My father passed away exactly two years ago today.  I wrote this piece shortly after he left us while I was sitting around contemplating my life without this 5′ 10″ giant of a man who had had such a huge impact on my life.  I thought it appropriate to re-publish this today.

After my father passed away in late-2007 I began to reflect upon the reasons why I love movies so much and how I wound up crunching numbers and analyzing box-office data for a living. Well the answer may have more to do with my father than I ever imagined. You see, Dr. Paul Dergarabedian was a mathematician, a mechanical engineer, a CalTech graduate and well yes, a rocket scientist. It was a fairly surprising fact that in high school I seemed to have a total ineptitude for all things mathematical and much to my father’s chagrin an even greater lack of interest in the subject. Finally I think he just gave up on the idea of his only son using the tools of his father’s trade and instead handed me a Kodak Super-8 movie camera with which to pursue another of his passions which was photography and movie making. Now in my dad’s case it was more about shooting home movies and maybe the occasional Apollo mission launch down at Cape Kennedy in Florida. For me it became a way to use friends and family as subjects for my latest cinematic endeavor. Either way, it became a conduit for our shared love of movies and an almost pathological need to purchase the latest in electronic or photographic gear.

I was luckier than most kids since my father’s association with America’s space program enabled me to actually meet and hob-knob with the astronauts who were then the equivalent of today’s rock stars. At the ripe old age of eight or nine years old, my parents allowed me to accompany them to various high profile events and conferences and it was at these events that I was introduced to many of the original Mercury 7 and Apollo astronauts and also the first men to travel to the moon.

Now you may be asking yourself what does this have to do with movies and I would answer by saying that in addition to my father’s love of space and mathematics was a pure love of taking his family to the movies. All of us, my mom, dad and my three sisters would hop in the car and travel twenty or thirty miles to Pacific’s Cinerama Dome in Hollywood and see all the big name movies of the late sixties and early seventies.

I will never forget the absolute awe of sitting in the “Dome,” which my dad pointed out was based on a design of renowned engineer and designer Buckminster Fuller, and seeing Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” in all of its 70mm glory. The stargate sequence in particular boggled my young mind and I realized at that point, the sheer power and beauty of cinema when projected on a massive screen with perfect presentation. I was forever changed and I owe that to my father who despite a very analytical and scientifically based constitution had a deep respect for filmmakers and the art of film. Other films that my father made sure the family saw included “The Sound of Music,” “The Guns of Navaronne,” “Ice Station Zebra” and of course “The Graduate.”

I never asked my dad if he knew of these films through word-of-mouth or if they were a by-product of his voracious appetite for reading the newspaper or other periodicals of the day. It hardly mattered. All I knew is that this guy knew how to pick a great movie and it was that influence that led me to develop my love for the filmed medium and for the directors who were a major part of bringing that vision to the big screen.

I have always admired Stanley Kubrick because his vision, particularly with “2001: A Space Odyssey,” most closely reflected my father’s love of space travel, classical music and cinema. However, my true cinematic hero is my father, without whom I never would have discovered the power and beauty of film as enjoyed in a movie theatre on the bigger-than-life screen. I will miss him every day and I will always cherish the memories of going to the movies with my dad.

I was interviewed on Marketplace about living at the mall, the Americana Mall that is, where I have lived for the past year.

This is a very cool reel that Justin Goudreau of our Hollywood.com team in Boca Raton edited together of some of my broadcast appearances over the past year.

This week Scott Mantz from Access Hollywood and I discuss Disney’s “A Christmas Carol,” “Michael Jackson’s “This is It” and the record-breaking debut of the amazing “Precious” and the overall breakdown of the weekend box-office derby. We also look ahead to the Summer-style debut of Sony’s “2012.”
Click here to go to Hollywood.com’s Box-office page to get this weekend’s Top 20 Box-Office chart

With the recent incredible and unexpected success of the no-budget box-office juggernaut “Paranormal Activity,” I decided to take a quick look back at the scary/horror/thriller-movie genre. What I discovered is pretty amazing and confirms my nearly two-decade-long assertion that this genre is one of the most consistently beloved and revenue-generating of all the various and sundry genres on the cinematic menu.

