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” ā 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 ā 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 ā he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” ā and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging ā I was with her at that moment ā 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 namedā” “Yeah, sure ā 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 Iām on the phone with you now, after all thatās 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 didnāt seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. Thereās not a case of that. He wasnāt using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had ā if that were what the accusation involved ā 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. Iām not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, āYou know, itās not this, itās thatā? Because ā let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. TimesĀ piece, thatās what it lacked. Thatās 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
I can’t believe that Jeffrey Wells is swooning over Jamie Stuart’s fake AmEx ad (and we know DP is cheering this on all the way too). If you thought Mutiny City News was the most unfunny, unnecessary additon to MCM, you’ll shrug just as dismissively as this.
I’m not trying to be a hater, but I just don’t get it. I don’t see what’s so funny. Am I supposed to relate as a fellow struggling film geek because this guy looks like every single dude in NY and LA trying to break into the business? What’s original or creative about this? Who do I have to blow to get a weekly column or video link?
“sucking Member since 1998”
I didn’t want to be the first one, but I’m happy to agree, the fake AMEX ad is just like every other Mutiny thing: poorly shot, slackly edited, uncharismatically acted, and not funny or interesting enough to make you not care.
Jamie Stuart must have photos of Poland and Wells making out.
You know, I hate M. Night Shyamalan with a passion, from the way he claims the possessory name above the title on his films to his narcissistic, overindulgent commerical. But there’s no denying the talent behind the camera. Even while rolling my eyes and groaning through the Lady in the Water trailer I still marvelled at his shot-making abilities (much like my reaction to all things Spielberg).
What’s funny is that Wells thinks Stuart’s take is “fucking ass-brilliant”, and that we should give him a “Wes Anderson or M. Night Shyamalan life”. Hyperbole enough for you? Stuart doesn’t even have a Blair Witch in him from what I can gather, let alone a Sixth Sense or Royal Tenenbaums. What exactly is Wells watching? I’ve seen online reality porn parodies of the MasterCard “Priceless” commercials that were more clever than this.
Stuart doesn’t have photos of Poland and Wells making out; he’s sitting on R. Kelly-style hidden camera footage. This is big-time blackmail.
I think this weekend’s BO is going to surprise a LOT of folks. At the theatre I was at in NYC last night, only one movie was selling out. No, not the extremely hyped “United 93,” or the big-budget “RV.” It was “Stick It.” (“Akeelah and the Bee” was also about 90-95% full.) I think we could see a surprise this weekend.
Gotta agree, I was mystified by that fake AmEx ad. I don’t know anything about Mutiny City News, but I was not impressed…it was sooo long and slack. I couldn’t even keep watching halfway through.
I do, however, love the uncut Wes Anderson one to death. Better than any single minute of The Life Aquatic.
If Stick It does better than United (3 I will have lost what little faith I have in the moviegoing public.
If lazarus072 hates that Night uses a possessory credit, does that mean he has no use for John Carpenter? Because if that’s true, I doubt we can ever take anything he/she says seriously again.
Has anyone seen United 93? Does anyone agree with me that DP got it wrong? The movie is about catharsis. It’s the release that most of us haven’t had since that day. We may think we have, but, trust me, we havent’t. DP broke Ebert’s old rule about reviewing themovie he thought it should be instead of the movie it is. Yo leave the movie in tears, but also clansed, as if entering a new stage of grieving.
The decision by Greengrass of not singling out any of the passangers as the “hero” is more than a stylistic choice. It removes any pretense of this being a conventional terrorist-action movie. We become apart of the experience in a way that we haven’t since that day. It wipes away every documentary or news report we’ve seen about 9/11. (Malick tried a similar trick with the naostly nameless soldiers of The Thin Red Line.)
DP will get the 9/11 movie he wants later down the line. Right now this is the movie that people need and want. it’s similar to the way The Deer Hunter was the Vietnam movie people needed before all the others. The Deer Hunter is racist and not very political, but it allowed audiences to start to let go of their anger and frustration. Later we would get Platoon and Full Metal Jacket. Those movies allowed us to discuss the war in more confrontational terms.
