It Looked Good on Paper

by Bill Fawcett

  The film remained unreleased until the mid-nineties when, after a few cinema showings, it was made available via videocassette and CD. Most reviews seemed to hail it as more of a landmark curiosity than a classic. A 2004 remastered extended DVD presentation, however, including footage previously thought to be lost as well as behind-the-scenes commentary by Circus participant Pete Townsend, earned much critical praise.

  “Its idea of ‘production value’ is spending a million dollars dressing up a story that any good writer would throw away. Its vision of the rewarding movie is a vehicle for some glamour-puss with two expressions and eighteen changes of costume, or for some male idol of the muddled millions with a permanent hangover, six worn-out acting tricks, the build of a lifeguard, and the mentality of a chicken-strangler.”

  —Raymond Chandler

  The End of RSO

  Brian M. Thomsen

  Disco Wasn’t the Only Thing to Die After Saturday Night Fever

  If the seventies was the decade of disco then RSO was the label of the seventies.

  RSO stood for the Robert Stigwood Organization and under its label (which Stigwood formed in collaboration with Polydor) the BeeGees became a supergroup, movie soundtracks became bastions of top-forty hits, and John Travolta became a bankable film star.

  Other artists signed to the label included Eric Clapton, Yvonne Elliman, and Andy Gibb, all of whom Stigwood signed before they had broken out as solo artists. But what really put the logo in the public eye was Stigwood’s success with movie soundtracks, including such platinum sellers as Jesus Christ Superstar (featuring Elliman), Tommy (featuring Clapton), and Fame, all of which yielded multiple hit singles.

  By the late seventies, RSO seemed unstoppable as both the film and soundtrack producer for Saturday Night Fever, which set the style for the entire short-lived disco generation, earned John Travolta his first Academy Award nomination, and sold a record number of copies for a double album compilation of disco hits (despite the fact that many of the hits were simultaneously available on competing albums by the artists themselves), including no less than four major hits by the RSO signature group the BeeGees.

  Stigwood quickly followed this up with a film version of the long-running Broadway musical Grease. This time Travolta (who unbeknownst to his fan base had gotten his start on Broadway in the musical Over Here) sang as well as danced, and the show’s original score was supplemented with new songs, some sung by oldies stars like Frankie Valli and Frankie Avalon, others by Travolta’s film love interest Olivia Newton-John—no stranger to the top forty charts herself. To fill out the mix on the double album, a full side’s worth of Sha Na Na hits were added.

  Both soundtrack and film were hits of blockbuster proportions.

  RSO seemed unstoppable at this point, so Stigwood moved to expand the label’s dominance. Having mastered the disco film, and the fifties film, it was time to lay claim to other genres through his innovative style of filmmaking/album marketing.

  So over the next two years he worked on two projects to extend his dominance, the first of which he began before Grease was yet in the can.

  As he had repeated his success with Travolta, Stigwood attempted to do the same thing with the BeeGees though slightly in reverse—where Travolta had to sing the second time, the BeeGees, in their follow-up, had to act.

  Their film—the first Beatles film not to feature the Beatles in any capacity—was a “cover” film based on the landmark album of the sixties, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It featured cover versions in character by such hot talents of the seventies as Aerosmith, Earth, Wind and Fire, and Peter Frampton, as well as such oddball vocal inclusions as Donald Pleasance (“I Want You”), George Burns (“Fixing a Hole”), and Steve Martin (“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”) as well as, of course, at least an album side’s worth of warbling by the BeeGees (the title song, as well as “Getting Better,” “She’s So Heavy,” “She’s Leaving Home,” “Nowhere Man,” etc.).

  The plot was at best marginal—a fable of sellout and corruption set against the big and evil business of the music industry (though not billed as such, it could have been the metaphoric memoir of RSO) filled with magic, mayhem, villainy, decadence, and redemption.

