May 8, 2024
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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” ā 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 ā 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 ā he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” ā and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging ā I was with her at that moment ā 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 namedā” “Yeah, sure ā 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 Iām on the phone with you now, after all thatās 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 didnāt seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. Thereās not a case of that. He wasnāt using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had ā if that were what the accusation involved ā 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. Iām not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, āYou know, itās not this, itās thatā? Because ā let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. TimesĀ piece, thatās what it lacked. Thatās 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
Wait, you saw the original Wicker Man in theatres? How old were you? LIke 10 or 11?! That would certainly explain a lot… š
“It is not the medium in which one publishes. It is the quality of the content.” True, and the best critics create a separate piece of art with their review, because they accept the subjectiveness of taste and don’t see their mission as thumbing-a-movie up or down. A well written review is enjoyable to read whether or not one has any intention of seeing or knowing if a movie is good or bad. It takes a seasoned or naturally gifted, curious and interesting person to accomplish this.
The Guardian’s film coverage nine out of ten times is worse than you’d get from a roomful of monkey bloggers.
I actually disagree with you on that, BC. for me, there is not more effective publication covering the wide world of film right now. But so it goes…
I was a bit unkind to the Guardian there. They can be pretty good, but then there are times the haughty self-righteousness that mars almost all their political coverage infects their film coverage. Probably the only paper I know right away when I see a link to a story on MCN that it’s from that paper, they’re so obvious most of the time. So I’ll revise my estimate downward a bit. Five out of ten times the monkey bloggers take it.
Advantage: monkey bloggers, still.
White orb? What were you on when you saw it?
The Scriptland sophomore effort took the enterprise from controversial to boring. At the end of the column, Fernandez asks his readers to email him “tips.”
“The reason my taste is more important than yours on The Wicker Man, Ms. Cooke, is that I saw The Wicker Man on a movie theater screen when it first was released (a bit tardy in the U.S.) and you watched a DVD last month.”
With all due respect, David: Since I’m older than you, and have seen many, many movies on theatre screens that you have not yet seen, or have seen only as DVDs — does that mean my taste is more important than yours?
Obviously, the point – which you took out of context – was offered in the context of Ms. Cooke’s piece.
But yes, Joe, there are areas of film about which your opinion is more qualified than my own. Absolutely.
I am sure you know more, for instance, about movies of the late 60s and early 70s than I do because your experience of them was not only in retrospect, after the media and popularity essentially curated my context for seeing those films. I can appreciate Budd Boetticher, but I can’t truly understand the world in which he worked just by reading books and seeing his films and more popular films from the same years.
The ability to analyze films – which is ultimately opinion, not fact – does not discriminate between employers. But knowledge, context, taste, history, and experience are all part of that dynamic… which is, ironically, Ms. Cooke’s argument. However, her argument of people will jobs at big Tradtional Media outlets vs people who write, for free or for pay, on the web, is inherently flawed.
I actually think you agree with that, Joe.
Well, it’s like I told D.W. Griffith on the “Birth of a Nation” junket…
C’mon Joe, give us the dirt on Lillian Gish.
She put out like a gum machine. And Mary Pickford? Don’t get me started….
Gish lived 99 years without ever marrying. Do the math! š
Perspective and time very frequently change our opinion of a movie, in both directions. I loathed BARRY LYNDON when it first came out. Saw it again recently at the Academy, and while I still think it could lose half-an-hour, I now understand what Kubrick was going for and have re-evaluated my opinion thusly. On the other hand, one of my favorite movies as a kid was TOPKAPI; saw it again 20 years later and was crestfallen–it seemed leaden and clunky for the most part. It almost seems mandatory to revisit films after a period–not only do we change, but so does the world around us.
The great thing about teaching film history is that I repeatedly re-view, re-re-review and re-re-re-review great movies — with college students who have never seen them before. The questions they ask and the comments they make — in short, their fresh perspectives — often motivate me to rethink my opinions and assumptions. Indeed, sometimes a student will spark me to think about possibilities and/or interpretations I’d never considered before. For example: A few semesters back, a student asked me if I thought Joseph Cotten’s Jedediah Leland in “Citizen Kane” might be a closeted homosexual. I must admit, that’s the first time I ever considered that take on the character. But the more I thought about it, the more intriguing the idea seemed.