Seen at Clearview's Chelsea Cinema, Auditorium #4, Saturday afternoon March 29, 2008. 3.5 Slithy Toads.
This is the best movie of the year so far.
Unfortunately, it has been difficult to read a review, good or bad, that reviews the movie on its own terms, divorced from its place in history following a string of (generally inferior) movies dealing with the Iraq war that have been box office disappointments.
And also unfortunately, it seems to arrive at the moment when many critics have decided to drop grading these Iraq movies on a curve, giving plentiful extra points for worthy intentions, or even just for the bare bones of the subject matter, to things like In The Valley of Elah, which certainly had its share of negative reviews but also quite inexplicably managed to appear on many Top 10 lists.
It's a double whammy, in which this really good movie is being victimized on multiple levels by the Critical Consensus, getting worse reviews than it deserves to compensate for films that got better, and reviewed in such a way that audiences are given permission in advance for skipping it because it is now to be expected that they should.
In case you're not familiar with the term or haven't read another review of this movie, or seen a coming attraction. "stop loss" is the name given to a provision in US military enlistment agreements that allows the military to hold a soldier past the contractual end date of the enlistment. And in a nutshell, Stop Loss the movie is the story of an Army sergeant who returns home to Texas as a hero, goes ballistic at finding himself stop-lossed, goes AWOL, goes on a road trip, and leaves a friend and fellow GI to deal with some of the mess of post-conflict adjustments that the unit is dealing with.
In big ways and small, the movie reminds of other war movies. The lines in the title lettering are reminiscent of the titling used for the TV series M.A.S.H. I was reminded on many levels of the excellent film Born on the 4th of July, which to my puzzlement I haven't seen referenced in other reviews I've read of Stop-Loss. The welcoming parade for the troops has the same sensibility as the 4th of July parades in the Oliver Stone movie, complete with a John Lewis trumpet solo in the score that hearkens back to the masterful John Williams score for 4th of July. The whole tone of the movie is as if Ron Kovac's parents had gotten the happy return of their son that never was theirs, only to find it twisted into a nightmare of an entirely different sort. I hope Stop Loss will have a better long-term fate than 4th of July, which hasn't entered the mainstream movie consciousness as it should.
Sgt. King is played by Ryan Phillippe, an actor whom I've long admired beginning especially with Cruel Intentions (which wasn't the first movie of his I'd seen, but certainly the first to make an impression). His performance is a knock-out. He adjusts smoothly to every line in a delicately wrinkled role that has to take him from the very definition of the guy you want at your side to somebody far more complex as he meets his limits at the stop-loss and then tries to find just where his new boundaries lie when removed of every anchor, every mooring, he thought was his. Channing Tatum as King's bud Sgt. Shriver keeps up with Phillippe in every scene they share, and no more need be said in praise of his performance. The other stand-out was Victor Rasuk, a member of King's unit who is badly wounded. He's come into his own since the interesting if not entirely good indiepic Raising Victor Vargas. Ever since Witness, I've always been happy to see Josef Sommer in pretty much anything. But the best movie of the year so far doesn't get my top 4 Slithy Toad ranking in part because of some of the weaker links. What is Ciarin Hinds doing, cast as Ryan Phillippe's father? Joseph Gordon-Levitt was very good in The Lookout, but here I think he's been a tad overpraised and doesn't do much with a role that is admittedly less well written than those for Phillippe and Tatum. In his scenes with either, I found he was just a little off their excellence. And Timothy Olyphant as the CO for King and Shriver struck me as a constant off note.
On the big questions of story and direction, I was with the movie pretty much every step of the way where a lot of other critics have been quibbling. The opening scenes in Tikrit, Iraq are one of the best war sequences I've seen. I was a little bit bothered by just how beautiful every soldier in the squad was, but it is an MTV Films movie, so what should I expect. But this scene had some shades of Full Metal Jacket, it was more realistic than the overblown and similar finale in The Kingdom, and I felt it worked. When we get to Texas, King is deftly sketched as every bit the company man who does his job thoroughly and well and to the admiration of all, which is exactly why his decision to go AWOL worked for me. It takes a lot of energy to fill that role, to be that employee, to be the go-to guy, and most of us don't have that to give in unlimited quantity. It worked for me on every level when he snapped, when he looked at what he'd done, and what he was expecting to do, and what he was now going to be doing instead, and decided he was empty, had nothing to give, and wasn't going to give what he did not have. As I said, Phillippe gives an amazing performance. Some have criticized the road movie aspect. Huh? He stops to visit the parents of one of the soldiers killed in Tikrit. Tom Cruise did that in Born on the 4th of July. It's one of the things you do. He goes to visit a soldier who was badly injured in Tikrit. Even after he's gone AWOL, he somehow can't leave the job he's abandoned, and that contradiction works. With everything we've seen sequentially, the ending can't be anything else, anything other, than exactly what it is. Emotionally, I didn't like the ending. I wish it could have been something else. Except it couldn't have been. The character we saw in the post-return scenes in Texas, the character we saw visiting the parents or his injured comrade, there are places this person can't go.
