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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Thursday, May 14th, 1998 - Comments Off on Movies By Numbers
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Movies By Numbers

I’m on my way to New York City as you read this. I love New York. I lived there for years, graduating NYU film school and starting my career in the TV business. Seems like a long time ago. I would love to move back to NYC, but the truth is, as much as I fight it, if you want to really understand the film business, you have to be here in L.A. Movies here are like fluoride in the water, smog in the air and cheesy come-ons at the SkyBar. You can’t escape them. But I am thrilled to be heading to the city that never sleeps for a few days. Things will continue as normal here at The Hot Button. Enter the Box Office Contest ASAP, read about the weekend to come tomorrow and check out New By The Numbers on Saturday. I’ll see you on Monday with the weekend wrap-up and a live chat at 3:00 EST/12:00 PST about New York, Godzilla or anything else you want to talk about. Until then, here’s some news to chew on.
MOVIES BY NUMBER: What in the name of Uncle Walt is Disney thinking?! In the “repeating the same mistake twice category,” the studio that brought you Super Mario Bros.: The Movie just set the feature version of Inspector Gadget as their tentpole film for next summer. If the idea of Disney turning another cartoon into a movie doesn’t make you sick (and let’s not even mention Judge Dredd) let’s look at the casting. Take a star coming off a big effects film (Bob Hoskins, as Mario, coming off Roger Rabbit then/Matthew Broderick, as Gadget, coming off Godzilla now) and add a quirky, charming up-and-comer whom you expect to breakthrough soon (John Leguizamo then/Rupert Everett now). All they need is a two-person-team of unconventional directors who have never done a big-budget film. (Let’s see if Disney hires the Can’t Hardly Wait team of Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan). At least the screenplay for this one offers a simple and clear story. Gadget is blown to pieces and is rebuilt with telescoping arms and legs complete with gadgets. The villain (played by Everett) just loses a hand, which is replaced with a gadget-laced prosthetic. What do you mean that’s not a story?
MORE MICKEY MOUSING: Disney’s top animated composer, Alan Menken, received an award from BMI this week and let it slip that he’s working on a project with Alice Cooper. They are working on an animated version of Dracula in which the Count becomes famous for sucking blood, but then gets tired of having to live up to the rep after becoming a middle-aged vampire. Songs include: “Sucking The Love From You,” “You May Live Forever, But Your Breath Still Stinks,” “Death-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” and the film’s love theme (to be recorded as a single by Puff Daddy in conjunction with Sting), “Every Pint You Take.” Of course, I made all that up, except for the Alice Cooper collaboration. And who knows?
BOX OFFICE XENOPHOBIA: What was the No. 1 film in Germany last week? Why of course, Mr. Magoo! Don’t laugh, oh, friends of Italian descent. It was No. 2 in Italy. Not doing nearly as well in the Boot Nation was I Know What You Did Last Summer, whose title may well have had it mistaken for a sex comedy. Other stiffs on the foreign front include: Deep Rising, Mercury Rising, Event Horizon, U.S. Marshals, A Thousand Acres, The Man Who Knew Too Little, Blues Brothers 2000 and Great Expectations, proving once again that it’s a small world after all. In the winners column is Alien: Resurrection, which has already pulled in $103.3 million overseas and of course, Titanic, which now floats at $1.08 billion overseas.
BITE THE TITANIC: It had to happen. New Line just bought the screenplay to the first Titanic spoof, Gigantic. The story is about a boat that was 2.5 inches shorter than Titanic, so it missed out on the publicity. Shorter. Two and a half inches shorter. What do you mean, that’s not all that funny? It’s funny! New Line paid $350,000 against $500,000 for the screenplay! It’s damned funny! Laugh, damn you! Laugh!
READER OF THE DAY: Kim B wrote: “Well, I must say that while I wasn’t completely bored, Deep Impact did not flow as well as I would have liked. The effects were incredible, unfortunately, we only got 10 minutes or less of effects at the end of the flick … The scariest thought? Armageddon is essentially 2 hours plus the worst part of Deep Impact (the drilling scene on the comet). I guess we have to hope that Armageddon has some Deep Impact with Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck (sorry about that one, had to)…”

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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