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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Wednesday, January 28th, 1998 - Comments Off on Washington in the Movies
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Washington in the Movies

There is only one story worth ranting about these days. And surprisingly enough, it has everything to do with the movies. Wag The Dog is the most obvious connection to Fornigate. Will the U.S. use missiles against Iraq to distract Americans from how the President may have used his? Not with Levinson and Mamet’s masterwork still in theaters. Chemical weapons are nothing compared to bad PR in Washington. There should be a Wag The Dog Holiday in Baghdad celebrating those not killed in “The Gulp War.” (Note to studio execs: Use Presidential crisis to drive DVD sales in the Middle East.)
On the horizon is Mike Nichols‘ adaptation of Primary Colors , which covers, “fictionally,” the Clinton election campaign. Universal is reportedly as nervous as Bill about the release of the film. Sure it has John Travolta in a dead-on impersonation of Clinton, but Hollywood fears that it may be too much reality for audiences. Expect the current advertising tag line, “What went down on the way to the top” to change in a hurry. I mused yesterday on Nichols tagging an addendum onto his film, but he may have found an outright sequel. Universal’s purchased rights to the novel The Reader for Nichols to produce and maybe direct. The story? A teenage boy has an intense affair with an emotionally unavailable older woman. Years later, her past is revealed, throwing everyone’s life into turmoil. Hmmm.
Clinton advisors must be particularly anxious for the release of Sony’s Les Miserables. After all, if Primary Colors is the warts-n-all version of the story, Les Mis is pretty much the version that the Clinton staff is pushing all over cable. The President is Jean Valjean (in the movie, Liam Neeson), pursued mercilessly by Kenneth Starr, Washington’s very own Javert (Geoffrey Rush). Of course, the hope of Clintonites is that Javert will throw himself into the Potomac because he’s so overwhelmed by Jean Valjean’s natural kindness. While his detractors wonder when nudes of he and Cosette in a compromising position will emerge. We’ll see.
READER OF THE DAY: From Rafael: “Enough with the jibes at Titanic. It’s getting old and boring. The last thing I need is one of my favorite Websites implying a conspiracy. I’m sure the book and CD are also in on it!”

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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