Young Macaulay Culkin appears to be pioneering a new concept in movie-star remuneration.
According to information we've been getting, it's almost beside the point that the 11-year-old Culkin is just a signature away from receiving $5 million to star as Richie Rich in a movie based on the rich-kid comic-book character. What has agent and studio types all agog is what one source describes as a kicker to the deal "that represents a totally new concept in dealmaking."
The way it was explained to us, Culkin's agents have presented Richie Rich distributor Warner Bros. with a plan that calls for the studio to pay Culkin additional money—or "kickers"—beyond his $5 million salary. The extra pay off would be pegged directly to the box-office success of his next film, Fox's Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, due in November.
Never in our memory has one studio made bonus payments that were determined by the grosses of another studio's film.
The same source, however, predicts Warner Bros. will go along with the Culkin team's plan "if the kickers aren't outrageous." Says a Warner Bros, spokesperson: "At this point there is no deal."
UH-OH, CALCUTTA
It sounds like a scene from The Tonight Show's recurring sketch "The Edge of Wetness," but it actually takes place in the new movie City of Joy, which opens this Friday (April 10).
In the TriStar film, Patrick Swayze plays a doctor in Calcutta. He picks up a baby boy and, well, gets thoroughly doused.
Studio sources say the scene wasn't planned that way, but was left in the film because Swayze managed to stay in character and ad-lib the line, "He'll grow up to be a good fireman."
BLINK, AND YOU'LL MISS HIM
Unfortunately there was no category at the Oscars for cameo appearances. If there had been, singer David Crosby would surely have been nominated.
If you looked fast, you could have spotted Crosby as a man whose apartment was on fire in Backdraft, as a pirate in Hook and now as a bartender in Thunderheart. Crosby also managed to squeeze in an appearance on TV's Roseanne, as the biker husband of Roseanne's fellow waitress Bonnie.
All this acting invites the question of whether he's looking for a career change. Crosby responds, "I like acting, but in no way am I putting down my guitar. That's reality. The rest is Hollywood."
ON THE DIAPER BEAT
Right after daughter Kathlyn Bening Beatty, now 3 months old, was born, papa Warren was asked by interviewer David Frost if he wanted more children. Beatty said yes, but with typical Beatty-esque equivocation.
What a little diapering will do for you. At a post-Oscar party at Spago, we asked Beatty the same question. With no hesitation, he answered, "Definitely!"
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
