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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, March 3rd, 1998 - Comments Off on It's About Time
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It's About Time

IT’S ABOUT TIME: Paramount has joined the rest of the movie business by finally starting up their own art house label. Still unnamed, the division will be headed by veterans from Fine Line (a division of New Line) and Fox Searchlight (20th Century Fox) in hopes that Paramount, which is one gimpy studio outside of Titanic, can re-legitimize itself with Hollywood’s talent pool (That means no more SNL movies, Ms. Lansing!). Miramax has been chalking up money and Oscar nods for Disney for years. October Films got sucked up into the Universal black hole earlier this year, just in time to lose steam. And Sony Classics, pretty much the old man in this group, just keeps chugging along. The only studio still holding out is Warner Bros., the home of the $30 million art film (see: Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil). Must be Chris Pula‘s fault.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH: The winner of the race to get the role of Andy Kaufman in Man In The Moon, Milo Forman‘s biopic on the late, great comic actor, is Jim Carrey. What’s surprising is that Carrey not only screen tested for the role, but he almost didn’t get it. It came down to Carrey and Edward Norton, whom I would think was perfect casting. But Carrey, a close friend from the old stand-up days, apparently “became” Kaufman in the short screentest, performing with Kaufman’s actual bongos. This could be the film that moves Carrey permanently from “funny, crazy guy” to “actor,” as Kaufman’s story, including death by cancer at 33, is sure to be poignant in Forman’s hands.
HOT ITEM: C. Thomas Howell, Angie Everhart and Sammi Davis will star in Death Do Us Part. No one will care.
RUNNING TIME, RUNNING WILD: People complain these days that films are too long. Not these two. Krippendorf’s Tribe runs a barely studio acceptable one hour and 35 minutes after the studio cut enough of the film to make it watchable. And Eric Idle, star of Burn Hollywood Burn, says that cuts by screenwriter Joe Eszterhas actually made the film worse. Hard to imagine. But the film is left with a one hour and 23-minute running-time, despite a completely worthless slow-mo title sequence and credit-roll complete with outtakes that interrupt the credits instead of running alongside. Together, they waste about eight minutes. I would have preferred the 75-minute version.
HULK NO LIKE: It would appear that Universal is balking at the estimated $100 million budget for a movie version of “The Incredible Hulk,” featuring a major load of ILM computer effects. What were they expecting with that kind of CG fest? These are the same guys who kicked in $115 million for lava in Dante’s Peak. Even worse, Universal will apparently fill Hulk’s slot in the line-up with a Flintstones sequel. Yabba-Dabba-Ugh.
READER OF THE DAY: From Brooks C: “Are you like me? Are you of the opinion that a movie can only make money on the basis of a nifty trailer or a sequel title? Look at the success of Men In Black (last year’s best trailer), The Lost World (anyone see the trailer?) and Titanic. Just this past week, we saw how The Wedding Singer can pack ’em in on sheer novelty. Unfortunately, the two best movies of the year, L.A. Confidential and Boogie Nights couldn’t find enough zingers to edit into the previews.”

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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