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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Hamptons, Tribeca and New York Film Festivals Collide in Publicity Three-Way


Three of New York’s biggest film festivals made a flurry of newsworthy announcements Monday, with Tribeca and New York setting their respective festival dates while the lovely folks at the Hamptons announced producer Ted Hope (right) as the recipient of their annual Industry Toast.
HIFF director Denise Kasell broke the news from Cannes, joining indieWIRE to celebrate Hope’s two decades producing films for the likes of Ang Lee, Todd Solondz and Hal Hartley. His producing partnership with James Schamus resulted in the Good Machine shingle, which evolved into Focus Features after the pair sold it to Universal in 2002; Hope now runs This is That with Anthony Bregman and Anne Carey. He will receive his toast and probably some hardware for the mantel at a dinner slated for Oct. 19.
The New York Film Festival does not have anything nearly as fabulous planned, unless you count a 50-year retrospective of Janus Films its own sort of honor. But at least we know that the 2006 festival–the 44th annual, incidentally–will run Sept. 29 to Oct. 15; the Janus series coincides with the event, running Sept. 30 to Oct. 27. And all told, it is a great-looking program–essentially a world cinema hall of fame featuring Renoir (The Rules of the Game), Bergman (Monika, The Seventh Seal), Antonioni (L’Eclisse) and a few rarely screened gems not yet available on video, such as Carlos Saura’s Cria Cuervos. Still no word on which Warner Brothers film modern masterpiece will open the festival, but I have my ear to the ground.
Finally, as though you were clamoring for Tribeca news so soon after the festival’s most recent go-around, organizers sent word that the 2007 event is booked from April 25-May 6. Better yet, submissions open Sept. 5, with shorts due by Dec. 8 and features due by Dec. 15. I like your chances, so get shooting.

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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