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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Paramount Update DuWeak

Here is Ron Grover’s full report on Paramount, entitled Mission: Precarious. I have some issues with it that are also my issues with much of the reporting around this subject these days. Sorry that Mr. Grover gets to be the butt of it.
Grover

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5 Responses to “Paramount Update DuWeak”

  1. Jimmy the Gent says:

    Dave,
    You ought to consider writing some kind of commentary on the sad situation involving the shake-up at the Village Voice. We could be witnessing the end of advocacy journalism in print. It’ll be a sad day in this country if altervative weeklies are turned into cookie-cutter versions of everyone else.

  2. Chucky in Jersey says:

    Executive doings du jour at Paramount? Duh.
    Sister company cuts a secret deal with the Smithsonian Institution? Major story that so far has been pigeonholed.
    Showtime Networks is starting a channel called Smithsonian On Demand. The Smithsonian has made this demand of all documentary filmmakers: Offer your work to Smithsonian On Demand — or you don’t get access to the Smithsonian archives. Ken Burns and Michael Moore helped blow the whistle on this sleazy deal.
    The Smithsonian is an agency of the US government. Showtime and Paramount are controlled by Viacom, whose chairman publicly endorsed Bush for re-election. Smithsonian On Demand smells like something cooked up at Halliburton.

  3. palmtree says:

    “Smithsonian On Demand smells like something cooked up at Halliburton.”
    Showtime has aired some pretty subversive stuff (could you equally imagine Sleeper Cell having anything to do with Halliburton?). Sounds more like the Smithsonian is angling for funds to keep their many many museums and archives afloat.

  4. jeffmcm says:

    Yeah, let’s get our issues straight. This Smithsonian thing is a budget-cutting/outsourcing thing. It sucks but it’s not the same as conflict-of-interest corruption.

  5. bach says:

    The Smithsonian deal is not about money, budget cutting or outsourcing. It’s an attempt to establish a mechanism that can be used for censorship and revisionist history. It was tried before, with another quasi-government institution about 40 years ago–but thankfully, was shot down.
    A little arithmetic will show that there are not enough homes which will “demand” this program material. The money is in pay-per-view to schools–at “public assembly” rates. Our children will have no alternative to the Showtime version, and Showtime will have no competition. That is why close scrutiny of this deal is so important, and why the exclusivity element must be excised from the contract. Showtime has experience and expertise, and should be encouraged to enter this market, but only on an even playing field.

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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