There's one scene in the movie that I didn't like at all, which is so blatantly there to announce the imminent arrival of a bad thing which we so blatantly and artificially don't see on screen that there's no surprise at all when The Call comes to tell Sgt. King that which the experienced film viewer has already deduced. But that bad scene leads into a climactic scene between the King and Shriver characters that works on every level and held me rapt. So I'll forgive the one bad.
This is the second movie directed by Kimberly Peirce, who also co-wrote with Mark Richard, after the excellent Boys Don't Cry, which won an Oscar for Hilary Swank. It's way too early in the year to say Ryan Phillippe should be nominated for this, but not too early to say that Peirce has directed another excellent film with another excellent lead performance that deserves to be seen.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Follow-on
Author Jim C Hines tells us about his snow-filled adventure to visit the new Borders concept store.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Supply-Side Agenting
So as we continue with the never-ending presidential election in the United States, the issue of tax cuts is certainly going to be one of those that's on the table. Do you soak the rich? Do you reduce taxes to increase revenue? An article in the NY Times on this subject a couple days ago, more to come I'm sure. Let us look at some of these questions through the prism of the profession of literary agent.
Agents such as myself used to be called ten-percenters, because we took a 10% commission on the income we earned for our clients. That is no longer the case. In the book business, agents are now fifteen-percenters. The move toward a 15% commission started in the early 1990s. The move was not without its logic. It is safe to say that major bestselling authors are now paid far more than they were in the 1960s. Same in publishing as in movies or TV or sports or any profession. It is equally safe to say that the same cannot be said at the bottom end of the scale. Unlike sports, where minimum salaries for professional players are much larger than they were decades ago, the typical advance for a first novel has not increased much at all. Most authors start at the bottom. But if postage keeps going up, and rent, and starting salaries for the assistant, and you still have 75% of your deals in an advance structure that hasn't changed in 40 years...
But I think it is also safe to say that the move to higher commissions would never have gotten off the ground if a lot of authors had said "well, I like my agent fine, but if I like some other agent only 10% less but would be paying 33% less commission, this is a trade-off I can and should make..." it would have been very difficult for the increased commission to stick. But authors did not do that. They did not, one-by-one through the actions of a significant few, reverse the increase or scale it back to 12.5% or anything of the sort. Over the next ten years, the 15% commission became the established norm. People do not do things solely for the money. It does not follow as the night the day that if tax rates are lower that people will work harder to take advantage of those lower tax rates. If it were that simple, agency commissions would not have increased by 50%. A caveat: that 50% increase in agent commissions is only a 5.555% reduction in earnings to the author who makes 85 cents on the dollar instead of 90 cents. Hence, the argument could be made that the increase stuck because it was only a 5.555% increase. So if you want to take a supply-side approach to taxation, you need to lower taxes by well more than 5.555% to see the benefits flow. Statistics are such interesting things.
So be it; commissions are at 15%. What would happen to revenue at JABberwocky if I followed a kind of supply-side approach and lowered my commission. The evidence on that is crystal clear: my revenue would drop. I was one of the last agents in the world to raise my commission to 15%; I had decided not to raise when I left a bigger company to start my own agency in the mid-1990s, when there were still a significant # of agents who had not yet gone up. It seemed risky, and I was going to have a low-overhead me-in-my-apartment operation. It was hard to detect any competitive advantage as the years progressed from having a lower commission than anyone else. Thus, it seems unlikely that I would gain an advantage today if I decided to reverse course and again be the low-cost literary agent.
But let's say it were otherwise. Let's say that I could raise revenue if I dropped my commission to 12.5%. Maybe I would have paved the way, even, by getting some or another major author to whisper in my ear "hey, you do that, and I'm yours." What if that went so well that I lowered my commission to 10%. And then to 7.5%. And then to 5%.
Well, at some point, I would have lowered my commission so much that it would be impossible to keep raising my income by lowering my commission rate. There is no way -- NO WAY -- that I could have a 2.5% commission rate, and a much larger client list, and be making more money. All those extra clients would start to put pressure on my overhead. Just like, in the real world, rising population in the US puts pressure on overhead. More people need more schools and more roads and more fire trucks, more clients at JABberwocky mean more staff and more postage. I could pare some costs by "driving out waste" and "making JABberwocky more efficient." And I would have a 2.5% commission rate but have a lot of "user fees." I would scour the business for chargeable events: $5 for sending a check to you, $25 for sending out a manuscript, and more. And again, in the real world lowered taxes do not always mean you pay less to the government. You end up paying more to renew your drivers license or to part at the state park or to get a copy of your birth certificate or to buy a pack of cigarettes. The airline industry is also moving to a low base with lots of extra charges. So here, my question for any strict supply-sider is to explain to me when on the path from charging a 15% commission to a 2.5% commission I would in fact start to lose money. The tax cut crowd would probably say that's a ludicrous question when applied to taxes because they are so high right now, So Very Very High, that we are not possibly close to cutting them to a point where that question would have any meaning.
