Inside Hollywood's Greatest Vanity Project (Details article on Chris Mallick)

[D Ghost]

The sun was shining at LAX as Chris Mallick lumbered up the stairs onto a private jet surrounded by a bevy of blondes. He fumbled with his crutches, awkwardly favoring his left leg—he'd recently broken his ankle and knee. But his physical injuries were the least of his worries.

A few weeks after the accident, his movie, Middle Men, had bombed. It had cost him $32 million and would earn a total of just $754,000 at the box office, and it hurt all the more because it was not just his first major production, but was all about him. One of the most brazen vanity projects in Hollywood history, the movie focuses on one man—based on Mallick—and his entrepreneurial genius, his business acumen, and his uncorruptible core, which allowed him to keep his moral bearing amid a sea of sleaze and filth. He'd cast Luke Wilson in the lead—as himself, essentially—and also enlisted James Caan and Giovanni Ribisi. And the movie was good—Variety called it "compelling [and] skillfully made."

Still, it was a flop of epic proportions. Confined to the couch, Mallick was hardly able to think about anything else. So as soon as he could hobble around, he decided to blow off some steam. He'd get through this—he still had ePassporte, the online-payment-processing business that was his cash cow. And he wasn't a newcomer to that industry. In fact, that was what Middle Men was about—how he'd made a fortune brokering online transactions for the porn industry.

Read More: http://www.details.com/culture-trend...#ixzz1EpJuaEEz