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
Fox dumped Idiocracy, Mike Judge‘s savage, often very funny satire of media and mediocrity over the weekend; here’s the clueless ad that ran in a few newspapers in the half-dozen or so cities where the picture opened without benefit of preview or word-of-mouth screenings. Over at Esquire, Brian Raftery tools down to Austin to have words with Judge, a man of few words. After terrible experiences on his first two pictures, Beavis and Butt-head Do America and Office Space, Raftery writes, “Idiocracy was supposed to be different. He filmed it two years ago, but once photography was finished, the real problems began: So-and-so executive hasn’t had a chance to see it, so everything was put on hold. Then Fox started nickel-and-diming him over a few special-effects costs. Finally, once the movie was totally finished last fall, Judge and the execs started to butt heads over the marketing, especially the trailers. (He’s still steamed over the ad campaign for Office Space.) “They’re just overthinking it, which is what they always do,” Judge says. “It’s just about an average dumb-ass person who winds up in the future. It’s not about ‘What if you could travel through time….’ “I’ve never experienced anything like this,” he says. “It’s just dragged on way too long, a good seven months longer than Office Space. I could have made another movie after I locked the picture before this one comes out.” [A review, to come, in this space.]
I saw the movie this weekend and it seems patched together by its voice-over narration — I’m wondering if it wasn’t recut by Fox before release. Despite its flaws, I thought it was extremely funny and am sorry it’s not getting a wider and better-publicized release.