By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Rapeland: LA Times swims with the leeches
When you were little, did you aspire to the fame, glory and spiritual avoirdupois of Harry Knowles? Not me, but it seems one Jay A. Fernandez, in a ” Special to The Times” column called “Scriptland,” wishes to become Hollywoodland’s next red-headed stepchild. In a vile column of pointless corporate espionage, Mr. Fernandez begins by rationalizing his potential revelation in the pages of the TribCo’s ever-faltering daily, the contents of the latest intellectual adventure by writer Charlie Kaufman, then doing so with alacrity. 
Unproduced scripts circulate throughout the bottomlands of Hollywood; like gossip, they’re a component of what makes the community tick. Information? Power. [And there are SECRETS for a reason.] “I feel a bit like Frodo palming the One Ring,” Fernandez geeks to start. “The last two weeks have been a grueling cacophony of real and imagined voices—other journalists, producers, publicists, Kaufman, myself—trying to convince me either of my righteousness as a journalist or of my complicity in possibly hurting one of the greatest screenwriters in history… On a personal and professional level, I thought reading his latest script would bring me great joy…. [M]any people, beginning with Kaufman, do not want me to have the script, do not want me to read the script, and without question do not want me to write anything about [it]. Words like “super-sensitive,” “invasive” and “freaked” have been cautiously leveled at me as I’ve reached out to those involved with the project to get their thoughts on it.” So why not fold? “Ambitious doesn’t even begin to describe the sublime and scary head-trip that is ‘Synecdoche, New York.'” Assuming his readers are stupid and that Fernandez can flag his superiority to them or to anyone who is smarter than he, he geeks further: “For all those who aren’t AP English professors, a “synecdoche,” other than a clever play on Schenectady, where some of the film takes place, is a figure of speech in which a part is used to describe the whole or the whole is used to describe a part… Yes, I had to look it up. Several times.” He parcels a plateful of spoilers, of which I offer but one: “Page 1 features a 4-year-old girl having her butt wiped.” “No one has ever written a screenplay like this,” Fernandez avers. “It’s questionable whether cinema is even capable of handling the thematic, tonal and narrative weight of a story this ambitious.” He also covers the perverse sexuality in Scorsese’s The Departed. Disingenuously, Fernandez types, “But the script I have is only the backbone of the story, because the director apparently encouraged and used a significant amount of improv during filming.” [There’s a review of Fernandez’s rave over at the Big House of Charlie, Being Charlie Kaufman: “It’s all rather cryptic… but he gives the screenplay a mind-bogglingly big rave…. Not afraid of making a big call is our Jay. Kind of a hesitant relief to me, actually, because I had been thinking… another story about a writer, and about folks having problems dealing with their own realities?” Let’s see… a major metropolitan daily decides it’s a blog and… Paging Michel Gondry… Paging Michel Gondry…]
