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 have no real axe in this discussion nor anything to really add since I am not a movie critic or aficionado — just a money manager with a focus on media stocks. However, I will offer that for an average reader of the LA Times, someone not involved in the movie business, this sort of column might be viewed as OK. So my question is “is a column like this targeted at the larger reader base of the LA Times or the narrower base of insiders that see the LAT as a paper of record for Hollywood?”
Is anyone without a fairly serious interest in the movie business interested in columns like this? I can’t imagine that they are. The latest Scriptland is a massive bore. One actual script review of a movie no one has heard of starring an actress no one cares about. Two small filler pieces with nothing remotely interesting to say. And the writing is just plain bad. His attempts at humor are awful.
At the end of the column in the print edition, Fernandez asks his readers to email him “tips.” Sorry, but wasn’t the whole conceit that this guy already had contacts inside the biz?
Direwolf, I think Scriptland is targeted at the online audience.
The WGA puts out a really good magazine about screenwriting and screenwriters called Written By. I gain nothing by saying that, with the holidays coming up, a subscription to it makes a great gift at $40/year.
Dave – do you feel used?
The whole ‘should i be good or should i be evil’ with the secret hot project for week one of Scriptland now has me believing the LAT just played. Slaps on the hand – sure, driving everyone to read a weak column every week from now on in the hopes they slip up.. – hell yes.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice… we won’t get fooled again.