Agents such as myself used to be called ten-percenters, because we took a 10% commission on the income we earned for our clients. That is no longer the case. In the book business, agents are now fifteen-percenters. The move toward a 15% commission started in the early 1990s. The move was not without its logic. It is safe to say that major bestselling authors are now paid far more than they were in the 1960s. Same in publishing as in movies or TV or sports or any profession. It is equally safe to say that the same cannot be said at the bottom end of the scale. Unlike sports, where minimum salaries for professional players are much larger than they were decades ago, the typical advance for a first novel has not increased much at all. Most authors start at the bottom. But if postage keeps going up, and rent, and starting salaries for the assistant, and you still have 75% of your deals in an advance structure that hasn't changed in 40 years...
But I think it is also safe to say that the move to higher commissions would never have gotten off the ground if a lot of authors had said "well, I like my agent fine, but if I like some other agent only 10% less but would be paying 33% less commission, this is a trade-off I can and should make..." it would have been very difficult for the increased commission to stick. But authors did not do that. They did not, one-by-one through the actions of a significant few, reverse the increase or scale it back to 12.5% or anything of the sort. Over the next ten years, the 15% commission became the established norm. People do not do things solely for the money. It does not follow as the night the day that if tax rates are lower that people will work harder to take advantage of those lower tax rates. If it were that simple, agency commissions would not have increased by 50%. A caveat: that 50% increase in agent commissions is only a 5.555% reduction in earnings to the author who makes 85 cents on the dollar instead of 90 cents. Hence, the argument could be made that the increase stuck because it was only a 5.555% increase. So if you want to take a supply-side approach to taxation, you need to lower taxes by well more than 5.555% to see the benefits flow. Statistics are such interesting things.
So be it; commissions are at 15%. What would happen to revenue at JABberwocky if I followed a kind of supply-side approach and lowered my commission. The evidence on that is crystal clear: my revenue would drop. I was one of the last agents in the world to raise my commission to 15%; I had decided not to raise when I left a bigger company to start my own agency in the mid-1990s, when there were still a significant # of agents who had not yet gone up. It seemed risky, and I was going to have a low-overhead me-in-my-apartment operation. It was hard to detect any competitive advantage as the years progressed from having a lower commission than anyone else. Thus, it seems unlikely that I would gain an advantage today if I decided to reverse course and again be the low-cost literary agent.
But let's say it were otherwise. Let's say that I could raise revenue if I dropped my commission to 12.5%. Maybe I would have paved the way, even, by getting some or another major author to whisper in my ear "hey, you do that, and I'm yours." What if that went so well that I lowered my commission to 10%. And then to 7.5%. And then to 5%.
Well, at some point, I would have lowered my commission so much that it would be impossible to keep raising my income by lowering my commission rate. There is no way -- NO WAY -- that I could have a 2.5% commission rate, and a much larger client list, and be making more money. All those extra clients would start to put pressure on my overhead. Just like, in the real world, rising population in the US puts pressure on overhead. More people need more schools and more roads and more fire trucks, more clients at JABberwocky mean more staff and more postage. I could pare some costs by "driving out waste" and "making JABberwocky more efficient." And I would have a 2.5% commission rate but have a lot of "user fees." I would scour the business for chargeable events: $5 for sending a check to you, $25 for sending out a manuscript, and more. And again, in the real world lowered taxes do not always mean you pay less to the government. You end up paying more to renew your drivers license or to part at the state park or to get a copy of your birth certificate or to buy a pack of cigarettes. The airline industry is also moving to a low base with lots of extra charges. So here, my question for any strict supply-sider is to explain to me when on the path from charging a 15% commission to a 2.5% commission I would in fact start to lose money. The tax cut crowd would probably say that's a ludicrous question when applied to taxes because they are so high right now, So Very Very High, that we are not possibly close to cutting them to a point where that question would have any meaning.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Never Back Down
Seen Easter Sunday March 23, 2008 @ the AMC Empire 25, auditorium #5. 3 Slithy Toads
A surprisingly good teen sports film in the mold of the Karate Kid, with a likable cast and a smarter-than-average script that digs a little more deeply than the typical film of this ilk.
It's the story of Jake Tyler, who is forced to leave his football stardom in Iowa behind when his younger brother gets a scholarship to an Orlando tennis academy. He can't leave behind the memories of his father, who died in a drunk driving accident which Jake survived in the passenger side. Why did he let his father drive? His sensitivity on this issue leads him to start a brawl during one of his football games, and internet footage of this brings him to to the attention of the mixed martial arts crowd at his new school. They want to fight him whether he wants to or not, leading up to a climatic brawl by way of the MMA gym operated by Djimon Hounsou.
