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By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Posted Friday, February 17th, 2006 - 1 Comment »
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More Errol: new projects from the Anti-Post-Modern Post-Modernist

Errol Morris has fact and faction on his plate, with 3 projects afoot, report Carol Beggy & Mark Shanahan in the Boston Globe. “In addition to a new documentary that he can’t talk about, Morris is set to start shooting… a studio project called ‘Nub City… a horror [movie] based on the bizarre true story of several Floridians who turned up missing arms and legs after taking out insurance policies on themselves. ”I’m not a big blood-and-guts guy, but this story’s been on my mind for close to 30 years… I actually like horror films. Hitchcock’s Psycho is a very important movie to me, and I love those Polanski pictures.” The director’s other film, also in pre-production, is a fictional account of the popular Michael Paterniti book, ”Driving Mr. Albert : A Trip Across America With Einstein’s Brain.”doggieoscar8908-.jpgSays Morris: ”Following the Oscars, I just decided this’d be a good time to expand my repertoire.” Over at his own site, Morris publishes the lengthy transcript of his Harvard “History and Literature” lecture, The Anti-Post-Modern Post-Modernist, including the clips he showed at the event. “I like to think of myself as the ultimate anti-postmodernist postmodernist…


“…Notwithstanding the unusual narrative or visual devices that appear in many of the films, what have kept me going for the three years of investigating this story, was the belief that there answers to questions such as, [Randall] Adams did it, didn’t he? Or [David Ray] Harris did it, didn’t he? That it’s not just up for grabs. Today, I believe there’s a kind of frisson of ambiguity. People think that ambiguity is somehow wonderful in its own right, an excuse for failing to investigate. What can I say? I think this view is wrong. At best, misguided. Maybe even reprehensible… I had a lot of trouble with [Robert] McNamara in the course of making [fog of War]. Horrible disagreements about stuff I had put in the movie that he did not want in there. One of the major disagreements concerned the lessons in the film. There are 11 lessons. And he repeatedly said, “You know, Errol, those are not my lessons. They are your lessons.” And I said, “Yeah, yeah, they are. But they’re extracted, of course, from things that you’ve said,” things that McNamara said, which is indeed the case. Perhaps not the lessons that McNamara would have chosen, but then, he was not directing the movie. I think that the lessons are all ironic. It’s very odd to me that people talk about the film and they talk about the lessons without pointing out that there might be intended ironies with each and every one of them. But yes, they are for me ironic, particularly the last one in the movie: You can’t change human nature. It tells you that all of the other lessons are valueless, that the human situation is indeed hopeless.”

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One Response to “More Errol: new projects from the Anti-Post-Modern Post-Modernist”

  1. Martha says:
    February 18, 2006 at 4:37 am

    Whoa, he’s making Nub City? Since that’s the doc he was trying to make when he ended up with Vernon, Florida, it’s nice that it’s finally getting done, even fictionally.

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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