April 25, 2024
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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
And for those who get bored easily by words and talking…. there’s the Spider-Man 3 teaser in the background!! (Now that’s a cheesy ploy to get hits if I’ve ever seen one )
Lunch w/ David worked because Ammo is so tone plain. These Daily David’s either have garish paintings or now moving images entirely distracting from the message.
Three clickable formats and no embedded file crashing my browser? Heaven.
I’m surprised how quick I warmed up for to the idea of THR buying MCN. Maybe I’m just hoping the overhaul would lead to a better comments system…
I ask again, why on EARTH would the HR buy MCN? They would take their site, which gets five times the traffic MCN does (according to Alexa, which DP rejects as a reliable source of traffic) and move in a blog which mostly links over to mainstream media sources? What would they start doing, linking back to themselves? If they wanted to hip up, I suggest they “buy” or hire The Reeler, or maybe Cinematical. Both offer up mostly their own content (MCN does too but that isn’t its main selling point, as far as I can tell – am I wrong?). The Reeler, as a possible young hip blogger on their site would make sense. To replace Thompson (who, frankly, is the only really big loss they’ve suffered) they would need someone like Michael Cieply at the NY Times. They need a real journalist/editor. They aren’t trying to compete with MCN — they are still trying to be real journalists. Freeform blogging and opinion has its place; maybe it makes trends even. But there is no replacing real reporters.
I agree–the TV is a huge distraction.
I ask again, why on EARTH would the HR buy MCN? They would take their site, which gets five times the traffic MCN does (according to Alexa, which DP rejects as a reliable source of traffic) and move in a blog which mostly links over to mainstream media sources? What would they start doing, linking back to themselves? If they wanted to hip up, I suggest they “buy” or hire The Reeler, or maybe Cinematical. Both offer up mostly their own content (MCN does too but that isn’t its main selling point, as far as I can tell – am I wrong?). The Reeler, as a possible young hip blogger on their site would make sense. To replace Thompson (who, frankly, is the only really big loss they’ve suffered) they would need someone like Michael Cieply at the NY Times. They need a real journalist/editor. They aren’t trying to compete with MCN — they are still trying to be real journalists. Freeform blogging and opinion has its place; maybe it makes trends even. But there is no replacing real reporters.
As I’ve written before, BiPed, Alexa is a survey based in great part on ad servers. (Someone in a studio internet dept explained this to me… I don’t really understand how it works.) MCN doesn’t have ad servers, so we don’t tend to register anything like our actual numbers. I have noted some anomalies to you in the past and your response was s shrug. All I can tell you is that Alexa, in our case, is factually inaccurate. I can’t really speak for anyone else’s traffic.
As for the point, BiP, it is to change the dynamic. Obviously, The Reporter is different than MCN. And I am not suggesting The Reporter would become MCN. But there is a paradigm shift that MCN represents and that I know how to work within that The Reporter needs to get into, whoever they work with. Variety continues to flail about on the web, but their game is still old school.
You have far too much respect and too little understanding of how e-news works, BiP. Cieply is a reporter and content provider. Yes, he is valuable. But he is not a big picture person… which is why he is back to reporting at NYT. Inside.com did the “let’s hire all the best” thing and failed because the paradigm has shifted. Personality journalism and journalism are different animals. Cieply is valuable talent wherever he is. But no one reads anything to read him… or for that matter, for today’s press release, which is most of what trade journalism is… a release a day before it’s released.
Investagative journalism would be new at either trade. A wider perspective would be new at either trade. All day reporting would be new at either trade.
It ain’t brain surgery… it’s a choice… it’s perspective… it’s vision…
And absolutely, Stu Van Airsdale would be high on the list of people to bring aboard, which is why MCN did that last year. But you need to have that narrow slice and multiply it by 10 to make the impact I am talking about.
No one is talking about replacing “real” reporters. (And if you were interested at all, you would know that everyone who writes for MCN is a longtime veteran journo.) How you deploy is the issue.
MCN is not neccessarily the best answer. But if they follow your advice, BiP, the place will be gone before the end of the decade.
P.S. Anne herself would be the first one to tell you that Cynthia is no small get. And if you think that Sheigh Crabtree and Lynne Segall were not big losses, you are only showing how little you know.
“everyone who writes for MCN is a longtime veteran journo”
Forgive my ignorance, but I thought Kris Tapley and Stu Van Airsdale were both young men in their 20s.
