'The Force Awakens' Is Now 3rd All-time In World-Wide Box-Office

Okay, this is my 8th report on the worldwide box-office earnings of Star Force: The Force Awakens, and I think I'm starting to get a better idea of what I'm talking about, and why my earlier reports were somewhat muddled. This is how it looks to me now, kiddies:

When it comes to North American box-office, US plus Canada, I can give a fairly exact report of how much the movie has taken in as of a day or two ago.

When it comes to box office in other countries, the situation varies by country. This is what was throwing me off in my earlier reports. The Force Awakens is showing in more than 60 countries. Some of them are reporting the box-office total on roughly the same schedule as North America, which is reporting $812,011,043 as of January 10, yesterday. Some are providing the total as of January 7, some January 3, some as of December 27.

So it occurred to me that the best I can do is sort of like what an election-night reporter does when he or she says that so-and-so-many votes have been counted so far from so-and-so-many precincts.

So far, a total of $1.7334 billion in worldwide box office has been reported for The Force Awakens, with the counting still underway.

That must be why the all-time world-wide box office chart at Box Office Mojo highlights current and recent releases in yellow: they want to make sure all the votes are counted before they give an official total.

How many more countries will The Force Awakens play in, countries where it hasn't opened yet? Gee, I wish I knew. It seems like it opened within a day or two of the North American opening in most countries, but it only opened last Saturday in China. There is a report of $53 million for the first two days of box office for The Force Awakens in China.

The current, incomplete total of $1.7334 billion leaves The Force Awakens $453.4 million behind all-time #2 Titanic and $1.0546 billion behind all-time #1 Avatar. Will it catch them? I'm not even going to go there, Girlfriend!

And no, I still haven't seen The Force Awakens. I haven't seen Titanic or Avatar either. I think James Cameron sucks. Out of the current all-time worldwide top ten, I've seen #5, Marvel's The Avengers and #10, Iron Man 3. I plan to see #7 Avengers: Age of Ultron when it comes to cable. And that's probably when I'll see The Force Awakens, too: when it comes to cable. Unless someones drags me to a theatre while it's still running in theatres. That could happen. They wouldn't have to pull all that hard. I've liked JJ Abrams ever since 2001 and the 1st episode of "Alias." (You want me to watch a network TV show? Do what "Alias" and "24" did: air a commercial-free feature-movie-length episode.)

While I'm going down the all-time world-wide box office chart, let me look at #11 through 20: I've seen two of them: #16, The Dark Knight Rises, and #20, Jurassic Park. I like The Dark Knight Rises okay, but Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight was an impossible act to follow. I like about 3 minutes of Jurassic Park. Spielberg gets a good shot every now and then, a few seconds' worth of striking moviemaking at a stretch. But sitting through an entire Spielberg movie is usually a high price to pay for those occasional pleasing moments. Minority Report is the only entire Spielberg movie I like. (I'm sure he's sleepless and tearful because of my lack of approval. I can hear him now: "Sure, I have billions of dollars and many awards and I've been married to one of the most beautiful and talented women on Earth for 30 years -- but how much of is any of that really worth when Steven Bollinger says that I suck?!")

Well cheer up, Steve: you're not nearly as untalented as James Cameron, and you can tell everybody I said so!

Things I Thought of to Say Too Late

It seems most people are very familiar with such things. After the fact, seconds or years later, when the opportunity has passed, you think of the perfect thing to say.

I have some pockmarks on my face, neck, chest and back, scars left over from severe acne, and occasionally I've been very self-conscious about them. I read a short story by John Updike once, about an actor who'd been successful in leading-man roles despite a similar problem. Then, later, Updike published a volume of non-fiction, Self-Consciousness,which contained an essay in which he discusses his psoriasis. I had stopped reading Updike by this time, but just by chance I read a review of Self-Consciousness. It and the short story about the actor combined to make me sort of almost like Updike. I could write a whole long essay about my problems with Updike, but why? It's been done exhaustively and competently by others already, and if I were to do it right I would need to re-read at least several volumes of his work and read several more for the first time. I think he was a mean-spirited, narrow-hearted a-hole. For more detail on the matter, I would refer the reader to William H. Gass, who, in an essay in his first non-fiction collection, Fiction and the Figures of Life,tore Updike a suitably thorough new one.