That’ll come later with the 9/11 movies. I think it’s limiting when critics view movies through a political prism when there isn’t one. God forgive me for bringing this up, but Brokeback Mountain is a perfect example of critics doing this. DP, Armond White, Edelstein and others saw BBM in terms of its greater significance in the culture instead of as an old-fashioned love story. Critics like DP and White talked about other, much better, gay-themed movies that have passed BBM’s sell-by date. What they fail to understand is that movies like Taxi Zum Klo and Mysterious Skin don’t get as much play or hype outside of NY/LA. Those movies rarely play in smaller markets, and if they do, it’s for a week. Yes, those are great, more progressive gay-themed movies, but not everyone has heard of or seen ’em. BBM is important because it’s the movie that allowed mainstream moviegoers to slowly come to accept gay-themed movies. While most of us on this board would love for people to be more progressive in their thinking. That just ain’t going to happen.
The critics who have been questioning the purpose of United 93 don’t seem to realize it’s the movie the public needs before the more complex and confrontational ones can be made.
Glad you are okay, David š
A conversation with a friend last night started with United 93 (are we ready, do we want to see it with the excellent reviews? answer: not yet, anyway) coming around to the question of how early World War II movies started coming out after Pearl Harbor (answer: found on classicmovies.org, really soon) which turned into how bad the two American Entebbe movies were (especially the one with Elizabeth Taylor), but the Israeli one was cool, and omg what was that called and does Netflix have it? (Answer: Operation Thunderbolt and yes.)
Oh, and then we talked about how cool the idea of the spinoff Battlestar Galactica prequel series was, which had nothing to do with anything else.
Our conversations may wander, but we enjoy them, so…
I don’t think anyone needs United 93, certainly not the history books, although perhaps the money-counters at Universal. Not only too early, but too short on fact and long on fiction. It’s a story that shouldn’t have been told now, or ever until the facts are straightened out. At best this is a greedy grab of hearsay, at worst it’s a mockery of the media and the audience.
I think Mr Poland’s point, which I agree with, is that the film does not go out of its way to produce emotion or catharsis. The fact that we feel it is a product of our emotions about 911 from outside the film. Within the film, there is precious little context or characters or narrative. I agree that this separates it from conventional dramas. But just because people have strong reactions to it or “need” to see it doesn’t mean that it is a good movie on its own terms. It is a novelty.
“If Stick It does better than United (3 I will have lost what little faith I have in the moviegoing public”
Why not mention RV? Stick It at least has pert young girls in it…RV stars a puffy, has-been comic doing shtick that Lucille Ball tried 50 years ago.
United 93 is performing exactly as expected: around $10m for the weekend. Did anyone really think it would do better than that?
Does anyone know what martin is talking about? I have yet to see a piece of art made with the intent to NOT make money. Pople who say it’s just a ploy to make a quick buck are either dumb or lacking in the history of art created in the midst of tragedy.
I think it’s pretty ignorant to say the basis for art is financial incentive. That is happens often does not make it right, or good.
I never said it was the basis for art. I’ve just never seen an artist make a painting (or a record, or a movie) and it just be because, I don’t know, they were bored.
Martin sounds like the Jeff Goldblum character from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Remember how he took pride in spending 6 months on what the next work should be in long-in-the-making masterwork?
OK, David….time to recharge your batteries..but……are you going to name the movie that almost put you into a coma?
I also wonder if you are going to comment further on your MI 3 review. You seemed to declare that the emperor had no clothes. Isn’t that against Scientology rules or something.
I agree with Jimmy the Gent. A 9/11 movie has a unique place within the American psyche; this movie can’t be viewed as a conventional movie, with ‘characters’ or ‘arcs’ or whatnot, because it’s a reenactment of a story that we already know, with characters that we’re already somewhat familiar with. It sounds like DP wanted something more conventional and has decided to explain (I mean “reverse overanalyze”) his lack of emotional connection as a flaw within the movie itself, just like he couldn’t connect with Brokeback Mountain and found a myriad of reasons why, rather than just shrugging it off.
jeff, isn’t that the definition of an exploitation movie? If what you’re saying is true, the movie will be worthless in just a few years.
This movie transcends exploitation by virtue of its performances, direction, and craft. The words I used above could indeed apply to a cheapie exploitation movie, but I was thinking of them in terms of something more unconventionally avant-garde, which I know sounds pretentious, but I think that if the movie had been more contentional it would have been less successful.
Have you seen it, Martin?
