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
I haven’t digested the column yet, I’m just commenting on the title, Snake Bit. I had a friendly argument with a writer (i.e. smart)friend of mine about what the term means because I thought Donald Trump, who I despise, said one smart thing about George Bush, he said, “the guy’s snake bit.” Turns out all it means is unlucky, I thought it meant “good as dead.” It’s a great title for right now, so I can read it or get fired for not working. That’ll be the day.
I disagree with the assertion that SoaP was the most highly publicized movie of the year. I’m pretty sure that MI3, Superman, X3, and Pirates can lay better claim to that title. Snakes had a lot of buzz within a particular realm but not as much in the mainstream.
Apparently, you don’t read much mainstream media, J-Mc. I tnot only got as many slots as the others, but it got them all three times.
Good post, Dave. Thought provoking and new ideas.
Despite the likely profits on this film, still a lousy summer the sibling studios at Time Warner.
I’m sure someone already brought it up, but the whole fact that it is Snakes on a Plane is why many stayed away. I’ve met plenty of people who have a very real fear of snakes (whether rational or irrational is up for debate). Couple that with those who also are afraid of flying and it’s a no-fly zone for many.
I grew up catching snakes in the woods behind my place. Not really an issue for me. As for flying, well no new fears there, even after the movie. It’s good honest fun. That’s all. I’m sure more people will see the film on DVD, and it’ll probably be a big seller, since people can control the experience in their living rooms.
I’m not in a rush to see it again in a theater mind you – not unless it’s a midnight screening with fellow SoaP lovers…that might be more fun than the first time.
What are ‘slots’, DP?
I’m pretty sure the average non-internet-surfing white male did not have high awareness of SoaP. My middle-aged mom sees a lot of movies and she had no clue what it was last week.
DP,
I know you like to say that opening weekend is all about marketing but the fact is the movie just wasn’t all that great.
People are constantly coming away from studio films disappointed and are increasingly unlikely to buy into the hype. Not always – witness “Pirates 2” – but increasingly.
I really would like to know what this sentence means, anyone?
“It not only got as many slots as the others, but it got them all three times.”
Huh?
Slots are publicity opportunities, all 3 times may be before and during production and before opening.
Great piece, word of advice to marketing professors at the university level: print it now for use in the classroom this fall.
David: copyright it and sell it to them.
I’m sure David knows what he’s talking about with ‘slots’ but I am pretty sure that there was less awareness of this movie in the mind of Joe Public. Newspapers and TV reporters being amused by the title and repeating it is gimmick publicity. Were they even running TV ads?
>>>David: copyright it and sell it to them.
Web pages and emails are copyright protected the second they are created. Any work of authorship is for that matter.
Hey Jeff, I got an idea, cut and paste the whole piece into your word processor and trim it down to include just parts that deal with the topic of awareness and with advertising. Then rearrange it into a shorter piece and cut and paste it back here as a comment. I have a feeling, we’ll all learn a lot.
Schools get fair use privileges on short articles in print.
J-Mc… it is the greatest mistake that we all make in this entertainment universe to believe that our experiences match those of everyone else. This is not an attack on you, because it happens to everyone. It is what lead to the “release it now” arguments a few months back. “If everyone I know is talking about it, everyone is talking about it.” When my nephew or neice show interest, that is the start of my research, not the whole research effort. (And when they don’t want to see something, it is far more informative, as a rule.)
Awareness of the movie was excellent. Want-to-see was weak.
My experience has been that people knew about SoaP the movie, but not so much SoaP the phenomenon. In other words, they just regarded it as another stupid horror movie. For them they didn’t see it as being a huge cultural event. Even someone I know who works for a well-known online marketing firm had no clue what kind of watershed SoaP was.
I was wrong about how big it was going to be, but I seriously should have seen it coming when it had almost zero traction with people I knew who were its prime audience. In fact, they all went to Step Up instead.
WINCHESTER, AN INTERESTING FELLA, AND I ARE HAVING “A FIGHT” AT HE THAT I THOUGHT Y’ALL MIGHT LIKE.
I have to agree with a lot of points Jeff made here. The film should have opened in June, against Click or something else of that ilk. Hell, it could have taken on Superman. But the buzz of those who didn’t want to see it killed it. Maybe they were intrigued back in the spring, but after the bombardment of flicks lobbed at them this summer, I think a lot of people were just burned out.
And the film should have been more “balls to the wall” out there. After the screening I saw (10PM thursday at Sherman Oaks Galleria, not packed, but reasonably full) pretty much everyone there who wasn’t checking their myspace on their cell phones throughout the flick, were agreeing that the film could have been ridiculoulsy better had it been even crazier. Like Sam Jackson ripping a snake in half and fashioning a belt from it better. The original Ronny Yu vision would have made this film infinitely better. As it stands, it looks like one of those flicks that fought hard for the PG-13 rating, where it’s awkwardly cut for the purposes of the rating, only to not make much sense. And this time, in reverse.
