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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Wednesday, March 4th, 1998 - Comments Off on Ranting & Raving
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Ranting & Raving

These are the dog days of Hollywood. Sports fans will recognize it as the Swimsuit Period. That’s the time between the end of the Super Bowl and March Madness (that’s the NCAA basketball tournament, for those of you who aren’t sports fans) where there just is no good reason to sit in front of a TV with the testosterone flowing and a six pack by your side. So this is when Sports Illustrated takes advantage of the lull and puts out an issue of semi-nude women that sits on news racks for about a month.
In Hollywood, it’s the December charge that creates the lull; all those “quality” movies hitting screens within two weeks of one another, all hoping for Oscar nominations. Some go wide immediately. Some wait. Some get their nominations. Some don’t. But as a result, January, February and March get very little play outside of the Academy Award push. It’s dump, dump, dump your crappy movies. From the first of the year until last week, the only big studio release worth watching has been The Wedding Singer. The Borrowers is terrific, but it’s marginalized as a kids’ film. Last week, Dark City showed up and was worth a viewing, but audiences so bored by the stream of Blues Brothers 2000s and Deep Risings and Spice Worlds couldn’t get excited enough to leave their houses.
At next week’s convention for theater owners, ShoWest (which The Hot Button will be covering daily starting Tuesday, March 10), exhibitors will be screaming, “We want more quality product in the first quarter!” They scream it every year. But the studios, who have become more aggressive in the non-holiday portions of spring and fall, tend to stay out of the pre-Oscar period. The logic will be obvious if you look at the box office. Three wide releases last week and none passed $6 million. Sphere crashed into the ocean and The Replacement Killers is struggling to generate $20 million domestic.
But which is the chicken and which is the egg? Are the studios holding back product because it’s doomed to fail or is failure inevitable because the material is terrible? Fox took advantage of the lull last year with its Star Wars re-release, effectively making them the only real story of the Swimsuit Period. This year, Titanic took advantage of the lull. I would suggest that audiences sense the lull and don’t trust the films that arrive fresh in the theaters. But with Titanic maintaining the $20 million a week pace for months, how can studios argue that people won’t show up for a good movie?
At least it’s almost over. U.S. Marshals, The Big Lebowski and Hush make this a legitimately big weekend, even though some would say that all three are inferior films that are really being dumped. I haven’t seen them, but that’s the buzz. The Man in the Iron Mask is next, then Primary Colors,and on April 3, the first real mega-movie of the year, Lost In Space. Or is it really the first film of summer?
ROTD: Readers responded to Monday’s “Reader of the Day” by showing a lot of support for Leonardo DiCaprio, especially for his role in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. One reader saw something else in Ryan N’s comment. From Matt B: “Why so much hate toward Ms. Heche? Is it homophobia? Could it be that she does quality films instead of mainstream thoughtless flicks? Perhaps Ryan’s adversity toward Anne Heche speaks more about him than it does her. Don’t worry, Ryan, there will be plenty of mindless, hate-mongering films out there for you to fling your money towards. That just means I won’t have to put up with narrow-minded idiots, like Ryan, when I go to the movies — such as ones that Anne Heche will star in. My view on Anne Heche is that she is a very versatile, talented, character actress.”
Ryan N. responds: “I realized afterwards that my comment bashing Anne Heche in a letter wondering why everyone felt the need to constantly bash Leonardo DiCaprio was pretty hypocritical. I get pretty overzealous when it comes to the stars on my A-list. That said, my problem with Anne Heche has absolutely nothing to do with homophobia. Whom I like to watch on screen depends on how much they appeal to me, and how much their performances consistently move me and impress me — it has nothing to do with their personal life. Anne Heche has never left a positive impression on me. She just doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve never cared much for her performances, or most of the films she has been in. If you think I’m narrow-minded, so be it.”

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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