From the earliest days of cinema, audiences have been transfixed, intrigued, repulsed, amazed, and just flat-out scared to death by films such as the 1922 release of “Nosferatu,” 1925’s “Phantom of the Opera,” starring Lon Chaney (wherein the reveal of Chaney’s disfigured face had women fainting and people running for the aisles), and into the classic period of the Universal Studios horror films of the ’30s and ’40s. Vampires, werewolves, mummies, invisible men, and Frankenstein’s monster helped create a cinematic language all its own and a canvas on which filmmakers could paint their spooky stories. Some of the finest movies of the time were steeped in horror fable and presented imagery that stretched the boundaries of the makeup and special effects of the time. James Whale’s 1935 classic “Bride of Frankenstein” was one of the first movie sequels and is acknowledged to be one of the best films (horror or otherwise) of all time.

Just as horror often reflects the Jungian idea of the collective unconscious, so the late ’50s brought the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation and the effects of radioactive contamination into the minds of the fear-laden masses, and this was reflected in the films of that era. The invasion of Earth by unwelcome and hostile creatures from other worlds, along with incredible shrinking men, giant-sized bugs and the occasional “Fly,” reflected the fears of the day and threw them back at the audience via the big screen. When Steve McQueen fought the red ooze that was “The Blob” in the 1958 horror classic, there was no question what “red scare” he was really fighting. (Possibly scarier for McQueen was that he was only paid $3,000 to appear in the film, and it went on to earn $4 million, but I digress.)

The 1960s were no less important in terms of the genre’s influence and continued popularity with audiences. The 1968 filmed version of Ira Levin’s famed novel “Rosemary’s Baby,” as directed by Roman Polanski and starring the angelic 23-year-old Mia Farrow and legendary indie filmmaker/actor John Cassavetes, was a purely psychological affair, with nary a drop of blood or image of gore in sight. The movie, however, scared the living crap out of people and so affected my older sisters at the time that they claimed the baby had horns and a gruesome face and thus fueled their nightmares for weeks. (BTW, the baby is NEVER shown in the film.) The spiritual progeny of that film came in the early ’70s with another and equally influential adaptation of a bestselling novel.  In 1973, “The Exorcist” had people lining up around the block at movie theaters and had the nation and box office abuzz. Written by William Peter Blatty (who also penned the screenplay), the William Friedkin-directed film was a slow-burn masterpiece and used the almost sadistic ratcheting up of the level of dread in the film to drive the audience mad. It worked, and as pea-soup sales took a nosedive, the film (released ironically enough on Christmas-eve) became the highest-grossing film of that year with a massive unadjusted gross of $165 million, and, much like “Paranormal Activity” today, a national phenomenon.

The late-’70s and the 1980s saw the introduction of the sequel-spawning/slasher/teen-killing/money-making horror films such as “Halloween,” “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Friday the 13th.” In one fell swoop, the genre eschewed the psychologically driven horror of the early ’70s in favor of blood, guts and boobs. The formula worked, and Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees and Freddy Krueger became the new Frankenstein, Wolfman and Dracula to a nation of bloodthirsty teens.

The 1990s saw two types of horror coexisting and thriving. First, the R-rated mash-up of comedy and horror that would become the incredibly successful “Scream” franchise captivated audiences looking to laugh as much as they screamed. I attended a midnight screening of the film two full months before its intended release at the ShowEast movie convention in October of 1996 and sat in awe while a theater full of recruited high school kids went absolutely insane as Drew Barrymore’s character was teased, taunted and tortured by a voice on the phone in the opening scene. After working the audience into a squirming and giggling frenzy, the film delivered the payoff of Drew being eviscerated by her killer. The audience members were hooked and, like teens on the scariest roller-coaster in the theme park, they wanted to take that ride over and over again. With box office reaching $103 million, the film became, appropriately enough, the 13th-highest-grossing film released in 1996.

