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
YES! I read that the other day and I was really confused by it and then they mentioned A Beautiful Mind and couldn’t believe they mentioned it. Like, er, it WON Best Picture, dickhead.
I highly doubt that that many potential Dreamgirls moviegoers would go “Oooh, I don’t wanna see that anyway. Diana Ross didn’t approve!”
Ugh, morons.
As has been reported elsewhere, Beyonce straight-up said on BET that she was told by Diana Ross that she approved of the movie.
But I guess that doesn’t matter when you’re literally making up a story.
Does the under-35 crowd even know who she is? (Or care?)
Ross also apparently had bad words for the musical. That seemed to have worked out okay.
Off topic but I had been waiting for a thread that mentioned the LA Times:
I was listening to the quarterly conference call for Tribune last week (Trib owns the LA Times) and in discussing the continuing weak ad trends at the paper they stated that 10% of the advertising in the LA Times is movie related and that line item saw a 17% drop year over year. They attributed the sharp decline to smaller ads that run for shorter periods. The shorter periods was explained as being consistent with shorter theatre runs for most films. Optimistically, Trib noted there were would be more major releases this holiday season than last.
New York Times, another paper with signicant movie advertising, also had a conference call last week and discussed similarly weak advertising trends for movie advertising.
NYT admitted that the problem was secular. Hollywood is pursuing different advertising strategies for its films, especially internet related. Additionally, TV, especially Thursday night network TV, has gained share.
I thought about this and remembered how I used to find the paper to check the movie times and what was playing close by. Now, of course, I just go Fandango. The only time I used to notice movie ads in newspapers was when I was looking up showings. Yeah, I know it seems basic, but there goes a whole bunch of advertising for the newspaper industry. As if they don’t have enough problems.