What in the hell is a gully sucker?

Movie budgets raging out of control is an old tale. Cleopatra set the bar, with Waterworld upping the ante. Blowing enormous wads of cash in uniquely stupid ways has always been a Hollywood pastime.

But it is rare to see an itemized account sheet detailing where all the money went, mainly because no studio wants their dirty laundry laid out for all to see. Well, someone at the LA Times got their hands on the comprehensive budget for the 2005 action movie Sahara.

Chockablock with juicy nuggets, it's a delicious romp that almost makes you feel sorry for movie studio executives.

I've seen Sahara. It's bad. But not in an exclusively bad way. It's by-the-numbers with overtones of camp, treasure hunting silliness and a slight hint of African geopolitical commentary. In short, there's some stuff to like here. Not much, just some.

But as I watched it, I remember feeling that, as the movie progressed, it became a step-by-step manual on how a movie gets screwed up. More than any other movie in recent memory, I could feel where a writer was canned and a new one brought in, where the producers broke up the movie into sections and targeted different ones for different editors, when Penelope Cruz became pissed off about gratuitous ass and boob shots. Every behind-the-scenes misstep is palpable in the final cut.

Check out the article and then watch the movie. Not a bad way to blow two hours.