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
Dave, you’re right on it mosty being a sour review. But if he’s going to give it a “B” and start the whole review by saying that it is “enjoyable,” I think you’re going to have a hard time convincing people that it should be a rotten tomato.
Face facts, for now you’re the most vocal disliker of the film.
I’m fine with that, Me… just sayin’…
No, it’s cool. I remember having a similar complaint about a largely negative review that got a positive tomato for Cars. Eventually RT did flip it. But that review wasn’t graded by the author.
After reading Harry’s review, I’m starting to dread the day I finally see SR. He loved it just as much as he loved Armaggedon and Godzilla and Jar Jar. The only problem with your criticism DP is that it followed almost four months of you picking on the movie.
You’re just making things worse, Dave.
B leaning toward B minus. He liked the flying.
KONG got mostly raves by these same mags/publications. So I’m not going to even go there with how “off” these critics can be sometimes.
Can we assume that means you didn’t like Kong?
That ad rings fake to me, or at the very least a placeholder. I mean, they seem to have Wireless Magazine listed twice. Plus, it just has too many of the usual suspects listed – Dittman, Salas, Allen (the latter two I actually shared a limo with once – a scary evening).
Funny, I’m used to these types of ads AFTER the first release weekend.
I’d harp on David for the rottentomatoes watch if I hadn’t done the reverse with Begins last summer.
Crazy how WB is redefining “weekend boxoffice”, since not only does SR’s “weekend” run from Wednesday – Monday, they’re now having “late night” showings starting Tuesday… I assume that means starting around 10pm or so. They’re only 22hrs away from having a full week as a weekend!
Actually, if you include July 4, it is a full week. Even so, it doesn’t sound like it will outgross X3’s first week.
first off, King Kong was the most universally praised mess of a film i’d ever seen. The critics couldn’t get their lips off Jackson’s dick long enough to state the obvious: it was an excercise in eccess. The last hour was really cool, but the first two were like an anchor tied around it’s nick. Superman Returns seems to be getting a similar pass, i.e. the filmmaker’s passion for the work and reverence for the material makes critics overlook the flaws. It’s akin to seeing a shitty band, but giving them a pass because they play with so much energy.
My second point is for Dave.
An opinion does not require defending. Just because other critics are praising it doesn’t mean your opinion is invalid. I hated Sin City. I thought it was a murky piece of shit. And lots of people emailed me and said “are you nuts? rodriguez did a frame for frame remake of the comics, how can you not like it?” Easy. It fucking blew. To spend any more time arguing your stance on Superman Returns makes you look really, really petty. It’s an opinion. If they give it a pass, so be it. You don’t have to invalidate others to validate your own opinion.
When did critics become such petulant children?
Not this again! 😉
I picked up tickets for 10 PM Tuesday night. Unfortunately at my theater, they’re not gonna start the IMAX showings until the 28th…so if I like the movie, I’ll have to catch it in IMAX on a later date.
Well said, Anghus, well said.
Petty indeed.
There was a lot of Kool-Aid drunk on King Kong.
Anghus – I obviously have no problem being out on my own… which almost invariably ends up being not so lonely when push comes to shove. I’m not remotely worried about how my review will play after next week.
But, I do find things like this interesting. I don’t think I was degrading Emanuel. In fact, I offered no dispute about anything he wrote. Just the grade.
Oh well.
Pauline Kael did it in her review for Lolita (and probably others too).
There’s nothing wrong with trying to put other critics in perspective…if you have a good reason to think they aren’t.
The first review to actually compare tones with Spidey and Bats. Not even the fanboy sites had the balls to do that.
to me, a critic has to have big brass ones. You can’t throw an opinion out there and worry about how it plays. Again, i was on the polar opposite of the online debate on Sin City, where my peers were lapping it up like ass kissing fanboys, where i saw something that was technically unique, but about as coherent as an acid trip at disneyworld.
If you’re a critic, and one deserving of respect, you give your opinion, stick by it, and fuck what everyone else has to say. To even consider other opinions to be weighed and measured is kind of ridiculous. It’s the cause of all this namby pamby bullshit with critics, it’s why they hedge their reviews for fear of being ‘out of touch’. Fuck ‘out of touch’, fuck safety.
I see your point Dave, youre just talking about other critics reviews. You weren’t railing on anyone, but your last few posts do read as being obsessive about the issue.
I don’t completely agree, I think that critics have to have an opinion and stick with it, but obsessive dogmatic opinions are as bad as wimpy non-opinions. That’s why people don’t like to read Armond White, because he seems to be a crazy person. Criticism should be a dialogue.
