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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Thursday, March 12th, 1998 - Comments Off on SoWest: Day Three
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SoWest: Day Three

The biggest news of Day Three was that there was almost no news at all. For years, Warner Bros. has thrown the Wednesday luncheon event, proclaiming, “Wednesday is Warner Day!” Not this year. Between Batman and Robin, Mad City and the underperforming L.A. Confidential and Conspiracy Theory, Warner Bros. had little to crow about. And their only big film currently in production, Lethal Weapon 4, is in such a production rush to meet the summer release date, the stars probably couldn’t afford to spend even four hours in Vegas doing promotion. But Warner did end up with some representation on Day Three. After no studio came forward to sponsor an evening event for the day, Warner Bros. coughed up prints of a dozen Warner classics (Goodfellas being the only one from the last decade) for event-goers to enjoy on the big screen. But the evening spawned a running joke that took a page from yesterday’s Sony event, which had a theme of “what are you gonna give us this year?” The joke was, of course, that Warner would be giving us a bunch of old movies in 1998, since they had nothing better. Ouch.
New Line did take up the lunchtime slack, but the event was a slacker, even by New Line standards. The studio, which I think had a magnificent 1997, has become a bit of a ShoWest joke. Why? Their food. One year, conventioneers found bread sitting on their tables when they entered the massive ballroom (2,500 minimum are served in the main room every meal). So, people ate the bread. When the cold cuts that were meant to join the bread in sandwiches arrived, there was no bread left. Last year, the studio tried to be clever and promote the time-shift comedy Austin Powers with ’50s-style lunch trays. But the reproduction was a little too accurate. More than one ShoWester was heard asking waitresses, “What is that?!” It was turkey with a yellow sauce. I can’t tell you whether it tasted good because I fed mine to the cat. In any case, this year there was a very nice salmon lunch. But New Line wasn’t adding to their ShoWest budget. We got the fish, but we got no New Line souvenirs of any kind. Not even a Lost in Space key ring. And believe me, the people who come here, no matter how much money they have, want their key rings (or clocks, studio bags, T-shirts, mugs or baseball caps). Even worse, the parade of New Line stars was fairly weak. And none of them did anything but march onto the dais and sit down to lunch. Not a speech in the group. Not smart.
The product reel was a mixed bag. New Line is clearly devolving (or re- evolving, if you like) to their original vision as independent-minded filmmakers. If you don’t know, the studio started chasing higher budget scripts and film projects when Ted Turner bought the company. Since we became part of the Time/Warner family, New Line has been working overtime, with Ted’s blessings, to go independent again. As a result, the last of these Turner-era tentpoles is Lost In Space, with no other blockbusters in sight. The product reel for the rest of ’98 marked a return to genre films, many of them directed at black audiences, and art product from offspring, Fine Line Features.
The most promising films were: Rush Hour (the action comedy pairing of Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan), American History X (a drama about a family dealing with a history of bigotry and hate). Living Out Loud (a Holly Hunter film about a woman who finds herself after a difficult divorce). But best of all was Pleasantville, a comedy about a couple of 1990s kids who get sucked into the black and white world of a ’50s sitcom. Very clever, very funny and very heartwarming. (I’m an old softy, huh?) Blade looks like it may be OK, but the buzz hasn’t been great.
Woo is Jada Pinkett Smith‘s first solo lead in a major film and was terrific in the footage, but it was hard to tell whether it’s a one-note film from the little we saw. The Players Club, from director/writer/star Ice Cube, looks like it could be good, but it could just be brutality and sex. And Pecker, the new John Waters comedy, went without footage. A personal disappointment.
Tomorrow, it’s Miramax and the ShoWest Awards. If you’ve missed the last couple days, check out Day One and Day Two .
P.S. More about DreamWorks’ event in Saturday’s wrap-up and in next week’s feature. I’ll leave you with this. It was the best ShoWest party I’ve ever attended.
P.S.S. More on Godzilla. (Warning: Stop reading now if you don’t want to know what Godzilla looks like) I saw Godzilla today. He’s got three rows of sharp fins running down his back with blue highlights, much like the colors on some dinosaurs. Like a crocodile, his belly is a lighter shade of his overall skin tone. And he has the arms that Tyrannosaurus Rex wishes he had. More later.

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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