Editor’s Note

If I had a million dollars…

So, what’s a million dollars worth these days anyway?

In next month’s thriller The Box, Cameron Diaz plays one half of a married couple posed with a moral dilemma. The twosome (James Marsden plays her hubbie) is presented with a strange box, topped with a button, and told that if they push the button someone they don’t know, somewhere in the world, will die. On the upside, they will be given a million dollars.

The film is based on Button, Button, a short story by Richard Matheson that was first published in the June 1970 issue of Playboy. In Matheson’s story the reward for pushing the button was a mere $50,000. When the tale was adapted for a 1986 episode of The Twilight Zone the prize was upped to $200,000. And now, even though The Box takes place in the 1970s, before that Twilight Zone episode, the incentive has been upped again — to $1-million. Guess The Box’s people didn’t think we’d be willing to account for inflation. That, after all, would involve doing math in our leisure time.

Besides, $1-million seems like a good amount. It’s the price Robert Redford offers Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore to sleep with the latter in 1994’s Indecent Proposal. Then again, $1-million is the butt of one of the most famous jokes in 1997’s Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. After Dr. Evil, who has travelled forward in time from 1967, steals a nuclear warhead, he demands $1-million from the United Nations for its return…prompting laughs of derision since it’s such a paltry amount.

And is it just me, or does the $1-million reward for winning a season of Survivor seem like a lot less now than it did when Richard Hatch first took home the prize a decade ago? Maybe that’s because, thanks to Hatch’s tax problems and subsequent jail time, we realize how little of that million the winner gets to keep. Then there’s that question that comes up on the dock at the cottage: How much would you have to win in a lottery to quit your job? I don’t think a million would do it for me.

In “Decisions, Decisions, Decisions” Diaz, who takes home millions for every movie she makes, talks about the repercussions of decisions — big and small — we make every day.

Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn have some decisions to make in their new comedy Couples Retreat, like whether to stick with their failing marriages. For “Wedding Bashers” we talk to the frequent collaborators and their director, Peter Billingsley.

Speaking of marital trials, in “Slow Burn,” Cairo Time’s Patricia Clarkson talks about playing a married woman who develops a special relationship with another man.

“Rolling With the Punches” is our interview with Drew Barrymore and Ellen Page about Whip It, a monumental movie for both — it’s Barrymore’s feature-film directing debut, and Page’s first major role since Juno.

We also have our Fall-Holiday Movie Preview, your guide to all the big movies coming out from now until the New Year.

Marni Weisz, editor