I have to say, though, that Updike's style, his evocation of the sensual world through words, is brilliant. But in my praise as in my condemnation of Updike I've hardly got a thing to say which hasn't been said and said and said, and this essay is supposed to be about things left unsaid. I was talking about my acne scars. To picture me, think of F. Murray Abraham, Ray Liotta, Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Trejo, Edward James Olmos -- and yes, John Updike belonged to my club, too. One of us! One of us! In 1990, I was sitting around getting high with some people in Germany, and this German who was a big admirer of Nietzsche, and whose hair and huge moustache were -- it seems clear to me in retrospect -- deliberately copied from Nietzsche's look -- it was a very popular style in the late 19th century, but it didn't really work in 1990, just as this guy's crude and overbearing personality weren't good advertising for Nietzsche's philosophy, any more than was Kevin Kline's Otto in A Fish Called Wanda-- this guy said to me: "You know, Shteefen, Iff I vas a voman, you know vat I vould like most about you? Your face. Your sveet scah face."

The reply to that which occurred to me too late should be fairly obvious: "And how would you feel if you were a man?" I'm not a fan of James Cameron, but it may well be that the obvious reply never occurred to me until after I a watched an actress say something very similar in Aliens.She was playing one of a squad of US Marines sent to deal with the Aliens, she had some big beautiful arm muscles, and while she was doing a set of pull-ups a male Marine asked her if she'd ever been mistaken for a man, and she replied, "No, have you?"

Sometimes the thing you should have said is short and pithy like that, sometimes it's more involved. In 1996 a man who several months before had offered me a couch for the night when I was homeless, then changed his mind as we were walking toward his place, came up and gave me a deep and searching look and offered me his hand to shake. He didn't have to say anything: he was forgiving me for the particularly hurtful things I had said after I'd suddenly found I didn't have a place to stay that night after all. Of course, he also wanted to feel like a good guy, like he and I were friends, even though he'd turned me out into the cold NYC night. It's not at all clear if this second part was conscious in his mind. But I shook his hand, might even have accepted his hug. (We ran with a very huggy crowd.)

Ever since, I've regretted making up with him. I want so bad to take back that handshake, and to say something like, "No, we're not cool. We're not friends, are you fucking kidding me? Don't worry about it, though. I was not your responsibility, any more than all the thousands of other homeless in this city are my responsibility now that I have a place of my own. I realize you feel very awkward seeing me now, and you want me to shake your hand, maybe hug you, too, and make you feel better. Well, go fuck yourself, life is awkward. If you really want to be cool and deep, you might want to start by trying to grasp that basic little fact. Twerp. We're not friends, I meant all those terrible things I said, each and every one of them, and more. Maybe you are a really good guy. I'll never know, will I? What the Hell do I know about you? You and I will never get close enough for me to tell. You've got absolutely nothing to feel guilty about. Like you said that night, you had to worry about your own well-being first. Absolutely correct. That's what you had to keep in mind. Each and every one of us should take that attitude, or else we'll never be much good to ourselves or anyone else. I really, sincerely do not blame you for a thing -- except, that night and right now, you want to have your cake and eat it, too. Turning a homeless person out into the night is not a crime. No single one of us can bear the weight of the world. But have the fucking tact not to turn them out and ask for their blessing at the same time. Don't explain your problems to them right at the same moment you decide there's no room at the inn after all. Not at that moment. It's just not the time, don't you get that? That's what pissed me off, and what is pissing me off again now -- not that you didn't help me. That's nothing, that much you have in common with almost the entire rest of the world."

There's no end to that answer, to what I should have said when he came up to me with that I'm-such-a-good-dude sincere deep expression on his face and held out his hand. Some replies you didn't think of are short and sweet, some are endless, you could never even begin them properly.