Box office numbers from boxofficemojo (rounded):
RV $4.5m
Stick It 4.0
United 93 3.7
Silent Hill 3.0
Scary Movie 4 2.3
The Sentinel 2.2
Akeelah and the Bee 1.7
Ice Age 2 1.6
The Benchwarmers 1.3
The Wild 1.0
I think it was Robert Bresson who once said everyone is capable of giving one great performance by playing themselves. I’m paraphrasing, but I think it applies to United 93. The performances in United 93 are brilliant because they’re so naturalistic. It’s like the ultimate exercise in Method acting. There isn’t a single moment where we see any of the actors reaching for a moment. Even Ben Sliney, who plays the head of the FAA, does the near-impossible by never showing the audience that he knows he’s reliving a day in his life. He plays his scenes as if they were happening on the fly. In other words there are no scenes that could easily be submitted for consideration. That’s quite a remarkable achievment in the day of award-show fever. Even the faces of the few bit players you might recognize quickly fade into the rest of the actors. There isn’t a single instance where Greengrass stops to linger on an action or actor in order for the audience to get the point. There’s no foreground. It’s all around you.
(Spoiler)
Actually, there was one moment of performance self-consciousness that I noticed and was really amused by; when Thomas Burnett (the round-faced guy) finds out that not only is there a pilot on board (David Rasche), but there’s another passenger who used to be an air traffic controller, he gets this silly look on his face, as if to say, “what are the odds?” It’s a tiny detail but it seemed perfect, to me.
It has nothing to do with “what I want.”
It has to do with cinematic drama.
As I wrote, there is nothing wrong with what Greengrass did in United 93. He did good work. But there is nothing more there than docudrama. And for most, that is not the definition of a great film.
p.s. I like Jamie Stuart and I think he is a passionate young filmmaker. MCN has not drooled on his work or on him. We have just given him a place to show his wares. No dirty photos required.
I would say that even if it is a ‘docudrama’, the form or genre should not dictate our response to it. To say that any docudrama (or a melodrama, or a comedy, or a thriller) is inherently less worthy of being a work of art than a straight drama is a kind of snobbery.
It was docudrama to a fault. Taking out all traditional narratives is admirable to an extent and I agree, very avant garde, and if the film was about a typical mundane plane trip, I could enjoy it like that. But it’s not a mundane trip. It’s 911. This creates a sense of confusion that we all associate with that day, but I’m afraid in the next generation of viewers will not receive the emotional viscerality we are raving about. Perhaps people are right when they say it is a film people “need.” The film is more utilitarian than an artistic expression.
Lynn, I too am way stoked on the Battlestar Galactica prequel series – Caprica.
Palmtree, you may be right about the film being ‘utilitarian’ and specific to our particular moment in time. But considering that nobody can break out of their own perspective, this’ll have to do.
I actually think you’re saying the same thing Poland said, but but perhaps in a more thoughtful, less prickly way.
pslmytrr,
By that logic audiences shouldn’t “get” Rebel Without a Cause or The Graduate or Easy Rider or Citizen Kane or Star Wars. Those movies were of thier moment in time. They are “dated” yet still retain their power. Same goes for movies like Network and All the President’s Men. Serious moviegoers will always be able to put amovie in context and give themselves over to it emotionally. You can always seperate the serious moviegoers from the rest by their reaction to certain movies. If they say they don’t “get” movies like Close Encounters or the ’33 Kong because the F/X look fake, then all one can do is msile and pity ’em because they don’t know what they’re missing.
Pretty much all movies are of their moment in time. The movies you mention transcend their time at least in part because they feature great actors giving great performances of great dialogue, etc. The quality of those essential elements of drama make them universal, and as you noted, U93 dispenses with many such elements. It’s not comparable.
One thing’s for sure, United 93 will be in a revised edition of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die some time in the future.
“If Stick It does better than United (3 I will have lost what little faith I have in the moviegoing public.”
umm… haven’t we all lost it all already? Besides, Stick It is a silly little movie aimed at teen girls. There’s been plenty worse lately.
A lot of what you say, Palmtree, is true, but plenty of movies considered to be masterpieces of cinema also dispense with standard devices of plot/character/dialogue. It’s a different way to function but not an intrisically inferior way.
I think it’s entirely possible that United 93 will be viewed as a historical curiosity twenty years from now, but for right all I know is that I think it’s a very good, effective piece of work.
It’s not a question of superior and inferior ways. I love plenty of films that discard traditional narratives, but none of those films were about a historical watersheds like 911. It is more about the reactions to the film and whether that comes from the film itself or Greengrass getting his audience to fill in the blanks for him. It is reductive and not challenging even if it is technically accomplished and an emotional event.
btw, I’m not trying to demean your reactions to the film, which are absolutely valid. I’ll tell you what I think when I see it again…
You have some good points, all I can think of in response is that in comparison with a movie that was very much about context and trying to grasp a wider appreciation of issues, like Syriana, I think this movie works better. But that might be because I didn’t think Syriana told me anything I didn’t already know, and this one did, on an experiental level.