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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, July 21st, 1998 - Comments Off on
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DISCLAIMER: Sorry all. Column’s a little lightweight today. Must be the full moon last night. Oh, there wasn’t a full moon last night? Damn. Maybe I should blame my mother. Nah, she’s already taking the rap for global warming. Don’t want to overload her. I’ll take the heat and promise to push the envelope the rest of the week. And read on. Maybe I’m being a little too harsh on myself. (Why should I be the only one to escape my wrath?)
PITT PUFFS FROM PIPE: Is anyone else’s favorite Brad Pitt performance his turn as the pothead roommate in the Tony Scott-directed/Tarantino-written/Elmore Leonard (and every other pulp fiction writer dead or alive)-ripoff classic, True Romance? Well, maybe it’s Brad’s too. Or maybe he caught Sean Penn in The Falcon and the Snowman on cable last week. Whatever the reason, Pitt is all-but-attached to Smuggler’s Moon, the true story of two brothers who appeared to be wealthy documentarians (that should have given them away right there), but were really pot smugglers. Pitt’s interest inspired New Line to cough up more than a million bucks to the brothers who will be receiving their big, legal check (shhh, the IRS may be listening) just eight months after getting out of Lompoc Prison.
FRANCIS, THE TALKING STUDIO CHIEF: What would you do if you won $80 million in a lawsuit against Warner Bros.? Well, if you were Francis Ford Coppola, you’d resurrect Zoetrope Studios, the on again-off again mini-mini-major that Francis has been breathing and sucking life from in alternate five-year spans for more than two decades now. Coppola is planning on knocking out four to six movies a year under the banner, splitting foreign and domestic rights in order to finance the work on smaller ($2 – $5 million) pictures while taking the big projects through the studio sludge. As for his own directing work, he’ll be doing another epic and another musical, plots undivulged at this time. With Spielberg in World War II, Soderburgh in the ’70s and Coppola being financed by Warner Bros., albeit unwillingly, to go back to his future, the cry for the great gritty filmmaking of the past may finally be coming into its own.
WHY GRANDMA, WHAT BIG CHEEKS YOU HAVE!: Last Friday, I joked about There’s Something About Madeline, directed by Roman Polanski. But Pippi Longstocking creator Astrid Lindgren probably wouldn’t think my joke was too funny. Interview magazine has apparently spoofed Pippi in a series of “erotically charged photos” (that’s according to Variety). I guess she won’t be signing off on the Larry Clark/Harmony Korine version, Pippi Does Manhattan, with Chloé Sevigny as the sassy redhead.
PEOPLE, PEOPLE WHO NEED FACTCHECKERS: People magazine, the bastion of insightful reporting, reported rumors last week that Tom Hanks was buying a Malibu house for the Clintons to retire to when they leave the Oval Office. It’s that old real estate saw, “location, location, location,” as the First Family indulges in proximity to Jodie Foster, Demi Moore and Charlie Sheen. The family that plays together, stays together. Of course, the whole thing is untrue, as Tom Hanks debunked the report. Next week, People will be running the story of Bobby Brown doing rehab in the Lincoln Bedroom.
FARRELLY THEY ROLL ALONG: For guys who are so original in their vision, The Brothers Farrelly sure like to piggyback off other people’s ideas. Looks like they’ll stay at Fox for their next project, a space comedy called The Space Man, based on a pitch by David Dorfman. There’s Something About Mary also started as someone else’s script (Ed Dector’s and John Strauss’) before the boys got their gooey hands on it. Ironically, the one project they don’t seem to be clamoring to make is the film of brother Pete’s best-selling novel, The Comedy Writer.
HERE’S ZORRO IN YOUR EYE: Antonio Banderas has made life safe for himself in New York. No, not because muggers will be afraid of him now that he’s Zorro. But because he has decided to pass on the role of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. A good choice for Antonio considering that for a great cup of joe in New York City, you have to go to a Greek diner. Considering the Greeks really hate the Turkish and didn’t want to see Ataturk made into a hero. And considering that urine and spit do nothing for the flavor of coffee.
CHATTING: This Friday, my weekly chat premieres on Yahoo! Come on by — 5:00 p.m. ET/ 2:00 p.m. PT.
EYEBALLS: About half the people who won eyeballs in the The Beyond contest haven’t sent addresses. So, eyeballs will be sent to everyone who did cough up their location today. The rest of you will just have to go third eye blind.
READER OF THE DAY: AJ wrote: “Damn! That was a FUNNY movie. I haven’t laughed that hard during a movie in a long while. Thank God the Farrelly Bros. have the gonads to do what they wanna do! I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a funnier moment in a movie, or sicker one for that matter, than when Stiller opens the door for Diaz with [joke censored for your comedy protection]! By the way, next week I’ll see Saving Private Ryan AND Mafia!. That’s almost as weird as watching ‘Jeopardy’ and ‘Wheel of Fortune’ in the same hour.”

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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