Old MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Foreign Sales Powerhouse Fortissimo Films on its Way to NYC


Eugene Hernandez sends word from Cannes that foreign sales rep Fortissimo Films will open an office in New York City. The company is moving its Hong Kong point person Winnie Lau into town before the Toronto Film Festival, at which point she can get to work “fostering long-standing relationships … with Jim Jarmusch, Mira Nair, Killer Films, Hart Sharp, IFC Film and IFC Television.” As far as jumping into a pool already crowded with the likes of Cinetic Media, William Morris, Washington Square and other fish of various shapes and sizes, Fortissimo co-president Wouter Barendrecht told Hernandez that he views those companies “as greater partners, rather than competitors.”
Right. I am sure Cinetic’s John Sloss is ordering up a “welcome to the neighborhood” flower basket as I write this. While the city is probably big enough to accommodate another A-list sales agent, Fortissimo’s worldwide reach has to bulge more than few domestic producers’ eyes; Ted Hope signed up the new Todd Solondz film with Fortissimo only a week ago, for example, back when Barendrecht was still offering brow-furrowing, chin- stroking platitudes about “organic, natural growth” and the “pitfalls of radical expansion.” Now that he is actually here, I cannot imagine at least a few mid-level reps around town will not be cutting their Memorial Day barbecue beers with extra-strength Pepto-Bismol, or just skipping the light stuff altogether and running straight for the vodka while anticipating the 70- or 80-day weekends of insolvency that lay ahead. Welcome to the neighborhood, indeed.

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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