Thanks to all for the comments on the way I am shooting the segments… it is all a work in progress in public… if the images behind me are a distraction, I will try something else…
You have a bit of a tense problem, J-Mc.
Gary Dretzka was a section editor at the Chicago Trib for a long, long time. Ray Pride is the film editor of Chicago New City and has been doing this for well over a decade. Len Klady has decades in the film news business. I’ve been at this for 15 years. Justine Elias has been at Time Out Chicago and New York. Jami Bernard is a NY Daily News vet.
And yes, I believe in bringing in young talent that I think is smart and interesting. Stu is a young big brain. Kris is still deciding what he really wants to be doing, but is smart and aggressive and was exclusively on Oscar for us, on which I had read him as an amateur for years.
A big part of how I choose who can work with us has to do with their veteran skills, since we don’t have an editorial staff to edit and massage the way a bigger publication does. So I have to trust the writers to deliver clean, reliable, publication ready work. And our reward for that is that they do just that… and more.
What is my tense problem? Do you mean a tension problem?
David, I don’t share your fatalistic views towards “The Hollywood Reporter”. I would even call them glib if it wasn’t for two things: first, the fact that you are obviously trying to use this to pimp yourself and your own site (and thus making the situation look worse than it is) and the fact that there’s always room for improvement.
And remember the golden rule of journalism:
There is always, always a place to thrive for the second rank newspaper.
But let’s face it, The Hollywood Reported has ALWAYS been in second place. Their whole friggin’ model is based around this fact.
People always want a second opinion or at least some sort of a way to confirm what they already know. THR does not need to be seen as “THE OPPOSITION” to survive. Is there anything they can do to strengthen their position? Of course! However, that doesn’t necessarily involve jumping on the latest internet bandwagon.
The real trouble would arise if there was a danger of someone overtaking the #2 spot. However, this is simply not the case. For better or worse, other publications don’t have as much of an access to the stories as Hollywood Reported does. A large majority of such publications (be they online only or print) just end up reprinting the same stories over and over again. 99% of “breaking news” these types of publications get usually come through interviews that they conduct (and, as we all know in 90% of the cases, people contractually aren’t allowed to say much anyway) because this is the best they can get. Everything else comes through press releases, which get sent out to everyone but the Variety and THR gets to print out earlier than anyone else.
If anything, shifting their model would force THR to compete with a much much larger market. This is dangerous, especially considering the fact that despite their 75+ history THR can’t even be considered a trade paper proper, in view of all the changes they have implemented in the past years. They are in a weird place where they are not quite a trade and not quite a full-blown entertainment magazine either. I say, that they must keep their core intact and layer all of the improvements on top of it.
On the other hand, who needs to go hire professionals when someone as unprofessional as Sasha Stone can find a (ever-growing) readership? She may have an honest love for cinema, but her knowledge of cinema history (and even Oscar history) is extremely spotty. Her taste in movies is questionable and her fangirlish biases are too apparent.
But perhaps, it’s the very fact that she is so pedestrian that appeals to the common people in the first place, but I digress.
First off, Roman, I would put my knowledge of cinema history up against anyone else’s, especially anyone who writes for this blog and comments on it. You have no idea how much I know. My blog is not about film criticism. I never claimed to have a vast knowledge of Oscar history – I use the past to understand the present. I do what I do and if you don’t like it, fine – I’m glad you don’t visit it (or I hope you don’t). I also do not hide my biases. Whaever the reason you think I have a growing readership, Roman, I can assure you the readers are anything but pedestrian. I don’t claim to have a greater importance than I have either, except for one USA Today interview.
Tossing a virtual pie in your face and moving on:
“And if you think that Sheigh Crabtree and Lynne Segall were not big losses, you are only showing how little you know.”
You have been a one-man publicist for Crabtree – it’s not a knock against her (I think she’s great) it’s just that Anne Thompson is the well known one, the star. Losing great reporters is a drag but it happens often. It hardly means the HR is doomed to fail.
You can insult my intelligence or knowledge all you want – the fact remains, blogs and opinion-based sites like ours simply cannot replace real journalism. You scream about the death of old media (all the while linking primarily to the stories they themselves dig up – you would not have what you have without them) but really, in an age when anyone with an internet connection can speak to an audience, I find myself seeking out real news anywhere I find it. I am just about sick to death of opinions. I think the next trend will be away from bloggers. Countdown: two to five years. But who knows.
OK.
