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
Well…would you prefer Trump not wearing underwear when exiting his limo?…
This is a nice follow-up to your anti-Anna Nicole potshots last week, like DP is just SOOOOO above our tabloid-trash culture. Comes off as kind of smarmy, not to mention a little disingenuous. You’re a fun writer, DP, but you’re hardly Edward R. Murrow yourself. I mean, your beat is schmoozing and reporting on actual artists; basically a papparazzo with a TypePad account.
I mean, it’s a free country and it’s your prerogative if you want to bash Trump as being consistently tacky. Have at it. But in both cases you seem to take this cackling glee at your infinite superiority, your being SO above the fray with this kind of nonsense. If Trump and Anna Nicole are so endlessly irrelevant, what’s the distinction between that and cooing (endlessly) over an American Idol reject’s performance in a splashy musical? Trump and Anna Nicole may be hacks to your mind, but they are (were) marketable brands and sterling examples of the American dream. Are you only impressed by this when it’s a big-shot film director whose publicist returns your calls or who deigns to have lunch with you?
I’m just saying, there isn’t exactly a whole world of difference between Paris Hilton and Beyonce Knowles, between Donald Trump and the director of “Hounddog,” but your sycophantic reverence for the latter, “respectable” types is every bit the same thing as the hack brand of celebrity worship you seem to be mocking.
It should be noted that most of this would go away if the media simply stopped covering these people 24/7. “Appalling” doesn’t begin to cover the scandal at the Walter Reed Hospital, but no one knows about it because the news networks are still focusing on Anna Nicole virtually non-stop.
Trump hosted WrestleManias 4 and 5 at Trump Plaza, and has appeared at others since…but appearing at number 23 is somehow jumping the shark?
David, you could easily have gone to WWE.com for the details, but this is the “bet” — a match between Umaga “The Samoan Bulldozer,” representing Vince, and a wrestler to be named next week, representing Trump (most think it will be Mick “Cactus Jack” Foley).
If Umaga loses, Vince gets shaved bald. If Trump’s guy loses, he gets shaved bald (obviously he won’t, but for WWE fans, seeing Vince gets shaved will be sufficiently entertaining).
Doesn’t the country at large want Trump to be shaved, more than just about any other person-of-hair?
Nice of them to cross-promote the Jim Carrey movie too.
Apparently, LexG, you take me a lot more seriously than I take me. “Infinite superiority?” Are you kidding?
I am, however, many cuts above being a professional gossip. That I cop to. Whatever you think I am, I am not in the business of making a living based on exploiting the personal lives of others.
If you want a serious answer – I don’t expect that you do – Donald Trump is a billionaire (or near it) and fronts what has been a major TV series. Head shaving bets for WWE is something that you might expect from someone on The Surreal Life. It makes as much sense for Trump as it would for Julia Roberts to do Howard Stern… which is to say, to submit her personal life to his abuse for the sake of attention.
But you misunderstand my argument that he is degrading his own valuable brand for calling him a hack. He is not a hack or a nothing. He is, it seems, addicted to hype.
Yes, LexG, I think the Anna Nicole thing was the tip of a very problematic iceberg… not because it was covered, but because CNN, which is not a tabloid news channel, got sucked into it. Donald Trump’s bald head? Not even from the same planet of conversation.
Perhaps I hurt your feelings because you are a WWE fan or get hot for self-destructive blondes who base their entire lives around showing their private parts publicly. I have been a Wrestlemania fan in my life. I have told the story, though perhaps not lately, about how Hulk Hogan and Mr. T were booked onto Saturday Night Live and how it enraged the cast and production team… and how it turned out they were amongst the best hosts all season on the show, because they are pros. I worked for one of the major wrestling outlets, TNT, for years and respected the very successful work of that team.
But this was not about whether I respect wrestling and the Anna Nicole thing was not about whether I respect naked blondes. (Some of my best friends have been naked and blonde!) Lift, LexG. Then separate.
And trying to parse your language… are you saying I have shown reverence (sycophantic or otherwise) to Beyonce or Deborah Kampmeier? Could you explain when I showed this? Unless, of course, I misunderstand. Because last I checked, I hadn’t written much of anything about Beyonce and all I have ever done regarding Hounddog is to call it a failed vanity project.
