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By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Posted Wednesday, December 14th, 2005 - Comments Off on Little comic caprices vs. the meaninglessness of life, the unreliability of humanity: Mr. Konigsberg at 70
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Little comic caprices vs. the meaninglessness of life, the unreliability of humanity: Mr. Konigsberg at 70

“Mr. Allen says that he has accepted that he won’t be another Bergman,” writes Suzy Hansen in a long, 70th birthday conversation with Woody Allen, “But he wants to make serious films from now on. “Now that I’m older, I don’t know how much time I have to make movies for the rest of my life,” he said, after noting that his next film, Scoop, is a light, light comedy. He said that Scoop might be his last comedy. “I should try and not indulge myself in little comic caprices, but try and do something more meat-and-potatoes. I find that it might be a good thing for me to not be in my movies so much—because when I’m in the movie, it forces it to be a comedy. I’m not believable in any other way. I can do much more interesting things if I don’t have to think, ‘Well, I’m going to be on the screen and I have to make people laugh.’”
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“And the interesting things weighing on him these days are the usual preoccupations: “the meaninglessness of life, the unreliability of humanity—nothing good, nothing commercial. Nothing that can’t be turned against me.” He laughed at that and seemed unfazed, the confidence of a man who’s been through much worse already, whether he’s pessimistic about what the future holds or not.” But, of the fantasy world of the movies he grew up on, Allen says, “The less reality, the better. You get enough reality… It finds you—you don’t have to seek it out. If you were locked into reality all the time, you’d go crazy. You’re reduced to escapism. Magic.”

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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