Cannes documentary `Boffo' explores Hollywood's hits and misses

Photo: Cannes documentary `Boffo' explores Hollywood's hits and misses

The movie, "Boffo! Tinseltown's Bombs and Blockbusters," presents such filmmakers and stars as George Clooney, Steven Spielberg, Jodie Foster, Morgan Freeman and Richard Dreyfuss, all reaching the consensus that no one really knows anything about what makes a hit and what makes a flop.

The directors, producers, actors and studio executives interviewed agree that groundbreaking movie successes share some common denominators, yet there is no formula to guarantee a hit.

The documentary, which makes its cable TV debut June 29 on HBO inthe United States, was inspired by the forthcoming book "Boffo! How I Learned to Love the Blockbuster and Fear the Bomb" by Peter Bart, editor in chief of the daily Hollywood trade paper "Variety." The book comes out June 14.

Bart,  an executive producer on "Boffo," a documentary made in conjunction with Variety's 100th anniversary, said the key similarity shared by most innovative hits is that no one in Hollywood believed they would work, the AP reports.

In the documentary, Freeman discusses projects he's been involved with that surprised Hollywood by clicking with audiences: Clint Eastwood's brooding Western "Unforgiven"; "Driving Miss Daisy," the story of a black chauffeur and a cranky Jewish widow; "The Shawshank Redemption," a prison buddy saga that sank at the box office then found commercial success on home video; and "March of the Penguins," the documentary smash Freeman narrated.

"Boffo" presents a litany of films that defied convention and became major hits, among them "Jaws," "Star Wars," "Tootsie," "Forrest Gump," "Braveheart," "Apollo 13," "A League of Their Own" and "Cast Away."

More a celebration of Hollywood's happy endings than its failures, "Boffo" focuses mainly on the blockbusters and is relatively light on the bombs. The documentary does examine what went wrong with such duds as "Howard the Duck," "Clan of the Cave Bear" and "The Bonfire of the Vanities."

The latter was adapted from Tom Wolfe's best seller and starred box-office stalwart Tom Hanks, yet it became one of modern Hollywood's big flops. Sixteen years later, Hanks starred in another best-selling adaptation, "The Da Vinci Code," which pulled in US$232 million (Ђ180.6 million) worldwide by the end of opening weekend.