MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Saturday, February 28th, 1998 - Comments Off on NEWS BY THE NUMBERS
Be Sociable, Share!

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

10. Heading For The Hills: Daniel Day Lewis doesn’t feel like playing the movie star game anymore. The New York Daily News is reporting that he’s going to give up show business for the quiet hills of Ireland. My question: Hasn’t he already been gone for a few years?
9. New Woo For You: Tom Cruise is preparing once again to do double duty as producer/star in Mission: Impossible 2. But the news here is behind the camera. Oliver Stone dropped out as director and now Cruise is talking to John Woo as the replacement killer. Though Woo has helmed big-budget flicks before (like Face/Off), this would be his first studio-life-and-death summer tentpole. Expect a big body count.
8. Harry And David: The skirmish between sites took its toll this week as Harry Knowles beat David Poland in a Stupid Question poll of their fist fighting skills, about 75% to 25%. Good news though. TNT has purchased the rights for a WCW pay-per-view. Kevin Smith will be in Knowles’ corner, while Poland will fight in Arnold Schwarzenneger’s 70-pound costume from Batman and Robin as symbolic punishment for working for a multi-national. May the darkest haired man win! (Hey! It’s still my column.)
7. MS MIA: Microsoft decided to follow AOL’s dumping of Entertainment Asylum by dumping their entertainment sites, Cinemania Online and Music Central. Don’t worry. This setback hasn’t made Microsoft any less arrogant. They’ll be trying to get $19.95 a year from you for their not-too-popular on-line magazine Slate.
6. Direct To Video, If You’re Lucky: The American Film Market is back in L.A. The market, which despite their protests to the fact, is primarily for foreign buyers of independently produced crap. It ain’t no Cannes. But if you really have a yen to see over-the-hill action stars or lots of sexy but unsuccessful actresses who will take off their clothes for a part, this is the place for you.
5. Wag the Trailer Park: After the Clinton sex scandal hit, audiences decided that Wag the Dog was a little too real to be funny, so they stayed home. Universal Studios Florida suffered the same bad luck with their new ride based on the movie Twister. After 39 people were killed last week in tornadoes in Central Florida, the premiere of the ride was indefinitely postponed. Also knocked out of the box was Six Flags Over Texas’ planned “Spending Oprah’s Money.”
4. The Wrath of Mikey: Michael Eisner went to Tuesday’s annual shareholders meeting in Kansas City under pressure from institution investors who wanted more independent directors on the Disney board as a balance to the fact that Eisner has no clear successor and no plan to have one in sight. Despite Eisner’s protest, 35 percent of shareholders managed to cast their votes for the measure before actually getting hit by lightning bolts.
3. Oscar Hint Of The Week: The Writer’s Guild, whose membership closely shadows the Writer’s Branch of the Academy, gave their annual screenwriting awards to As Good As It Gets (Best Screenplay Written Directly For The Screen) and L.A. Confidential (Best Adaptation From Other Material). Will it matter Oscar night? Who knows? But remember, all Academy members vote in the finals, not just the writers.
2. Black Out: In much worse news at the Writers Guild America West, Black History Month came to a close with this admission from Guild rep Zara Buggs Taylor: “There is a dearth of African-American, Latino and Asian writers in the Guild and frankly, I don’t see it getting better.” The western half of the writer’s union boasts 8,700 members. Only 233 are Black, 93 are Latino, 44 are Asian members, 18 are Native American and five are Eskimo. No joke here. It isn’t funny.
1. Risk Free Business: Mel Gibson is preparing to direct his version of the Ray Bradbury classic Fahrenheit 451, but he may not play the lead as originally planned. If Mel gets his first choice for the lead, Warner Bros. could finance the film by selling tickets to the set. It’s Tom Cruise. Why is this news? It’s part of the return of Cruise to Hollywood life after being hijacked by Stanley Kubrick for over a year. As one of the few truly bankable leads in Hollywood, Cruise’s ambitious work schedule could actually save a lot of jobs in the executive ranks. And Warner Bros. execs need all the help they can get.
READER OF THE DAY: From Alex A: `You recently had someone send you an e-mail that said that Titanic would remain number one until Leonardo DiCaprio’s new movie The Man in the Iron Mask took its place. I think when ‘Man…’ is released, we’ll all get a good close look at why Leo didn’t get nominated for Best Actor.”

E-Me. Tough room! But like it or not, the buzz on Leo’s next film has not been good. How much of The Man In The Iron Mask’s opening weekend do you think will be about Leo and how much of it will be the movie (preview, ads, etc)?

Be Sociable, Share!

Comments Off on NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

Comments are closed.

Quote Unquotesee all »

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