Crazy Nikki, not to be trifled with, gets slipped a remarkably embarrassing email from fellow-breathless-Tinseltown-tattler Jeffrey Wells, of Hollywood Elsewhere, and publishes it, to general merriment.

Here’s an interesting issue. The email in question was sent Aug. 9; one doubts that “3:10 to Yuma” director James Mangold accommodated Wells’ slightly pervy request.

To Wells’ credit, one must note, he told Mangold he didn’t like the movie and that he would ding it close to the film’s release, which is this Friday. Wells’ eventual post on it, which is a little overdone but well within the bounds of fair comment and far above the level of most internet film commentary, was published midday Wednesday. Sometime after that, it seems, someone in Mangold’s camp leaked the email.

Wells’ request is unforgivable, but you get the feeling he had reason to believe he would have gotten what he asked for.

A puzzling story in the NYT on Hollywood’s record summer. If I understand the premise of the story aright, the movie industry just had a record, $4 billion box office for the summer season, which concluded Labor Day weekend. “But the movie studios are not quite popping the Champagne — at least publicly,” writes Brooks Barnes:

Studio executives were quick to point out that the blockbuster hit “Spider-Man 3” was among the most expensive films ever made.

Indeed, to hear many studio executives talk, the movie business is closer to the edge of a cliff than ever. The 18-week summer season ending today looks great on paper, with 16 movies selling at least $100 million in tickets. But executives quickly point out that $4 billion is not a record when ticket sales are adjusted for inflation. Attendance was also lighter than in years past.

In other words: A fake record was set. Why aren’t the studios celebrating the fake record? Paging Nikki Finke.

Crazy Nikki Finke has caught box-office fever. Her latest post is titled:

OFFICIAL! Summer 2007 Smashes Record

Gotta love the opening clause of her breathless report:

Because of (or in spite of) all those blockbusters and threequels, Summer 2007 today crossed the $4 billion mark, setting a new record for total domestic gross receipts.

Because of (or in spite of) the fact that movie ticket prices are always going up, this really isn’t a record summer. As I wrote below, 2007 is running a hefty percentage below audience tallies earlier this decade. Since there is a constant that can be looked at—in this case, actual attendance figures—this focus on dollar amounts isn’t a harmless fetish. It’s a smokescreen for the industry (”Hollywood setting a record!”) to obscure the truth (”Hollywood not setting a record!”).

Reading Finke is always a pleasure. Lower in the item, she gets around to mentioning the fact that actual ticket sales are below record highs. Here’s how she puts it; I leave her uneasy grammar and colorful punctuation intact:

[A]verage ticket prices in 2004 was $6.21 versus $6.85 in 2007. (Which is why Hollywood box office figures are starting to resemble baseball statistics with lots of asterisks after every record set…)

Why is this “starting” to happen? Hasn’t it always been that way? Why do we need asterisks? Wouldn’t we be able to eschew the asterisks just by focusing on the information that means something and ignoring the information that doesn’t? ? And I’m not a sports person, but aren’t the (very few) asterisks in sports based on extraordinary circumstances? Isn’t this movie issue the opposite, just the banal reality that prices always go up?

Crazy NIkki says it’s opening well:

Sony’s Superbad did supergood at the domestic box office Friday as the studio told me that Judd Apatow’s low-cost coming of age comedy opened with $12.1 million from 2,948 theaters for what should be a gigantic $30M to $32M weekend. “It trounced all expectations,” a studio source explained to me.