Funny.. I love to read Armond… and would almost never go to a movie or stay away from one on his behest
i have no idea who Armond is. I read very few critics. Most of them just piss me off.
No, I love to read him too. But part of why he’s great is because he’s nuts. And I often go to a movie at his behest – I wouldn’t have seen Running Scared if not for him.
Considering the number of junket whores listed (like Dittman), if that’s anything close to being an actual ad boy does it scream “Sucks Ass!”
You know you are in a all-bets-are-off summer when Poland is ripping a new one for the big summer fantasy CGI blockbuster that Jeff Wells praises to high-heaven.
Is this what if feels like to realize you are going insane…?????
WB making almost a week’s run a “weekend” gross sounds like they’re shit scared of POTC2.
i think everyone is overestimating POTC 2 and underestimating Superman Returns. But everyone is tracking POTC 2 like its going to shatter shitloads of records and have legs longer than Heidi Klum.
Armond White is very talented. In many ways his observations are ahead of the curve.
He is where I think most film criticism will be in about a decade.
I’ll be very curious to read his Superman review.
He will probably not like it.
Nicol, don’t Armond’s politics irritate you or are those the ways his observations are not ‘ahead of the curve’? Just wondering.
the keoki has a good point as to how it applies here. To regular readers there has often been some amount of commentary from Dave about a film before the actual review. Pre-screening concerns or hopes about a film are many times on record, so if the review bears those out it might seem like the film was pre-judged. With someone like Ebert, the only thing I’m likely to know about his opinion on a film is what he writes in his review or says on his show.
I’m sure that there are examples where Dave has liked a film that he expressed concerns about beforehand and vice versa, but when a review lines up with doubts written in advance commentary it can look like his mind was made up months ago.
It happens all the time. But it usually lines up the other way, which is that I am anticipating a hit and it turns out to be a dud. Now and again, a film I expect nothing from turns out to be terrific (The Proposition, which I avoided for months, for instance) and that is a joy.
The funny thing on Superman Returns is that I really didn’t have a predetermination about the movie at all. I had a predetermination about the marketing. And like it or not, they still have the problems I was writing about two months ago. Maybe they will overcome them.
As anyone who really wants to be fair should note, two weeks ago, I wrote a whole MCN column about how I thought they turned the corner with the ads with boys. And they have. They are still trying to make it work for girls too and every time they move in that direction, it turns off boys.
The movie – which I never thought would be gay and which does, I believe, have what plays like a gay bashing scene – is the movie. Different issue altogether.
Still, I understand why people sometimes have a hard time separating one from the other.
I get no glee from disliking any movies, though I certainly can go to town when writing about a movie I dislike. And in a case like SR, the more I discussed it, the worse it got.
P.S. I’ll be going back to SR next week in IMAX 3D and hope to see more I like. We’ll see.
Jeff,
No, White’s politics do not bother me. Neither do Dave’s or Jeff Wells or Jason Apuzzo or Steve Greydanus or Michael Medved or Roger Ebert or Todd Mcarthy or Tony Scott.
I read people who I think get film. I do not have to agree with thier political views or thier views on every film.
Do you read any critics who have a wildly different world view than you yet still respect them?
I only ask that they are up front and honest about them.
I would much rather read a review from a critic who is openly liberal or conservative and acknowledges as such than one who feigns neutrality but is not.
White gets how film reflects the ideology of our time and does not shy away from it. He is honest. He is also a very good writer as I would argue are all of the crix I mentioned whether they agree with my world view or not.
Honestly, Nicol, I am unaware of any conservative film critics who have impressed me enough to make me stick with them. I go to Greydanus’s site occasionally but mostly out of curiosity – the writing is nothing special. Do you have any other names that you would recommend?
Jeff,
No recommendations. If you are unimpressed, I am sure there is nothing I can say that would make you so.
Thanks for trying, but come on. Medved is not on the same level as Armond White. Are those three guys the best you can suggest?
Jeff,
I wasn’t ‘trying’ to do anything. I wasn’t suggesting these people for you to read.
If you do not like a critic because of thier political, social or religious disposition that is your business.
We like who we like for the reasons we like them.
As I said above, I am sure there is nothing I could say to change your mind.
When I said ‘trying’ I was referring to what I was hoping was any interest you might have had in helping to educate me. Since you are not ‘trying to do anything’ I will continue along on my way.
Why the obsequious coverage of this Franchise/Sequel in Time and Newsweek? So those 2 magazines don’t have to run cover stories about the South Asia quagmire or the Bush gang.
