MCN Columnists
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Saturday, September 20th, 1997 - Comments Off on Weekend, 20 September 1997
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Weekend, 20 September 1997

Cary Granat is the new president of Miramax’s Dimension Films. Granat has been credited with his work on Scream, From Dusk Till Dawn, Mimic and the hood spoof, Don’t Be a Menace… But Menace was primarily the project of former Dimension V.P. Helena Echegoyen, as was Rhyme and Reason and love jones (her last project at New Line). Her exit this spring not only marked a change of the color guard at Miramax, but left Hollywood without a single African American holding a V.P.-or-better post at any studio.
On the brighter side, the Screen Actors Guild reports that ethnic minority actors have increased their stake in Hollywood in each of the past five years, topping out at 20.7% of all speaking roles last year — an all-time high. And a few of those roles could actually be performed without a gun or the use of the “F” word.
Meanwhile, even in the future, Laurence Fishburne is being cast as a slave fighting for freedom. In Keanu and Laurence’s Excellent Adventure, a.k.a. Matrix, the future is run by computers which trick the world into thinking it’s still the 1990s. (If I had to relive another decade of Gen X, I’d kill myself) Mr. Fishburne plays Morpheus, leader of the freedom fighters who recruit Reeves’ character to help retake control. And a dumb white man shall lead them!
In ethnicity-
free news, if you are in San Francisco and you love horror movies, you can check out Body Snatchers: The Musical this month. If it succeeds, we’ll all be looking forward to Jason On Ice and Robert Englund in Hello, Freddy. (“You’re lookin’ dead, Freddy! Open head, Freddy!”)
body_snatchers.jpg
Finally, reports of Jabba The Brando making A Civil Action with John Travolta were premature. Robert Duvall will re-team with his Phenomenon co-star since “the deal” for Brando couldn’t be worked out. Something about three tons of M&Ms with all the brown ones taken out. Rock on, Marlon!
E-Mail Dave with the issues that get your button hot!

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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