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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Monday, March 2nd, 1998 - Comments Off on
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OK, kids. Hold onto your hats. This is not a misprint. Titanic grossed less than $20 million this weekend. I know! It’s horrifying. $19.7 million, ending the longest streak of $20 million weekends ever at 10. But Titanic was not the only film to sink this weekend and the others didn’t have a $900 million life raft. Dark City couldn’t muster up more than $5.5 million. Krippendorf’s Tribe hit the crapper with $3.2 million. And David was Schwimmering with sharks, as Kissing a Fool smooched the dirt with just $2.2 million in ticket sales. The only negative that could be seen as a positive was Caught Up, a crime drama that grabbed $2.4 million despite a minimal promotional push for the film. The only truly happy note is The Wedding Singer, whose $9 million showing left it $1 million shy of a $50 million domestic gross after its third week of release. A sweet movie and a sweet success for all involved.
THE GOOD: Not much this weekend. I guess it’s good that so few people bit on Krippendorf’s Tribe. And of course, any box office weekend that makes movies by the stars of “Friends” less likely is OK by me.
THE BAD: The weak weekend automatically reduces Dark City to a video cult hit. It is a flawed film, but it really should be seen on a big screen if it’s going to be seen at all.
THE UGLY: I’m giving this week’s ugly over to David Denby, critic from New York Magazine. His review of Sphere in its entirety: “At the end of Sphere, the three principals — Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson and Sharon Stone — agree, for the good of humanity, to forget everything that has happened to them in the movie up to that point. This is a pact I can only rush to join, and with exactly the same motive. There are just some things that humankind is better off not knowing about.”
JUST WONDERING: Did the rest of you note the passing of character actor J.T. Walsh? I certainly did. I’d go on now, but I’ve already shot my wad on this week’s chapter of The Whole Picture. It’ll be available on Wednesday.
TWO BAD MOVIES EQUAL: Burn Hollywood Burn + Krippendorf’s Tribe = Burn Krippendorf Burn. Disney’s hilarious sequel stars our own Andy Jones as a pissed off reporter who burns Richard Dreyfuss alive until he doesn’t actually need any make-up to convince his college peers that he’s discovered a tribe of the walking dead.
YOU’RE GONNA MAKE IT AFTER ALL: I noticed this weekend that Mary Richards line-produced The Borrowers. She made it to Hollywood from Minneapolis after all. Up until now, I thought she was spending all her time losing weight and getting face lifts.
BAD AD WATCH: The pull quotes are in on Kissing A Fool. Loving it as only they could are Lisa Best from Global, Olivia Fierro from KTTV, Bobbie Wygant of KXAS, Brian Carroll from The Interview Factory Radio Syndicate and last but not least, Byron Allen, whose talk show, “Entertainers,” is known for its kissing. Kissing that has to be done before the guest sits.
READER OF THE DAY: From Ryan N: “I’m quickly realizing that I’m about the only person who visits this site that actually thinks Leonardo DiCaprio is very talented. For those who aren’t fans…if you don’t like Leonardo, why are you going to see his films? I avoid the people I don’t like. I wouldn’t pay to see Anne Heche in a film even if her performance cured the common cold. And that will not change.”

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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