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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Friday, February 27th, 1998 - Comments Off on the Good, Bad and the Ugly
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the Good, Bad and the Ugly

Is it a coincidence that when you enter Dark City, you find a place with no water around? No water usually means no boats, but not this weekend. Titanic may actually dip below $20 million for the first time this week, but The Crow director Alex Proyas’ Dark City is unlikely to beat the boat. My estimate is that it will scare up $14 to $16 million. For any of you that were feeling the need for a new movie from the cast of “Friends,” David Schwimmer turns up in Kissing A Fool, which should have a hard time taking third place from The Wedding Singer, but could open in the $7 million range, beating out Good Will Hunting in its 13th week. Impressive. The wildcard this weekend is Krippendorf’s Tribe. As I reported earlier this week, sneak preview attendance was light in L.A., even in multi-plexes that normally sell out 80 percent of their screens on Saturday nights. But that may just be L.A. I like Jenna Elfman and Richard Dreyfuss a lot, but I’ll say Disney has a $5 million opening weekend stiff on its hands.
THE GOOD: Titanic‘s numbers are awesome across the globe. After six straight weeks of grossing at least $55 million outside of the U.S., Cameron’s revenge is number three of all-time in international gross with more than $460 million. Add in domestic totals and Titanic will pass the $900 million mark sometime this weekend.
THE BAD: It’s hard to imagine that everyone who wants to see The Full Monty has already seen it, but it can’t seem to break the $1 million weekend mark since its Oscar driven re-release. It’s experienced the smallest award boost of the five nominees.
THE UGLY: Dark City is the most beautiful movie of an ugly place you might ever see.
TWO BAD MOVIES EQUAL: Senseless + Deep Rising = Deeply Senseless. Anthony Hopkins is Sigmund Freud. Jim Carrey is Kirkegaard. Hilarity ensues when this duo fights over the meaning of life. With Sharon Stone as Golda Meir and Carrot Top as himself.
JUST WONDERING: Did this column degenerate into a playground fight for a couple of days there or was it just me? (If your answer is yes, my apologies.)
BAD AD WATCH: Originally, Dangerous Beauty was maliciously destined for this slot, with glowing pull quotes from such major reviewers as the SSG Syndicate, GQ, Playboy and Dr. Joy Brown of WOR radio. But Siskel and Ebert came along and gave it “Two Thumbs Up.” I’ve already crowned this film my “Worst of 1998 To Date” and I know Gene Siskel will give a positive review to most films that get him aroused, but Roger, Roger, Roger. What were you thinking?
READER OF THE DAY: From Steve of Taipei: “You won’t believe this, but Burn Hollywood Burn already opened in Taiwan last week. Many people who bought tickets complained to the cinema manager and all of them got their money returned. Why? Because they thought it was a movie with Sly, Whoopie, and Jackie, but it turned out to be a silly movie. My opinion is that only entertainment news reporters can really know what the movie talks about.”

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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