MCN Columnists
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Friday, October 10th, 1997 - Comments Off on WEEKEND PREVIEW
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WEEKEND PREVIEW

It looks like an ugly weekend at the box office. Four new films hit theaters nationwide, but they all look like short-term players. Brad Pitt’s Seven Years In Tibet should lead the charge grossing more than $10 million. If Tibet passes the $13 million mark, it will be a shock. If it somehow dips below $8 million, “I told you so!” will ring out in hallways all over town.
Kiss The Girls and Soul Food should be the strongest holdovers on the charts. The girls can kiss off a modest 25 percent for about $10 million and second place and Soul Food should lose about 15 percent off the top for about $7.1 million and fourth spot. Sneaking somewhere in between should be Disney’s kid comedy Rocket Man, the only family film to be released in what seems like eons.
In & Out should equivocate its way to fifth with a 20 percent drop to $6.1 million, becoming the first film released since Air Force One (July 25) to pass the $50 million mark domestically. Gang Related should ride to $5 million and sixth place on Tupac’s name and a decent ad campaign, though reports are that the movie is a bomb (non-ebonic). The Peacemaker should continue its precipitous drop, with a 40 percent dip to about $4.9 million for seventh place, and looks like it will max out with less than $40 million domestic. Do you know anyone who’s still anxious to see it? Me neither.
In its second week of wide release, L.A. Confidential’s expected 20 percent fall-off to $3.77 million and the eighth spot has prompted rumors that Warner Bros. is already planning a major re-release in early January.
Keenen shows us why he’s now hosting a talk show! Most Wanted takes a dive with about $3 million for ninth place on its way to the 99 cent racks at the video store. And The Edge is on the edge of the Top 10, dropping an unbearable 45 percent to $2.8 million and pushing The Full Monty off the charts. Monty will probably return next week, when The Edge, Most Wanted and Gang Related join U-Turn, The Game, Wishmaster and The Matchmaker as former Top 10 hits.
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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