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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Thursday, June 11th, 1998 - Comments Off on Summer Excitement
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Summer Excitement

The other day when I asked whether you all were excited about anything except The X-Files and Armageddon, the No. 1 response, by far, was “We want Saving Private Ryan.” (Mr. Spielberg will be pleased to know that The Mask of Zorro was the second most looked forward to film.) The odd part was that people seemed to think I wasn’t excited about anything other than X and A. Not true. I was just wondering how you all felt. I still think there will be some great surprise films this summer. Maybe not the biggest money-makers, but some quirky, great stuff. That said, I am excited to be at The X-Files premiere tonight. You can be there, too. Just click on the link on the right side of this page. The one with The X-Files logo. See you there.
EYE ON LEO: As the American Psycho debacle looks like more than Leonardo DiCaprio wants to take on, Universal has stepped into the batter’s cage with Bombshell: The Secret Story of America’s Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy. They just hired a writer to pen a screenplay from the book of the same very long title. And this one has the pedigree of already having DiCaprio’s manager Nick Weschler and Leo’s father, George, attached as producers. It’s the true story about the youngest member of the Manhattan Project team, who it turns out, gave secrets to the Soviet Union, perhaps being responsible, in his actions, for starting the Cold War. Don’t expect Universal to balk at Leo’s $20 million price tag. When studios are perceived to be in trouble, they tend to overspend. When Ron Meyer was hired to run the studio, he tried to prove the studio’s mettle by signing Stallone to a three-picture-$20- million-per contract. Everyone laughed. Some studios buy $1 million specs when they need respect. Leo could be Universal’s $20 million feather in their cap.
MORE TITANIC: The video of Titanic that hits stores September 1 will be the same version you saw in theaters. But Jim Cameron promises an extended version, or at least a version with a number of scenes that were cut reattached sometime soon. (Guess November, just in time for X-Mas buying.) Thank goodness we’ll finally see the rest of the gun chase with Billy Zane LeGreed. And the back story on that guy who fell to his death while Kate and Leo held on will take your breath away! (Anyone catch Gloria Stuart in the new Hanson video acting opposite Weird Al Yankovic? Scary!)
EVEN SCARIER: Miramax is entering the summer fray with their Halloween sequel (the seventh), H2O, which reunites Jamie Lee Curtis with Michael Myers (the murderer, not Austin Powers) on the 20th anniversary of the horror classic. After scheduling H2O for late September, a more traditional release period for teen horror films, they’ve moved the film’s release to August 5, putting it directly into the path of MGM’s Disturbing Behavior, a teen horror flick starring “Dawson Creek”‘s Katie Holmes. Why? Miramax says that H2O has outscored Scream in test screenings, which would make the move to summer completely sensible. My guess is that Miramax has decided Disturbing Behavior, which was written by Con Air scribe Scott Rosenberg and is directed by “The X-Files” TV director David Nutter, is a miss. In fact, Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein has warned MGM off the date. One little problem. H2O will also have to fight off Snake Eyes, the Nic Cage/Brian DePalma thriller which opens on August 7. The next weekend doesn’t ease up any either with The Avengers and Virus hitting theaters. Perhaps Weinstein has Scream in mind. The sleeper sensation started with just a $6 million weekend, but ran for seven months, never earning less than $1 million a weekend, and ending up with over $100 million domestically. By opening in August, Weinstein probably is looking for a run of at least 15 weeks, taking the film all the way to, when else, Halloween.
MY LAST GODZILLA THEORY: Word has it that Dean Devlin was going toe-to-toe with Godzilla bashers on the Godzilla Website’s bulletin board. Don’t run over there. The board has been shut down to keep Devlin from ruining his relationship with his core audience even further. But let me float this idea. Had Godzilla been ready a month or two before its release, in time to test screen the film, Sony, Devlin and Emmerich would have likely gotten a clear sense of how audiences reacted to the new-style monster. Had that happened, they may well have abandoned the “veil of secrecy” campaign they ran and diffused the backlash before it happened. The hyper-anticipation would be deflated somewhat and, I suspect, the harsh reactions to the film with it. What do you think?
HOPE SINKS: Last weekend, Hope Floats was reviewed on “Siskel & Ebert” (which continues to be Roger and a telephone, with Siskel calling in from his recovery bed). Or more to the point, the film was reviewed by Ebert because Fox didn’t get Siskel a copy of the film on tape for his review. Siskel was generous on air, saying that Fox “wasn’t able” to get the film to him. Bull. Fox has a film that’s been in release for two weeks and had a lot more to lose than gain by having a Siskel review of the film. What does this say about the power of these two critics and the cold, professional cynicism with which Hollywood approaches them? Too much. I didn’t think Hope Floats was a bad film, and I hate to defend the rights of the Thumbs Up team (like they need me to fight their fights), but it sure seems like bad form by Fox to me.
MEATBALL SPICE: Were you worried about who would replace Ginger Spice? Well, Luciano Pavarotti filled in on Tuesday in the group’s first appearance since Ginger turned back into Geri. The concert took place in Modena, Italy and was filmed for TV by who else, but…Spike Lee? Yes, Spike directed the show, which was a charity benefit for the children of Liberia.
READER OF THE DAY: From Chatroissy: “I do [care about screenwriters]. But I’m a writer, so I’m obviously biased. I think most writers recognize that movies are a collaborative effort, blah, blah, blah. It’s surely a trial, though, to open up a posh mag like The New Yorker to confront: ‘Peter Weir‘s The Truman Show.’ I mean come on. As I read the review I was actually grateful that Anthony ‘Smug Bastard’ Lane mentioned Andrew Niccol’s name. Is there a snowball’s chance in hell that this auteurist stuff will crawl away and die. (Weir is a great director by the way.) The average moviegoer, in response to your original question, doesn’t give a monkey’s *@#& who wrote or directed it unless it’s Spielberg.”

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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