P.S. Please note the tabloid piece on Ralph Fiennes that I posted over the weekend on MCN. If you want to accuse me of hypocrisy, that is the bait, not this. But damned if that wasn’t some of the funniest tabloid prose I’ve read in a long time!
(P.S.S. Sorry for not doing more research, Luke. The photo comes from a press release sent to me this morning.)
Heh; Well, I can’t really come back to too much of that, since you pretty well schooled me there; My only defense is, yes, I am a superfan of hot, dazed, vacuuous blondes (seriously), and I can only dream of achieving Trumpian levels of success with Czech models, at inverse proportion to the quality of my own hair, which is likewise going in the always-unenviable Bob Zemeckis-Al Gore-Robert Forster pattern. I’m 34 and have the hair of fucking James Cromwell, so yeah, I guess I have sympathy for the Donald.
I’ll concede your point about this being well beneath a near-billionaire mogul.
As for the Beyonce/Kampmeier hyperbole: Just two absurdist examples, and maybe not the best way to make a point; Just pulled them out of thin air to say that you’ve breathlessly covered “Dreamgirls” and “Hounddog” with the intensity generally reserved for Woodward and Bernstein in 1972, so I felt these occasional (albeit amusing) potshots at junk culture were a little on the easy and disingenuous side.
I wouldn’t say you trade in gossip, but understandly you do engage, even maybe subconsciously, in a bit of hero-worship for celebrities, filmmakers, publicists. And there’s nothing wrong with it, so I don’t know why you’d downplay it.
I’ve only been reading the blog for a year or so, and I’m just a humble postproduction hanger-on, and not a junketeer, so maybe not the true audience to gauge your intentions.
But your musings here, and the comments you attract, are very much steeped in a Westside, talk-and-name-drop-a-little-too-loud-at-the-Grove, “check your texts right up until the studio logo comes on ’cause I’m so important,” “guess whose publicist just gave me a ring” insider-ness that I think just comes as second nature to those as deep in the game as you are. Yes, that’s your circle, and Hollywood is your beat, so who can blame you. It was maybe a slight to compare you to a papparazzo or a gossip, but ultimately you’re squarely within an insular sewing circle who hem and haw over things that in the grand scheme of things, aren’t really THAT much more “important” than a Britney Spears haircut.
I think the main notable thing I recall in your writing about Beyonce was the phrase “crossover erections.” Which was actually kind of awesome.
Well, thanks for that, Lex.
I know that none of this is brain surgery or politics. But as with all things that are not, they are important to the participants. If the projects you work on are not important to you, you should probably get out now.
I can’t really speak to all of your assumptions. But I do think you need to be a little more careful about distinguishing what you think and what you know, whether it be why someone looks at their Blackberry or how they relate to the professionals that cannot be avoided in this job. The issues you raise are not unimportant or inherently false, but you paint with such a wide brush, you become unavoidably wrong and not just wrong in detail.
Donald Trump is a billionaire (or near it) and fronts what has been a major TV series. Head shaving bets for WWE is something that you might expect from someone on The Surreal Life. It makes as much sense for Trump as it would for Julia Roberts to do Howard Stern… which is to say, to submit her personal life to his abuse for the sake of attention.
Vince McMahon is also a billionaire, and has been friends with Trump for many years — he’s not going to humiliate him; the “bet” is a match with a pre-determined outcome, and I guarantee you Trump has script approval. WWE is consistently at or near the very top of the weekly cable ratings, and their shows on sci-fi and CW are always at or near the top of those channels’ ratings.
It is arguable both that reality TV shows like The Apprentice, and WWE, appeal to the exact same audience; it is also arguable that WWE has more brand recognition than Trump in some quarters, especially younger viewers and international TV audiences.
I don’t know why this should be seen as something out of the ordinary – Trump has always been a publicity hound, it’s his m.o. And he’s been famous for over twenty years, so I don’t think there’s any reason to think his ‘Warhol clock’ is running out.
Is there any reason for a person to look at their Blackberry throughout a movie except rudeness?