First of all their recent movie, "Bright," is as dull as SNL is Saturday Night Dead. The latter should adopt as its theme music, Frank Sinatra singing "Saturday Night Is The Lousiest Night Of The Week." And Reed Hastings, CEO of NetFlix, might well become a bagger at STOP AND SHOP, to display his lack of talent and Netflix's greedy slope downward.
As a media griper, I have every right to complain about anything that invades my nefarious mind. Let's start with the break-through satirical movie, "Is There Sex After Death,?" Rated R that was written, directed and produced by Jeanne and Alan Abel.
It opened at the Cinema Rendezvous (now known as the Directors Guild Theater) on October 24, 1971 before a soldout audience of 600. They loved this send up of sex and Roger Greenspun's review in the NEW YORK TIMES was headlined FUNNIER THAN WOODY ALLEN'S 'BANANAS'!
Vincent Canby, chief critic for the NY TIMES, was in the audience and called me the next day to say he was also writing a review: "I love the way you dashed up on the stage, during a breakdown of the projector, to offer free vasectomy procedures to the first 100 men at intermission."
Canby's full page rave in the Arts and Leisure Sunday section of the venerable NEW YORK TIMES insured a three month sellout of the movie run. But not so fast, before we get back to oddball Hastings. There is a play within the play as follows.
Hugh Hefner was in the atmosphere at 30,000 feet in his private jet reading the reviews and having a bowel movement in his super expensive leather seat, in his pants. Why? Because he had already booked Roman Polanski's "Macbeth" film at his Cinema Rendezvous (then changed to THE PLAYBOY THEATER). And the premiere was only a month away!!!
All this info was unknown to the Abels and Buck Henry, making his funniest appearance before the camera. The only way Hefner could open "Macbeth" on schedule was if our weekly gross fell below $8,000 a week. Presto! He had the escape clause.
To make a longer tale brief, Hef immediately hired a construction company to tear up his theater's basement. All while the packed audience upstairs was attempting to hear the film's dialogue. Impossible. Refunds were at an all time high. That is, until I hired four German Shepherd Attack Dogs with handlers to threaten the workers, if they made any noise louder than 10 decibels. They packed up their jackhammers and fled.
Our lawyers and Playboy lawyers met and settled. Playboy paid all costs. We moved to Cinema II on the Eastside of NYC and enjoyed another three months of soldout audiences before national distribution, and eligibility for an Academy Award. Boo-hoo. We lost.
Getting back to Netflix, they turned down the award-winning Slamdance Documentary, "Abel Raises Cain," by Jennifer and Jeffery Hockett. Instead, Hastings offered a subcontract by one of his subclass distributors, whose subcontract was full of disclaimers and payback extortion funds.
No way Jose! That's why Netflix is full of shit.
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