Three years later, a completely different kind of horror movie shook audiences to their core and elevated the twist ending to high art. Newcomer M. Night Shyamalan quietly delivered “The Sixth Sense” to an unsuspecting public and at the same time reintroduced the thrill of psychological horror to the late-’90s masses. The film, starring Bruce Willis in a total career-changer, grossed a massive and unexpected $293.5 million in domestic receipts alone and was the second-highest-grossing film released in 1999, behind only the most anticipated movie in two decades…wait for it…”Star Wars: Episode One – The Phantom Menace,” which grossed a jaw-dropping $431.1 million.

Now onto the 2000s — or as some might call it, the decade that introduced the beast that has become known as “torture porn.” Ushered in with great success by the first “Saw” film in 2004 and further expanded upon by the “Hostel” films and the lesser-known 2005 release “Wolf Creek,” this sub-genre allowed moviegoers to exorcise their own demons through the viewing of other humans being tortured, dismembered and killed in all manner of clever and innovative ways. The twisted and cathartic nature of these films evidently struck a strong chord with audiences and has given the “Saw” franchise life for the past six years and generated an average opening gross for the first five films of a staggering $29.1 million.

This very abbreviated history of the horror genre was inspired by the recent success of the unlikely box-office juggernaut that is “Paranormal Activity.” Shot on a shoestring budget with virtually zero production values, the film is on its way to becoming the most profitable film of all time and is a film-school marketing course in the making. Formula: $11,000 budget, plus viral marketing, plus tons of press coverage, plus a to-date gross of over $85 million, multiplied by a movie that actually delivers on the promise of a major subconscious mind-f&*king, equals the box-office story of the fall movie season.

It will be interesting to see where the horror genre heads to next. If history is going to repeat itself, perhaps the classic monster movies can make a comeback. I recently saw the trailer for Universal’s “The Wolfman,” starring Benecio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins, and I am truly excited at the prospect of traditional monster-driven horror making its return. In the meantime, I will let the new-school horror charms of “Paranormal Activity” seep into my subconscious and keep me awake at night.

Francesco Marciuliano is a regular Hollywood on the Run contributor. Francesco periodically creates an original comic strip for my blog related to current trends at the box-office. Francesco writes the internationally-syndicated comic strip “Sally Forth” and the webcomic “Medium Large.” He was the head writer for the PBS series “SeeMore’s Playhouse,” for which one of his episodes won two 2007 Daytime Emmys. He currently writes for the Onion News Network.

Click here to learn more about Francesco Marciuliano

I spoke with Marketplace today about the “Paranormal” phenomenon and the prospects for a potential sequel.

TEXT OF STORY

Kai Ryssdal: I’ve said before on the show that I don’t do scary movies, so there’s absolutely zero chance that I’m going to go see a film called “Paranormal Activity.” My personal issues aside, though, the movie’s going gangbusters. Paramount has already made more than $60 million from it. Not bad for a film that cost the studio just $300,000 to get made. This being Hollywood we’re talking about, Paramount is said to be considering a sequel. But is that really a good idea? I mean, we all remember the “Blair Witch Project.” But does anyone remember “Blair Witch Two”? Anyone? Bob? Bob Moon?

BOB MOON: I seem to recall the “Blair Witch Project” grossed $140 million a decade ago. But I’d almost forgotten its sequel took in just $26 million.

So when the head of Paramount says the studio is already considering a sequel to a movie that’s so reminiscent of Blair Witch, you don’t have to search far to find skeptics.

JOHN HORN: It had to be a guerilla movie made in somebody’s garage, or it wouldn’t be what it was. And I think if the studios tried to make it, it would be a big, bloated, star-laden flop.

John Horn follows the movie business for the Los Angeles Times. He says DreamWorks and Paramount wanted to remake the original movie into a full-budget production, and release this version only as an bonus feature on the DVD.

