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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

A New Lion Roars

While MGM is fading away and Miramax is retooling as an indie again, there is one indie player who is quietly building what they hope will be the next major mini in the world… Lions Gate.

The stock is going crazy because people are seeing the company, the one really big indie left on the board, as a takeover target. But Jon Feltheimer & Co. are behaving more like predators than prey. In the last week, they announced an aggressive plan to get further into the doc business, announced plans to raise over $125 million, and played the unexpectedly gruff John Travolta card in the Oscar race.

They also have the stability of a film library of over 6000 titles, which they add to by dozens every year.
The danger and the opportunity for this company is divining the next step. Do you spend more to make bigger hits? Do you lie in wait for a next Blair Witch? Do you remain happy to groove in an 8% return every year?

Of course, in a tight film biz world, these are great worries to have.

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One Response to “A New Lion Roars”

  1. BrotherhoodOfSteel says:

    I just happen to look at a Lion’s Gate catalog today
    and notice they have all sorts of the oddest titles this side of Troma.
    They have a movie on their catalog called, “SHREAK.”
    Now that’s just comedy.
    But hey; who doesnt need a new major indie in the world?
    Someone not owned by some other fat cats? BRILLIANT!
    Let us hope, someone like, say NBC UNIVERSAL, do not
    get a bug up their arses, and want to purchase their
    own sort of indie arm or something like that.

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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