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
The big problem I see with having a Republican President and a Democratic House (and potentially Senate) is that nothing will ever get done for the next two years. However much some of us hated it, we had a unified government before, now it’s just going to be a mess and you know that Bush’s veto power is going to be used a lot over the next two years so the rest of his term will be an even bigger joke than the last six years. Oh, well… only two more years.
It’s a good day for America. ‘Nuff said.
Well, EDouglas, that’s up to the administration. You can’t say that “nothing got done” during the entirety of the Reagan administration or during Clinton’s presidency post 1994 (and pre-Monica). The opposition party held the House during both periods. It was up to the administration to reach out and try to find common ground.
If anything, the past six years has been a rubber stamp for the current administration, with no effort by the White House to reach out to the minority party. We’ve now seen what can happen with one-party-rule in the U.S. and I think most people have now decided they don’t like it.
It may have been a better move, politically-speaking, to dump Rummy a month ago. Or maybe it wouldn’t have been. Ultimately, Bush said he did not want this move to be politicized, for better or worse. So now is the appropriate time.
Bush is taking his lumps. If the Dems had lost, all we’d be hearing about today would be disenfranchised voters, malfunctioning machines and voter irregularities.
“If anything, the past six years has been a rubber stamp for the current administration, with no effort by the White House to reach out to the minority party.”
Not true. Kennedy wrote the education bill. Many Republicans refused to support the president’s immigration bill, and likewise his nomination of Harriot Myers to the Supreme Court. Bush did not get his Social Security reform passed. Otherwise, I don’t know how you can quantify how much Bush reached out to the minority party, and how receptive they would have been to it. It’s just rhetoric.
Bush is facing lame duckness. And if he now wants to get anything passed, he’s gonna have to not veto things he might have in the past.
I love how, after weeks of DP saying, “You can’t compare things to Snakes on a Plane!” he compares a NATIONAL ELECTION to Snakes on a Plane.
Bush DID try to make a joke about two minutes into his press conference — something about Republican interior decorators measuring drapes — which he botched and quickly abandoned. Worse than Kerry, but then Bush must have a concussion. Still, how could we tell?
EDouglas, nothing getting done for the next two years is certainly better than what’s been done for the last four– suspension of habeus corpus, handouts to big business, the attempted phase-out of Social Security, and profound corruption.
Funny Leer… but I will be happy to compare movies to SoaP when the analogy works. Borat did not and does not.
For me, the SoaP template is an unintended media pheomenon followed by the studio being seduced by that phenomenology.
“phenomenology”
Did someone just create a new word? If so, I’d get it trademarked post haste!
Sorry, it’s a real word. Basically ‘the study of stuff happening’.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/phenomenology
“unintended media phenomenon”
That describes Bush perfectly.
I’ve had it with these muthafu**n Republicans in my muthafu**n government! =)
“For me, the SoaP template is an unintended media pheomenon followed by the studio being seduced by that phenomenology.”
Someone’s been reading Merleau-Ponty.
Yessirree, it’s “Lame Duck Walkin'”.
The Democrats have the opportunity now, if they really want it, to make policy and show the American people who they are. Before they were always on the defensive, trying to make a comeback, always being defined by the party in power. The tables are now turned.