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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
Travolta as TV’s most famous oil baron? Here’s hoping it’s a musical.
“I got spiiiiiiiiiiills… they’re multiplyin’!”
When I read the Dallas thing, I gagged. Converting a soap into a movie is ridiculous. I can’t wait for Desperate Housewives in 2026 with Dakota Fanning playing Lynette, Daniel Radcliffe as Paul Young, etc.
I remember a Saturday Nite Live a few years ago where Travolta was in drag as Streisand. It was not funny as much as it was just plain bizarre.
“Hairspray” with him as Edna sounds even more bizarre.
And the “Dallas” is too dreadful to think about, especially if JLo really joins the cast.
As a Dallas resident, the saddest part of the upcoming motion picture is how our city officials are falling all over themselves trying to get that train wreck waiting to happen to film locally.
So strange that you’d use a Welcome Back Kotter reference on the day they announce the new movie version of it starring Ice Cube. 🙂
It’s kinda ironic that the film world looks down on TV, but when they remake TV shows into movies, A-list movie stars are chomping at the bit to be in them.
Hopefully Dallad will never make it out of development hell. The idea that a studio has greenlighted this travesty nauseates me. Who’s the audience??
As for Travolta’s career…he has one hit coming out next year. Wild Hogs is a potential $100m sleeper in spring ’07. Lawsuit notwithstanding.
Haven’t they already learned their lesson from Bewitched, The Stepford Wives, I Spy, The Honeymooners…
Having said that, the new Miami Vice and the new MI3 look exciting because they are pushing the original premise and not just rehashing it.
John Travolta is one of the most talented actors working today. It is just that he is not selective in his choices. He likes making the money to fuel his lifestyle. Literally, since he needs to pay for his airplanes. He would make a great JR Ewing. Luke Wilson is even better casting as Bobby.
I know from a good source that Travolta thought about playing Edna for 6 months before he agreed. he’s taking less money ($4M) than usual, and he gets a huge chunk of the movie’s sountrack profits…
The Dallas thing is a total headscratcher. Robert Harling (First Wives Club, Steel Magnolias) did the script, the director of Legally Blonde is on board… J-Lo? wtf?
Travolta with Zeta Jones in a dramatic version…huge hit.
With J-Lo…kitsch.
It won’t hurt him though. Done right, this will be huge.
Zzzzzzzz. Travolta has been making boring choices and mediocre to bad movies ever since Pulp Fiction, with very few exceptions.
for goodness sake.
the thought of Travolta being JR is terrifying. or maybe it should be funny.
Luke Wilson as BOBBY?! Oh my. I need a drink.
Whose next, Tara Reed as Sue ellen? wait she isn;t old enough yet.
May Wrectum’s wish come true. Development hell until infinity.
So he IS alive. I just lost 20 bucks.
You mean that guy with the weird hair at the Oscars–the one who looked like him–that actually was him? Damn.
Dallas = Syriana 2!
We can all only hope that they take Dallas down the “The Brady Bunch Movie” path. Now THAT was a stellar tv-to-film adaptation. So perfectly done and one that is constantly rewatchable. …or they could go down the Dukes of Hazzard route (Dukes is a much more appropriate simile, right?)
However, I still reckon Harvey Firestein should’ve been cast as Edna. We’ll see how John turns out in that part though.
And yeah, weird that the day John signs onto a tv remake, the tv show that Travolta started in gets it’s main man (er, Ice Cube of all people)
I never watched the TV show so I could care less. I never watched Starsky and Hutch, and could have cared less about the movie. When I finally did see it I thought it was literally one of the biggest pieces of shit I had ever seen. Not funny, not fun, just a drag. I hope Dallas fares better.
As for Hairspray it’s being directed by Adam Shankman (Cheaper by the Dozen 2, Bringing Down the House, The Pacifier)…i wonder how it will turn out..??
A Dallas movie won’t do Travolta any more harm than Get Shorty 2 did. I never saw A Love Song for Bobby Long…was it any good?
I doubt it.
Jennifer Lopez is Box Office Poison because of “Gigli”. That’s why Jane Fonda did “Monster-in-Law”. That’s why John Travolta is doing “Dallas”.
I Netflixed LOVE SONG FOR BOBBY LONG awhile ago. It’s not too good. Not awful, but cornball and melodramatic and tedious. Travolta is hammy in it, though Scarlett is pretty good. Oddly, when I saw WINTER PASSING, it struck me as a less cornball version of LONG… but I still didn’t like it (and I thought I would — like WINTER PASSING, I mean).
Hopscotch, when say you finally saw S&H and it wasn’t fun, are you talking about the show, or the movie? The movie is really funny! One of the better studio comedies of the past bunch of years, I’d say. It’s not groundbreakingly hilarious or anything (it’s not brilliant like ANCHORMAN is brilliant) but it’s consistently funny throughout.
yeah, I’m talking about the movie. It’s awful…in my opinion, of course. Didn’t even budge a grin, it was true agony. That whole extended cameo at the end was just painful.
The sight gag with the car, towards the end, slayed me. As did the Will Ferrell cameo (but that usually does). As did that “DO IT” bit.
The Kotter/Ice Cube thing is for real? You honestly can’t parody this stuff.
