April 20, 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” ā 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 ā 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 ā he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” ā and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging ā I was with her at that moment ā 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 namedā” “Yeah, sure ā 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 Iām on the phone with you now, after all thatās 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 didnāt seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. Thereās not a case of that. He wasnāt using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had ā if that were what the accusation involved ā 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. Iām not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, āYou know, itās not this, itās thatā? Because ā let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. TimesĀ piece, thatās what it lacked. Thatās 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
Does that make it eligible for an Independent Spirit Award?
A big Yawwwwwwnnnn from me. Another big dork fest.
Dorks make your economy go round, Carpetmuncher. The best you can do for a living is to serve the dorks of the world. š
Hope the dorks line up at the right theater this time.
Carpetmuncher serves dorks a nice serving of poop on a stick.
Any Transformer movie that doesn’t use the old theme song is garbage, what happend to More Than Meets the Eyes!
The fact there is anticipation at all for a Michael Bay movie makes my head spin. Just because Brett Ratner makes Bay look like Orson Welles, it don’t make him Speilberg…
Thank God Knocked Up is coming out, finally some adult fun…
Blah!
Man, I’ve had that damned Transformers cartoon theme song stuck in my head for about a month now…really annoying.
TRANSFORMERS…more than meets the eye…autobots blah blah blah blah blah the destrecto-con.
Which I KNOW is wrong…but that’s the soundtrack of my brain for the last few weeks. And, Rosie singing REHAB.
Just to be clear, as one journalist seems to have failed to get the irony of this headline… Transformers in the LA Film Festival is every bit as horrifying as anything that happened at Tribeca and the least Dawn Hudson could have done was to take on the responsibility for this humiliation and not force Rich Radon to lie to the media in the press release.
And I continue to wonder… why isn’t anyone calling out the LA Times for being the title sponsor for an event run by a group they accused of breaking the tax laws with false status as a not-for-profit in the pages of their newspaper?!?!? Is that hypocrisy any less than the horror of Transformers as an indie film fest event?
(Personally, I would have suggested allowing Paramount the Westwood locations for a fee and putting that money towards showing some actual indie films… but that’s just me. And semantic spin or not, at least it’s not hard core, public, interspecies anal penetration.)
OK, Carpetmuncher, not much I can say to a man who copped his handle from Hitler…
David-
Are you like…late to the party? That headline above could have been used at any time over the last 8 Sundances. The way film fests tack on films that are anything but “indie” has almost become…acceptable. or at least, for me, it’s become a matter of apathy.
Complaining about indie fests overshadowing the hard work of smaller filmmakers by inviting celebs and pointless corporate sponsors is about as invigorating as bitching about Bush and the Iraq war. At least SXSW has the couth to not announce what big budget mainstream movie they’re “sneak previewing” every year.
In fact, since we’re talking about it…sorta…what does the Seattle Film festival have to do with the career of Anthony Hopkins? You just devoted a blog entry to a guy who’s is basically overshadowing the Seattle Film Festival and if nothing else, the 2 hours you spent talking to him took you away from any number of great undiscovered festival gems. Is there a difference between a fest like Seattle inviting a major movie star to their event to sell tickets and the LA Film Fest inviting a big blockbuster to sell tickets? I don’t see much of one…
If you can’t see the difference between Anthony Hopkins or even last year’s LAFF opener, The Devil Wears Prada, and Trans-fucking-formers, I can’t help you, Pet.
AND I have been writing about this slide for years. Tribeca and Spidey 3 and M:I3 and yes, Sundance when it was doing a lot of major studio openers. Sundance stopped because it was embarrassed.
Your argument is a little black and white compared to what I usually expect from you.
I think it’s a bit insulting to Anthony to be criticized for honors at Seattle. He’s been in many indie films over the years.
I imagine most indie actors would give an arm for a career as broad and successful as his. He’s paid his dues.
And as for Transformers? May I join the collective groan? I don’t care what money it makes, it’s farcical to have it open LAFF… wait, maybe it’s all a big joke?
Last time I checked, it was called the Los Angeles Film Festival, not the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival. Yeah, so it’s put on by Film Independent, but let’s face it, a part of a film festival’s job is to promote film. And as shitty as it may sound, if some kid in Hancock Park to whom an independent film is Brokeback Mountain and would never see anything that didn’t play at The Grove all of a sudden discovered something like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days because he heard about this Transformers screening and went to the LAFF website… well, that is a trade-off I am willing to make. Even if he never sees 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days but becomes even mildly exposed to anything outside the mainstream, that is a good thing.
