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By Other Voices voices@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, December 2nd, 2003 - Comments Off on The MCN 100: The First Incarnation
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The MCN 100: The First Incarnation

Welcome To The First Incarnation Of The MCN 100.

THE MCN 100 is a voting group of 100 film journalists from across the globe – representing print, television, radio and the internet. Members have been drawn from some of the best known and most obscure publications in the world in hopes of finding a balance that no other critics group attempts.

The poll you will see in the following pages is a work-in-progress. The MCN 100 is being built in the spirit of absolute democracy. No meetings, no awards shows, no dinners, no advertising… nothing but 100 opinions from knowledgeable, professional film watchers. As a result, calling the first vote turned out to be a little more complicated than expected.

The rest of the 100 membership will be introduced weekly and added to the polling until the group is at capacity. The next group will join the 100 next Tuesday

In this first vote, MCN 100 members will vote “Bests” in the categories of Picture, Director, Screenwriter, Actor, Actress, Documentary and Foreign Language Film. Again, in the spirit of a wide-open field, MCN is not making distinctions as to Lead vs. Supporting Acting or Original vs. Adapted Screenplay or even in what year a documentary or foreign language film belongs. Each voter makes those decisions for themselves.

There is also the Key Movies That Have Not Yet Been Seen category. The list is long. Only a handful of our participants have seen Lord of the Rings: Return of the King or Cold Mountain, for instance. The correction of these absences will be reflected in future, as theMCN 100 grows into maturity.

Key Movies I Have Not Seen That I Should Have Before Voting

Votes
 Title
25
 Lord of The Rings
21
 Cold Mountain
8
 Big Fish
6
 21 Grams
6
 The Fog Of War
5
 House of Sand & Fog
5
 The Last Samurai
3
 Peter Pan
3
 In America
2
 Girl With A Pearl Earring
2
 Big Fish
2
 The Company
2
 Lost In Translation
2
 The Triplettes Of Belleville
2
 Monster
Bad Santa
Boat Trip
Cheaper By The Dozen
City of God
Gigli
Good Bye, Lenin
Magdalene Sisters
Master & Commander
Mona Lisa Smile
Mystic River
Paycheck
Rana’s Wedding
Shattered Glass
Spellbound
Stuck On You
Sylvia
The Cooler
The Life of David Gale
The Missing
The Station Agent
Whale Rider
Winged Migration
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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