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By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 - Comments Off on UPDATE: I am a Correspondence Addict: Zahedi writes again
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UPDATE: I am a Correspondence Addict: Zahedi writes again

I Am A Sex Addict director and blogteur Caveh Zahedi continues his genteel tack after Mark Cuban deigned to comment on his post about the IFC/Comcast foofaraw that got his film yanked from Landmark screens, this time writing, “Dear Steven Soderbergh.”I called you on the phone once and asked if you could spare some of your short ends for a film I was making at the time. You said no, but you were nice about it. I am writing to you now to ask for another favor…” caveh_zahedi1485787.jpg Word has it that you and Mark Cuban are good friends, and that you might be able to wield some influence in the matter. I have asked Mr. Cuban to reconsider his decision, as the whole thing has nothing to do with my film, which I spent the last fourteen years trying to make (that’s what the requested short ends were for), and which IFC Films has… picked up for distribution. Mark Cuban has been faultlessly courteous and straightforward in his replies, but he has also refused to budge. Since you yourself are a filmmaker, and someone who obviously cares quite deeply not only about the quality but also the politics of cinema, I am asking if there is anything you can do to help resolve the situation… My sense of Mark Cuban is that he’s a well-meaning and not unreasonable person, but I can’t help thinking that your eloquence in this matter would be far more persuasive than mine.


In any case, I wish you the best of luck with your five (!) upcoming HD films for HDNet, and I wish HDNet every success in their struggle for a seat at the Comcast table. With sincere admiration for your enviable body of work.” UPDATE: In the comments section of GreenCine’s summa of what’s going down, Mark Cuban weighs in (and you have to wonder if he’s using his blog search IceRocket to “trend” this stuff [typos are Cuban’s own]: “[D]id [your colleague] fail to note that Landmark is opening the film, day and date in non Comcast markets ? This isnt about day n date. We are fully supportive. And if IFC was showing the film day n date on Charter or Time Warner VOD. No problem. If they were showing it PPV day n date on Dish or Directv. No problem. I dont have a problem being painted the bad guy in this. But the reality is still there for future film makers. THe good news in all of this is that there are indie theaters that will book day n date and thats good for indie film makers everywhere.” Another GreenCiner had posted that HDNet is a bad name, to which Cuban adds, “And as far as our name…You got to have better things to think about..dont you ? Names are easy to change. Putting indie film makers in a position to succeed isnt as easy. Along the way you are going to piss people off.” A less diplomatic gong is sounded in the indieWIRE comments, by Chicago-based filmmaker Joe Swanberg (Kissing on the Mouth, LOL): “Caveh, you’re being very diplomatic about all of this, and I’ve been trying to stay out of it, but fuck Mark Cuban. Who cares that he responds to your blog? That doesn’t make him a hero… Cuban’s a business guy, looking out for #1, and the Indie film world is just his latest playground. It’s doesn’t matter whether he tells you to fuck off to your face, or doesn’t say it at all. It’s the same message.”

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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