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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

X Marks The Spot

I’ve been getting lots of e-mail asking for my take on The X-Files movie (not technically called Fight The Future. Just, apparently, a half-hearted attempt to differentiate the film from the TV show). The reason I haven’t said much is that I know X-philes are looking forward to this film like the second coming. I don’t want to fight that future. As I’ve said before, with movies I am really looking forward to, I won’t even read reviews ahead of time. I end up thinking about what the reviewer said during the movie and that’s no fun. So, I’ll just say this for now. It’s the best season ending and season opening TV show ever. I don’t know how much X-philes will love it. (Please let me know after you see it.) Probably a lot. If you have been a casual viewer of the show, you will get it, but I doubt you will be overwhelmed. And if you have never seen the show, this is not the best way to get started on the series. More on Monday, after the “must-see” viewers have seen the movie.
100 BALLOTS OF BILGE ON THE WALL: AFI’s “100 Greatest American Films” list hit CBS on Tuesday night. Citizen Kane was tops. Shocker. The list was way too conservative, and there were some gross miscalculations. Casablanca is the second-best American film of all time? I think not. I have great respect for Schindler’s List, but number nine? No. Godfather II at No. 32? Please! Birth of a Nation will certainly turn heads. An important film, but one of the 100 best? I would bet money that 75 percent of the voters have never seen Birth of a Nation. And Pulp Fiction doesn’t belong on the list. It isn’t even Tarantino’s best film (Reservoir Dogs was better, particularly as a director.) Oh, well. Such is the treachery of polls. (AFI polled 1,500 people.) At least there were no bad films on the list. My request for your choices of movies that would be missed produced these titles: A Midnight Clear, Broadcast News, House of Games, The Conversation, A Perfect World, Road to Morocco, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, The Shawshank Redemption, The Last Picture Show, Blue Velvet, Birdy, Harold and Maude, Risky Business, River’s Edge and Deliverance. Do the Right Thing got multiple entries with some detail about Spike Lee being dissed in general.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Vote for your 101st best movie, and win a USSB satellite system and free service for one year.
UN-TRU-MAN: A playwright who says he was wronged, Mark Dunn, has sued Paramount for $200 million claiming that The Truman Show was based on his play Frank’s Story. Dunn will also be suing The Twilight Zone, Paul Bartel for his Secret Cinema, MTV’s “The Real World,” “Cops,” “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” the FBI, the CIA, and HBO (and their “Taxicab Confessions”) just as soon as he files his claim against Nora Dunn for stealing his last name.
PASSING THE BUCKS: John Krier, a real sweet man who also happened to be the man who founded Exhibitor Relations, the company that gets everyone their box offices numbers each day, passed away over the weekend. The last time I saw him was at ShoWest at the DreamWorks event. Not a young man, he gamely hustled along with the crowd from buses to theaters to Gameworks, with a smile on his face, never complaining for a second. He always brought a certain humanity to a business that sometimes forgets the individual. He will be missed.
KING OF THE STARS: Jim Cameron told graduates of Carleton University that he wants to go to space and make a documentary about the building of the International Space Station. In fact, he’s put a call into NASA toward that end. Apparently, the space geeks want Cameron to stop stalling and make Spiderman (I made that up.). In deference to the Titanic titan, friends who saw Cameron at another honorary event, this time at UCLA, said that he was incredibly modest and genial toward the crowd. Good show.
HOLD THE HOISIN: The first global Happy Meal promotion project between Disney and McDonald’s started on Tuesday in 10 countries across the globe with Mulan characters. McDonald’s decided not to match the theme and financial expectations for Mulan by creating inedible Mushu Cheeseburgers and Soy Tofu McNuggets. (I hope the movie is great. And that it exceeds low expectations. Just for the record.)
READER OF THE DAY: A GREAT letter from Kathleen M. I don’t like to run reader gossip, but this kind of catch is just outstanding. “Just a little disillusioned here. I check the Turner Classic Movies monthly listings religiously to check for noir titles I haven’t seen yet. They put next month’s titles into the search engine before they are added to the calendar. So last week I punch in 193* (to get all the upcoming films for July from the 1930s) and one of the first listings is: ‘7/5/98 3:00 AM — Remember? (1939) A bickering couple takes an amnesia potion so they can re-discover each other. Robert Taylor, Greer Garson, Lew Ayres. D: Norman Z. McLeod. BW 84m.’ And I think, what a great idea! Somebody could update that. I confess to being a currently recovering aspiring screenwriter, so I let the idea just pass into the back of my mind. Imagine my surprise when I go to your column and read your story on Charlie Kaufman and his great pitch! (THB 06/16) This just all seems like a bit too much of a coincidence for me. The plot of an old ’30s movie, just after it is announced to play on cable, is pitched to the studios. Of course, it had to be a pitch, not a script, somebody might see Remember? when it shows in July and realize what is going on.”
And this from David: “And how on EARTH is A Clockwork Orange an American film????? It’s a British novel, by a British director, filmed in Britain with British actors!” Good point. I love Kubrick, but David’s right.

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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