  Concurrently, though on a slightly slower track since this project was being created from scratch (unlike Grease and Sgt. Pepper), RSO made a film that would be the metaphoric kid sister of Saturday Night Fever, a gritty young outsider’s tale that would do for punk and new wave what its older brother did for disco.

  This film was called Times Square.

  Set during the early years of Ed Koch’s mayoralty, when New York’s fiscal health was on par with the bag lady fashions featured throughout the film, this was the story of a rich girl and a poor girl (literally living out of a shopping cart), both in need of human contact and understanding, who bond amid the squalor and decay of the west end of the Times Square area. It showcased a soundtrack of outré hits by the Ramones, the Talking Heads, Suzi Quatro, Patti Smith, Gary Numan, Garland Jeffries—and, of course, the BeeGees (it was an RSO soundtrack after all). Once again RSO was producing a two-album set that would define the new wave/punk movement as Saturday Night Fever had for disco.

  Both films followed the RSO formula for success and were expected to yield blockbuster box-office and best-selling soundtracks.

  Neither did.

  Unlike Grease, Sgt. Pepper lacked a familiar storyline and believable characters, even within the fantasy world of Hollywood storytelling. Moreover, the madcap mania and mayhem of the previous Beatles films, such as A Hard Day’s Night and Help, didn’t work without the Beatles themselves. The powers that be seemed to have substituted “cheesiness” for the “campiness” that worked so well with the fifties homage. Everything looked cheesy—the sets, the costumes, and the performers. Probably the only thing that wasn’t cheesy was the budget—and needless to say neither the film nor the soundtrack ever recouped its expenses.

  Also unlike Travolta in Grease, the BeeGees proved that they were less adept at multi-tasking. They never ventured into the dramatic arts again.

  As for Times Square, the film did capture some of the neighborhood grittiness that was so evocative in Saturday Night Fever, but being down and out in a homeless wonderland on the west side of Manhattan is a far cry from the more familiar neighborhood experiences typified by Tony Manero’s Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst. Moreover, both girls made the audience uncomfortable—as the question of whether they were misfits or real mental cases was purposely left up in the air. There were also several “uncomfortable” sexual subtexts that raised questions and were never resolved. And the music (with the exception of the “let’s break out of the Bellevue mental ward” sequence to the tune of “I Want to be Sedated”) never seemed to match the loose storyline.

  Where Sgt. Pepper made the turkey list, Times Square just sank into obscurity—no hit records, no box office blockbusters, and plenty of red ink on the RSO balance sheets.

  The RSO formula for success had failed, and the company never recovered. In 1981, Stigwood walked away from the company that bore his name and let it be absorbed into the amorphous Polydor label from whence it originally came.

  “Roll the Dice.”

  —Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons

  RPG Envy

  Brian M. Thomsen

  The Plan: Unseat the top role-playing game from its throne and take over the RPG top spot.

  The Reality: Since its creation in 1974, the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons has been the top-selling game system of its type. D&D and its progenitor company TSR became the leaders in the field of fantasy role-playing games with numerous rule system innovations and creative and well received “fantasy world settings” such as Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Ravenloft.

  Though other companies created other rule systems, and sometimes perhaps edgier settings in which to play, TSR ruled the roost in the game genre they created.

  This often left other compan
ies suffering from RPG envy.

  One such company, Wizards of the Coast (WOTC), was comprised of “young Turks” whose phenomenally successful collectible card game Magic: The Gathering had taken the hobby trade by storm. Peter Adkison, a gnomish systems analyst at Boeing, founded WOTC in 1990 along with several associates who lucked into success backing the revolutionary card game design work of wunderkind Richard Garfield. The game Garfield had designed was easy to learn, quick to play, and extremely portable—you could play it just about anywhere! And because it was “collectible,” players were continually drawn to purchase new packs of cards to supplement their decks and keep themselves competitive with fellow players/collectors. Indeed, the introduction of rare cards and special limited edition cards only succeeded in making the game more “in-demand.” The new card booster packs were sometimes dubbed “Crack for gamers.”