I’m with Hopscotch. I had very low expectations when I rented the thing, and it, um…it, uh…hmm. Did you know that there’s no word that’s the opposite of “exceeded” in English? Seriously.
But yeah, painful. Every joke thudded to the carpet. And the “do it” bit was from his TV show, so the funniest thing in the film was recycled, which is fitting in a way.
I’d say 40-Year Old Virgin was the best recent mainstream Hollywood comedy.
Why do people think Will Ferrell is a god amongst men? I was so happy he didn’t show up in The 40-Year-Old Virgin like he did in Wedding Crashers. What was the point of him there? Ugh.
I’m a big fan simply because he almost always makes me laugh, as he did in WEDDING CRASHERS. I thought the funeral-crashing thing was a brilliant riff. Although it might’ve been funnier if he had been put in some old-age makeup or something.
I don’t know — Ferrell’s sense of humor just appeals to me, as most of the “frat pack” dudes do, but moreso. He always seems committed to a bit, and that intensity makes him hilarious to me. Above, I called S&H one of the “better” studio comedies of the last bunch of years; I’d call ANCHORMAN the flat-out best. From that film, I also get the sense that Ferrell (again, like the rest of this comedy clique, but perhaps moreso) is generous even as a ham; he’s got tons of funny stuff to do in ANCHORMAN, but he co-wrote the movie and gave plenty to all of his co-stars, even people in bit parts.
That said, I guess it’s difficult to explain why someone makes you laugh. But Ferrell definitely does it for me. I can’t believe I’m actually anticipating a NASCAR movie, but I am!
I pretty much dislike all the “frat pack” guys. I do like Will Ferrell it’s just that he’s nowhere near as funny in movies as he is in real life. Like, he has two modes. SCREAM EVERYTHING or STARE BLANKLY. In Wedding Crashers he annoyed me (and i liked the movie generally) because he just seemed to be there and THAT was the joke. They didn’t actually give him any funny lines they just put him in a scene and expected it to be funny just because it’s Will Ferrell.
That’s why I liked The 40-Year-Old Virgin so much. It actually had good writing with funny JOKES and didn’t just feed off of the personality of it’s lead star (Steve Carell is better than everyone in the “Frat pack” even if people lump him in there). The worst frat pack movie? Dodgeball. *shudder* now THAT was horrendous.
No arguement there, Camel. I liked the fact that Stiller played an uber-agresive asshole instead of the put-upon nebbishes he gets stuck playing so often these days, and the few laughs in the movie came from his macho/pathetic strutting. But otherwise it was just lazy. People getting hit in the crotch again and again and lame celebrity cameos. Worst of all, the supporting cast were wasted. There were some funny actors playing the other team members (like the guy from Office Space) and they had nothing to do. A guy who talks like a pirate, and then he stops, and that’s his character arc? Right.
But I still thought S and H was worse. Did not laugh, did not smile, was grateful when it ended. The Spike Jonz Beastie Boys “Sabotage” video parodied 70s cops shows better in three minutes, back before making fun of that decade was a cliche in itself. Enough. Bring on Cosby: The Movie if you must, but please bury 70s TV at the crossroads.
“Listen All Of Y’all It’s A Sabotage!”
love the Beastie Boys. Just think if they were put in charge of comedy scripts…imagine the inventive changes to grammatical structure. Those were classy wigs and shades in that video too.
times are bad for ‘funny’ comedy (sparing 40 YOV =very good). except things could be worse–I’d say Romance is in a worse fix as a genre.
why Mr. Booth would you want to bury 70s TV?
C’mon–why deny the Playstation 2 Generation the discovery of the movie versions of Good Times, Maude, The Jeffersons and Rhoda?
Travolta could be in alla those too. would make the same level of common sense as him being JR.
He can sing the Js theme-song too, dressed like Edna Turnblad.
“‘movin on up…to the East side
to a dee-luxe apartment in the sky-y”
You’ve sold me, Lota. Our children need and deserve these movies. What the hell was I thinking? My favorite Roy Orbison song came on the radio just as I wrote that, and it does funny things to me. In dreams…I walk…with you *sob*!
I saw Romance. Does that qualify as its own genre? I suppose it does–Intimacy, The Brown Bunny, 9 Songs, Ken Park…you know, art-porn. I agree that it’s not what it was back in the days of In the Realm of the Senses.
THAT was a severed-penis movie with class. Now it’s all shaky digital photography, cheap sensation and genital warts.
Please mr Booth your sarcasm is getting in my righteous way.
I don;t have “our children” yet, but definitely my rotten neighbors’ kids deserve whatever gob-fest Hollywood dishes out. At the same time, I wish for better fare so we can all be our Best Selves once again at the movies.
ewwww. When I said ROmance I meant more along the lines of The World of Suzie Wong or Love and basketball.
But I thought Sada was better than Realm of the senses.
Recent decent romance but will never be seen:
Runin (japanese 2004) will likely never get released in the US, but maybe after a 20 min edit has a chance; and a $3000 cheapo film called Discover Me was also getting there with the correct idea, but needs to be fixed up. That’s the best cheap student movie I have seen of the last 5 years for sure.
The good romances are not coming to a theater near you or I anytime soon.
Brown Bunny ain’t no romance. Vincent is such a whiner. I mean weiner.