Old MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Monday, June 19th, 2006 - 1 Comment »
Be Sociable, Share!

Wall Street Journal Nudges Reeler's Stock Higher; Also Reveals Lukewarm Iger and Sonnenfeld


Big thanks to the Wall Street Journal’s Julien Vernet, who today included The Reeler among the three indie film sites profiled in his Blog Watch feature. Along with GreenCine Daily and The IFC Blog, your humble editor has been singled out for “serv(ing) up longer critiques and on-the-scene reporting” as well as “tak(ing) advantage of the city’s rich film scene to interview industry players and attend local events.” The only thing that could make this a prouder moment would be being able to afford a WSJ subscription and thus find the link to Vernet’s lovely praise. Oh, and one of those engraved illustrations they always use in place of photos. Alas, you can find the hard-copy edition on page R14. Some blogger I am.
Coincidentally, Disney CEO Robert Iger also gets another WSJ close-up today, this time transcribed from an interview he gave a few weeks back at the Journal’s “D4” Conference in Calrsbad, Calif. And this is hardly the Iger who was publicly clashing with National Association of Theater Owners head John Fithian last year in this same paper; rather, this is the guy whose publicist and maybe one or two influential shareholders evidently spiked his coffee with a double dose of Banal-Exec Lite before he went on the record:

I think the movie experience, the big-screen, multiple-person experience, is actually a pretty good experience. I think the whole industry should get behind improving that experience. …We create a lof of value with the initial big-screen release. So I like the notion of keeping that where it is. How long that lasts in some exclusive window, I don’t know. It seems pretty obvious that windows are going to compress.

Oh, come on, Bob! Where is that street-fighting man who came out to the Journal last December to say he saw windows slimming down “by force more than negotiation or diplomacy”? The Mouse does not back down (except to Harvey Weinstein), and neither do you!
Also in the Journal, director Barry Sonnenfeld says windows should, in fact, get longer as a way of building up the social experiences of theatergoing and buzz-building:

People need to have things they want to do. They need to have events. … To me the embracing of the Internet is not a good thing. … [Studio heads] all fear the Internet. They all fear that it’s taking time away from their core stuff. “We don’t know what the Internet is, but we’re going to throw a lot of stuff up in the air, and maybe some of those things will be really good.” But maybe by doing that, they’re hurting what they know how to do, which is television or electronics or movies.

This coming from the guy who went from being one of his generation’s best cinematographers to directing Big Trouble and RV. At any rate, there are two types of movie lovers, and they DO have their respective events. One is called a film festival, where the anticipation and experience of theatrical viewing is communal and essentially sacred (hell, even RV premiered at Tribeca). The other is called the DVD release, which has cornered its own market on hype and which promises the blend of interactivity and authority (e.g. director commentaries, director’s cuts, etc.) that the digital age has conditioned us to expect.
And do not think Sonnenfeld has not prepared his extras for the semi-autobiographical RV‘s DVD, either. It will be out before you know it, and, you know, people need events.
UPDATE: My pal Bennett over at Open All Night has maxed out his credit cards for a WSJ subscription and thus sends along this link to today’s Blog Watch featuring The Reeler. Show-off!

Be Sociable, Share!

1 Comment »

One Response to “Wall Street Journal Nudges Reeler's Stock Higher; Also Reveals Lukewarm Iger and Sonnenfeld”

  1. prideray says:
    June 19, 2006 at 5:25 pm

    Um, that link still doesn’t work unless you have a password. But kudos!

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