Although, I’m kind of happy that it didn’t really succeed all that well. Now the cult status should kick in, as it’s no longer affected by the restraints of popularity. Speaking as a disenfranchised Gen X.5er with not that much to say, knowing that movie can belong to the dorks again is kind of a relief.
Posted by: The Winchester at August 21, 2006 12:55 PM
In order for SOAP to have caught the hype and come out in June, then New Line would of had to dispense with traditional finishing and streamed it over the internet with temp visual effects and unmixed sound. The amount of discounting that goes on around here of the fucking labor intensive, technological and lab processes that go into releasing a picture is mindboggling. It pisses me off because in the real world, compressed post and finishing schedules has ruined more lives than anything else I know of. Now I got to go to lunch from 1 to 2 like the lemmings I work with now — much less interesting, boring actually, but steady and you can bullshit your way in and out of stuff a lot more.
Posted by: T.H.Ung at August 21, 2006 01:15 PM
I don’t see how rushing post on Snakes on a Plane could make it a worse film than it already is. If anything, it can only add to the great fromage taht is SoaP.
And the film was well on it’s way to being complete before the hype truly began to peak. They were done shooting last September.
Rushing post didn’t stop Superman from opening on time. And I worked across the lot from those guys the few weeks before opening. I saw a lot of tired people. Angry, tired people. And Superman kind of turned out to be an even bigger disappointment in some eyes.
At least n one expected SoaP to be good. That would be asking far too much.
(And that didn;t stop me from having a great theatrical experience with Snakes, light years more enjoyable then sitting through the almost 3 hour program with Supes)
Posted by: The Winchester at August 21, 2006 01:41 PM
Hey, Winchester, I like your website and finally, someone gets it. Sure, sure, true enough about SOAP and SUPES sucking, I’m talking about getting the agry post-production people part.
Didn’t they do additional shooting in responce to blogger requests, so they weren’t done last September. I think it was Joe Leydon that said the pick up shooting looked obvious — that shit NEVER matches right especially with a crap director.
I’m advocating a different distribution for SOAP. Given that they relyed on the net and didn’t bother advertising, New Line should have streamed it in June “unfinished.” Unfinished in post terms — you can cut months off your schedule that way. It would have added, as you say, to the great fromage that is SoaP. And would everyone please drop the pretention and just type it out all in CAPS.
More circular reasoning from you to correct:
Rushing post is the reason Superman opened on time. Superman kind of turned out to be an even bigger disappointment in some eyes for ENTIRELY different reasons than rushing post.
Posted by: T.H.Ung at August 21, 2006 02:13 PM
T.H. Ung,
When you talk about New Line “streaming” SOAP in June, are you talking about bypassing theatrical altogether?
Posted by: Dixon Steele at August 21, 2006 03:24 PM
Yes, only if A.), it had to come out in June in order to catch the “wave” and B.) there’s a way to make millions of dollars streaming something over the net and bypass all the expensive, time consuming finishing. It’s really a theoretical discussion to make a point. What’s that called: making a illogical point to support another case. David Poland’s got a Snake Bit piece that’s really hot (how’s that for illogical, DP: hot. Now where’s my nude yoga class?)
Posted by: T.H.Ung at August 21, 2006 03:38 PM
David Poland certainly is… I can’t think of a way to end that sentence.
Kudos to whoever brought up the dead genre of the horror comedy. The irony is that those flicks are usually better than the “horror” films being put out these days. Give me Slither over Pulse any day of the week. (Of course, I’m biased being an AICN dork who claims Shaun of the Dead as his favorite movie, but I feel no need to defend my view yet)
TH Ung, thanks for the good words.
So, I wrote that post about Supes being rushed, and I think I may not have written what I was thinking. (then hit submit twice accidnetally to prove I’m an even bigger idiot)
But the point I was thinking I was making was, save for the 5 days of additional footage, there’s a good chance that most of SoaP was completed, CGI snake rendering aside. (By the way, for all the real snakes they claimed to have in the flick, they all looked fake as hell to me). You gotta figure that most of the time was spent on FX work, and even if it wsas only at 70% done by May, they could have easily pushed, just like Superman, and gotten it done in time. The main difference is that people probably still wouldn’t care.
And said reshoots were quite obvious (C’mon, the couple having sex NEEDS to be smoking a joint, so it’s doubly horrible when they get whats coming to them). And did you notice that with the exception of the infamous Muthafuckin snakes on the muthafuckin plane line, every other time the word “fuck” was used, it was all ADR from a character offscreen? It’s like they let Uwe Boll come and play.
Streaming it would have been a bold step, especially when people would look back on great moments in media, and find that Snakes on a Plane was the largest film ever made to be released solely on the internet.
As it stands, at least companies will think differently again about the use of the internet. It’s funny because they were all reshuffling ideas after Snakes became ridiculously huge, and now that it “failed”, it’s back to the drawing board again. Remember, though, just because it’s all the rage doesn’t exactly mean the myspace kids are always right.
