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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Saturday, February 7th, 1998 - Comments Off on More News by the Numbers
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More News by the Numbers

10. More Grisham: Philip Kaufman, best known as an “arty” director (Henry and June/The Unbearable Lightness of Being), hits the John Grisham trail with The Runaway Jury, the runaway project that’s seen Joel Schumacher, Sean Connery and Edward Norton come and go. Let’s hope Kaufman has, to quote the title of another of his films, The Right Stuff.
9. Nanny S.Q.U.E.A.L.S.: Former nanny to Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, Kim Tannahill, is now suing the couple, claiming she was “shamelessly exploited and abused” during her three-year stint on the job. But will forcing her into repeated screenings of Striptease and Color of Night really hold up in court?
8. Tobacco Row: Al Pacino and director Michael Mann, who teamed up for the undervalued Heat, are back together again, along with Russell Crowe, to tell the story of whistle-blowing tobacco executive Jeffrey Wigand. Heat, now “smoke.” What’s next, Fire: The Movie?
7. Script-Selling Roundup: So, you want to sell your screenplay to Hollywood? Variety has done a survey of the 146 films released by major studios in 1997 and found that spec scripts are still king, accounting for 43 percent of the films made. In second, screenplays from books made up 20 percent of the market. Writers sharpen your pencils and go!
6. 350 Days: A Shooting Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick has finally had enough. The 15-month shoot for the Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman starrer, Eyes Wide Shut, is over. Kubrick’s long haul probably bugged Hollywood more than Cruise as it kept one of the five stars who guarantee a good opening weekend out of the summer ’98 line-up.
5. Dumbest: The Dumb & Dumber sequel has moved to the front burner with “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone taking on the screenwriting chores with a reported $1.5 million deal. The guys won’t be writing too far out of their range as the sequel will be a prequel, offering up the Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels characters as 16-year-olds. “No Jim Carrey?! *(&#(** %&**^@#.”
4. Monica Comes To Hollywood: Monica Lewinsky hit L.A. with the kind of media crush usually reserved for movie stars or murderers. Her first outing was at L.A. Farm, a hot spot for westside movie types. No deals have been reported, but Republicans are pushing for Shannen Doherty in the biopic, whereas angry Democrats see Rosie O’Donnell as the perfect fit.
3. Nominating Words: The nominees for the Writers Guild Awards are out. The only surprises are nods to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights and Simon Beaufoy‘s The Full Monty. Kind of confirms that old saying about nerds and sex, huh?
2. The Mouse Blinks: Disney has changed its own rules and will release the sequel to Toy Story in 1999. Originally slated to go direct to video like the Aladdin and Beauty and The Beast sequels, the change of heart may reflect the relatively soft numbers for recent Disney animation and the new challenges to Disney’s most valuable movie monopoly.
1. Goodbye and God Bless: The last of the first-generation moguls, Lew Wasserman, has retired from his position on the board at Universal Studios after 62 years. Not only does he know where all the bodies are buried, he dug most of the holes.
READER OF THE DAY: From Kin: “I need to visit rough cut more often. You miss a week or two and they go and rearrange EVERYTHING. I still can’t find the silverware drawer.”

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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