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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 - Comments Off on Reeler Pinch Hitter: Bennett Marcus, Open All Night
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Reeler Pinch Hitter: Bennett Marcus, Open All Night

[Note: Reeler editor S.T. VanAirsdale is taking the week off, but the blog is in the good hands of trusted friends and colleagues; click here for other entries in the series. Bennett Marcus is the co-editor of the celebrity and gossip site Open All Night. He graciously contributed this dispatch from the Ziegfeld Theater premiere of OutKast’s garish cinematic soul-ocaust, Idlewild.]
Who knew that Liza Minnelli was into rap? Homegirl said she hung out with OutKast’s Andre “3000” Benjamin and Antwan “Big Boi” Patton down on the Wilmington, N.C., set of their new film Idlewild. I would have loved to have been a fly on that wall, but Liza told your humble Guest Reeler about it Monday at the film’s New York premiere.

Liza with a ZZZZ: (L-R) Macy Gray, Ben Vereen, Liza Minnelli, Andre Benjamin and Antwan Patton arrive at Monday’s Idlewild premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater (Photo: Louis Lanzano/AP)
It should be noted here that today’s Guest Reeler, far less astute than the Real Reeler, initiated the conversation with Ms. Minnelli by asking if she was in the movie. “No, but I was there for a lot of the filming,” she said. “I went to visit Ben [Vereen] because I thought it was such an unusual project. And it was thrilling to watch. I mean, he worked with these kids for like a month before they got in front of a camera, and they are so marvelous in it. And [choreographer] Hinton Battle’s work is so good. And the director is brilliant.” It should be noted here that the Real Reeler disagrees with Liza on the last point about director Bryan Barber being brilliant. (Let me also point out the obvious: This Guest Reeler has not seen this film.)
Liza then looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if her buddy Vereen had taught the guys to dance. “They could always dance!” she said.
Now that Liza had set me straight on the rap world, I was prepared for my conversation with Benjamin, who sings a love song to a dead woman in the film. “Well, actually, that was the original concept,” he told me. “Like, the movie started from two video concepts, and that was the video concept for a song called ‘She Lives in My Lap,’ which I perform in the movie, and a song called ‘Church.’ Bryan Barber took those video concepts, and he stretched it out and made it this long-form movie. But it’s not a video at all.”
I didn’t get to talk to Barber, but it should be noted here that the Real Reeler also disagrees with that last statement, and in fact called the movie a long-form music video.
At any rate, your Guest Reeler is more comfortable discussing weightier issues: Benjamin displayed his appealingly offbeat fashion sense in a straw hat, orange- and blue-striped shirt and white pants.

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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