Showbiz History: Waterworld, Waterfront, and Wonderland
Saturday, July 28, 2018 at 9:00AM 10 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history
1892 Joe E Brown, the comic actor who delivered Some Like It Hot's immortal closing line, was born in Ohio on this day.
1951 Disney's Alice in Wonderland has its NYC premiere two days after its world premiere in London. It was not (initially) a success in theaters, the studio taking a loss. But in the 1970s people became interested in it in a big way prompting its first rerelease in 1974...
1954 On the Waterfront premieres in NYC and opens the following week in more cities. It will eventually be crowned Best Picture and take 7 other Oscars too including Best Supporting Actress.
1969 Alexis Arquette born in Los Angeles, the fourth of five siblings who all became actors, most of them famous ones, too. She died two years ago.
1972 Elizabeth Berkley, Nomi Malone herself, born in Farmington Hills, MI which is incidentally just 20 minutes from where I grew up!
1978 National Lampoon's Animal House opens in theaters and becomes one of the most profitable movies ever since it was made for less than 3 million and made nearly as much as Superman that year.
1992 Mary J Blige's first album "What's the 411?" drops. It gives her her first hit single with "Real Love." Twenty-six years later she became the first person to ever be nominated for acting and songwriting simultaneously at the Oscars.
Rosario Dawson and Chloé Sevigny on the set of their first film
1995 Kevin Costner's megaflop Waterworld and Sandra Bullock's thriller The Net squared off in wide release. In limited release the controversial Kids opened. It marked the screen debuts of two teenage actresses Chloé Sevigny and Rosario Dawson who would go on to impressive careers.
2006 Miami Vice opened in theaters. Colin Farrell doesn't like it but a lot of critics do.
2017 The Emoji Movie opened at number two at the box office (because people have terrible taste!) just between Dunkirk and Girls Trip which were already big hits. Atomic Blonde was also brand new and insanely good but for some reason it didn't catch on. Sigh.
Which of these events will you be inspired by today?
Reader Comments (7)
Nobody's perfect. Only Billy Wilder and his movies.
But was Waterworld really a bomb? https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=waterworld.htm Box Office Mojo somewhat disagrees.
And Colin Farrell was right about Miami Vice. They forgot the neon pastels
Even with its mammoth international take, WATERWORLD lost significant money (nearly $100M) overall.
Went to see Kids with friends and we felt such "adults". Love Chloe and Rosario ever since.
We'll never know what happened with these four characters.
Rosario Dawson is a criminally underrated actress. I’m waiting for her to find that one amazing role that the Academy will recognize. Her top 3 best performances:
1) Trance
2) Descent
3) Rent
Billy Wilder was a true movie genius