  But the high command at WOTC wasn’t satisfied with simply being a successful card game company.

  They didn’t care that they were the top grossing game company in their field.

  They just wanted to be TSR.

  No, more than that, they wanted to be a better TSR—and in order to do that they had to design a better role-playing game than Dungeons and Dragons. Armed with oodles of cash from the pockets of their card-addicted fans, that is exactly what they set out to do.

  Their first attempt was entitled Everway.

  In an effort to distance themselves from the designosaurs (the game designers working on D&D—or as it was called at the time Advanced Dungeons & Dragons/AD&D)—the TSR designers conceived and pitched Everway as a form of role-playing for a new generation—dice-less, card-based, and multiculturally mature. Gone were the plastic polyhedrons that determined your fate, to be replaced by a tarot-like Fortune Deck.

  Also gone were the hack and slash/spells and monsters, emblematic of the magical medieval setting that had been archetypally associated with Dungeons and Dragons. In its place was a pastel multicultural mélange of mythologies carefully selected and designed to offend no open-minded individual and cast off the clichés and stereotypes that had dominated the role-playing realms and fantasies of adolescent boys.

  Lead designer Jonathan Tweet and his team delivered a property of which they were justifiably proud. WOTC proceeded to back it with all the marketing clout of its six-hundred-pound pusher of the in-demand Magic: The Gathering.

  But despite the hype, gamers yawned. Everway failed to attract even a substantial fraction of the role-playing audience, let alone compete with Dungeons and Dragons. Indeed most D&D players (even the ones who weren’t stereotypical adolescent boys) failed to put down their polyhedrons of chance in favor of the new kid on the block. Kinder, gentler, multicultural, and modern just wasn’t enough of a selling point for most players; they’d rather hack and slash than switch.

  Very quickly WOTC withdrew marketing support from the Everway line and adopted a new strategy to achieved domination in the RPG field—if you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em out. They decided to buy the company who owned the most successful RPG system and call it their own.

  Since TSR had fallen into financial difficulties this became quite easy. WOTC ponied up the finances from their card revenues and bought TSR and all of its brands and trademarks, quickly transferring ownership of all things TSR to Wizards of the Coast.

  Now with the hottest card game and the most successful RPG system in their arsenal nothing could stop them—except their inability to leave well enough alone.

  No one is ever satisfied with someone else’s success, and the creative instinct that drives gaming culture fosters an evolution that results in the replacement of the old with the new. Eventually the WOTC design team was no longer satisfied with the inventive and successful playgrounds that had been developed by the designosaurs at TSR (such as Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Greyhawk). They immediately launched into a quest for a new world that they could call their own—one that would succeed and surpass all of these earlier models.

  Stage one of this quest was a contest—you propose and design the world and if we pick it we will not just compensate you but fully develop it and support it across the board with both games and book products befitting its sure-to-be bestseller status (which isn’t hard to promise when one has no idea how to make and market a bestseller in the first place).

  The winner of the contest was Keith Baker. His wonderfully innovative world of Eberron combined traditional fantasy tropes with pulp genre elements and quasi-steampunk technology that begged to be adapted to the big screen by cinematic design geniuses such as Tim Burton or Terry Gilliam. There were elves and magic but also robots and airships.

  Best of all—it was new.

  And with the WOTC team firmly behind it, management was certain the game setting would soon replace the top-selling Forgotten Realm’s line. Baker’s own novel set in his world would soon be on the bestseller tables in fine bookstores everywhere.

  But as with Everway, it just didn’t happen that way. Eberron didn’t even rattle the Forgotten Realms throne. WOTC had no success with creating or launching new products to replace old ones.

  If something had a mature following already, they could maintain it (like R.A. Salvatore’s best selling Drizzt novels, or the Forgotten Realms role-playing setting that had been created by Ed Greenwood), but when it came to making and selling something out of whole cloth, they couldn’t make it happen.

