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BULLY BOY:
German star Michael ‘Bully’ Herbig recently broke records in Germany when his 2001 hit Der Schuh des Manitu (above) screened on TV. He’ll be back this summer with a new spoof - (T)Raumschiff Surprise (below)
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Yes, yes, I know: this magazine is about films. But read any trade paper these days and you will know that tail - video, DVD, pay-TV, games, merchandising - is now wagging the theatrical dog. Or it is as far as Hollywood movies are concerned (though I’m not quite sure how many of those big, squishy Hulk action figures my local Asda sold). When it comes to European movies, on the other hand, the tail doesn’t really do the wagging: in fact, if often falls off altogether.
Which makes it all the more gratifying to report that a German film recently became the most successful local entry  of all time when broadcast on free-TV channel ProSieben. The film in question, it will come as no surprise to observers of the German scene to learn, was the monster local hit Der Schuh des Manitu (Manitou’s Shoe), an amiable spoof western directed by and starring popular comedian Michael ‘Bully’ Herbig. When it went out in the cinemas in 2001, the movie was seen by 10.5 million people, with another million or so turning up when it was re-released to celebrate its first birthday in the summer of 2002.
Der Schuh is easily the most successful German movie of all time at home, far eclipsing such internationally better-known contenders as Good Bye, Lenin!, and almost toppling Titanic from its position atop the German all-time box-office iceberg (in Austria, they loved Der Schuh even more, and it did topple Titanic).
Well, it looks as though almost everyone who went to see the film ins Kino switched on when ProSieben broadcast it at the beginning of March. Mind you, the channel did its best to drum up a little extra interest, billing it as the ‘extra-large’ version and putting back in all the bits even the director had decided to leave out. Still, it certainly paid off: 12.21 million viewers tuned in, giving the film a market share of 32 per cent - the sort of figures that even the biggest movies struggled to get in the days before video, DVD and movie channels put an end to the ‘event’ status of films on television. Better still, in the all-important 14-29 demographic, Der Schuh kicked in at a market share of 63 per cent. For which the only word is ‘awesome’.
The sole sad note in the whole shining success story which is Der Schuh des Manitu is that Bully’s film has not managed to make even the shallowest footprint anywhere outside the German-speaking world. What is more, the fact that what the movie parodies is home-made German domestic westerns of the fifties means that a remake isn’t likely to happen, either.
Still, with those kinds of figures, it doesn’t look as though Bully & Co will be out of pocket. Meanwhile, the actor/director is currently in post-production on another parody, (T)Raumschiff Surprise, which brings an equally jaundiced eye to bear on TV space operas. (T)Raumschiff - the title is a pun on the word for ‘spaceship’ which, if you put a ‘T’ in front of it, becomes ‘dreamship’ - is due on German screens this summer, with Herbig playing a character called Mr Spuck. Expect warp-drive box office.
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MANX MAN
John Malkovich (above) will follow his two films on the Isle of Man with a third collaboration with Raul Ruiz (below left, on the set of Le temps retrouvé). The film will be a biopic of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, whose 1907 portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer is shown below right.
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HE’S CERTAINLY BEEN busy of late, that Mr John Malkovich. It may be a while since he made a studio movie - Con Air in 1997 was his last full studio outing, although he has done a couple of indie pix since then - but the 50-year-old actor has been keeping more than busy in Europe.
Most recently of all, though, Malkovich has abandoned the gentle climate of his home in the South of France for the more bracing weather of the Isle of Man, a green and windy rock mid-way between Liverpool and Dublin, where a benevolent tax climate and a bunch of local incentives have kept the cameras almost constantly turning on nearly 60 films over the past nine years.
Earlier this year, Malkovich was there filming Colour Me Kubrick, the bizarre story of a man who posed as the legendary American director during the filming of Eyes Wide Shut, despite looking nothing like Kubrick  (the latter’s reclusive nature helped here, of course) and not knowing much about his films, either.
That film is part-funded by Luc Besson’s production company, EuropaCorp. But the next project that Malkovich was due to shoot on the Isle of Man was The Libertine, a movie set up under one of the many tax-relief schemes which have helped to drive the recent UK revival.
On February 10, however, the UK government closed that particular loophole, throwing between 15 and 20 productions
 into doubt. Some - like Tulip Fever, starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law and to be directed by John Madden - look unlikely to recover. But The Libertine has gained a reprieve, thanks to the Isle of Man’s willingness to be flexible and a sizeable amount of Malkovich’s own money, following a reported dinner-party conversation between Malkovich and director of IOM Film Steve Christian.
Pre-production thus resumed and the film starts shooting next month (April), with commercials director Laurence Dunmore making his debut behind the camera. Johnny Depp plays the debauched title character, the 17th-century Earl of Rochester, who died of syphilis at the age of 33. Malkovich played the role on stage some time ago, but is King Charles II here, with Samantha Morton also starring.
Once that is all done and dusted, Malkovich will be off to Vienna, where he is due to play Austrian artist Gustav Klimt in a movie directed by Raul Ruiz. The film - which will mark Malkovich’s third collaboration with the Chilean-born director, following Le temps retrouvé and Les âmes fortes - will reportedly focus on the last 18 years of Klimt’s life, which coincided with the first 18 years of the last century. Sophie Marceau is also slated to star and, given that Ruiz is an enshrined member of Gilles Jacob’s pantheon, Klimt is expected to be unveiled at Cannes next May.
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