HORN: The studios are largely incapable of doing anything on a small scale and that’s been, you know, a huge problem for them. They are much better equipped, and have the aptitude and interest and kind of institutional knowledge to do movies like Star Trek or Transformers or Harry Potter.

Box office analysts credit much of this movie’s success to a savvy marketing campaign, which got a mostly young audience spreading the word through Twitter and Facebook.

SCENE: Did you hear that? Where did you think that came from? Shh..shh…Is anybody down here?

There’s another problem with doing a sequel anywhere near the claimed $15,000 production cost of the original.

Paul Dergarabedian watches box office returns for Hollywood.com.

PAUL DERGARABEDIAN: Whenever this happens, when you have a film that’s an unexpected hit with a low budget, inevitably everybody’s price tag goes up, and it’s virtually impossible to recreate a movie like that for that budget.

Even so, Dergarabedian says with the phenomenal success of this movie, Paramount would be foolish not to consider Paranormal Activity Two.

DERGARABEDIAN: They’ve made so much money off the first one, they have some, you know, gambling money to work with here, and I think it’s worth a shot.

In Los Angeles, I’m Bob Moon for Marketplace.

This week Scott Mantz from Access Hollywood and I discuss the movie mania surrounding this week’s number one film “Paranormal Actvity,” the dull slice of “Saw VI” and the overall breakdown of the weekend box-office derby. We also look ahead to the much-anticipated Michael Jackson documentary “This is It.”
Click here to go to Hollywood.com’s Box-office page to get this weekend’s Top 20 Box-Office chart

I taped this segment on Thursday in Burbank and they ran it today on…well, The Today Show.  I cannot wait to attend the big premiere on Tuesday at L.A. Live.  Should be a major happening. Watch for me at 1:22 in, but don’t blink.

Another interesting fall film lineup with a biographical drama, a controversial indie film, an animated newcomer, a returning animated classic, a fantasy adventure and a very successful horror franchise hitting theatres this weekend. And of course a little film called “Paranormal Activity” that in its expanded run into 1,945 theatres could work a little paranormal magic and potentially take the weekend. A little math is in order: “Paranormal” last weekend in just 763 theatres earned $25,711 per-theatre. Let’s say it earns $10,000 less per-theatre (in nearly three times as many theatres we have to lower the per-theatre average), that’s a possible weekend gross of $29,175,000 ($15,000 x 1,945 theatres). This is merely a hypothetical, but interesting nonetheless. Furthermore, this ascent to number one would happen in its fifth weekend of release, a feat rarely seen in the box-office world. One such example: 1998’s “There’s Something About Mary” finally hit number one in its eighth weekend of release way back in 1998. Of course “Saw VI” will not go down without a bloody fight as that franchise eats $30 million weekends for breakfast.

The fall movie season is the season of eclecticism and this is certainly reflected this weekend with a film like the biographical “Amelia,” starring Hillary Swank as famed aviator Amelia Earhart sharing the cinematic stage with a horror sequel mainstay and box-office juggernaut, Lionsgate’s “Saw VI.” Now simply throw in a bit of controversy with the unrated (and harrowing) “Antichrist” directed by Denmark’s Lars Von Trier, add a bit of fan boy fave “Astro Boy” and a dash of the fantasy world of Universal’s “Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant.” Finally, sprinkle generously with the yearly re-issue of the Henry Selick (”Coraline”) directed “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” and you have a recipe for a very tasty late fall weekend lineup.

It’s hard to believe that Halloween is nearly here and the home stretch of the box-office year of 2009 is at hand. With revenue totals already well over $8 billion and many huge films still in the lineup, such as Fox’s “Avatar,” Summit’s “New Moon,” Warner’s “Sherlock Holmes” and Universal’s “It’s Complicated,” the first $10 billion year at the box-office is within the industry’s grasp. All this as unexpected hits such as “Paranormal Activity” and next week’s debut of Sony’s Michael Jackson concert film “This is It” continue to define one of the most unpredictable (and fun to watch) fall movie seasons in recent memory.