The Non-Phenomenon of "Grindhouse"

Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's retrograde exploitation anthology "Grindhouse," an exuberant, wild, gloriously gonzo funhouse orgy of carnage and mayhem, was, sad to report, a commercial disappointment Good Friday to Easter Sunday, with $11.6 million in total receipts. So Harvey Weinstein, executive producer, says The Weinstein Company may slash the 3-hour-and-12-minute "Grindhouse" into separate productions: Rodriguez's "Planet Terror" and Tarantino's "Death Proof," no longer together as sold, "two great movies for the price of one." Shameless knee-jerk damage-control tactics, I must say. "First of all, I'm incredibly disappointed. We tried to do something new and obviously we didn't do it that well," Weinstein said in an interview with Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily. "It's just a question of how is it going to hang in there. But we could split the movies in a couple of weeks. Make Tarantino's a full-length film, and Rodriguez's, too. We'll be adding those two missing reels that's talked about in the movie." Not cool. In an announcement prior to the financial failure of "Grindhouse," Tarantino said he would submit a longer edit of "Death Proof" at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Read more at Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily.