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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, October 28th, 1997 - Comments Off on COUNTDOWN TO BOOGIE NIGHTS – DAY 3
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COUNTDOWN TO BOOGIE NIGHTS – DAY 3

Boogie fever is catching on other film sets. At least according to Netizens. While the mainstream media may sit back and wait for a final print of John McNaughton’s new movie, Wild Things, the twin terrors of the URLs, Matt Drudge and Harry Knowles are already all over it. The news? Kevin Bacon shows his penis! Drudge ran a story, giving his column inches exclusively to Bacon’s column inches, quoting a Variety source making the industry connection to Boogie Nights and saying “Does (Bacon) really want to draw comparisons between his and Dirk Diggler’s ? …”
Knowles and one of his test screening sneakers offer a fuller view of Wild Things, which got a thumbs down. “First off, let me put to rest the question which most of you male types will be dying to know: NEVE IS NOT NAKED IN THIS FILM.” Pretty much my priority in every film. My new book, “Who’s NOT Naked!” will soon be available in bookstores everywhere. Knowles’ mole continues, “Words fail me for what we see next. Through the steam, we see a naked body from behind. Yes folks, that’s right, it’s Bacon doing his token, Hollywood, ‘bare-ass’ shot. But does it end there? No, I’m sorry to say, not when you are Kevin Bacon, executive producer of Wild Things. Kevin has seen Boogie Nights and he knows how to create a ‘buzz’ about his film. He turns toward the camera a la Dirk Diggler revealing, to a shocked audience, his manhood. Unlike Dirk, this shot was all Kevin. The horror, the horror…”
This is not why the studios test screen movies. But according to Boogie Nights director, Paul Thomas Anderson, they shouldn’t be testing at all. “Test screenings are the most asinine, ridiculous thing that ever happened to movies. That’s a grand, sweeping comment, but it’s true. It’s fucking ridiculous. On Boogie Nights, I went, but I didn’t get anything out of it. Test screenings are a fucking waste of time and massive amounts of money. They cost a lot of money. And it’s not a test because it doesn’t hold up to any scientific standards. People don’t get to see movies for free. They pay $7.50 to see a movie. People know what they are going to see when they go see a movie, so the process of recruiting is totally biased from the get go. People will easily walk out if they don’t pay $7.50 for something. If people think they are coming to see a sort of raucous exposé of the porn industry, they are probably gong to be disappointed. If they don’t know that it’s two hours and 37 minutes long, they are going to fucking be bored. They are going to say, ‘I have dinner plans.'”
Tommorrow, Is It Real? Or Is It Boogie Nights?
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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