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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Friday, March 6th, 1998 - Comments Off on The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
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The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

This weekend could be the ugliest yet of the new year. Titanic is likely to lead the pack yet again with about $17 million because the reviews of U.S. Marshals are incredibly bad. It’s a big movie with a couple of big stars, but then again, so was Sphere and that barely opened. Personally, I think that Hush could rise up and take U.S. Marshals by surprise in the race for second spot. Hush just seems to me like a sleeper after months without a good thriller. We’ll see. The Big Lebowski seems like a sure bet to generate at least $10 million from Coen Brothers freaks (like me) alone, which should put it in the top four for sure. And Twilight, which hits a relatively limited number of screens, could be the $2.5 million embarrassment of the weekend. Or worse, all four new releases could take a dive, much like last weekend, except that this weekend, you’re looking at $150 million worth of product that could be hitting the wall in its first week out. Ouch.
THE GOOD: We should be able to say goodbye to Senseless and Krippendorf’s Tribe after this weekend.
THE BAD: Both will turn up on video.
THE UGLY: Nothing really ugly this weekend (and as you can tell from the above, not much good or bad either). In the dictionary under the word mediocre, there is a link to this weekend. I suggest that you go to the Oscar contenders that you haven’t seen yet and get ready for The Man In The Iron Mask, which hits theaters next weekend.
TWO BAD MOVIES EQUAL: Kissing A Fool + The Replacement Killers = Kissing A Killer. After being rebuffed by moviegoers, David Schwimmer goes back to the “Friends” set and mows down the entire cast with a machine gun after Rachel refuses to marry him. (She saw his movie.) The cast is replaced next season by the kids from “Dawson’s Creek.”
JUST WONDERING: Would anyone actually notice if My Giant went right to video?
BAD AD WATCH: I know that Harry Knowles is excited, but could there be any less valuable a critic than the pseudonymous Agent Apple Crisp, whose review is now quoted by Disney in ads for Burn Hollywood Burn? Perhaps. I am saddened that Twilight, a film loaded with incredibly talented people, has to stoop to quoting KMSB-TV, Rolling Stone, Sixty Second Preview, the L.A. Times Syndicate (not the paper), Larry King, KPRC-TV and non-network-level reviews attributed to Fox and NBC.
READER OF THE DAY: From RyanBP: “U.S. Marshals is going to BOMB BOMB BOMB BOMB BOMB. First of all, if you look at the commercials, replace Wesley Snipes with Harrison Ford and you have the trailer to the Fugitive. The producers are doing nothing to distinguish the two films and not much to link the two of them. Said to be “From the producers of The Fugitive,” then touted as being the remake it will probably end up being. I always liked Tommy Lee Jones and Wesley Snipes and wish them the best, but for the future of this film, it looks pretty dim.”

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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