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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

DeVito Producing, BeattyFinishing

Danny DeVito continues to show exceptional taste as a producer. He’s had hits with rising stars Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction) and Barry Sonnenfeld (Get Shorty), and now Eve’s Bayou director, Kasi Lemmons, is about to settle into the diminutive star’s Jersey Pictures to rewrite and eventually direct The Caveman’s Valentine, a murder mystery which forces a schizophrenic former jazz prodigy to move out of his Central Park cave and back into the real world to solve a crime. Sounds like a job for Lemmon confidante Samuel L. Jackson, who was co-producer of her debut film and who is always on the lookout to do something new.
Did anyone else wonder where Warren Beatty was when his sister, Shirley MacLaine, was receiving a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes? He probably still has his nose to the grindstone, trying to make Bulworth, his soon-to-be-released-after-a-long-delay political comedy, work as well as a full-length feature as it does as a two-minute trailer. Meanwhile, his wife, Annette Bening, is going back to work, joining Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis in Martial Law. The film starts blowing up stuff all over New York on January 28.
In fabulous babe news, Miramax may finally have found someone to take the female lead of Shakespeare in Love. And the lucky girl is – taa daa! — Gwyneth Paltrow. Julia Roberts toyed with the role as the object of Billy Shakespeare’s lust for eons before passing and taking on My Best Friend’s Wedding. Paltrow would appear opposite Ralph Fiennes brother, Joe. Meanwhile, Heather Graham may join Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin in Bofinger. Looks like Eddie may be trying to stabilize his career as a solo superstar. His last film was opposite Jeff Goldblum and now he’s hooking up with the white-haired one. Or maybe he just figures that carpooling is safer for his image.

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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