in the script.’ The set was dead silent. After a pause, Tommy just looked at him and said, “OK. You’re the boss’.''
Sonnenfeld’s instincts about Jones and Smith were on target. The movie got its dream team, and the dream team sold the movie. It was the special chemistry between Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith that made those exhibitors in Vegas see dollar signs in the sky. And it is why Sony now thinks it may have given birth to a new franchise, the commodity that every studio in Hollywood lusts after. Get ready for ““MIB2,’’ an animated TV series, K and J toys.
Now Sonnenfeld, who cried when he showed the movie to Spielberg and cried at the press screenings, can cry for joy. The director and his partner Josephson just signed a lucrative production deal at Disney. He has almost everything he wants. But not quite. When the movie wrapped, Spielberg sent the director a black Armani suit and a pair of the film’s trademark Ray-Ban sunglasses. Sonnenfeld wrote back a note thanking him, adding that he’d like Spielberg to produce his next movie: ““Men in Private Jets.''
Some movie aliens offer salvation, others doom. All of them seem smarter or stronger than we are, but earthlings haven’t lost one of these encounters yet.