  The lightning that WOTC caught in the bottle with Magic: The Gathering was destined never to return—which turned out to be okay since the company made oodles more dollars with a licensed card game based on the animated series Pokemon. If Magic was crack for gamers, Pokemon was crack for gaming kids.

  It made tons of money. But no one was ever going to mistake it for a fantasy role-playing game. As a result, WOTC will always be known first as a card game company and only second for its acquired association with Dungeons and Dragons—the role-playing system that still reigns supreme.

  “Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings.”

  —George F. Will

  The XFL

  Brian M. Thomsen

  Baseball may be America’s favorite pastime, but football or, more precisely, NFL football, is “must see TV.”

  Not only is the season more limited (only sixteen games), the schedule is almost entirely confined to Sundays with most broadcasts limited to local areas or pay TV venues—and when it comes to TV ratings, it kicks the behinds of all other sports events in the United States.

  The problem is simple—it dominates only one third of the year.

  Logic has it that if a palatable football substitute were offered in another season, respectable ratings should be assured. But such was not the case during trial broadcasts of such reasonable substitutes as the CFL (Canadian Football League), NFL Europe, and Arena Football, all of which performed on par with American soccer—which is to say, they were not worth the major networks’ valuable airtime.

  Since a reasonable substitute failed to make the grade, perhaps an “unreasonable” substitute might do the trick.

  Thus the XFL was born.

  Citing the ratings success that pro-wrestling evolved into once it became more outrageous and less rules conscious, NBC and WWF (World Wrestling Federation) formed an alliance to spawn an equivalent “smash mouth” version of the NFL for broadcast in the television season immediately following the Super Bowl.

  Embracing the two themes of sex and violence, the XFL (“Xtreme Football League”) was sold as football without the drawbacks of civilizing rules—ergo more roughness, fewer penalties, and, in general, more anarchy on the field. It would feature “tramped up” cheerleaders, encourage gutter talk, and embrace “bad boy” branding. Even the team names were designed to invoke a sense of criminality—the Orlando Rage, the NY/NJ Hitmen, the Chicago Enforcers, the Memphis Maniax, and so forth.

  Spokespeople emphasized that all points in the game had to be
earned through combat (which really only meant that the field goal extra point after a touchdown was eliminated in favor of another play action down at the two-yard line—no different than the NFL’s “two point conversion,” though the XFL’s down only earned one point). Representatives bandied phrases like “mortal combat,” “gladiatorial combat,” and “to the death” to promote the sense of savagery and danger soon to be on display.

  Just as with television’s latest incarnation of pro-wrestling, the key concept was to deliver a fan-friendly product that would produce high ratings by providing the audience with the type of sports entertainment they enjoyed magnified to the extreme.

  The league signed players, held practices, designed cheerleader uniforms, and with the signing of Jesse Ventura as the official XFL announcer, brought everything to readiness for the league’s big debut.

  Opening night, February 3, 2001, more than fourteen million viewers tuned in to watch the Hitmen take on the Outlaws with ratings that dwarfed that season’s NFL’s Pro Bowl telecast—a debut to be envied by any network.

  The problem was that viewers did indeed tune in, but they weren’t particularly impressed.

  The actual rules variations from the NFL seemed arbitrary and didn’t really affect the game play that much (with the possible exception of the man on man conflict for possession of the ball that replaced the opening half coin toss—and also resulted in the first player injury of the season). Moreover the skill of the players themselves was far inferior to the level that viewers of the NFL had come to expect.

  And what of the promise of sex and violence? Well, that had definitely been oversold—it was still network television after all—and subject to all of the usual FCC guidelines.

  Moreover, from week one forward, sports reporters throughout the nation denigrated the league, calling it “fake football” and worse. Many implied that the involvement of WWF’s Vince McMahon assured that the games were fixed and not to be taken seriously—just like the then current incarnation of pro-wrestling.