As far as movie critics’ politics go Michael Medved is pure poison. He is a servant of two masters — Paramount Pictures and Pat Robertson. Even the right-wing New York Post dumped Medved because of the Robertson connection.
What does Medved have to do with Paramount?
I think it’s unfair, Chucky, to single out Time and Newsweek for not paying attention to political stories of whichever stripe. It’s a media-wide phenomenon, plus obviously Time is involved in corporate synergy.
“Why the obsequious coverage of this Franchise/Sequel in Time and Newsweek? So those 2 magazines don’t have to run cover stories about the South Asia quagmire or the Bush gang.”
The Time Chucky reads must be different than the one I used to subscribe to, since that Time hasn’t been a “news” magazine in at least a decade. Maybe their next cover story can be about why Regal won’t run “Prairie Home Companion.”
Sorry to keep politics going, but I just saw something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before: A tv ad for the Syriana DVD pitching it in relation to high gas prices, with shots of gas signs intercut with actual movie footage.
Crass? Useful?
Smart Advertising.
Chucky,
Just out of curiousity, what is the ‘Paramount, Pat Robertson, Michael Medved’ connection.
Do you suggest he is on both’s pay rolls?
Do you have proof?
Disney produces Ebert’s show, yet I do not assume he is dishonest.
Medved is also openly Jewish so that hardly makes him a “Robertson” crony.
Again, if you do not like him due to his religious, social or political views that is your biz…but you infer he is ‘on the take’.
Can you elaborate?
Remember the “Coming to America” trial? Art Buchwald sued Paramount and won, claiming the studio stole his idea for the Eddie Murphy comedy. Michael Medved was an expert witness for Paramount in that trial. Medved admitted on the stand that he was giving the studios advice on how to promote their pictures. At the same time Medved was the film critic on “The 700 Club”, Pat Robertson’s political/religious TV show.
Robertson is a major player in the Christian right and ran for US President (as a Republican, naturally) in 1988. He also is a right-wing demagogue; his 1991 book “The New World Order” said Jews formed a conspiracy to start the two world wars. Last year Robertson went on “The 700 Club” and called for the US government to assassinate the president of Venezuela.
The Medved-Robertson connection should have raised a red flag in Hollywood. At least one studio continued to use Medved pull quotes until several years ago.
The Coming to America trial was in 1990, do we know that Medved has had a relationship with Paramount since then? Chucky, you stated it as if it was current, common knowledge.
(Of course, Medved and Robertson are both awful people).
Chucky,
You say a lot here and to be honest, it has the whiff of left-wing paranoia and stereotypes.
Y’know the same types of things such as those said in the DaVinci Code or on the Daily KOS.
A bunch of disparate ‘facts’ used to prop up a pre-ordained conclusion that Medved is ‘dishonest’ when the examples you give either A) have nothing to do with Medved or B) have nothing to do with honesty as a film critic.
I have heard many outlandish things said about conservatives and religious people in my life. Things that were not rooted at all in fact, truth ot common sense but in paranoia, fear and hysteria. Much of what you say, seems at first reading, to speak to that.
You seem to take a whole bunch of disparate facts (some of which may or may not be true) and then contort them to fit your implied view that Medved is ‘on the take’.
Ebert’s show is produced by Disney. Is he on the take also? Or is he exempt from suspicion because he is liberal and only conservatives are ‘dishonourable’ by nature.
Many critics have had relationships to studios and most of the entertainment publications you read are owned in some way by the conglomerates that produce the films. Are those crix (EW, Time etc.) on the take as well?
As for Robertson…I am not evangelical. I do not watch the 700 Club; but again…what does that have to do with Medved’s qualifications as a reviewer?
The insinuation here is that ‘Christian reviews’ are not trust worthy? Why? What about reviewers in Jewish, gay or partisan political publications? Do you subject them to the same scrutiny?
If Robertson is anti-semitic, why is he (as you infer) in ‘collusion’ with Medved who is an open Jew? Do you know how silly this sounds?
Sorry, but none of what you wrote constitutes ‘proof’ that Medved is dishonourable or an awful human being.
What it proves is that many (but not all) of the modern New Left are overwhelmed in hysterical conspiracy theories and even a hapless film critic is not exempt.
I would say that believeing many in the “modern New Left” are overwhelmed in hysterical conspiracy theories is in and of itself a hysterical conspiracy theory. And thankfully liberals and non-religious people are never subjected to outlandish things. Never.
Medved is far from being a ‘hapless film critic’.