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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Annie Dull

I don

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12 Responses to “Annie Dull”

  1. jeffmcm says:

    It’s a bad sign that I remember seeing Boiler Room, but I don’t remember anything that happened in it except fratboy i-bankers sitting around an unfurnished living room playing video games. Or was that college?

  2. HenryHill says:

    Prime makes you appreciate the flawed but sexy P.S.
    At least that movie had the balls to have a genuinely interesting sex scene, awkward, funny and sexy.

  3. EDouglas says:

    Well said, HenryHill. I didn’t like PS, but it did seem to take more chances and I thought Laura Linney and Marcia Gay Harden (and Topher Grace) were better in that then this trio. I was embarassed for Meryl Streep after watching Prime.
    BTW, David, I’m not sure, but I think Ben Younger’s character was meant to be Bryan Greenberg’s friend with the pies. Wasn’t there a similar best friend in Boiler Room or am I misremembering?
    All I could think of while watching Prime is what a night out with Cameron and Justin must be like. That’s pretty sad, right?

  4. PandaBear says:

    If you saw Unscripted then you would agree with DP. Greenberg is not a leading man.

  5. Angelus21 says:

    Prime just looks like a bad ABC movie. Just put in the older girl from the Gilmore Girls in the Uma role and some WB actor as the kid.

  6. LesterFreed says:

    I’ll see anything with Streep in it. She is one of the best out there.

  7. Sanchez says:

    What is with these directors trying to do Woody Allen? Be yourselves.

  8. jeffmcm says:

    That’s especially interesting since even Woody Allen has gotten tired of doing Woody Allen, check out the trailer for Match Point to see what I mean.

  9. Mark Ziegler says:

    Woody Allen now or 1979?

  10. Joe Straat says:

    By “I don

  11. BluStealer says:

    I think Meg Ryan misses those too.

  12. KamikazeCamelV2.0 says:

    heheh, that’s true (she probably also misses her original lips, but that’s another story).
    Man, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, When Harry Met Sarry… that’s how you make modern romantic comedies.

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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