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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Responding To The John Horn Piece In The LA Times Today

Besides the factual inaccuracy about Paramount and Universal "declining" to participate, here is what I have to say:

Kinsey
Sideways

The Incredibles

Born Into Brothels
Z Channel:  A Magnificent Obsession

The Sea Inside

Beyond The Sea

Phantom of the Opera

Alexander

Closer

House of Flying Daggers

The Aviator
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
A Love Song For Bobby Long
The Assassination of Richard Nixon

No one could ask for a finer list of films to have shown.

Thanks to Fox Searchlight, Disney, IFC, ThinkFilm, New Line/Fine Line, Lions Gate, Warner Bros, Columbia, Sony Classics, Miramax and Paramount for their participation in the screening series… and for paying the cost of renting the theater.

Also, thanks to the studios that did not have films in the series this year, but that made the effort to try to make dates work, even when they ultimately could not.

And to the volunteer staff, who came out week after week to mkae sure things ran smoothly with no promise of anything but a hand shake and a thank you.

And of course, to Bill Condon, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor, John Walker, Craig T. Nelson, Xan Cassavetes, Kevin Spacey, Joel Schumacher, Jared Leto, Colin Farrell, Rosario Dawson, John Logan, Graham King, Brad Silberling, Billy Connolly, Bill Corso, Colleen Atwood, Cheryl Carasik, John Travolta, Scarlet Johannson, Gabriel Macht and Deborah Kira Unger for coming out and sharing their time, their humor and their insights with fellow members of the industry.

It was, indeed, one of the most fun events on the awards season calendar, week in, week out.

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8 Responses to “Responding To The John Horn Piece In The LA Times Today”

  1. Mark says:

    That is a monster list of good films. What films did you want that you couldn’t get, Dave?

  2. teambanzai says:

    The LA Times, as all of us that live in Southern California are well aware has the worst industry reporting of any newspaper so it’s no surprise when something like this happens. Isn’t Horn one of the reporters Tribune brought in from one of their other properties?

  3. David Poland says:

    As an awards-related event, one would clearly like to get all the serious contenders. But we were very specific about our dates going in and it didn’t always work out.
    The great get would have been Million Dollar Baby on Nov 29. So much of the experience of that film is seeing it fresh and without any expectations. To offer that would have been one of the many highlights of this year.
    I have to say, last night, seeing the pride of John Travolta and Scarlett Johnasson, who really drove the film into existance with her mom, was fantastic.
    Next year, one of my key interests is in making more slots for docs and foreign language films. They desevre it and audiences love them. To do this, we will need a presenting sponsor who is willing to lay out a decent amount of cash, but that is always possible. I would far prefer that studios pay nothing, whether for big movies or small.

  4. teambanzai says:

    I heard about Born into Brothels on NPR last week and it sounds fantastic.

  5. Ray Pride says:

    For non-Angelenos, I guess it’s good they hide Horn’s pissiness behind a (subscription) wall.

  6. bicycle bob says:

    really top notch selections

  7. oobie says:

    Somewhere lost in this discussion is the main thrust of Horn’s piece: That the BFCA is attempting to become the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which is fine. Who cares? But Horn examines the membership of the group and find their credentials to be even more suspect and compromised than those of the much vilified HFPA.

  8. jougina says:

    seeking film i watched on z channel but cant remember the name…are monthly program guides available…thanks

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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?

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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.

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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.”
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“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