MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

In & Out, Brad Pitt, Robert Downey, Jr.

IN: New Line is putting all its eggs in one movie, teaming Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker and The Full Monty co-star Tom Wilkinson (who played Gerald) in Rush Hour, to be directed by Money Talks director Brett Ratner. The storyline? The Chinese ambassador’s daughter is kidnapped in Los Angeles. Wilkinson plays the ambassador’s right-hand man. But is Jackie Chan the ambassador? I don’t know, but it wreaks of Sonny Bono, doesn’t it? And I’m guessing that we’ll be seeing, as soon as a trailer hits theaters, Chris Tucker’s eyes bulging out of his head as the foxy Chinese daughter of the ambassador shows off her legs. We are the world.
OUT: Brad Pitt just dropped out of New Line’s attempt at a western, Custer Marching to Valhalla, from Dances With Wolves scribe Michael Blake. It marks the end of his longest personal relationship, having been attached to the project since 1995. “The National Perspirer” says that Brad’s split left New Line pregnant and heartbroken with a $3 million price tag for the story rights. “The Scar” tabloid says it was New Line that wanted out, returning to their original pre-Ted Turner love of lower-budget filmmaking. “The Weekly World Screws” re-printed the nude photos of Brad.
IN & OUT: Robert Downey Jr., Heather Graham and Natasha Wagner have teamed up to earn the dreaded NC-17 rating for “a scene of explicit sexuality.” The film, Two Guys and a Guy, is written and directed by infamously sexist pig James Toback, who also teamed with Downey (and producer Warren Beatty) for 1987’s The Pick Up Artist. Graham, also who stars as porn actress Rollergirl in Boogie Nights, is becoming a regular on the hotbod highway, paying off on her claim that she “wants to do out there things.” No word on whether Downey will be paroled for the premiere.
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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