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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Excuses, Excuses, Excuses

EXCUSES, EXCUSES, EXCUSES
Elle “The Body” Macpherson recently complained, “Modeling does not train you in any way, shape or form to be an actor.” We noticed, Elle. Fortunately it does prepare you for lying (her recent claims that she wasn’t pregnant), humiliation (her turn in Batman & Robin) and full-frontal nudity (Sirens).
Quentin Tarantino recently singled out Ralph Meeker as the actor whose career he would most like to resurrect. His excuse for not doing so? Meeker is dead. Even so, Tarantino complained that by the end Meeker had been reduced to a low-rent appearance in 1977’s Hi-Riders. Interestingly enough, the director of that film, Greydon Clark, was a pre-QT hirer of burnt-out stars. For 1980’s Without Warning, Clark hired Meeker, a pre-City Slickers Jack Palance and a pre-Tucker Martin Landau and gave work to a pre-NYPD Blue David Caruso. Another late-in-the-game Meeker employer, director William Richert, was also QT before QT was cool. For Winter Kills (1979), an anarchic thriller, Richert hired Meeker, Richard Boone, Sterling Hayden, John Huston, Dorothy Malone, Toshiro Mifune, Anthony Perkins and featured Elizabeth Taylor in an uncredited cameo. Quentin is still one of Hollywood’s best and still has never done anything that someone else didn’t do first.
Speaking of Caruso, Freckle Boy “got real” with People this week, claiming that his NYPD Blue tantrums were misunderstood. “Sometimes I appeared angry, but I was just trying to summon the energy to do the take,” he said. Ahhhhh. So, in Kiss of Death, when he appeared stiff and untalented, he was only trying to make Nicolas Cage look good. And while shooting Jade, he sometimes appeared megalomaniacal, but was only trying to get really lean corned beef for lunch. Now we get it.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon