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
On a related note, I just found out that the 3rd fratboy, the one not suing, actually goes to my school. I never would have guessed that seeing as I goto school in New York, but he apparently transferred here. Here’s a link to an article our paper wrote about him if anyone is interested, basically describing his feelings and attitude towards this whole thing – http://www.bupipedream.com/pipeline_web/display_article.php?id=3548
I have no doubt it is legal. I don’t think Fox would have backed the film without a lot of legal strength.
But just because it is legal doesn’t make it right.
Fox and Cohen abused the trust of a lot of people who are not lawyers and not in the film business in order to mean-spiritedly make fun of them. And since Fox and Cohen can’t be held accountable in a court of law, I personally think they deserve all the bad press the people who are in the film can throw at them.
This film may have exposed the idiotic nature of these people, but their actions and comments since the film’s release are even more pathetic, given that they now know they’re in the American spotlight. Any podunk news producer who claims that Borat’s awkward interruption of her program’s weather report “sent her life into a downward spiral” deserves to be mocked.
Regardless, my points are moot. While intriguing, this rash of lawsuits will dissipate quickly enough. The film, on the other hand, will live forever as a comedy masterpiece.
There’s a lesson here, folks: If people would have spent more time watching Da Ali G Show and less time collecting Confederate memorabilia, they wouldn’t be in this mess.
Look, the type of stupid those fratboys are simply cannot be faked in the editing room. This movie did not make them look like fools, it simply documented them for the fools they are. And doubly so, for not merely being stupid, but being stupid enough to be stupid in front of a camera.
In a discussion with the lawyer I sleep with [my spouse], after reading the release above, it appears pretty damned specific and iron clad. I doubt Fox is losing any sleep over the potential law suits.
Anyone signing should have read it carefully, which I suspect they did not. It’s amazing how many people don’t bother to read legally binding documents before making commitments. This one isn’t even long or hard to understand.
What a litigious society we live in. Seems to me that if people act the gullible fool, they need to just suck up the embarrassment and move on, with a lesson learned.
Personally, I hated the film because I’ve never enjoyed insult and ridicule humor.
So was that your apology without naming me?
These people were told they were going to be in a documentary appearing in a foreign country, and nothing in the contract comes out and says otherwise. I’m not sure that’s gulibility, so much as the extent that leagalease is completely non-understandable by the average person. They were tricked – but legally so.
I will admit, I don’t feel too bad for the frat kids, though I do think they were lied to.
But for an etiquette coach to innocently take someone into her house and have that person say she and her friend look good enough to be whores and that another friend is too ugly to be a whore, and then have shit thrust under her nose, that’s just a dick move on Cohen’s part. And now the abused people have no rights to not have the person making fun of them show it and make shitloads of money off it. Unlike the frat kids, I doubt these people are telling their friends proudly that they’re in the #1 movie in America.
To me it doesn’t seem so much a case of being gullible, it just seams that they were taken advantage of by someone mean spirited and selfish.
No, Spammy… your ignorance of the facts and presumption of knowing what you did not demands no apology.
It’s a funny thing how people want to be given credit for taking the status quo position.
And I would still advise Fox to make some payments.
Me – First, you are stating allegations as fact.
Second, I don’t think that any of the American people were abused. I am going to post the press conference with the dinner party lady sometime this weekend. Her rage is sad and more horrifying than anything in the film. The only person in that sequence who really could feel pained in a reasonable world is the woman whose looks are insulted.
I do think that if people in small towns in Europe were paid substandard wages to be extras, that should be remedied.
Nonetheless, Fox is making so much damn money off this picture that it couldn’t hurt to throw a few bucks to these people, as a good-will gesture if nothing else.
Sorry, you’re right – I forgot to use the leagalese term “allegedly” in my post.
However, I’m not sure what you mean by saying her rage is sad and horrifying. How so? She was held up for ridicule by someone now making millions off of her embarassment. I’m not sure when a reasonable world became one in which we can’t understand her anger.
Also, unlike the townpeople it’s not as if her motive is greed – I think it’d be another case then. She feels wronged and wants an investigation.
I feel wronged by the woman who cut into the parking lane on Wilshire and passed me on the right the other night… but I got over it.
Were some of the people made fun of in the film wronged? Emotionally yes, but legally? No.
That doesn’t make what Borat does to them right or even defensible in my eyes. But again, if they signed a release, which really is pretty easy to understand if you take time to read it, they are told in that agreement that the film is aimed at the young crowd and they may be told things contrary to contract, but the contract is what matters and they’re agreeing to it by signing.
Remember how Randy Quaid tried to sue over his Brokeback Mountain contract after it became a monetary hit? He said he had been told it was meant as a small indie film and they couldn’t pay him a lot. He signed the contract anyway because he wanted to do the film.
I think this is almost exactly the same situation. Maybe Quaid should have been given a bonus after the fact, but he had no grounds to sue. Maybe extras or others in Borat should get a bonus, but they don’t have legal standing. They knew what the wages were when they signed on.
“These people were told they were going to be in a documentary appearing in a foreign country, and nothing in the contract comes out and says otherwise. I’m not sure that’s gulibility, so much as the extent that leagalease is completely non-understandable by the average person.”
The last sentence Dave quotes says that the person signing is not relying on any promises or statements made by anyone, and that the whole agreement is in the release. Which says nothing about a documentary (it says “documentary style” e.g., Spinal Tap). It says they “hope to reach a young adult audience” (e.g., this ain’t Frontline) and it says nothing about not being viewed in the U.S.
I do have to understand such things for a living, and I generally agree that a lot of contracts and releases are incomprehensible by laypeople, but this one seems to be drafted in pretty readable English, as these things go.
My bet is that it simply was’t read by any of these people complaining. I have no sympathy for the American whiners. In this age of stuff like the Daily Show and its faux-interviews, they should have had a clue. There said and acted like morons in front of cameras — I don’t care what the release said. Get a clue.
The issue of what the Romanians were paid is completely separate, IMO, and legal or not, they should make that right.