Sahsa, the problem I have with your site is a simple one:
Yes, blogs are created for a sole reason to communicate the opinions of their creators. However, to me Oscar Watch is NOT a blog. While it may use a simmilar format, it is a full-fledged site. Blogs don’t sell space for FYC ads, commercial sites do.
While you may argue and be right that your don’t make any money off the site at the end of the day, I and other professionals will still treat and analyze it like a commercial site. It’s a fair fame.
But I never ever tried to insult your intelligence. I appologize if I came of a little too harsh.
Still, I too would put my knowledge of cinema against anyone, including you ;).
I wouldn’t even have an issue with anyting you write if it wasn’t for the fact that you insist to (and made a big deal out of) use the name “Oscar Watch”. To me it’s a travesty on many level and the main originator of my crticisms.
“Whaever the reason you think I have a growing readership, Roman, I can assure you the readers are anything but pedestrian.”
Newspapers are mentioning you this past year more than ever before, stuidos buy ads. They obviously know you exist. I think I saw growth in the number of replies you get. However, it’s the comments that some users leave that make me have bad AICN flashbacks. You wouldn’t know they weren’t “pedestrian” by reading them.
“You scream about the death of old media (all the while linking primarily to the stories they themselves dig up – you would not have what you have without them) but really, in an age when anyone with an internet connection can speak to an audience, I find myself seeking out real news anywhere I find it.”
I agree and this is also why I think THR will survive.
“I think the next trend will be away from bloggers. Countdown: two to five years. But who knows.”
Interesting prediction. You may be on to something here. This is sort of what I meant when I spoke of being cautious of jumping on internet bandwagons.
But remember, Sasha, this warning applies to you as much as anyone else.
P.S. NOW HERE’S AN IDEA FOR THR. They should by Ain’t It Cool News lol.
“I wouldn’t even have an issue with anyting you write if it wasn’t for the fact that you insist to (and made a big deal out of) use the name “Oscar Watch”. To me it’s a travesty on many level and the main originator of my crticisms.”
I’m sorry, what exactly is it you’re trying to say? While Premiere, Hollywood Reporter and virtually every other entertainment site there is can use “Oscar Watch” and I can’t? My site has done well because of its content and its devoted fan base, not because it has the word “oscar” in the URL. Insulting my intelligence? Don’t be shy – it was worse than that.
And you don’t have to “warn” me – I’m the one who said it in the first place. You think I don’t know that soon my number is up? Like Kris once said in an interview, if I’m still doing this in five years I’ll kill myself. I need no warning from you.
p.s. DP – re: Daily David – I don’t think it works to stick a camera on yourself and chatter away. You can do that, and should do that, on the blog. I like your Lunch with David’s better because they have a point to them. I guess having a YouTube “show” or whatever might be fun (like cable access for net people) but to do it right you would have to invest more time I think. Like Rocketboom (or whatever).
If I were just interested in “pimping my site,” I would not be doing it in public and I wouldn’t be worried at all about whose money I took and what taking it meant.
The thing about THR is that it doesn’t matter, bottom line, whether it has a subscriber base. It matters whether it can sell as many Oscar ads next year as it did this year and the year before. Period. They don’t survive on the subscription fees. They make their money on ads. And Variety
“And BiP, again, I don’t know how to say it without sounding insulting, but you don’t think like someone who builds things. You think like a very smart person who puts your personal tastes ahead of building anything. And that’s fine. But it is the young reporter’s, like Sheigh, who will be the Anne Thompsons in just a few years.
Take a breath between your hard fighting opinions and ask yourself, “Who was Manohla Dargis five years ago?”
My answer would be that Manohla was a brilliant critic who went against the grain on many, but fit perfectly as The Voice and then, the LA Weekly. But she wasn’t nationally famous. And she was not discussed like she has been since she arrived at the LA Times and now, the NY Times.”
You are confusing film critics with reporters and that is a silly thing to do. Dargis was my favorite film critic back when she worked for the Weekly. I was not surprised to see her get hired by the LA Times and then the NY Times. I don’t think she is a good fit with the NY Times and frankly, I much prefer he stuff with the Weekly, truth be told. I think Maslin was a better fit for the NY Times.
I think you undersell Anne Thompson when you say someone young is nipping at her heels. That’s such bullshit. As far as I can tell, the only one promoting Sheigh is you. She is much more about the work. I don’t know if she wants to be Anne Thompson but I would put Thompson in a class all on her own – someone who went places because she’s worked hard in this business for going on 20 years. You’re going to say the Sheigh Crabtrees of this world are going to “overtake” Anne Thompson? Please. More power to Sheigh but I truly hope she follows in Thompson’s footsteps by writing good stuff. You are the one with true ambition to climb, DP. You tend to project it on everyone else. And of course you’re insulting to me. What else is new.
