Just Desserts: Peter Fonda’s New Movie Crashes and Burns
Opening weekend of $30,000 is a disaster for Sony Pictures.
A little over a week ago, aging Hollywood has-been Peter Fonda said on Twitter that Barron Trump should be ripped from his mother’s arms and put in a cage with pedophiles.
He also said that DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen should be stripped naked and put in a cage in public so she could be whipped by passersby.
These are obviously not policy disagreements. Fonda later apologized but no one bought it because his words were so horrific that it’s impossible to believe that he just casually misspoke.
Because Fonda is a Hollywood leftist and was just doing his due diligence as a member of the resistance, Sony Pictures went ahead with a new film which features him. I am happy to report that the movie is bombing at the box office.
Jeremy Fuster of The Wrap has the details:
‘Boundaries’ Has Tepid Indie Box Office Launch After Peter Fonda Tweets
After it made headlines in Hollywood for the wrong reasons, Sony Pictures Classics’ “Boundaries” is off to a tepid start at the indie box office, as it opened on five screens this weekend. Directed by Shana Feste and starring Vera Farmiga and Christopher Plummer, the film has made $30,395 for a per screen average of $6,079.
This past week, Peter Fonda, who has a minor role in the film, posted an angry Twitter rant aimed towards President Donald Trump and his wife and son, Melania and Barron, that was a knee-jerk response to the White House’s family separation policy towards undocumented migrants and asylum seekers…
Fonda later apologized for the tweet, but it still drew an angry response from Donald Trump Jr., who pointed out Fonda’s role in “Boundaries.”
“I wonder if they will apply the same rules to [Fonda] that they did to Roseanne,” Trump Jr. tweeted, referring to the cancellation of Roseanne Barr’s ABC show following a racially charged tweet. “I have a strange suspicion that they wont [sic] do anything.”
Benny Johnson of the Daily Caller reminds us that Sony tried to downplay Fonda’s role after the controversy:
Sony disavowed Fonda after the sick comments, calling them “abhorrent, reckless and dangerous,” but saying that they would release the film because Fonda had a small role and it would be “unfair” to the rest of the cast and crew to spike it.
At the time of this writing, neither Wikipedia nor the Internet Movie Database indicate the film’s budget, which is rather telling. This is usually an easy thing to find.
A $30,000 opening weekend isn’t a poor showing, it’s a disaster. If this trend continues, which is likely because even the reviews are unimpressive, Sony Pictures will end up losing a lot of money on this film.
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Comments
Karma is a bitch. I saw his movie Easy Rider when I was young, and it poisoned me against the South for decades. I now live here and the people are the just the best – totally opposite of how Fonda portrayed them. I tell folks, “I wasn’t born in the South but I got here as soon as I could.”
Glad to have you! “Easy Rider” did its damage as did “Deliverance”.
Whitewall, haha… I was going to mention Deliverance. Had a big effect on me as a kid. When I served in the Army in Alabama 30 years ago, everytime we were on a river we laughed about it. Locals may look nice, but they might decide they don’t care too much for ya either. heh. Weird how Hollywood put out so many movies in the late 60’s -70’s that were so ” southern centric” but unflattering and myopic.
What are you saying. Those of us in the South want as bad a rep as you can get. We are horrible people and Yankees should stay away. Otherwise they will move down here and bring New York with them.
I went to school right near where that movie “Deliverance” was made and it was not too far from the truth. However, that part of the country is almost like no other. Inbreeding produced some people that are almost clones of each other. It was a closed society where outsiders were not welcome. The fortunate thing is that I know of no other place like it North or South. We in the South have known that we were always portrayed as slow and bigoted as well as violent in the movies. I’m just glad Chicago is in the North.
Hmmm.
How do you react to this,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoVL1Zs6WTw
which I find funny and just love. Given that it is by Charlie Daniels a guy I have always thought of as a “good ole boy”. Though I have never been south.