Jake is played by Sean Faris, who looks like Tom Cruise and has a lot of charisma, but probably isn't going to have Tom Cruise's career. Sean is 26, and this is the highlight of his filmography. Tom Cruise had already done Risky Business, Top Gun, The Color of Money, and Rain Man and Born on the 4th of July not far away. And yet Faris seems to have a little more going for him than good looks alone. That 26 thing is an issue, though. I hate to criticize the casting, which is co-credited to the niece of somebody who I go to synagogue with, but this is a particularly bad example of over-age casting. Faris can barely get by as a high school student, but you can't even say that about most of the "high-schoolers" that surround him. His chief nemesis Cam Gigandet looks post-collegiate. On the other side, Hounsou does an excellent job of filling the Morgan Freeman "Oscar-nominee-doing-good-work-and-not-looking-down-on-material" role. Leslie Hope (Teri Bauer in the first season of 24) does well and adds something to the often thankless mother role.
But let's talk about the script some, because this one is definitely a cut above. Jake's younger brother is a scholarship kid, and the film doesn't let us forget that. Differences of class between Jake and the other much richer children he meets up with at his new school are handled with unusual dexterity. He lives in a middle-class apartment complex and his mother has some job that requires her to use a uniform, and he goes to see people in big mansions with large pools. Yeah, we've been there. What we haven't so much: Jake takes the bus to the party he's invited to, and I'm thinking "um, if Orlando's like a lot of other places, that bus ain't gonna be running when he leaves the party," and I keep wondering if the script will remember this. Oddly enough, it does. Jake gets a ride home from the party in less than ideal circumstances. And he continues to take the bus. In fact, it becomes a kind of running gag. This isn't a treatise on race and class, and its ideal of mixing through mixed martial arts is probably not realistic, but Chris Hauty's script is nonetheless doing more, more realistically, than I would have expected.
Another instance of some script-smarts: one of Jake's friends is lured away to bait Jake into the big fight he's trying to avoid. Everyone in the audience certainly knows what's going on, and you want to give the usual "stupid character" demerits and lump this in with every standard-issue teen slasher flick and anything else scripted on their level. But. A scene or two before we saw Jake persuade his friend to join him at the lunch table by saying how this girl at the table's totally been keeping her eye on friend. It sets up the friend's desire to be accepted, and it makes it more plausible when he hops in that car two scenes later. Credit to the screenwriter for putting this in, and to the director for not trimming the earlier scene. This is a good takeaway for somebody who might want to become my client: maybe the characters in your novel will need to do stupid things on occasion, but that doesn't mean you have to write stupidly.
There's also just a little more intellectual depth to Jake's decisions on when to fight and when not to than you might expect to see in a movie of this sort. Toward the beginning of the movie, there's a scene where Jake shows off his smarts about the Iliad on first day at his new school. Bad movie of this sort, that scene is nothing more than that. It gives some vague excuse for the bad guy to decide to take on Jake. Here, we revisit that scene toward the end of the movie. Jake goes off to the big battle because he's like that character in the book; he's fighting now so he doesn't have to fight again. Which in turn makes Never Back Down an excuse to ponder on other more important decisions in the world about when and why we fight. It manages to raise those questions naturally in the course of the movie, and even as you resist the idea of any film like this having anything to say about questions like that, you have to credit the naturalness with which they're introduced into this particular movie.
In a genre like this, it's the willingness to sweat some of these small details that makes the film stand out. It's easy enough to grind out the product. The makers of Never Back Down show a pretty consistent interest in beating the low-end expectations.
A surprisingly good teen sports film in the mold of the Karate Kid, with a likable cast and a smarter-than-average script that digs a little more deeply than the typical film of this ilk.
It's the story of Jake Tyler, who is forced to leave his football stardom in Iowa behind when his younger brother gets a scholarship to an Orlando tennis academy. He can't leave behind the memories of his father, who died in a drunk driving accident which Jake survived in the passenger side. Why did he let his father drive? His sensitivity on this issue leads him to start a brawl during one of his football games, and internet footage of this brings him to to the attention of the mixed martial arts crowd at his new school. They want to fight him whether he wants to or not, leading up to a climatic brawl by way of the MMA gym operated by Djimon Hounsou.
Jake is played by Sean Faris, who looks like Tom Cruise and has a lot of charisma, but probably isn't going to have Tom Cruise's career. Sean is 26, and this is the highlight of his filmography. Tom Cruise had already done Risky Business, Top Gun, The Color of Money, and Rain Man and Born on the 4th of July not far away. And yet Faris seems to have a little more going for him than good looks alone. That 26 thing is an issue, though. I hate to criticize the casting, which is co-credited to the niece of somebody who I go to synagogue with, but this is a particularly bad example of over-age casting. Faris can barely get by as a high school student, but you can't even say that about most of the "high-schoolers" that surround him. His chief nemesis Cam Gigandet looks post-collegiate. On the other side, Hounsou does an excellent job of filling the Morgan Freeman "Oscar-nominee-doing-good-work-and-not-looking-down-on-material" role. Leslie Hope (Teri Bauer in the first season of 24) does well and adds something to the often thankless mother role.
