Zzyzx (видео) - (2006)

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Год: 2006
Создатель кинофильма: Ричард Халперн
Перевод : Закадровый перевод
Длительность: 81 мин. / 01:21
Рейтинг: 89.2
Актёры: онни Падилья, Педро Падилья, Кэссия Уолтон, Кенни Джонсон, Linda Meylin Lozano, обин Коэн, Карлота Падилья, айан Фокс, ичард Халперн, Каё Зепеда
Страна: США
Имя фильма: Zzyzx (видео)
Описание фильма: A few days after Christmas, John Penney checked his e-mail. He had been on vacation in Napa with his wife and daughter, and on the way home they stopped off at his sisters house in Carmel, Calif. He logged on, scanned through his in-box, then clicked on an innocent-looking message from an acquaintance, whod sent him an article. What if they released a movie and nobody came? read the headline. The story, from the scrappy film site described a truly spectacular failure — a 2006 thriller called Zyzzyx Road that, despite starring Tom Sizemore and Greys Anatomys Katherine Heigl, had grossed a grand total of $30 at the box office. I was mortified, says Penney, who, as it happens, had written, directed, and produced the movie in question. I went, Oh, my God, this is horrendous. Im reading it and saying, Oh, no. Oh, no! This isnt how its supposed to go. Ive been through a lot of crap in my career. Ive seen so many things. But this movie is like my baby, and its being dragged around in the street with people poking sticks in it. It was brutal. It was ugly. I was reeling.
In a daze, Penney drove his family home to It was kind of quiet in the car, he says. But pretty soon the humor of the whole thing starts kicking in. By the end of the trip were just laughing. Im thinking, You know what? Its an Internet thing?itll die down. But there was another e-mail waiting at home. Variety had picked up the story — and was calling Zyzzyx the lowest-grossing movie on record. I go, Oh, noooo. But I said, Now surely its done with. This is all gonna go away. Trying to resume his normal routine, Penney went to see Children of Men. I come out of the screening room, and my cell says I have a message. [Zyzzyx editor] Joe Gutowski is saying, John, let me just say, theres no such thing as bad publicity. I go, What now?! The New York Times had weighed in. I went, God, please let this be over. Because no one was telling the real story.
In April 2004, Penney was a successful genre-film screenwriter with cult movies like Return of the Living Dead III and the William Hurt film Contaminated Man to his credit, when he took a meeting with a guy named Leo Grillo. Born in Massachusetts, Grillo got into acting early, scoring small roles on an episode of Banacek and a 1978 Alan Arkin TV movie called The Defection of Simas Kudirka. He never made a name for himself in Hollywood, but he found fame in another arena: animal rights. In the late 70s Grillo started taking care of 35 dogs he found abandoned in the woods. Today, his company, DELTA Rescue, occupies a 104-acre compound in the desert hills of Acton, Calif. It houses 1,000 dogs and 500 cats and is one of the largest animal-rescue operations in the world.
But Grillo, 52, never forgot the thrill of being a performer. A lot of people over the years said, Why dont you make animal movies? he says, sitting in a diner not far from DELTA. Im thinking, I dont want to do fing Lassie, I dont want to do fing Benji. Give me a break. Then one day he had a revelation. I go, Why didnt I see this before? It can be any genre. You get to people and affect them on their own terms, speaking their language. What if I made a Rambo picture with a dog? What if I made a horror movie about animals — an animal Hannibal?
He started looking for a collaborator, and Penneys name came up. During their meeting, Grillo asked Penney what he was working on. He told me about this treatment he had on a movie called Zyzzyx Road, recalls Grillo. The film — loosely inspired by a real road outside Las Vegas — was a modest thriller about an accountant (a role eventually played by Grillo himself) who hooks up with a Lolita-esque teenager (Heigl), knocks out her menacing ex-paramour (Sizemore) in a fight in Vegas, then drives out to the desert to kill him — when, predictably, things start to go awry. I said, Whoa, its a thriller, we can sell it foreign and get our money back, says Grillo. Then well have a track record and we can make the [animal].