I grew up in the south and have lived most of my life here. Most (not all) southerners don’t have a problem laughing at themselves, so Uneasy Rider was popular here. I lived in the north a few years and the company I worked for partnered me with a black guy. After a couple of years working with him a member of management told me we had been put together so they could watch the explosion and no one could understand why a southerner and a black could work well together and get along. I explained that in the south racism had been acknowledged and attempts to move past it were ongoing. It was the north that was in denial of their racism, which is why partnering a black and white to see the “explosion” was considered acceptable and a big part of why racism still lives.
You’re right about the attitudes outside the South. Our history is what it is. Another reason a black and white person can get along fine is that up until the late 1960s we were always around each other. We knew names, children’s too. We knew where so and so worked. We lived near each other and in rural areas, across the road from each other. Southern humor is based on shared lives and experiences. Outsiders have a hard time with it because they are well, outsiders. Bless their cotton pickin’ hearts!
Ain’t it the truth. I traveled all over the United States and up North you could take the racism and cut it with a knife. White on black, black on white, white on Asian, Asian etc, etc, etc. Everything was defined by ‘race’. I also lived in Charleston SC and Louisville KY; totally completely different atmosphere.
I was raised on country music in Texas, and I remember this song as being very popular. We laughed at it. Same goes for
“Up against the wall, redneck mother,”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcBOcwgb4OA
“Put another log on the fire,”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWpYQjuJ0u0#action=share
“How to be a Country Star.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP4hOGZ2a2E
Would Jesus wear a Rolex?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76ohvqwsNkk
I lived in Bama for two years. Whenever you meet somebody they want to know three things:
1) First and last name?
2) What church do you go to?
3) Alabama or Auburn?
Sounds right. If a convention is held outside the South in say Cleveland or Denver or where ever, all the attendees who are Southern will gravitate together in time and the conversations go like this: we’ve never met. Where y’all from? Oh, you don’t say! What’s your name? Who are your people? Really, did y’all ever know so and so? Not too sure but his aunt (grandfather, cousin) lived there and went to the —–Church. Oh my husband has kin from there…who’d he marry?
Something like that. None of us have ever met but within an hour, we all ‘know’ each other. It’s our culture.
If you’re not from Alabama, and your not sure which one to pick, the perfect response to Number 3 is; “Which one is further South?”
I swear I typed “you’re” in the second instance, ya’ll.
The obvious answer is “Roll Tide!”
War Eagle!
When I lived in the South there were “Colored Only” water fountains (around 1949 IIRC). The reputation was deserved at the time.
Things are changing quite a lot even now. OK just voted 57% for med pot in an off year primary election – i.e. the worst for turnout on that type issue.
“I just don’t understand what the problem is. My father was a great actor, I wear a scarf around my neck and gave a peace sign to show how edgy and avant-garde I am, I say all the PC required hatred towards the president.”
What was Sony thinking? If Fonda truly only has a small part, they should have shot the scenes again with another actor and delayed distribution until they could edit the new scenes in. The anger isn’t going to be limited to Fonda. Sony has been tainted. This isn’t the kind of movie that attracts teenaged boys or the Friday night date night crowd. The audience for “Boundaries” would have been the Deplorables. We don’t forgive things like this, and we don’t forget. Truly a bad business decision on Sony’s part.
this is a ‘niche’ film – aimed at 50s and older
imdb 3.1/10
IOW a ‘bomb’ –
Fonda probably thought that his tweet would increase interest,
sony was complicit and needs to pay the price, as well as the other ‘talent’less.
Few people buy these after the blow up apologies these days. Fortunately, more people are seeing what the apologies, which aren’t apologies in the true sense, are. They are sorry for the backlash against them, sorry that it didn’t garner support from the bubble world leftists, sorry that the backlash affects their pocketbooks.
These things they do and say are what they mean, and what they hope for, they are the true persona, and like the Democrats, they aren’t comfortable when the masks come off. Trump, if for no other reason, has been great at getting their hatred of people who do not believe as they do out in the open.
Most movies these days are not all that good anyway, and given how the left in Hollywood are, I have a hard time wanting to support them in any way. Glad others might feel the same way, as Hollywood continues to have a tougher time in selling their movies.
