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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

And news on another Oscar nommed short doc…

DreamWorks and Parkes/MacDonald Prods. have acquired the rights to
Oscar-nominated documentary “The Life of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang
Bang Club.”The producers will use the film and tap the research of director
Dan Krauss for a feature about the Pulitzer Prize-winning photog. Carter
dodged bullets to capture images of famine and violence in the waning days
of apartheid.Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, who’ll produce, closed the
rights deal with Krauss just before his docu drew its Oscar nom. Doc had
several suitors as the role of Carter has the potential to attract a big
male star.Exec Alisa Tager brought the project to Parkes, who got the upper
hand partly because Krauss’ Berkeley film professor shot part of Parkes’ own
docu, “The California Reich.” Krauss, whose docu will air on HBO, will be
exec producer.South African-born Carter grew up loathing apartheid, and
through photography found an outlet to show its impact to the world. He
became famous when his photo of a starving Sudanese child stalked by a
vulture won the Pulitzer Prize. When he described waiting for 20 minutes for
the starving child and vulture to fit perfectly in his frame, critics called
him a vulture for not interceding. Carter committed suicide at 33.”Beyond
dramatizing a courageous life at a historic turning point, we hope to
explore why Kevin ended things the way that he did; in some ways, that photo
both made him and destroyed him,” Parkes said. “Even though his work brought
international attention to the struggles in South Africa and the Sudan, the
end of Kevin’s life was dominated by the controversy surrounding one
picture, and his decision to document rather than intercede. His story is
particularly relevant now, as we’ve become a world hooked on visual
information. As the violent reactions to the publishing of the cartoons in
Denmark last week suggest, the power of the image has never been more
evident.

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6 Responses to “And news on another Oscar nommed short doc…”

  1. Charly Baltimore says:

    He lived a life that should be a big screen story. Lots of potential there.

  2. Spacesheik says:

    Can someone in the industry tell me what does Steven Spielberg see in Parkes/McDonald? I thought they shamed themselves last year with the whole ISLAND name blame game (i.e. Johansenn)

  3. Bruce says:

    Throwing stars under the bus for a lackluster Box Office? Not the right thing to do.

  4. PandaBear says:

    The Parkes team had a tough 2005.
    The Island
    Legend of Zorro
    Just like Heaven

  5. JBM... says:

    The Ring Two wasn’t really hot shit for them, either, was it?

  6. KamikazeCamelV2.0 says:

    The Ring Two was the worst! And it only made about half as much as the original.

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