MCN Columnists
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, November 4th, 1997 - Comments Off on Tuesday, 04 November 1997
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Tuesday, 04 November 1997

Grease is the word at Paramount these days. Producer Alan Carr, the most popular caftan wearer ever, aside from our own Andy Jones, is back on the lot, prepping the Grease 20th Anniversary Star Wars-like re-launch, in which more than 1,500 screens will play the remastered version on the smash hit. Unlike Star Wars, there’s no extra footage highlighting new advances, like Olivia Newton-John being able to act. This could be Paramount’s one shot at cashing in on its status as The Studio of The ’70s after making little noise with re-masters of The Godfather and Chinatown. Remember, Paramount is now owned by MTV parent Viacom, so any film that requires an attention span may be out of their range.
Meanwhile, Carr, also in re-release, has finally recovered from the 1989 Academy Awards he produced. (Remember Rob Lowe and Snow White? Disney did. They sued the Academy for copyright infringement, eventually settling.) You’ve got to respect the guy. Carr was a Hollywood Queen when Queens weren’t cool and has since survived years of dialysis, multiple hip surgeries and back injuries, not to mention the ’70s themselves. And as Sondheim says, he’s still here.
Speaking of large men, has Willard Scott finally found the right movie vehicle? I hope not. Twentieth Century Fox has paid low-to-mid-six figures for Five Day Forecast, a movie pitch about an experiment that brings evil weather systems normally found only on other planets to earth. I guess they ran out of earthbound weather disasters. “Hail Storm: The Movie,” “Smog Alert” and “Seasonal Showers of Death” were all rejected by the studio. Al Roker will pull on the tights and cape to fight the interplanetary storms. Just kidding. But now that image is in your head. Mmwwwahhh-ha-ha-ha!
What, you think I’m a natural disaster? Email’s the word…

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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