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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Thursday, May 7th, 1998 - Comments Off on Mad About The Boy
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Mad About The Boy

You have to admire a gal for sticking with her dream. Madonna is hooking up with the infinitely more charming and talented actor Rupert Everett in The Next Best Thing. It’s the story about best friends who decide to have a baby together before the biological clock runs out. Madonna plays Jennifer Aniston. OK, I lied. Jennifer Aniston has had a more successful film career than Madonna.
THAT TINY SUCKING SOUND: Jonathan Lipnicki is taking his cute-kid-with-glasses-and-a-lisp act to The Little Vampire. It’s the story of a little kid who becomes buddies with a little vampire. Watch for the Jerry Maguire mini-star to offer a variation on his signature line, “Do you know that a quart of human blood weighs 3 pounds?”
YOUNG LOVE: Lolita has finally found her place in the sun. She’ll premiere on Showtime (the cabler who had the exclusive on Showgirls), starting this August. This has been a long-winded saga, but it is now finally over. Someday, someone will find out the real story behind all this. It still makes no sense that if the producer (Guild-Pathe) was willing to make the right deal, that Miramax or October wouldn’t release the film in the U.S. No doubt they’ve released far more controversial material. I still think the budget ($58 million) meant the asking price was just too high. All this controversy will be more valuable in the home video and foreign markets than a $10 million 300-screen domestic release. And by the way, all of this inspired me to read the Vladimir Nabokov classic while on vacation last week. It was great. Better than I would have ever guessed. I haven’t seen the current version, but the novel is one of the funniest pieces of writing you could ever read. Just terrific. I hate to recommend reading, but have someone rip the cover off the book before you start and you’ll never know the difference.
N IS FOR NUMBSKULL: Quentin Tarantino continues not to get it. The New York Post‘s Page Six reports that QT got into a brawl at a restaurant. (Just like with his last fight. Maybe it’s a blood sugar problem.) Turns out that Tarantino was explaining to his companions that African-Americans have wide noses by sticking his fingers up his nose, spreading his nostrils and saying, “You know what they all have! It’s the wide nose!” What brilliant dialogue! I guess the black couple who overheard this delightful comedic insight and took offense simply didn’t understand why a gawky white boy should be given a free ride when it comes to racial disrespect. Or maybe they had just seen Jackie Brown. When controversy cropped up over the use of one particularly ugly racial slur at least a 100 times in that film, Quentin explained that the term was just part of the world in which he grew up. Doesn’t sound like he grew up at all.
U OUGHT TO KNOW BETTER: Universal owner Edgar Bronfman Jr. seems to have a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease. First, he got smacked around for suggesting premium pricing for movies while his company has very few premium movies. In his capacity as owner of Seagrams, he’s been open about wanting more liquor advertising. Now, he’s in New York Magazine calling Hollywood a “dumb town.” I can’t say I disagree with that last sentiment, but you better show you can tame this monster before calling everyone else stupid. Right now, Bronfman, as a studio owner, seems like Bill Holden in Sunset Boulevard — floating dead in the water while narrating his own story. (Sorry if I ruined the ending for any of you. It has been 48 years.)
The company has lost Spielberg, is almost completely beholden to Imagine Entertainment (which has led to speculation that Imagine producer Brian Grazer will take over Universal) and seems to be without a clear direction, other than down. Bronfman is also freewheeling in shooting barbs at former Universal chairman Lew Wasserman. After all, Wasserman only built and maintained a major studio, from before TV and into the video age. He built the only studio theme park, outside of Disney, of any value, giving his studio consistent cash flow in less successful years in the movie business.
And while all the other studios were maintaining their lots or selling off parcels for condos, Wasserman was expanding his backlot, again creating another consistent income stream. In his final years, there were barbs to throw at Wasserman and his team, no doubt, but blaming the previous management only holds for so long. Besides, it would be a lot smarter to shut up and let Warner Bros. take all the heat. The difference is this: WB toppers Semel and Daly know that blaming others won’t work. You’ve got to just keep going. That’s why they have seen studio heads and owners change at every studio in town over their tenure. They’re the sole survivors. And I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. Bronfman.
CONTEST WINNER: Only three of you got the top four right. And two got the Top Five, Joe Oliver of Granite City, IL and Feng-Ying Shih of Bryn Mawr, PA. (Yeah, you’ll get something for hitting the Top Four, Donovan Pagtakhan of Vancouver, BC.) This week, it’s Deep Impact and Woo opening wide. And this week’s top contest winner will get prizes from both. Runner-ups will just Woo it! Start calculating now!
READER OF THE DAY: Michael P wrote: “Can you tell me why Gwyneth Paltrow is being such a bitch bad mouthing Titanic right and left? (I read this in TV Guide around the time of the Oscars. She said, ‘I’d rather anything win than Titanic.’ She has also been quoted in several tabloids saying she does not know what everyone sees in Titanic.) After three film flops in a row, she must be secretly wishing she hadn’t turned down the role of Rose in Titanic. Or maybe she was turned down for the role. I will not pay to see another film of hers!”

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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