But let's talk about the script some, because this one is definitely a cut above. Jake's younger brother is a scholarship kid, and the film doesn't let us forget that. Differences of class between Jake and the other much richer children he meets up with at his new school are handled with unusual dexterity. He lives in a middle-class apartment complex and his mother has some job that requires her to use a uniform, and he goes to see people in big mansions with large pools. Yeah, we've been there. What we haven't so much: Jake takes the bus to the party he's invited to, and I'm thinking "um, if Orlando's like a lot of other places, that bus ain't gonna be running when he leaves the party," and I keep wondering if the script will remember this. Oddly enough, it does. Jake gets a ride home from the party in less than ideal circumstances. And he continues to take the bus. In fact, it becomes a kind of running gag. This isn't a treatise on race and class, and its ideal of mixing through mixed martial arts is probably not realistic, but Chris Hauty's script is nonetheless doing more, more realistically, than I would have expected.
Another instance of some script-smarts: one of Jake's friends is lured away to bait Jake into the big fight he's trying to avoid. Everyone in the audience certainly knows what's going on, and you want to give the usual "stupid character" demerits and lump this in with every standard-issue teen slasher flick and anything else scripted on their level. But. A scene or two before we saw Jake persuade his friend to join him at the lunch table by saying how this girl at the table's totally been keeping her eye on friend. It sets up the friend's desire to be accepted, and it makes it more plausible when he hops in that car two scenes later. Credit to the screenwriter for putting this in, and to the director for not trimming the earlier scene. This is a good takeaway for somebody who might want to become my client: maybe the characters in your novel will need to do stupid things on occasion, but that doesn't mean you have to write stupidly.
There's also just a little more intellectual depth to Jake's decisions on when to fight and when not to than you might expect to see in a movie of this sort. Toward the beginning of the movie, there's a scene where Jake shows off his smarts about the Iliad on first day at his new school. Bad movie of this sort, that scene is nothing more than that. It gives some vague excuse for the bad guy to decide to take on Jake. Here, we revisit that scene toward the end of the movie. Jake goes off to the big battle because he's like that character in the book; he's fighting now so he doesn't have to fight again. Which in turn makes Never Back Down an excuse to ponder on other more important decisions in the world about when and why we fight. It manages to raise those questions naturally in the course of the movie, and even as you resist the idea of any film like this having anything to say about questions like that, you have to credit the naturalness with which they're introduced into this particular movie.
In a genre like this, it's the willingness to sweat some of these small details that makes the film stand out. It's easy enough to grind out the product. The makers of Never Back Down show a pretty consistent interest in beating the low-end expectations.
Friday, March 21, 2008
When Pershing Square Knocks, Hide in the Cellar
Somewhat related to my last post, Pershing Square Capital is one of these big money firms that likes to come in with its wonderful ideas to enhance shareholder value. Sadly for me, they've decided to help ruin two companies where I've had a tiny bit of stock, Borders being one of them. If you own stock in a Pershing target, sell while you still have the chance.
I'm generally suspicious of these "enhance shareholder value" ideas, which too often can be short-term fixes to boost the stock price with little regard for real long-term prospects.
Certainly, loaning money to Borders at 12.5% interest is very helpful to Pershing Capital, but not to the rest of us. Where have they been while this cash crunch developed?
At Wendy's, one of their great ideas to enhance shareholder value was for the company to spin off Tim Hortons to concentrate on the core business. Many of you in the US may not have heard of Tim's, but it is to Canada what McDonald's is to the US. It is everywhere. It sells coffee and baked goods and soups and sandwiches, most of it of high quality (I love timbits). It's heavily saturated in the Canadian market which limits growth, but they have the ability to conquer the entire United States, an endeavor which may not be easy because of entrenched competitors like Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kreme, and in fact Tim's acquisition of the bankrupt Bess Eaton donut chain in New England has led to a difficult uphill struggle against Dunkin Donuts.
But that being said, Wendy's is the #3 fast food burger chain in the US. It was able to gain a little momentum when McDonalds had a bad spell a few years ago, but when McDonalds is run better as it is now, it's as difficult for the #3 burger chain to gain momentum as it would be for Borders as the #3 on-line book retailer.
But Pershing comes in and says it would be better for Wendy's to concentrate on its core business -- i.e., the burger chain that is #3 in the market going up against two strong competitors -- and spin off Tim Hortons -- i.e., the company that is #1 in its space with some potential to grow. I sold off 18 shares of Wendy's to buy more Tim's than I would have gotten in the spin-off and am glad I did. My remaining few Wendy's shares I've decided to give up on as well. And my few dozen Borders shares, it's not even worth selling right now. There's honestly no significant difference at this point to having $300 or having $0 if the company goes bankrupt tomorrow. I may as well retain the right to go to the annual meeting and make a fuss.
Thanks, Pershing Capital! Thanks, Bill Ackman! The best day to sell is the day they buy.
I'm generally suspicious of these "enhance shareholder value" ideas, which too often can be short-term fixes to boost the stock price with little regard for real long-term prospects.
Certainly, loaning money to Borders at 12.5% interest is very helpful to Pershing Capital, but not to the rest of us. Where have they been while this cash crunch developed?
