Destination mines Sundance,
Jersey Shore for 'Mona' team

By Martin A. Grove

Destination discussion: After the first-place opening of its low-cost pickup "Eye of the Beholder," Ashley Judd's first film after "Double Jeopardy," Destination Films is now in the happy circumstance of opening "Drowning Mona," Neve Campbell's first film after "Scream 3."

"Mona," a comedy from Neverland Pictures/Jersey Shore, is directed by Nick Gomez and produced by Al Corley, Bart Rosenblatt and Eugene Musso. Written by Peter Steinfeld and executive produced by Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher and Jonathan Weisgal, it opens March 3 at more than 2,000 theaters. Starring are DeVito, Campbell, Bette Midler and Jamie Lee Curtis.

"The idea came to us from a writer (Steinfeld) who just handed us a script and was pretty much just off a plane from New Jersey," Corley told me. "We were not expecting much and sort of fell in love with it and then optioned it. We decided we needed to get a director attached to then take the script to the next stage before we actually sent it to any financiers or distributors or any talent. We attached Nick Gomez as the director, and then Nick and Peter Steinfeld worked (with us) on the script to fit Nick's vision of the movie."

"Mona," which had me (and everyone else on hand) laughing when I saw it at Destination's screening for exhibitors Wednesday, was always intended to be a comedy. "The problem with Nick that most everyone had was that he really hadn't directed a comedy," Corley explained. "He'd directed 'Laws of Gravity' and 'New Jersey Drive' and 'illtown.' I was in Sundance a few years ago and saw 'New Jersey Drive' (a gritty drama about urban teens). I had met with Nick and thought he had the capability of making a bigger movie. Not all the directors at Sundance have that capability. I thought Nick did by the camera movement and the work he had done with the actors. After meeting him, I realized what I liked most about him was that he was very intelligent, really got the script, understood the tone -- which is a little dark -- and had an enormous ability to attract talent. When we started to meet actors, I could see that he could close actors. He had an affinity creatively with actors everything from a big A-list actor to the smallest supporting parts."

"Another great thing about Nick is that his movies like 'New Jersey Drive' are about very specific inner-city towns and you can't imagine what a great picture he's painted of these places," Rosenblatt told me. "When you realize that he's not from that background at all and how specific our town in 'Drowning Mona' is, we really felt that Nick could paint a really wonderful picture of that town. That's really what his expertise is: taking someplace he's never been and painting a specific environment."

The film's setting is a town called Verplanck, N.Y., where everyone drives a Yugo -- a wonderful running gag in itself as well as a plot point in the mystery about who killed Mona Dearly (Midler) by cutting her car's brake lines. DeVito, as the local police chief, investigates the crime and finds that it's not so much a question of who would want to kill Mona, but who wouldn't want to kill her.

"(Gomez is) also a writer, himself, so there was a very positive relationship between him and (Steinfeld)," Corley said. "And they worked very diligently and very quickly."

"Our company is really director- and script-driven," Corley pointed out. "We feel if the director is on board, the talent will follow, assuming they respect the director's work and the director. It was our idea to cast the part Danny plays (first) because we felt (his character) was the cornerstone of this movie. He was also sort of the straight man in this movie and walked us through all of these sort of odd, funny creatures living in this town. We went out to Danny. He read the script for whatever reason -- probably because of Mike Nilon and CAA's involvement; they were real champions of this project the moment we sent it to them. They sent it to Danny. He read it in, I think, two days and called back and said, 'I really love this script. I really love this character. I want to meet Nick."

"He thought the script was hysterical," Rosenblatt said. "And he also thought it was very fresh. I drove Nick up to his house and let him out and let those guys talk. When I picked Nick up, I said, 'How did it go?' and Nick looked at me and said, 'Awesome guy.' That was pretty much it. From then on, we sort of cast around him." "It wasn't that difficult from that point," Corley added. "Pretty much everyone was our first choice."

"We built the cast around Danny and Bette, and once they came on board we were able to get Jamie and Neve, who were always interested," Rosenblatt said.

"The second person we went to roughly around the same period of time was the other sort of cornerstone (of the film)," Corley recalled.

"The movie is centered around the death of this woman (played by) Bette Midler. We contacted her, and she had serious interest in it. Her only condition was: Who was playing (the police chief)? Once we had Danny, she committed and then we were off and running."

"We never intended to have a reteaming of Bette and Danny (who starred together in the 1986 comedy 'Ruthless People')," Rosenblatt said, "but once it turned out that way, we were pretty excited about it."

"It's interesting that Bette said (recently) that she'd never allowed herself to not be glamorous (in a film) and she'd turned down parts she wished she hadn't turned down earlier in her career because she wanted to glamorous," Corley said. "Nick assured her, as we all did, to try this (unglamorous role) on. And what she did was very brave and courageous. I think the press and everyone really respected and loved her work because she really went into the character."

Destination's involvement as the film's domestic distributor resulted, according to chairman and CEO Barry London, from an approach by Jonathan Dana, the film's production consultant.

