MCN Columnists
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Friday, October 3rd, 1997 - Comments Off on WEEKEND PREVIEW
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WEEKEND PREVIEW

Movie theaters load up on product this weekend, with four new releases and the expansion (finally!) of L.A. Confidential. As a result, the bottom of the top 10 should be significantly more impressive — last week’s number 10 was G.I. Jane with $1.3 million, this week’s number 10 should do about $3 million. On the downside, none of the new openers look like major successes. Last week’s top three all climbed over $11 million. I don’t expect any films to hit the $11 million mark this weekend.
Look for Morgan Freeman’s return to chasing psycho killers, Kiss the Girls, to lead the pack with around $10 million. Last week’s surprise hit, Soul Food, may well be the most solid returnee, with incredibly positive exit-poll numbers, dropping just 20 percent to take second spot with $9 million. Last week’s number one and number two spots should take the average 30 percent dips, leaving The Peacemaker at number three with $8.7 million and In & Out in fourth place with $7.9 million. U-Turn, the latest kink from Oliver Stone, should open in fifth, with a soft $6 to $7 million.
In the bottom half of the order, L.A. Confidential and its crew of Oscar nominees-to-be expands its screen count, actually increasing its gross, but not enough to rise above $5.5 million and a sixth-place finish. The second weekend for The Edge should find Sir Anthony falling over the side, dropping 40 percent for a $4.6 million, eighth place finish. Janeane Garofalo, the studio proclaimed “Funniest Woman In America,” couldn’t stand watching her face on a 15-foot screen and walked out of the New York premiere of her first starring vehicle, The Matchmaker (more on that in The Hot Button weekender). Four million bucks and eighth place feels about right for the name-pronunciation-challenged comedienne. Michael Douglas stays in The Game for one more week, dropping another 40 percent to $3 million to take the ninth spot. The naked Brits of The Full Monty may be in their final full-frontal assault on the top 10, round out the deci-leaders with $2.5 million or so.
Top 10 drop-outs look to be (in descending order): The Wishmaster, A Thousand Acres and G.I. Jane.
Have a good weekend at the movies and come back Monday to check out the results. You can even mock me via e-mail.

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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