The Angels weren't the only ones who had a bad Sunday.
In a rarity for the movie industry, every movie in the top 10 ended up selling fewer tickets for the weekend than the studios that released them predicted on Sunday morning."Paranormal Activity" ended up grossing $21.1 million, down from Paramount's estimate of $22 million. "Saw VI" collected $14.1 million compared with Lionsgate's $14.8 million call. Warner Bros. thought on Sunday that "Where the Wild Things Are" would sell $14.4 million worth of tickets for the weekend, but it ended up at $14 million.
Projected grosses issued Sunday morning, which are based on Friday and Saturday ticket sales compared with similar films that played on similar dates, are often off by a few hundred thousand dollars. It's unusual, however, that every estimate is too high; typically some are too low.
That means fewer people went to the movies than studio distribution executives predicted Sunday morning. While there's no way to know for sure, one possible reason is that people stayed home to watch what turned out to be the final game of the American League Championship Series between the Angels and Yankees and a few high-profile NFL games including the Steelers' big win over the previously undefeated Vikings.
Total weekend receipts were $116 million, according to Hollywood.com. Sunday morning, the box office analysis firm pegged the number at $121 million. That means actual ticket sales fell a substantial 13% from the same period a year ago.
That's bad news Hollywood didn't need after a weekend on which every new movie -- "Saw VI," "Astro Boy," "Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant" and "Amelia" -- opened poorly.
--Ben Fritz
Let's talk 'Mad Men': 'The Gypsy and the Hobo'
The following post discusses "The Gypsy and the Hobo," Sunday's episode of "Mad Men."
"I'm not saying a new name is easy to find." Don to Annabelle.
"I'm not going anywhere." Don/Dick to Betty.
"And who are you supposed to be?" Carlton to Don.
I find myself without a huge array of things to say about "The Gypsy and the Hobo." Not because it was uneventful -- far from it -- but because what happened in this terrific episode was so straightforward and unambiguous.
It centered on the truth. We saw Don finally telling Betty the truth (and what an enormous WOW those scenes were), Roger trying to get an old flame to see some hard truths, Joan soldiering on (literally) as she realizes the truth about what it means to be married to her nitwit of a husband.
As much as I love Joan and Roger, and as I was glad to see those characters get a good amount of screen time, not a lot can compete with Jon Hamm's performance as Don Draper in this episode. Someone give this man an Emmy. Now.
I got to this point with Mary McDonnell and Edward James Olmos on "Battlestar Galactica," with Edie Falco and James Gandolfini on "The Sopranos" and with Michael Chiklis and C.C.H. Pounder on "The Shield." At some point you just run out of adjectives to describe their superlative acting. As was the case on those shows, the entire ensemble is so great every week that over time, I stopped commenting on their phenomenal skills. We just come to expect that they will be impressive every time. We get spoiled.
Though we've come to expect great things from Hamm, the range of emotional states he nailed in this episode was extraordinary and worthy of the highest praise. Let's just go through the list of emotions that washed over Don as he entered his house and discovered his family unexpectedly there: Shock at their presence, a scrambling (and unsuccessful) attempt to go back to the car and get rid of Suzanne, wariness as he followed Betty into the den, anger as realized she was determined to confront him and fear as he realized what Betty knew.
Then, as he's often done in these heated situations, he tried to physically loom over her in order to intimidate her, and he tried defiance as one last attempt to preserve the Don facade (even though he knew by then his attempts to browbeat Betty would be futile).
And then you see something new breaking over his features: He becomes Dick Whitman -- a frightened boy who is petrified of being rejected once again. "You didn't have to look at my things," he breathed. He sounded like the frightened, abused kid some part of him still is.
That sequence of scenes between Don and Betty is one of the best pieces of writing in the history of "Mad Men." And it almost functioned as a meta-commentary on the show, given that Betty asked every question that viewers have asked since she found the box (Why did he even keep this stuff in the house? Who's Anna? Who are those people in the pictures? And so on.)
This wasn't the kind of elliptical writing that the show sometimes employs, but it was no less effective. Seeing these two people finally drop all their pretenses was as fascinating as it was unexpected. Last week's episode contained the bombshell of Betty finding the box. And rather than hanging on to that knowledge for weeks, she confronted him with it almost immediately. I honestly didn't see that coming, not this week anyway. I enjoy "Mad Men" most when it zigs when I expect it to zag.
Full praise to January Jones for holding her own in those scenes, which is no small feat. But let's face it, those scenes belonged to Hamm. As is the case with the actors mentioned above, Hamm can communicate his character's internal state eloquently even when there is no dialogue.
After the initial confrontation, we saw Don move into the kitchen. He was a gutted man. At this point, Don doesn't know if the safe, suburban life he worked so hard to create is over forever. (And it's an interesting side note the Don begins revealing his real truths to Betty in that kitchen -- just a few feet from where the first scene of the first episode of Season 3 began. Remember how, in that season premiere, we saw Don heating up milk for Betty and then, in a reverie, recalling his own birth?)