Plus, this premiere is going to bring in a shitload of money into the FIND coffers, and that can’t be too bad either.
Good point, Edward.
And my point previously was that film fests bring in “big guns” to attract people. Of course I get the difference between Transformers and Devil Wears Prada but like Edward said, it’s all about attracting attention and trying to get people to the fest.
Maybe LA Film Fest felt like they needed something REALLY big to attract notice in that market. Hell, Silverlake film fest did a whole program featuring “alt-porn” to attract new people.
You boys are very good at rationalization.
Again… if you can’t see the difference between Silverlake serving a wider cut of its internal audience and TRANSFORMERS at an indie film fest, you are blind or intentionally wearing blinders.
Notice that I have never complained about midnight movies or quirky commercial indie fare at these fests, whether Asian horror or extreme comedies. Even a movie like Hot Rod, which is surely commercial, is an oddball at Paramount and it fits into your “draw a different audience” argument.
Of course, Pet, you already lost your argument when you used an Anthony Hopkins career tribute directly connected to his extremely iconoclastic art film Slipstream as the standard for a festival whoring out.
The reason the indie business is in disarray right now – and its off on a raft, looking desperately for land – is because studios took it over and brought, in most cases, the standards of the majors to the idea of indies, pumping up budgets and marketing budgets and the idea of what was an indie success. As a result, the simple opportunity for films outside of that closed system has become extremely limited. It can be cracked. But it is rarer and rarer each year.
As I wrote yesterday, if LAFF insisted that Paramount buy all the tix for the 8 other screenings that night so they could give them away to people who might not otherwise be going to LAFF films, that would be more interesting. Taking the money to sponsor a specifically iconoclastic program… more interesting. Arguing that a $200 million Michael Bay film belongs at this festival? Priceless.
Dammit! Now they’re honoring Hopkins at Cinevegas too…lol. I’ll be there..at the fest, not the honoring party. Unless there’s strippers.
Anyone else going to Cinevegas?
CineVegas is a good example. Every year, they look for a studio premiere to hang their hat on. But they also understand what they are as a kind of oddball festival. Their embrace is George Romero.
LAFF wants to be a festival of weight… a symbol of what is good in the indie world… not this time…
And even last year… the biggest lesson of Prada should have been that the fest looked like whores with 80% of the seats in the 1200 seat theaters being held for sponsors. So what did they learn? To have more theaters for “real people” spillover when they bent over for a much bigger, much less indie, intentionally brain dead film. Nice learning curve.
I don’t understand the idea that the festival should make Paramount buy all the tickets. what’s the difference between paramount buying them and a bunch of fanboys buying them? The money still goes to the festival. If my roommate getting the chance to pay way too much for a movie he could see cheaper a week or so later allows me the opportunity to see 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days that much earlier, great.
Also, where is the press coverage on all the other films in the festival? Maybe I’m not doing the search right, I can’t find anything on this site or on a few others. If everyone was so concerned about the truely indie films in the festival (and they’re there) why didn’t people write about them?
If you look at their web site, the festval isn’t pretending Transformers is an indie movie. They’re calling it a blockbuster blockparty. Seems like they know what they’ve got.
Very few “big” news sites cover smaller fests. I’m pretty proud of our work at Film Threat as when we hit a festival, it’s our intention to review EVERY movie there. That’s the plan for Cinevegas. We were a few short at Sundance and SXSW this year, but we cover at least 90% of the films at fests we attend with more than 2 writers.
Incidentally, DP…OCEANS 13 is this years festival kickoff film for Cinevegas. Seems to fit what you were saying about an oddball big release. Plus…Vegas…OCEANS 11, 12 13…should be fun.
That’s what I love about David… if you disagree with him, you just get marginalized, and then you get lectured. I’d rather have LAFF book Transformers to bring in the masses and have some of them discover other works, instead of trying to get them in with a wasteful look back at the best of art-porn.
David, indie cinema is in trouble not because of the studios. Indie cinema is in trouble because there are far too many indie movies that are just like a thousand other indie movies that came before. In my time at Troma, including a time as their Director of Acquisitions, we received several thousand submissions, and a good half of them were zombie movies. There were so many fucking zombie movies that it took a really interesting hook to get me to give it a look, and even most of those really sucked ass. In fact, the only movies I did try during my short run as DoA were Frog-g-g, a not that great throwback to 1970s man-in-suit cheapie sci-fi/horror/comedies that I felt had enough lesbian T&A to be somewhat exploitable, and Lollilove, which was specifically brought to us by its writer/director/star, Jenna Fischer, and her collaborators James Gunn (Fischer’s husband) and Stephen Blackehart, both Troma alums. Lollilove, while being yet another mockumentary, was so painfully uncomfortable and politically incorrect that it was somewhat refreshing.