At Wendy's, one of their great ideas to enhance shareholder value was for the company to spin off Tim Hortons to concentrate on the core business. Many of you in the US may not have heard of Tim's, but it is to Canada what McDonald's is to the US. It is everywhere. It sells coffee and baked goods and soups and sandwiches, most of it of high quality (I love timbits). It's heavily saturated in the Canadian market which limits growth, but they have the ability to conquer the entire United States, an endeavor which may not be easy because of entrenched competitors like Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kreme, and in fact Tim's acquisition of the bankrupt Bess Eaton donut chain in New England has led to a difficult uphill struggle against Dunkin Donuts.
But that being said, Wendy's is the #3 fast food burger chain in the US. It was able to gain a little momentum when McDonalds had a bad spell a few years ago, but when McDonalds is run better as it is now, it's as difficult for the #3 burger chain to gain momentum as it would be for Borders as the #3 on-line book retailer.
But Pershing comes in and says it would be better for Wendy's to concentrate on its core business -- i.e., the burger chain that is #3 in the market going up against two strong competitors -- and spin off Tim Hortons -- i.e., the company that is #1 in its space with some potential to grow. I sold off 18 shares of Wendy's to buy more Tim's than I would have gotten in the spin-off and am glad I did. My remaining few Wendy's shares I've decided to give up on as well. And my few dozen Borders shares, it's not even worth selling right now. There's honestly no significant difference at this point to having $300 or having $0 if the company goes bankrupt tomorrow. I may as well retain the right to go to the annual meeting and make a fuss.
Thanks, Pershing Capital! Thanks, Bill Ackman! The best day to sell is the day they buy.
Hey Hey Ho Ho George L. Jones Has Got to Go!
So somehow or other Borders has managed to get itself into a deep cash crunch, is pursuing "strategic alternatives," which is Wall Street speak for praying for rescue, has seen its share price drop toward $5ish a share. It'll never happen until it's too late, but it's time for the board to admit it made a mistake in hiring George L. Jones to run the company, and to put him out on the street.
I've been very ambivalent about George L. Jones for a long time. Big picture, he's seemed to have some good ideas. Chief among them: he stopped pouring money into wasteful store remodels; he did what needed to be done at Waldenbooks which had gone from being a cash generator 10 years ago to a cash drain; the new concept store idea was intriguing. Some ideas had potential but carried a lot of uncertainly, in particular the benefits of having your own web site instead of tying in with Amazon to allow better integration with the stores and the Borders Rewards program, but that up against the risks of having a lot of capital invested in launching what would clearly be no better than the #3 internet retail site for books because of the sheer impossibility of going after B&N and Amazon.
And I don't know if George L. Jones is responsible for this, but I do think the current buyer for sf/fantasy is the best person Borders has had in that position in my entire professional career.
But small picture, the company has been a mess. The employees at the Evanston, IL store know that the picture on the BordersStores web site is of the old location, which they relocated from five years ago, I've written to point this out, the employees have tried to get it changed, and it doesn't happen. The Paramus store moved nine months ago, and that picture hasn't been updated. It's a small thing, but the store relocation manual should have as step 6.A.2 "update picture on web site," and the district manager should see that it is done. They sent out a press release to announce the opening day of their Santa Monica store just a few days before, changed the web site on that day to say "Now Open," and Brandon Sanderson get there and the store is days away still from opening, and there's no excuse for that. That happened multiple times. Stores would change hours and the web site wouldn't be updated, and again, isn't that step 2.B.1 on the "changing hours" manual? Barnes & Noble does better. He's complained about the inefficiency of returns, but does nothing about the stores that have extremely high rates of store-generated returns like Columbus Circle, Manhattan because of space issues, which sees the store shipping back 2 copies of Brandon Sanderson's WELL OF ASCENSION one day so that the central office can reorder them the next and ship 2 right back. This is a problem that can be solved, by building taller shelves or segregating the hardcovers and trades as all Borders once did to maximize efficiency or by shelving more creatively. There isn't a complaint in this paragraph that I haven't written to Borders about. Why in one instance did it take me two letters to get them to update incorrect store hours on the web site, when one should have sufficed, and none have been necessary?
And I'd keep thinking in the back of my mind that I didn't really think I or the board or anyone should be too trusting in the CEO of a major company who didn't care about doing the little things right, consistently.
On their last quarterly earnings call, George L. Jones took great credit for his initiative in being sure the endcaps ran on time. He had gone into some markets, got the message across from the top down that every store had to be doing its store promotions consistently and correctly and etc., and gotten great results. But where's the passion for all the other little things?
And if he was so happy to take the credit there, will he take the "credit" for steering the company to the precipice of a cliff?
I've been very ambivalent about George L. Jones for a long time. Big picture, he's seemed to have some good ideas. Chief among them: he stopped pouring money into wasteful store remodels; he did what needed to be done at Waldenbooks which had gone from being a cash generator 10 years ago to a cash drain; the new concept store idea was intriguing. Some ideas had potential but carried a lot of uncertainly, in particular the benefits of having your own web site instead of tying in with Amazon to allow better integration with the stores and the Borders Rewards program, but that up against the risks of having a lot of capital invested in launching what would clearly be no better than the #3 internet retail site for books because of the sheer impossibility of going after B&N and Amazon.