The initial budget was $750,000 — raised from private investors — with Penney directing and producing, and Grillo starring and producing. (The film would end up costing his financiers about $ million.) The whole setup was a gamble, but nobody worried much. Hed never seen me direct, and Id never seen him act, says Penney. For me, it was like, Okay, whats the worst thing that could happen? The movie doesnt turn out good, no one sees it.
Four months later, production was in full swing. Grillo and Heigl had already been shooting for days. Sizemore was due on set soon to film his scenes, and Penney, a first-time director, was trying to make sure everything ran smoothly on an extremely tight schedule. But when he showed up on location that morning, a crew member met him with some news: Sizemore had been arrested. I go, What? says Penney. Hes about to start shooting! He cant be arrested. It was shocking.
Well, maybe not that shocking. Sizemore had been cast after several other actors passed (including Jason Lee), and he did come with some baggage. By 2004, Sizemore was something of a punchline, more famous for his legal troubles than for his acting. Hed been convicted of beating his ex-girlfriend Heidi Fleiss in 2003, and his sentence was suspended so he could enter rehab. But Grillo was drawn to his acting chops, and Sizemores past actually made him more convincing as a tough-guy villain. He was also a recognizable name. In Hollywood, you can be bad and still be able to work, laughs Zyzzyx co-producer and casting director Valerie McCaffrey. Its an industry that forgives very quickly. As a casting director you think its a risk, but as a producer you think, well, people know who Tom Sizemore is.
That wasnt the case with Heigl. Initially her part had been offered to Thora Birch, who turned it down. Heigl, 28, had been in a few movies (Prince Valiant, Bride of Chucky); more intriguing was a new ABC pilot shed just landed: Greys Anatomy. With the cast in place, Zyzzyx shot over the course of three weeks, filming entirely on location under the 110-degree sun of the Mojave Desert. Rattlesnakes were a constant problem (a snake wrangler was hired to manage them), as were scorpions and bull ants. Heigl was on set every day but one, when ABC borrowed her to shoot Greys promos. The thing about Katie, says Grillo, is the girls a sport. She ran around in a negligee in the desert, and she hated the desert. In one scene of the movie she has to fall, and she did it 10, 11 times. Every time she picked up little cactus hairs, and it was hurting her, but she kept doing it. Afterward, she had a million red bumps on her arm. I stripped the cactus hairs off with gaffers tape. (Neither Heigl nor Sizemore would comment for this story, although in 2005 Heigl told a magazine that Zyzzyx was the most creative work she had ever done.)
The shoot had been going pretty well — until the news broke about Sizemore violating his parole with a drug arrest. Nobody knew if the judge would jail him or not, says Grillo. What are we gonna do? Should we get another actor prepared in case Tom goes to jail? I go, No, hell be fine. Sure enough, on the appointed day, they got a call. Oh, Toms on his way. Then there he is, walking up in the flesh. I go up and say hello to him first. He says, Hi! Not guilty! He goes up to everybody: Hi! Not guilty! Then we got right into it.
There was no red carpet at the American premiere of Zyzzyx Road on Feb. 24, 2006, in Dallas. No stretch limos, no paparazzi. The stars didnt even bother to show up. In fact, there wasnt a real premiere at all; the film simply opened. Zyzzyx ran for seven days at Dallas Highland Park Village Theater, with a single screening each day at noon. When it closed, exactly six people had gone to see it, for a total gross of, yes, $30. One of those paying customers was Sheila Moore, a Dallas-based makeup artist who had worked on the film. I thought it was a little odd, she says of the films debut. I thought it was a joke at first. Yeah, right, of all places theyre gonna premiere this in Dallas, so far from where we filmed it? I figured theyd do it in Los Angeles. Moore and a friend were the only people in the theater. We got popcorn and a drink from the same lady that took our tickets, she says. It was kind of surreal. She looked at us like, You want to see what?