"Jonathan is our producer's rep and helps us with the marketing end of our company," Corley said. "Jonathan had a relationship with Barry London (going back to when London was Paramount's vice chairman and supervising the studio's marketing and distribution). He took us up to Barry's new company, Destination. Of course, we all knew who Barry was and were very excited to even be talking to him about this film. We gave them the script. It was just a very good marriage from the beginning. We were very happy with all of them, and we thought they had an extremely professional staff."

"Having Danny and Bette and a group of actors like this in a film we believed in, it was very important for us for everyone to feel comfortable," Rosenblatt said. "Experience and reputation was really, really important for this film for us. And with Barry and with (executive vp marketing) John Jacobs and the management team at Destination, we immediately felt like we were in the best hands possible. They were the kind of company that moved quickly. They made decisions quickly. They didn't beat around the bush. They were straightforward with us.

"A deal that can take months and months at a lot of companies, we solidified in a matter of weeks. And (then) we were making the movie. That was really important for us and for Danny DeVito, who (as a partner in Jersey Shore) was also in all those meetings. To have someone like Barry, who knows that world and feels comfortable with A-list stars, it was just very fortunate to have Destination involved."

"Right from the beginning, Danny was very involved," Corley noted. "He was 100% behind Barry in his new company from the beginning and was more than happy and excited to have his film there."

All of this was going on around April. "We were very avidly trying to seek product we believed could fit the game plan of the company, which is moderate budget, commercial, target-specific type films," London told me. "This film really fell into that kind of zone very quickly for us."

While this was the second or third of the projects Destination got involved with after making some early pickups, it is the first to surface in the marketplace. "Theoretically, (good projects) would have been more difficult for us to acquire (at that early point). But, fortunately, the relationships that we've had in the past enabled us to get entre and have people believe in us from an early on standpoint."

While London's reputation is legendary after his years of blockbuster success at Paramount, he modestly pointed out that, "In this business, every time you go to the plate, you've got to prove you can hit the ball. So at that point, we were assembling the marketing and distribution staff and trying to coordinate the start of production of the movie and all of those elements. To say it was quite an exciting time here is a mild understatement. The best part of the whole situation was working with people like Bart and Al and Danny and Jersey Shore with the cooperation and the relationship the way it just all kind of fell together and grew almost immediately from day one."

Destination acquired North American rights to "Mona." Capital Films in London is handing the film's international release, selling it on a territory-by-territory basis.

Destination, London said, "was always targeting the film for a first-quarter 2000 release, looking at the production and postproduction schedules and when we could make the release date without totally driving Bart and Al and everybody crazy to get the movie finished and allowing enough time for the movie to get finished properly. We allowed that process to happen and interfaced with them on a continuing basis as the movie was shooting. They were more than cooperative in getting us film to look at to start doing a trailer and all the attendant marketing materials.

"We're very excited about the prospects for the film because we have had a number of screenings than have gotten tremendous response. We had our press junket last week in New York, which also got a strong response from the press. We have TV spots that test extremely well, and we're very bullish on the prospects of this movie. From the standpoint of this company at this stage of its existence, the results of this film is critical. We proved (last fall) with 'Bats' that we could compete in the marketplace. With 'Eye of the Beholder,' (we showed) we could be smart about how we distributed a picture and be fortunate enough in that case to get it to No. 1. And now we need to take a picture out into the marketplace which we feel can work on its own merit."

"The film takes place in upstate New York, but we wanted to shoot in Los Angeles for a number of reasons," Corley said. "We were able to piece together different places in L.A. to look like New York. We actually built a small town. We built a police station and reconverted a diner and a whole street."

"The original script took place in New Jersey," Rosenblatt said, "but when Nick came on board, he changed it to New York. We put together a small town here in L.A. to look like upstate New York and then Nick had the idea of having everybody in the town drive Yugos. That gave us the problem of how to we get 14 or 20 Yugos for everybody to drive, especially at that time NATO was at war with Yugoslavia."

"Not the NATO that we know," London interrupted with the National Association of Theatre Owners in mind.

"We ended up finding through the Internet 15 Yugos," Corley explained.

"What was interesting was trying to piece together what looked like upstate New York in Glendale and surrounding areas without getting too far away," Rosenblatt said. "Hiding from palm trees and yet really being true to the film. I have to say, I guess that's why everybody came to L.A. to make movies: because it looks pretty phenomenal. I don't know that many people who could tell the difference. It allowed us to have more shooting days. The actors had less travel time. It made for a much more relaxed shoot and gave us more time to actually shoot the film."

"We shot for about 35 days," Corley added. "We had a very smooth shoot -- as smooth as you can have when you're making a film in under 40 days."

Corley and Rosenblatt make no secret of how pleased they are with their relationship with Destination, prompting London to point out, "It's also a credit to the people we've got in this company, John Jacobs and his marketing group and Chris Aaronson and his distribution group."

One element in Destination's marketing campaign for "Mona" is its Web site (www.drowningmona.com). Focusing on how the Internet now serves Hollywood's marketing needs, London said, "In the marketing world today, you have to surround the consumer and, also, you have to be able to find him to give him information about your movie. As the Internet has become such a big thing, especially for young males, you have to devise a plan to create an awareness in that medium because you just can't catch everybody on television as you could in the not-too-distant past. We were (on the Web) with the other two movies ('Bats' and 'Eye'), and we'll be there with the films after this because it's just another way to create an image for the consumer."