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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, June 16th, 1998 - Comments Off on Son of Spawn
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Son of Spawn

Spike Lee is going to make a movie about New York’s Son of Sam whether we like it or not. After getting some attention with the “And Leo may do it” rumor, the film seems to be settling in with John Leguizamo and Patti LuPone. In addition, Spike is grabbing young Adrien Brody, who is the highest-ranking star in the “in alphabetical order” list of stars of The Thin Red Line. If Spike is lucky, he’ll be getting the same surprise benefit, that is to say above and beyond talent, that Saving Private Ryan is getting with a young, previously little-known actor named Matt Damon. Maybe you’ve heard of him.
THE EDGAR WATCH: Instead of selling off Tropicana, the orange juice giant, to cover the cost of PolyGram, Edgar Bronfman Jr. has decided to take the company public and to use the approximate $3.6 million in revenue created to help cover the cost of the purchase. So, while Bronfman continues to squeeze juice from the oranges, his efforts to make Universal work may be a little less like squeezing blood from a stone.
SPEC CHECK: He has never had a screenplay made (though one is heading toward production next month). He’s known for quirky off-beat material — his “go” project is called Being John Malkovich, and he wrote the screenplay for the Chuck Barris biopic. And he’s a millionaire. After a Thursday bidding war, Charlie Kaufman signed a million-dollar-plus deal for a pitch that is not only great, but had Nicolas Cage attached as the star-to-be. The idea? An unhappy couple goes to a fictional service that can erase portions of your memory and they erase each other and their relationship. Then, they fall in love all over again. Ain’t Hollywood grand?
BATMAN & RAMBO?: Another writer who is hot, hot, hot despite not having any of his movies released, J.D. Zeik, just got about three-quarters-of-a-million to write the next Rambo film. (Zeik’s further along than Kaufman. His Ronin had already been shot with Robert DeNiro starring and will hit screens in the fall.) This is all part of a Miramax gameplan that also has the studio prepping a Total Recall sequel and releasing a Halloween sequel this summer (THB 6/11). Soon, the Brothers Weinstein will be picking up the sequel rights to Piranha, Alligator and Walking Tall.
101 OVATIONS: OK, it’s really 100 even. The American Film Institute is premiering it’s “100 Greatest American Films” on CBS tonight. The list is based on a poll of 1,500 industry types. Is there anyone who doesn’t think that Citizen Kane will win? Tomorrow, rough cut will premiere its 100 Worst American Film list. I didn’t participate in voting for either list. I’m not a big fan of group thinking for better or for worse. I’d ask you to let me know what you think of the two lists, but history tells me that I don’t have to ask. (And by the way, TNT will be running a series based on the AFI list starting June 23. That’s not why I’m writing this, but it may interest you. I’ll probably tune in myself.)
SAVING PRIVATE’S RATING: Once again, Steven Spielberg is in the middle of a ratings brouhaha. First, the PG-13 rating was created as an “antidote” to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Schindler’s List was as harsh a depiction of the holocaust as has ever been put on screen and probably would have drawn the restrictive NC-17 had the film not been, one, Spielberg’s and two, understood to be extremely important. Now, Spielberg has brought such passion and realism to D-Day in Saving Private Ryan that the MPAA has once again toyed with the NC-17. They coughed up the R, but they added unusual language to the rating: “for intense prolonged realistically graphic sequences of war violence, and for language.” This has lead DreamWorks marketing topper Terry Press to clarify the studio’s position that they don’t want kids seeing the film. Another reason for me to fall in love with the fledgling studio. For years, I’ve been saying that NC-17 is a failure because there are some high-quality movies that are simply not for kids. Period. (The first film I thought this was excruciatingly obvious about was Jonathan Demme’s brilliant and incredibly realistically violent Something Wild.) But most studios would take their R and shut up. Not DreamWorks. The studio is respectful of their kids’ movies, clear about their adult movies being for adults and unwilling to cross-promote the meaning out of Prince of Egypt despite a lot of pressure from all sides. Shocking!
JUST WONDERING: He may have been a lover and not a fighter, but French superstar Yves Montand‘s remains have proven that he is not the father of paternity claimant Aurore Drossart. Yes, they dug the poor guy up just to prove that his DNA didn’t match his litigious, deluded faux-son. Will movie stars have to start writing buried wills to go with their living wills and their just plain wills?
RANTING & RAVING: When I wrote about the Premiere article on New Line Cinema over the weekend, my reportage was based on excerpts I had read. I read the whole thing this weekend. And I am still in shock. But probably not the way some people will expect. More tomorrow.
READER OF THE DAY: From Erin P: “I saw Mulan the other day. Is it just me, or does the Eddie Murphy-voiced dragon, while extremely funny with his one-liners, not really fit with the ambiance of the rest of the movie? Both emotionally and in the way Mushu is drawn and colored. It’s very incongruous and kind of jarring, although very necessary for Disney, controlling force in the lives of millions of brainwashed children across the nation. No wisecracking, cute little dragon, no happy meal deal of commercialization. Also, you left out Claire in your flat-chested actress rundown (THB 6/12). Sniff. She’s a role model for us all.”

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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