Old MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Reeler Screening Series Continues With 'Half Nelson' at BAM; 'Outsider' Q&A Skedded For Pioneer


Big news on the event front: The Reeler Screening Series that successfully launched last month with Lodge Kerrigan’s film Keane continues in August at BAM with a special preview of Ryan Fleck’s superb Half Nelson. Featuring Ryan Gosling as a drug-addled Brooklyn schoolteacher who develops a strained friendship with one of his students (Shareeka Epps), the film has earned steady accolades since its premiere at Sundance last January; it made its New York bow at this year’s New Directors/New Films festival, and ThinkFilm plans an Aug. 11 release.
But Fleck and co-writer/producer Anna Boden will be on hand in Brooklyn a few days early to discuss the film and take your questions. So save the date: Wednesday, Aug. 9, at 7 p.m. Tickets will available on BAM’s Web site soon; rest assured I will let you know when.
I will also be dropping by the Pioneer Theater Aug 2. to moderate a discussion and Q&A following a screening of The Outsider, Nicholas Jarecki’s documentary about iconoclastic filmmaker James Toback (check out the related Reeler podcasts from earlier this month). Both Jarecki and Toback will be in attendance, and I will try to stay out of the way as the anecdotes and insights cascade from the front of the room. Tickets are available now at the Pioneer’s Web site.

Be Sociable, Share!

Comments are closed.

Quote Unquotesee all »

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