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Messages - KC
61
« on: November 15, 2002, 10:32:25 PM »
62
« on: November 14, 2002, 09:58:44 PM »
KC, check and see if that's the "domestic" gross(meaning North American) The numbers you quote seem like they are close to the ones I've seen elsewhere for US box office. The worldwide grosses are much higher. Check the "box office mojo" board that was posted above. So far it's the best online source I've come across.
The Variety figures are clearly for "domestic" (North American) grosses. Going back to my post about Frayling's figures, he did mistakenly use the word "grossed" when what he evidently meant was "returned in rentals" .... In any event, if we add his U.S. and Italian figures, we get more than $10.5 million (presumably) returned to the distributors in those two countries alone, for a picture that was budgeted at something over a tenth that amount. KC
63
« on: November 13, 2002, 10:41:33 PM »
There's probably some confusion here between grosses (what the theaters take in), which is how movie money is always reported these days because the figures are so nice and big, and rentals (the amount actually returned to the distributor), which is how Variety, for one, always used to report the figures in its annual listings of the box office champs.
The figure of $6 million was undoubtedly for rentals ... see Zmijewsky and Pfeiffer's The Films of Clint Eastwood (1993 ed.), which has a report of how Eastwood films fared in Variety's "All Time Rental Champs" listings. That also gives a figure of slightly over $6 million for GBU ... $6,111,962, to be precise, and it's specified that these are "Rental dollars."
The figure of $25,100,000 sounds like an approximation of GBU's grosses on its original U.S. release. On the other hand, $140,000,000 for Thunderball sounds way too high even for grosses, for the 1960s. I wonder if it's either an attempt to adjust for inflation ... or if subsequent revenue streams (video and DVD) are being factored in here?
The Variety website (for paying subscribers only) currently has a list of the so-called "Top 250 Films of All Time." The figures are "box office receipts," i.e. grosses, and they are not inflation-adjusted. The 250th film on that list is Hercules, which grossed $99,112,101 in 1997. Thunderball is not on the list—the only sixties films that made the cut are The Sound of Music ('65, $158,671,368) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ('69, $102,118,287).
64
« on: November 11, 2002, 10:45:23 PM »
"Only," Nightwing? That was a HUGE success in 1968!
According to Frayling, GBU grossed $4.3 million in Italy (a slight come-down from its two predescessors), and $6 million in the U.S. (where it was the most successful of the three). (Sergio Leone: Something to Do with Death, p. 245-246.)
65
« on: November 11, 2002, 10:38:26 PM »
Actually, Eastwood's character doesn't really have a name in any of the three Leone pictures. He's called "Joe" in A Fistful of Dollars ... but only by the little old coffin maker, who for all we know calls all Gringos "Joe." He's called "Blondy" in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but again only by one character, Tuco. And in For a Few Dollars More, he's called "Manco" (in English language prints) or "Monco" (in Italian prints, and in the Italian credits, and in the credits for the American release, which were copied from the Italian). That is a sobriquet, not a real name; "Manco" and "Monco" mean the same thing in Spanish and Italian, namely, one-handed or maimed.
From the University of Chicago Spanish Dictionary has it: "manco. adj. one-armed; one-handed; maimed; lame (referring to an arm or the front leg of an animal); faulty, defective."
From the Concise Cambridge Italian Dictionary: "monco, adj. maimed; (fig.); deficient; incomplete; stunted; n.m. person who has lost one, or both, of his hands; cripple."
It was confirmed for me by Sergio Donati (one of the screenwriters, uncredited) that this nickname was chosen for Eastwood's character as a sardonic comment on the fact that he never does anything with his right hand ... except shoot.
Eastwood's character is called by this name only twice in the film (both times, in his absence) ... once by the Sheriff of Tucumcari, when he's telling Col. Mortimer that another man is on Red Cavanaugh's trail, and once by Indio, when he asks Niño how long he's known that "Manco is a bounty killer."
As in the other films, he never refers to himself by this name or any name at all.
KC
66
« on: November 11, 2002, 10:03:37 PM »
Well, as you probably know, Nightwing, the IMDb is often wrong, so you can't win any arguments by citing it as a source. In this case, the earlier birthdate was reported in a number of printed sources, including Richard Schickel's biography of Clint Eastwood (1996). That's why we had a long discussion about it in the early days of the old Leone board (I think the Webmaster of that site changed the date on his main page from 1929 to 1921 around that time) ... in late 1998 or early '99. Some people didn't want to be convinced ... including our old friend GMAT, who insisted that if Schickel said something, it must be right. But since it's a well-known fact that Enrico Morricone was born in November 1928, and since there's a picture of the two of them together as schoolboys, looking to be about the same age ... and since Frayling has now written the DEFINITIVE Leone biography ... it seems that it's time finally to get this correct, regardless of the original source of the error.
KC
67
« on: November 11, 2002, 09:00:52 PM »
It's still reported on the main page of this site that Leone was "born in 1921" (naturally enough, since that page was just taken over from the old Leone site). We had long discussions about this topic on the old Leone board, and though we never determined where the error came from, I don't think there's any doubt by now that it IS an error. I think it's pretty well established that the correct date is January 3, 1929 (see Frayling's Sergio Leone: Something to Do With Death, p. 25). Can this FINALLY be changed?  KC
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