In truth, nobody was supposed to see Zyzzyx Road at all. The Dallas screening was never meant to be a real theatrical run. Instead, it was set up to fulfill a Screen Actors Guild agreement, which permits low-budget films to pay actors a lower rate as long as the film gets a domestic theatrical release. The Dallas opening was merely a formality. I didnt want an audience, says Grillo. We looked at it and said, Whats the cheapest way we can get out of this mess? We rented the theater for $1,000.
At most of the screenings, Grillos plan worked just fine: Nobody showed up. Even so, the movie had to run. We paid to show the movie every day, says Grillo. So legally speaking, we have a screening every single day. If a tree falls in the forest and nobodys there, does it make a sound? In the law of physics, the answers no, but in the law of SAG, the answers yes.
Grillo decided to pursue foreign sales first and worry about a legitimate domestic release much later, betting on the rise of Heigls and Sizemores Hollywood profiles (Greys Anatomy soon grew into one of TVs highest-rated shows, and Sizemore landed a VH1 reality show). Regent Entertainment started hawking the foreign DVD rights, eventually selling the film in 23 countries, including Bulgaria, Indonesia, and Portugal. By the end of 2006, it had generated around $368,000. It was completely out of my mind, says Penney. Every month or so Id run into Leo and wed say, Yeah, yeah, we gotta make sure we get a good situation with the domestic deal, but it was way off my radar.
Penney and Grillo both moved on to other projects, including one of the animal movies Grillo was so keen to produce: a Penney-directed family film called Magic, about a talking dog (voiced by Christopher Lloyd) who turns out to be an angel. Moore, the makeup artist, worked on Magic too. When Grillo heard that she and her friend had paid admission to the Dallas screening, he insisted on refunding their money. Zyzzyx, it turns out, actually made $20.
On Dec. 31, 2006, the movie-biz site posted the short, snarky story that made Zyzzyx famous. It was New Years Eve and there was just nothing to write about, says editor and writer Devin Faraci. I have a friend who has a lot of time on his hands and nothing better to do than go through Tom Sizemores filmography, and he came across this movie. I just thought it was funny — $30 is just such an incredibly low number. It makes everybody feel a little better about themselves. Like, maybe I could never make a movie that makes $300 million, but I could certainly make one that makes $30.
Variety quickly picked up the story (without crediting ), as did The New York Times, NPR, and several other outlets. Much of the coverage was somewhat mean-spirited, sneering at the films box office and continuing to refer to it as the worst-grossing movie since record-keeping began. It was an odd situation for the films director. My [industry] friends started providing me with one-liners, says Penney. You know, My names John Penney, what did they expect?! But at the same time, people in the real world look at you like somebody died in your family. Theyre like, Im so sorry. Are you really okay? Im like, Yeah, Im fine, trust me! They think Im gonna go put a gun to my head or something.
Grillo, too, is handling the negative attention pretty well. Its nice to have a record, he says with a smile. Some people would not voluntarily accept the lowest-grossing-movie-of-all-time record, but the professionals in this town are not laughing. They know the truth of it. You know what? Look at it this way. I made $20 on a movie that wasnt distributed. Imagine if wed distributed it! And really, the bad press is the best thing that could have happened to the movie. Everybodys making fun of Zyzzyx Road, says Faraci, but the number of e-mails Ive gotten from people asking how they can see it — its like Ed Wood. After Plan 9 was called the worst movie of all time, everybody had to see it.
Penney has come to see the humor in all of this, but that sort of comparison still stings. Legitimate newspapers — I dont want to name names, but theyre down in San Diego, lets put it that way — are writing articles on the biggest bombs of 2006, assuming the movie was so bad that it made $30, he says. Thats too bad. I would like a chance for people to see it and make a judgment — not have it be Gigli, you know?
American audiences may get that opportunity soon. Grillo thinks a domestic DVD is a near certainty. The Internets given a higher profile to the movie, and Katie and Tom have a higher profile, he says. Were in a much better position than we were. So we could turn the corner on this, get into a little profit. Theres even a chance Zyzzyx could get a proper theatrical release, although that would almost certainly cost it its unofficial status as the lowest-grossing film ever. Asked about that possibility, Grillo laughs. Well, he says, the sacrifices you have to make for your movie!

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