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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, September 21st, 2004 - 2 Comments »
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Sucking It Up Like A Sponge

Paramount did a series of presentations for The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie today, hosted by Tom Kenny and Bill Fagerbakke, who voice Sponge and his best friend/sidekick, Patrick Starfish.

There was an odd genius to the presentation, as you walked into the small screening room and were faced with a gigantic SpongeBob in every seat. There were, indeed, inanimate. But still, there was something powerful about their presence in the room. My niece, the only human in the room that represented the target demographic, let out a squeal of shock and delight that still makes me smile.

Tom and Bill came out and introduced the half dozen or so clips. And I have to say, the film got me to laugh hard enough to shut my eyes at least three times, Patrick or Plankton being the culprit in each case.

I was also struck by the visual style of the film. Director/Creator Stephen Hillenburg has a very specific style of having his characters play almost everything directly to the camera, making the visual experience much like theater. The camera rarely wanders inside a scene, between characters or offering much perspective on the happenings. Perhaps the dynamic represents the visual style of watching a fish tank. I’m not exactly sure why the aesthetic exists… Hillenburg was not at the screening. But moving a TV show, animated or not, to the big screen can be treacherous. And this variation of style strikes me as one of the reasons why SpongeBob doesn’t feel “just” like a larger version of the same old show.

After the clips, Fagerbakke and Kenny hung around and talked shop. Neither could have been any more gracious.

All in all, a very good event that left me wanting more. And my niece… she was in Bikini Bottom heaven.

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2 Comments »

2 Responses to “Sucking It Up Like A Sponge”

  1. Ace Roberts says:
    September 22, 2004 at 5:44 am

    I speculated months ago that Paramount would succeed with SpongeBob because the target audience is clear, and the fan base is set. I’m now interested in seeing how they handle Team America, Lemony Snicket, and Sahara where perhaps that isn’t the case. Especially Sahara!

  2. bicycle bob says:
    September 22, 2004 at 6:55 am

    who doens’t love sponge bob???
    ur right dave. must be really slow news if you’re talking about this.

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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