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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, October 7th, 1997 - Comments Off on Tuesday, 07 October 1997
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Tuesday, 07 October 1997

Woody Allen gave a very rare interview to the New York Daily News this week. Guess he wanted to make sure not to lose any ground to the returning Roman Polanski as America’s Favorite Cradle Robber.
Apparently, the U-Turn press junket was a lot more interesting than the movie. First, there was Stone vs. Stone, with director Oliver unhappy with actress Sharon who was told by Oliver, according to him, that the film was relatively low-budget and that there would be no movie star salaries only to have her agent call later with a “request for a huge fee.” Oliver gave the role to Latina-star-on-the-rise Jennifer Lopez, who filled more than the acting requirements in Stone’s eyes. “Jennifer’s full-bodied. She’s got a full butt. I think she’ll make women with big butts feel good.” Well, no wonder Sharon didn’t get the job. Oliver was looking for the wrong body part.
The other one to make heads do a u-turn at the junket was Nick Nolte. He told some reporters that he didn’t use fake teeth to play the John Huston-like Jake McKenna. He did. Then there was the one about his first wife doing a circus high wire act. She didn’t. But the topper was his story about receiving a testicle tuck (I’ll give the male readers a moment to uncross their legs). This one started when he was being pressed by Bryant Gumbel about the possibility of having a face lift. Nolte effectively shut Gumbel up by offering that the only plastic surgery he’d had was a testicle tuck. And the legend lived. Until the U-Turn junket, where Nolte finally fessed up. These junkets have everything from tooth to nuts.
Acting By Phone was reader Joe Duffy’s suggestion as a possible title for the now-in-development Romancing The Stone sequel. Just goes to prove — I read my email. Send some. It’s your moral duty.

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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