And I don't know if George L. Jones is responsible for this, but I do think the current buyer for sf/fantasy is the best person Borders has had in that position in my entire professional career.
But small picture, the company has been a mess. The employees at the Evanston, IL store know that the picture on the BordersStores web site is of the old location, which they relocated from five years ago, I've written to point this out, the employees have tried to get it changed, and it doesn't happen. The Paramus store moved nine months ago, and that picture hasn't been updated. It's a small thing, but the store relocation manual should have as step 6.A.2 "update picture on web site," and the district manager should see that it is done. They sent out a press release to announce the opening day of their Santa Monica store just a few days before, changed the web site on that day to say "Now Open," and Brandon Sanderson get there and the store is days away still from opening, and there's no excuse for that. That happened multiple times. Stores would change hours and the web site wouldn't be updated, and again, isn't that step 2.B.1 on the "changing hours" manual? Barnes & Noble does better. He's complained about the inefficiency of returns, but does nothing about the stores that have extremely high rates of store-generated returns like Columbus Circle, Manhattan because of space issues, which sees the store shipping back 2 copies of Brandon Sanderson's WELL OF ASCENSION one day so that the central office can reorder them the next and ship 2 right back. This is a problem that can be solved, by building taller shelves or segregating the hardcovers and trades as all Borders once did to maximize efficiency or by shelving more creatively. There isn't a complaint in this paragraph that I haven't written to Borders about. Why in one instance did it take me two letters to get them to update incorrect store hours on the web site, when one should have sufficed, and none have been necessary?
And I'd keep thinking in the back of my mind that I didn't really think I or the board or anyone should be too trusting in the CEO of a major company who didn't care about doing the little things right, consistently.
On their last quarterly earnings call, George L. Jones took great credit for his initiative in being sure the endcaps ran on time. He had gone into some markets, got the message across from the top down that every store had to be doing its store promotions consistently and correctly and etc., and gotten great results. But where's the passion for all the other little things?
And if he was so happy to take the credit there, will he take the "credit" for steering the company to the precipice of a cliff?
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Funny-book round-up
I used to have a serious comic book habit. When I started my own business in 1994, time suddenly got a lot scarcer and it became hard to keep up. It was even harder to give up the idea of it, and I accumulated huge stacks of comics with the certainty I would read them some day, and then finally went cold turkey. I never read those stacks. Several years ago, around the time "Y" started with Vertigo, I decided I was missing my comic books too much, and I decided to pick up the habit again, the the conditions that I would average no more than a few comics a week, that I would read them all, and that I wouldn't read things out of force of habit if I wasn't liking them. I've done a pretty good job of sticking to it. With the exception of the meandering last year of "Y," I've rarely been patient for two bad issues in a row of anything. And though the books might get stacked up 4-6 weeks sometimes, I do read them. I buy the monthlies, because the compilations or trades would be too big, and I would never be able to make the time for them. So herewith, the first in a sometimes round-up of what one finds on my shelf:
Infinity Inc #7. This is the kind of comic I once read all the time, but my current age and interests and habits leave me little interest in books that endlessly crossover here and there with this book and that book and some company-wide catastrophic civil crisis. It looked like there was a bit of a break in the crossing over here, so I decided to give this a try on a slow week. This is the 2nd issue I've read, and it's solid. 3.5 slithy toads, and I'll probably stick with until the next crossover, and then drop it.
The Exterminators #27: This is the kind of comic that once never existed and which now forms the core of my reading. A surprisingly good Vertigo series that I've enjoyed from its inception. A Mayan cockroach infestation threatens to conquer Los Angeles, and along the way to stopping it the eponymous exterminators manage to find much that is interesting. Here, a little sidetrip into the world of the cantaloupe bomber. 4.5 slithy toads.
The Un-Men #8: Another interesting Vertigo series, if perhaps a step down, 4.0 slithy toads, from the line's best. A carnival city of mutant freak show acts, a PI, action, sex, all kinds of stuff thrown in. I kind of figured out the Aidan bit an awful long time before the lead, but OK.
The Simpsons #139: Bongo does a great job, and The Simpsons has always held true good and bad to the TV series. Homer orders an ostrich farm off of an infomercial and the merriment begins! 4 slithy toads. & FYI, my client John Zakour will be doing a Simpsons script or two. I can't wait to see his name in Bongos. John will be upset if I mention his name without also mentioning his entries at Zuda comics.
DMZ #29: Manhattan is the war-ravaged zone between the US and the Free States, an intrepid reporter goes in to cover the story and ends up becoming part of it. In this start to a new six-parter, he's covering peace talks and a cease fire in the offing, and the flash-forward at the start tells us things may not go as well as one would hope. Like a lot of Vertigo books, this is worthwhile for being a bit off the beaten track, and it easily lets you think it's more intellectual than it is because you can maybe pretend NYC is a stand-in for Baghdad, though I'm having a harder and harder time buying it, and this 6-part epic I kind of feel could maybe be done as 4, kind of like the last multi-parter could have been an issue or three shorter, and I'm not sure where it's going but know it's doing it slowly. I liked this issue more before the blogging forced me to really put it up against the other books I'm reading. 3.5 slithy toads, and I'm not in danger of giving it up. Yet. If it slips any, though...
