MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Great V-sar's Ghost!

James Purefoy, the guy playing Marc Antony in HBO’s new show, Rome, is the guy who ended up being let go from the role of V, replaced by Hugo Weaving, in V for Vendetta.

Be Sociable, Share!

12 Responses to “Great V-sar's Ghost!”

  1. Sanchez says:

    After watching Rome, the only question I got is Why?

  2. cullen says:

    Purefoy is an excellent actor…and as usual HBO knocked another show totally out of the park with Rome. I bet when V for Vendetta comes out next March and BOMBS, he’ll be happy he was removed from the movie.

  3. joefitz84 says:

    V will not be a bomb. It has too good a pedigree for a bomb.

  4. cullen says:

    nobody will want to see a movie where the main character is a terrorist bomber and the trailer looks like nothing more than re-hashed action ideas from the matrix and every other comic book movie/graphic novel adaptation. i don’t know…i just don’t see anyone getting excited for this movie other than fans of the comic.

  5. Eric says:

    I agree with Cullen, I don’t see a bright future for V for Vendetta. There’s just not enough brains behind the movie to make it the first successful Alan Moore adaptation.
    I’ve got to disagree with you, Joe, if the pedigree you’re referring to is the Wachowskis. I was wholly disenchanted by the final Matrix film. I do believe they can do sterling work, but their involvement is no guarantor of quality.

  6. jeffmcm says:

    People will be perfectly happy to see V for Vendetta given that it’s not a film about a terrorist bomber…it’s a film about a freedom fighter who happens to set bombs. Semantics is everything.
    That said, Matrix Revolutions will have turned a lot of people against the Wachowskis.

  7. cullen says:

    and the wachowski’s didn’t direct it…the 1st AD from the matrix trilogy is the “director”…

  8. RP says:

    Speaking of “Rome,” how ’bout a round of applause for Polly Walker! 🙂 Two thumbs…er…OK, thumbs, up!

  9. PandaBear says:

    I thought Polly overacted. Bad.
    I hope it stay on for a while so we can see Octavian grow up and be the leader he is.

  10. lazarus says:

    If James Purefoy is playing Marc Antony, who is playing J-Lo?
    sorry.

  11. bicycle bob says:

    hopefully it doesn’t bomb worse than that last joke.

  12. Terence D says:

    I think Hugo Weaving has a better voice for the role of V.

The Hot Blog

Quote Unquotesee all »

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