(However, to contradict my point, I direct you to Step Up, a film nobody had heard about that focused it’s advertising with it’s myspace page. That film will likely outgross SoaP many times over)
Posted by: The Winchester at August 21, 2006 03:59 PM
Woah, woah, locked in May and ready for exhibition in June, and you were a post PA?
Posted by: T.H.Ung at August 21, 2006 04:07 PM
Yes, locked in May and ready for the internet in June, absolutely. Render the effects, don’t mix on a stage, don’t print master, don’t master anything for that matter, don’t Dolby it or do anything and stream it.
Step Up = my space + ABC Family advertising (see High School Musical cable hit phenom and basically the same audience).
Posted by: T.H.Ung at August 21, 2006 04:15 PM
Unfortunately, I hate and avoid myspace at all costs. And don’t really watch all taht ABC family, but it’s defintiely the right targets for their flick.
I’m not saying that locked in May, ready for June release wouldn’t be unpleasant, but as a post PA on a show that’s trying to do a very similar thing, it is something that has been known to be done before.
It’s not like it hasn’t happened before, and yes, I agree, it will make dozens (if not more) Post folk unbelievably upset. (As the low end of said post totum pole, I would bear the brunt of it). But it’s something New Line should have considered, given that the final product felt just as sloppily put together. (Except those snake scenes, those made the film much more tolerable then it had any right to be)
(Tangential thought process: They just cast Hostel 2, which is aiming for an end of January release date. Meaning 4 months to make the damn thing in time.)
Posted by: The Winchester at August 21, 2006 04:34 PM
I’m questioning your grasp of post because “sloppily put together” is a production issue, not a post issue. It’s as big a misconception as: editors cut out the bad stuff. Rush post is not only impractical at a certain threshold, it’s impossible at a certain tipping point, let alone exponentionally more expensive at very high speed.
Posted by: T.H.Ung at August 21, 2006
DP, I agree with you completely. That’s why I think you are wrong. Awareness within those of us in the bubble of movie/internet world was high, but that isn’t the same as the real world. To me it seems completely counterintuitive that this was ‘the most publicized movie of the year’.
Jeff, you had to asleep, dead, living under a rock, under the age of 5, too old to matter or possibly home schooled to not be aware of this movie.
Uh, J-Mc… lovely for you to insist, but the facts – by survey – do not match your notion. Tracking is not good at picking a sure figure for a weekend… but pretty good at finding out about awareness. Palmy’s argument that awareness about the web intensity was limited, yes. But whether your mom saw it or not, this movie was everywhere in the last few weeks, in and out of the bubble.
THUng… please don’t do that again. It’s a long, long piece of copy. If you want to have the fight in here, have it. I don’t need other blog fights recopied onto this page. Appreciate your enthusiasm, but…
I’m not disputing “this movie was everywhere”. I’m disputing “this movie was _more_ everywhere than Pirates/Superman/Tom Cruise”. Are there any facts or figures to back this up?
How can Superman have spent $100m on marketing and still be out-publicized by a New Line movie?
D – remove it, suffice to say I was having a fight at HE.
J-Mc… publicty and advertising are not the same thing. There were twenty movies or more this summer with bigger ad budgets than SoaP.
And THUng… it’s cool… didn’t mean to sound harsh… just an ettiquette request… would prefer you put a link to the thread and a comment like “this asshole and I are fighting on HE…. take a look.”
Then I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe Time Warner should let the New Line guys run their operations like Paramount did with Dreamworks.
Snakes problem?
1 – Marketing was bizarely off. First rule of camp — don’t make the materials look CAMPIER cause then it’s not funny anymore — duh. From the TV spots to the final poster, the look, take, style was all over the place. An event spot finally ran this weekend that finally made the movie look like an EVENT not some mixmash video from MTVU. Imagine that.
2 – Release date. New Line should have gotten this movie out in April. The only competition would have been Silent Hill — need I say more. David is correct in asserting NL had to crazy with publicity at the end cause the buzz was already over…and they were over compensating.
3 – Critics. Um, maybe the movie would have broadened if there were critics out there saying how fun it was? NL acted scared and didn’t screen for review. Now, granted, there is no guarantee the response would have been the same if the crazed fans weren’t sitting with all those old white men late Thursday night, but would it have been that far off from a 59 average on Metacritic? Most of which were positive reviews?
NL has some major problems. They screwed up “Just Friends,” “New World” and “Hoot.” Not easy sells, but all could have done fine business. They should pray Jesus saves them with “The Nativity.”
I don’t think anything was gonna save Hoot.
So what’s been the “geek” reaction to the actual movie? Were they satisfied?
IMDB’s 8.2 rating with 11 thousand votes (71% of people voting ’10/10′) indicates ‘yes’.
Hmmm, I just got back from Snakes on a Plane.
It is exactly as was promised. Laughs, gratuitous violence gore and swearing and a bit of nudity. It was probably the most fun I’ve had in a cinema all year. Better than stuff like Superman Returns and Miami Vice and the like.