Betty was not cutting him any slack; she was waiting for him to pull his usual trick and leave. But now that Don/Dick has been discovered, he doesn't need to. Perhaps part of the reason Don staggered into the kitchen was because a weight had been lifted off him. He no longer has to keep all those secrets. Much of "Mad Men" has depicted Don as trapped and hemmed in, but at that moment, when he finally begins telling Betty the truth, in some ways he seems freer than he's ever been. And thanks to Hamm's subtle work, there's an intriguing emotional core to Don in those scenes. There's a quality of sincerity in him we've rarely seen when those two characters are together.
He tells Betty his name is Donald Draper, but, in that moment, he seems more like Dick Whitman than he ever has -- around her, anyway. He's stopped playing a role. When he tells her he's surprised she ever loved him, that is Dick speaking. It's utterly poignant when he recalls Abigail's boyfriend, Uncle Mac. "He was nice to me," Don/Dick said. For some reason, I found that line so sad. He probably liked Uncle Mac because he didn't beat him or call him "whore child."
When Don/Dick recalled Adam's death, it was heartbreaking. Three years later, the guilt he feels about Adam's death finally comes pouring out, and it's devastating. Don's done some terrible things, but we see that he's also been carrying around an incredible amount of pain.
It's worth noting that, in his profession, Don Draper is the master of eliciting sympathy and using nostalgia to rather cynical ends, but in that bedroom, Dick wasn't playing on Betty's emotions. He was just telling her the truth about what he'd done and why he'd done it. He wasn't asking her to feel bad about his brother's suicide -- Don/Dick felt that was his fault -- but he couldn't let Adam disrupt what he had built for himself.
Despite all that Don had done to Betty over the years, how could she not feel compassion regarding what he'd gone through and what he'd given up?
The actors and the director used some kind of alchemy on those morning-after scenes; you could tell something was different between Don and Betty. They looked at each other with new eyes. They were solicitous of each other in a way they never had been. Perhaps it was just odd to see them look each other in the eye so frequently. You got the sense that they finally saw each other -- the other person was no longer just some prop in a facade. Don and Betty had been married 10 years earlier, but their marriage truly began on Halloween, 1963. They finally began to know each other as people, warts and all. Don may not know about Betty's extramarital forays and she may not know about the teacher -- but I hope neither party does find out. Does it really matter, at this point? I'd honestly like to see these two try to make a go of it.
Given that the Sixties are about to begin in earnest, perhaps I was expecting to see them explore new paths for themselves -- alone. But wouldn't it be interesting to see these two damaged people begin anew and forge a real relationship, even as society begins going through a series of upheavals and revolutions?
Question time: Given the Don and Roger we met in Season 1, who expected both men to be in functional marriages at the end of Season 3? Not me.
But both men had accepted what their lives were. And the theme, if there was one in the episode, was acceptance of the truth.
Roger's old flame, Annabelle, doesn't want to accept that her opportunity with him is gone. She doesn't want to accept that the name of her dog food is never going to be viable again (interestingly, she was told to give up that name, just as Don finally reclaimed Dick Whitman, a name he's spent years trying to escape).
Some truths can't be escaped, some names can't be redeemed, some mistakes can't be unmade. Joan's CreepRapistHusband can't simply undo all of his bad life choices by sticking "Captain" in front of his name. Annabelle can't simply pick things up with Roger more than two decades after breaking his heart. And she can't get consumers to buy her dog food by simply ignoring the fact that people react in revulsion to that brand.
"The Gypsy and the Hobo" explored who will accept the truth and why. Betty accepted Don's explanations, because he had no option at that point but to level with her. He had run out of other options (and he seemed glad to finally be able to unburden himself).
Annabelle finally had to accept that Roger loved his new wife and that she had missed her chance with him, but only after he repeatedly turned her down.
Joan. Oh Joanie. We still don't know where she stands regarding Captain Idiot. It was absolutely delightful to see her finally hit him in the head, but too bad it was only with a vase and not with tire iron. When will she finally tire of his towering narcissism and realize that she still has a chance at happiness, as long as she ditches him and his crazy schemes?
We still don't know quite where Joan is on the acceptance scale. She may still be making a go of it with Captain Idiot in future seasons. Or she may realize that he is dead weight who will only drag her down. She's still in the role-playing stage that Roger and Don were for so many years -- as they were, she is married to someone to whom she doesn't reveal her true self. Why would she bother? CreepRapistHusband will never know what a gem he has in Joan. Sigh.
We actually saw that role-playing begin with Don and Suzanne, as she looked at his face and told him how unhappy she thought he was. He closed up and gave her a line: "I'm happy now." And as she moved off, irritated at his inability to be honest with her, the magic started to dissipate. This was no longer as scorching affair but a relationship in which Don had begun guarding his real self and the other person had begun to find that tiresome.
Who knew that we'd end up feeling sorry for Miss Farrell? She'd been written so many ways all season that it was hard to get a handle on her. But her vulnerability in that final scene in which Don broke things off with her was beautifully played and heartbreaking. For some reason I felt awful for her that she feared for her job -- I suppose she didn't know if Betty would try to make trouble for her.
Poor girl. She really got crushed. In the end, she wasn't Miss Kookoo Stalkerpants, she was just a sweet, somewhat naive, somewhat unconventional girl who got emotionally crushed by an affair that was more intensely emotional than she expected it to be.
And she accepted the truth with dignity. There's nobility in that.
A few stray thoughts:
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