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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Wednesday, November 19th, 1997 - Comments Off on Behind the Scenes
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Behind the Scenes

DreamWorks is prepping Hell Bent, an effects comedy about a tobacco executive whose primary responsibility is selling cigarettes to kids. When his disgusted wife pushes him out of his window to his death, hell is the next stop and he, of course, fits right in. You all have read Rough Cut Daily’s Pact With The Devil. Well, here’s your chance. What show business people — star, executive or job title — do you think are one window push away from running the city that never extinguishes? E-mail me your candidates and the reasons. The best entrant will win their very own slot on The Hot Button.
The Jackal may have been number one at the box office this week, but the road was as twisted off-screen as on. You may remember the controversy over the original title, “The Day of the Jackal,” which was meant by Universal to make the new version seem like a remake of the 1973 classic directed by Fred Zinnemann. Fred objected strenuously after reading the screenplay by Kevin JarrŽ. At the time, producer Jim Jacks defended the changes in the screenplay as part of the artistic genius of JarrŽ, the writer of Tombstone and Glory. “Why the IRA character?” I asked. “Kevin’s Irish,” was Jack’s response. “Why a Richard Gere-type rather than the frumpy government guy?” “Kevin thought The Jackal was so charismatic that we needed someone equally as charismatic.” Cut to the release of the movie. Universal settles with Zinnemann, who sadly passes away before the movie is done. It’s called The Jackal. And as far as Kevin JarrŽ? His name is nowhere near the credits, displaced by Chuck Pfarrer, the genius who brought us Hard Target, Barb Wire and Navy S.E.A.L.S. Fickle business, huh?
Sony chief John Calley is prepping the studios first Bond movie for 1999. MGM is suing. Which company is going to get the Goldfinger? Who knows? Sony’s already snuck around MGM and snagged the prize. Now MGM has Sony in the war room, threatening its life. Soon, Sony will be hung over a tank of sharks, hog-tied to Sharon Stone in a string bikini. That watch you’re wearing had better be more than a standard issue Rolex, Mr. Calley.
Anything on that movie mind of yours? E-mail me your thoughts.

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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