By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Blogging 102
Okay… here we go…
Claude Brodesser – who is a smart, well-informed guy who should try about 90% less hard to be funny on his NPR radio show, The Business, since I have been unhappily forced to take it off my podcast list for the bad forced jokes alone – blogs an incomplete “exclusive” that Harvey Weinstein has a hold on the director of Derailed and it has come up as an issue regarding the director’s next picture, which is trying to be at Paramount.
(Suggested replacement joke for the radio show… Deathlok isn’t funny… Harvey hiring Mikael Hafstrom by mistake because he thought that Meryl Poster said “Lasse Hallstrom” is funnier. But only a little.)
Anne Thompson then blogs a response that accurately adds out that Harvey Weinstein pulled this “I’ll make your movie, but you have to give me your next film or two too” scam on Rob Marshall and that it got in the way of Memoirs of a Geisha for a long while. She also adds that the obligation, which Weinstein set aside in the end for Geisha (it was a bloody, bloody year long battle), is now rearing its ugly head as Marshall considers his next film. Great stuff.
However, a densely written graph on Harvey at an AFM cocktail party and Oscars and whatever distracts from the story. Split it up, Anne. There are four separate things in there… paragraphs are your friend.
And in the end, there is one key thing that was written in neither piece… Weinstein has pulled this schtick on almost every single director and many writers he has financed at Miramax in the last five years. Speaking of Lasse Hallstrom, it has taken him years to get away from Weinstein and I don’t even know if Casanova was an internal arrangement at Disney. Not every filmmaker has to be coerced to go back and some have refused the deal and still gotten their movies made. But locking down talent is standard operating procedure for Mr. W… it’s not a mystery.
Hit the note. Hit it hard. Move on.
Casanova.
They should hire Dave to be their editor. Always room at MCN or is Mutiny City playing primadonna?
hopefully they take ur advice. but its survival of the fittest in the blogging world. some can’t hack it.
All I know is, Casanova looks like good fun! Memoirs looks at least like it’ll be great eye candy. And Derailed looks moderately entertaining if I see it on a cheap Tuesday.