Dennis Friedland and Christopher C. Dewey
The
Cannon Group, Incorporated ("Cannon") was incorporated
in New York on October 23, 1967.
The Kids at Cannon
Many movie companies are going
through a period of drastic cutbacks, both in personnel and production. But
over at Cannon things are in a prosperous uproar. The Park Avenue nameplate is
bright on the door, the furniture is new and the painters are still at work.
The company expects to put six or eight movies into production during next year
with a total budget of $2,000,000. If its record so far is any indication,
Cannon may soon fulfill the ambition expressed by its 26-year-old president of
being "the new United Artists."
These dreams of glory are made
possible largely by the success of a hardedged, modest movie called Joe (TIME,
July 27), an attempt to dramatize the bitter frustrations of Spiro Agnew's
hardhats. Made on a starvation budget of $300,000 (even Easy Rider cost
$100,000 more), Joe has already grossed that much in New York City box-office
revenue alone. "We didn't think it was going to do this well," admits
Cannon President Christopher Dewey. Considering their youth and collegiate looks,
this is probably the first time that Dewey and his partner, Dennis Friedland,
27, ever underestimated a market.
Sexual Wanderings. The pair met at
Columbia University, where Friedland attended law school and Dewey studied
architecture. They shared an interest not so much in film making as in film
commerce, so Lawyer Friedland incorporated them as the Cannon Group. They
promoted $50,000 worth of independent financing to make a scorcher called Inga,
a titillating travelogue of the sexual wanderings of a Swedish teenager. The
movie was a smash in what show business calls "the sexploitation
trade," grossing $4,000,000 for the two producers.
By this time the boys had developed
a canny skill in marketing and exploitation. Besides continued explorations of
Swedish sex life (Yes!, What Next?), they began to make films in their own
country. Amazingly, they have not had a loser yet, if only because the budgets
are so slender, emphasizing short shooting schedules and minimum salaries for
all. The only way Cannon could lose money on any of its films would be to burn
the negative. The prospects for Joe and for Cannon are so rosy that MGM
recently offered to buy not only the movie but the company as well. MGM was
rebuffed on both counts.
Bergman Bull. Dewey and Friedland
are interested in making good movies. But they also talk about
"markets" and "products" just as coolly as any grizzled
veteran of the Hollywood studios. "The horror market is wide open,"
Chris Dewey says. "What we'd really like to do is the Easy Rider of horror
movies." Cannon even adopts the big-studio system of cutting movies, and
even reshooting and adding scenes if the film maker's version doesn't please
them.
"I don't know an awful lot
about film history," Dewey says, "but it seems to me that ten years
ago critics got hold of this business of Ingmar Bergman and directors being the
creators of films and blew it up out of all proportion. Well, that's all bull.
There are a lot of people involved in making a movie, not just the director,
and if we see something we don't like, then we're going to change it."
Riding high on Joe's box-office
booty, the Cannon Group, which now includes some 20 employees and six titled
executives, is looking at masses of scripts. "It's a mammoth job,"
says Dewey. "We have them read." Already scheduled, for production or
for imminent release, are a film by Novelist Howard Fast called The Hessian,
set during the American Revolution "but with contemporary overtones,"
an Israeli comedy called Lupo, which is intended to "scoop" Fiddler
on the Roof, and a movie about demolition derbies called Jump.
Dewey and Friedland, like their
Hollywood forefathers, have also apparently learned that imitation is not only
the sincerest form of flattery, but it is also one of the surest signs of success.
Jump, which is about stock-car racers in Appalachia, is described as "like
The Hustler, except that the Paul Newman character doesn't have a pool cue—he
drives a car." The budget on that one will be Cannon's limit, $300,000.
With that kind of money, they reason, even if the picture bombs in the big
Northern cities, they can still turn a handy profit down South.
©2007 Time Inc.
Original
article http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876813,00.html
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