For the record, I never said anyone was “nipping at Anne’s heels” or “overtaking” her. What I wrote was, “it is the young reporter’s, like Sheigh, who will be the Anne Thompsons in just a few years.” I don’t Anne would disagree with that comment, except to say that she will still have the advantage of being a veteran. And she will. And the disadvantages too. And no one would agree with that more than Anne.
I don’t know what else to tell you, BiP. I don’t understand your anger at me.
I live how I drive. I will dart around like a bit of a madman, trying to find open road. I don’t need to get there faster than anyone else. I just want the room to do what I feel the need to do.
And if there is traffic, I just go with it. If there are three people blocking otherwise open highway, I scream loudly. But climb? Never. I’m way too arrogant for that and would feel too much guilt if I cut someone off, much less used them as leverage.
I’m a first guy in the door kind of person. I don’t mind the bullets. I kinda like them. Because as an arrogant prick, I don’t think they can hurt me. Climbing is for pussies. (And I mean that in the non-female, worst sense of the word.)
I get that about you and I think it’s cool. What I mean to say is that you are looking at the business like there are winners and losers. You are also suggesting (I think) that young is better in journalism, or new journalism, than old. I don’t think that’s really true. I haven’t found that to be the case – in fact, I think the opposite is true: someone with life experience and depth of knowledge is, to me, the more valued player.
I think it’s really cool what you do – I love how you’ve revolutionized ad selling on the net and I love how you bring original content to the web with good writers, cover the oscars and have an interesting perspective on the news (though I don’t like the playing favorites part of it). It’s all good. I think the site and its content speaks for itself. It doesn’t need a bold tag. I think publicly telling the Hollywood Reporter that it’s failing because it lost some writers was arrogant and prick-like on your part. It’s one of those “you have some balls” moments. To do what you do, dodging or taking bullets, doesn’t require that you constantly put down the competition does it? (I’m referring to “old media,” not myself).
The Reporter was in trouble before this, BiP. The death rattles have been going on for a couple of years now. Your idea that my response was all about Anne and Cynthia is not accurate.
And of course new is not by its nature better than old. Didn’t I just get through a list of the veterans who work with MCN?
And this notion that I “constantly put down the competition” is rather narrow. I see a total of two headlines on the MCN front page that can be considered negative. Perhaps if you replaced the word “constant” with “the ones I tend to remember are the ones where you…” would be more accurate.
Considering how wide the output of these sites are, the list of things I actually “constantly” do is very short.
Of course, I don’t really see many publications as “competition.” Not how I think. But I do say and write what I think.
“I use the past to understand the present.”
There’s no more surefire way to be led astray. Unfortunately, there aren’t any better ones.
“The Reporter was in trouble before this, BiP. The death rattles have been going on for a couple of years now. ”
Argue newspapers themselves, maybe. The reporter in danger of being replaced by bloggers? Give me a break. God, I hope not. As that Frontline series made painfully clear, there is no replacing people on the ground, digging up stories, making phone calls. There just isn’t, and god willing, there never will be.
“The thing about THR is that it doesn’t matter, bottom line, whether it has a subscriber base. It matters whether it can sell as many Oscar ads next year as it did this year and the year before. Period. They don’t survive on the subscription fees. They make their money on ads.”
The thing is David (and I’m sure you realize this yourself) that the two are interconnected. If THR doesn’t loose it’s subscriber base than the studios won’t have a big reason to stop advertising in it. After all, the ads are meant to be seen and as long as people keep reading the studios will keep buying.
There’s another thing to take into account. Usually there’s a set budget that the ad buyers are working with. And they like to split it into different directions. Most of the time, when given an option of buying one big ad in one paper versus two smaller ones they’ll go with a later (now this is not always true, I know that). Yes, Variety is likely to get a boost, I just don’t necessarily think it will come at THR’s expense.
Lastly, (this is a minor point), if THR were to expand it’s focus and start covering more things (essentially becoming less of an “insider’s paper”) their newer readers would not necessarily be as appealing. After all, not everyone who reads Entertainment Weekly (or even to a lesser extent LA Times and New York Times) is likely to pick up a copy of THR or Variety.