If the poor showing is partially a result of PF’s big leftist mouth then I feel badly for Farmiga and Plummer. Vera Farmiga is, sort of, a smoke-show for me. She was the perfect mother to Norman Bates and I had the “hots” for her during that series.
I guess they are also leftists but tend to keep their mouth shut.
Easy Rider had Dennis Hopper though and that was great. He was about the best bad guy you could have and Jack Nicholson with his “biker’s helmet”. Sorry the movies damaged you for the south. I did like both movies though and I don’t think they intentionally disparaged the south as they would today. I agree with you about the South though. I spent my high school years and a few more in Virginia and also spent some time elsewhere and I don’t think there is, overall, a nicer and more decent group of people than Southerners.
Is he Hanoi Jane’s brother? Screw ‘em both.
$6000 per screen over a “weekend”. I don’t know if a “weekend” is two days (Friday and Saturday), or three (including Sunday).
If it’s two days, then that’s $3000 per day.
How much are tickets? $10? $15?
At $10, you’re putting 300 rear ends into seats and at $15 its 200 people.
Sure, that’s probably multiple showings per screen per day.
I’ll defer to experts, but getting 200-300 per day to pay to sit for an Indie film doesn’t sound horrible to me.
I have no idea if it is a good showing or not, but I hardly think it a coincidence that he said the most outrageous thing possible just before the release.
Pedantic grammer nazi point:
It should be “just deserts” — though “deserts” is pronounced like “desserts” not like the plural of Sahara.
Correction from the spelling Nazi. You are incorrect. OP is right.
http://www.learnersdictionary.com/definition/dessert
No, clintack is correct, and both you and Mr. LaChance are wrong.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/deserts
Although, since we’re being pedantic and all, it’s “grammar.”
😉
And that’s the concern of the Spelling Nazi, not the Grammar one.
He also misspelled “grammer (sic)”
Correct. Though there is a fun card game, published by Looney Labs, called “Just Desserts”.
Okay, I can’t pass up a grammar challenge. Here’s the deal, everyone here is “right.” The phrase is in its original form “just deserts,” but it hangs on an obsolete meaning of the word “deserts” when used in this context.
Therein we find the rub . . . and how and why “just desserts” is also correct.
Here’s the deal: archaic terminology and even grammar (yes, “ar” grammar, not “er” grammer) rules are constantly being updated. Often, though, trite sayings like “just deserts” are the last to be influenced by these changes in the English language. “Desert” takes on a specialized meaning relating only to arid, sandy, vastly expansive areas, so it makes no sense in the idiomatic “just deserts” phrase. The word’s meaning changed, but it was still hung up in our idiomatic speech. Most people don’t know any other meaning of the word “desert,” so we develop the more logical “just desserts.”
My personal test in this “just deserts”/”just desserts” debate: Tell me what “deserts” means in this context. If they cannot, they do not deserve the coveted Grammar Nazi title and must forfeit the crown.
Next up: Splitting infinitives is just fine. Really. [Gasp.] 😉
No, “just desserts” is not correct, and never will be (except when punning, as in the card game).
That’s easy. It’s what you deserve. Note the ultimate stress in both words, as opposed to the penultimate stress when it means somewhere dry.
Two things:
1] He doesn’t really care about the movie. He knows he’s a loser and nothing will change that.
2] He already has his money, so doesn’t worry about how good the movie does in the first place.
That could be Sony’s angle to sue the hell out of Fonda 🙂
In the photo, someone just asked Fonda how many people attended the premier.
Disaster? For practical purposes Sony lost every nickel they put into it.
Yeah, they can blame Fonda’s tweets for “bad box office” if that makes them feel better.
It was an indie film in limited release.
A tepid start? It was screened in 5 theaters – in the entire country!
Were they really expecting it to make Jurassic Park money on opening weekend?
Am I the only person who thought Easy Rider had a happy ending?
Losing “a ton of money” doesn’t mean he won’t win Best Actor.
I just checked the plot for Boundaries. It really couldn’t be less interesting, so it has to rely on the characters being interesting or likable. Peter Fonda crapped all over that. Way to go Peter, you continue to destroy Hollywoods brand. We Trump voters could not be happier.