DC Special Raven #1: Yuck! You can't go home again. I found with a lot of the recent First Comics revivals (Badger came back, Nexus came back, Grimjack came back, Sable came back) that I wasn't liking them the way I had loved them when First was in its prime, and certainly not loving them so much to pay $3.99 when the rest of my comics were $2.99. Well, heavens knows I have a real super soft spot in my heart for Marv Wolfman and the New Teen Titans. So I picked this up because it's Wolfman, because it's Raven, and in spite of the fact that the art looks so godawful bad that I can't comprehend what fandom sees in the guy, except there must be something. 0 toads, dude!
Young Liars #1: Another new Vertigo series. This one had decent art and looked literate so I decided t add the first issue to my bag. David Lapham, the creator, is apparently known for something called Stray Bullets. Not familiar with it. This first issue introduces us to a guy's guy named Danny Noonan who's moved to the big city, gotten himself involved with a slightly crazy lady who has a bullet in her brain that will kill her if the craziness it induces doesn't kill her first. Her father's crazy without the excuse of a bullet in his brain. There's something about Danny that has me at "hello," as the sane core of a crazed existence. But does the title hint at something about Danny that I may not like to find out? 4.5 slithy toads as a first issue that has me eager for more...
Infinity Inc #7. This is the kind of comic I once read all the time, but my current age and interests and habits leave me little interest in books that endlessly crossover here and there with this book and that book and some company-wide catastrophic civil crisis. It looked like there was a bit of a break in the crossing over here, so I decided to give this a try on a slow week. This is the 2nd issue I've read, and it's solid. 3.5 slithy toads, and I'll probably stick with until the next crossover, and then drop it.
The Exterminators #27: This is the kind of comic that once never existed and which now forms the core of my reading. A surprisingly good Vertigo series that I've enjoyed from its inception. A Mayan cockroach infestation threatens to conquer Los Angeles, and along the way to stopping it the eponymous exterminators manage to find much that is interesting. Here, a little sidetrip into the world of the cantaloupe bomber. 4.5 slithy toads.
The Un-Men #8: Another interesting Vertigo series, if perhaps a step down, 4.0 slithy toads, from the line's best. A carnival city of mutant freak show acts, a PI, action, sex, all kinds of stuff thrown in. I kind of figured out the Aidan bit an awful long time before the lead, but OK.
The Simpsons #139: Bongo does a great job, and The Simpsons has always held true good and bad to the TV series. Homer orders an ostrich farm off of an infomercial and the merriment begins! 4 slithy toads. & FYI, my client John Zakour will be doing a Simpsons script or two. I can't wait to see his name in Bongos. John will be upset if I mention his name without also mentioning his entries at Zuda comics.
DMZ #29: Manhattan is the war-ravaged zone between the US and the Free States, an intrepid reporter goes in to cover the story and ends up becoming part of it. In this start to a new six-parter, he's covering peace talks and a cease fire in the offing, and the flash-forward at the start tells us things may not go as well as one would hope. Like a lot of Vertigo books, this is worthwhile for being a bit off the beaten track, and it easily lets you think it's more intellectual than it is because you can maybe pretend NYC is a stand-in for Baghdad, though I'm having a harder and harder time buying it, and this 6-part epic I kind of feel could maybe be done as 4, kind of like the last multi-parter could have been an issue or three shorter, and I'm not sure where it's going but know it's doing it slowly. I liked this issue more before the blogging forced me to really put it up against the other books I'm reading. 3.5 slithy toads, and I'm not in danger of giving it up. Yet. If it slips any, though...
DC Special Raven #1: Yuck! You can't go home again. I found with a lot of the recent First Comics revivals (Badger came back, Nexus came back, Grimjack came back, Sable came back) that I wasn't liking them the way I had loved them when First was in its prime, and certainly not loving them so much to pay $3.99 when the rest of my comics were $2.99. Well, heavens knows I have a real super soft spot in my heart for Marv Wolfman and the New Teen Titans. So I picked this up because it's Wolfman, because it's Raven, and in spite of the fact that the art looks so godawful bad that I can't comprehend what fandom sees in the guy, except there must be something. 0 toads, dude!
Young Liars #1: Another new Vertigo series. This one had decent art and looked literate so I decided t add the first issue to my bag. David Lapham, the creator, is apparently known for something called Stray Bullets. Not familiar with it. This first issue introduces us to a guy's guy named Danny Noonan who's moved to the big city, gotten himself involved with a slightly crazy lady who has a bullet in her brain that will kill her if the craziness it induces doesn't kill her first. Her father's crazy without the excuse of a bullet in his brain. There's something about Danny that has me at "hello," as the sane core of a crazed existence. But does the title hint at something about Danny that I may not like to find out? 4.5 slithy toads as a first issue that has me eager for more...
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