“The Beaver” is dead. No matter of life saving technique will revive cinema’s first and last hand puppet psychiatrist. Jodie Foster’s movie about a suicidal man, played by a man who’s already committed career suicide and a kind of personal Hari Kari, earned just $104,000 over three days at 22 theatres.
They were the kinds of theaters where depressed people might go. But they didn’t. They didn’t want to see an anti Semitic, Holocaust denying son of a neo Nazi, anti Pope essayist who threatened to harm his girlfriend and their baby–in a movie about a man who has no responsibility for his family, continually plots to off himself, has violent outbursts, and looks like he’s been sleeping on a park bench. Imagine that.
The movie got middling reviews but not enough, I hear, to bring Gibson to Cannes for an out of competition screening. Jodie Foster continues her tour as Joan of Arc, defending Gibson, the title of the movie, and the sullen tone of of the film she created. But if she comes to Cannes, she’ll be welcomed, even though she told our Q&A audience last week after the Lincoln Center screening, “I don’t care if the movie doesn’t make any money.”
Luckily, Summit Entertainment has made so much money on vampires that a mere beaver won’t get in their way.