In fact, of the few movies Troma has acquired in recent years, both Lollilove and the various films of Giuseppe Andrews have received glowing reviews (from those few critics brave enough to give them a chance) for their being so completely different from what passes as “independent” cinema today. Maybe that’s why documentary cinema is becoming so big today. We’d rather learn about pedophile priests and global warming than see another mediation on what it’s like to be twentysomething and aimless.
I got DP’s back on this one, pretending that bringing in TRANSFORMERS is going to broaden the audience for the smaller non-studio backed films the festivals are built to support is just ridiculous on it’s face. This is simply a matter of a studio using a festival to push it’s tentpoles, and a festival selling out to the studios.
Then again, it’s not like the LAFF is on anybody’s radar, it’s one of the more irrelevant festivals out there. So in the end, I guess the Transformers thing is a big whatever. Big Dave’s point stands.
Slipstream is a big piece of garbage, the didn’t bring Hopkins in because of his “art film” but rather accepted a crappy film because Hopkins is a big star.
As for Troma’s contribution to indie film, the reason they get pitched so much garbage, I don’t know, but isn’t that what they traffic in?
well, it’s the old art vs. commerce argument again.
i understand your outrage, david. i share it, to an extent. i mentioned in a previous post that i was there at the start of the festival (not as an organizer, but as a lover of film). as it’s grown, it’s lost its roots. i think they dropped the word “independent” for a reason, regardless of who runs it. someone is trying to distance itself from that word. with this premiere, i think they have finally succeeded.
i have ceased caring for the festival because i think it is more interested in the festival than in the films. the part of me that isn’t outraged is the part that was waiting for something like this to happen. it was only a matter of time.
i think it’s pie the sky thinking to believe that anyone attracted to “transformers” is going to give a shot to a truly indie film.
the LAFF is getting exactly what it wants. i just have no intention of being there when they do it.
Troma gets pitched so much garbage because they’re one of the few distributors who will pick up a low-to-no budget movie from a no-name filmmaker… and because so few filmmakers think their films are garbage. š
The kids dream of being the next Matt Stone and Trey Parker, whose Cannibal: The Musical was picked up by Troma two years before South Park got off the ground, when more than 85 other distributors wouldn’t even look at it. (I mean, come on, who the hell is going to be interested in a musical about a cannibal?)
But then, look who else has gotten their start in movies that Troma either made or acquired. If you get away from Lloyd’s hyperbole and the disdain most cineastes have for the company’s product, you’ll find it’s pretty damn impressive.
As for the pie in the sky comments… yeah, it’s wishful thinking that a great many people will find interest in a Romanian movie just because it’s in the same festival as Transformers, but what does it matter if the number of people who discover something they otherwise didn’t know existed is one or one thousand, as long as they are exposed to it? It was pie in the sky thinking that helped get the current trend of documentary features becoming (relatively) mainstream going. Just keep exposing it to people until their resistance is slowly shrunk to nothing.
I also think another issue surrounding the “indie film business” is that there are small studios making “indies” and independent filmmakers making films on their own to little or very little notice. Self distributing, working the circuit, all that. Like the old days. The whole “Mumblecore” movement is truly indie while (c’mon Dave…gimmie a break) “Slipstream” is “studio indie.”
It’s like going to a local brewpub that makes their own microbrew or buying a sierra nevada microbrew in any store. One’s a mass market micro, the other is truly local and independent of big commerical distribution. Same for “indie” films.
I still don’t see much difference between feting a big star at an indie fest and bringing in some big studio fare. I went to the Sonoma Valley Film Fest this year and they did a tribute to Pixar’s John Lasseter. It brought in celebs and got them a bunch of press from all over, but he’s never been a festival type filmmaker. It’s all about getting press and notice. I mean, would we even be talking about LAFF if they hadn’t done this hullaballoo with TRANSFORMERS? Seems like it worked…
Nobody did self-distribution in the old days. It wasn’t even possible. In the late nineties some filmmakers four-walled their films and road-tripped them, but they typically lost their shirts. These days you get vanity releases from really small indie labels, but most of those didn’t exist in the old days, and today we have a lot more ways to get your film out there, IMO things have changed for the better if you’re a no-budget film, you can self-distribute on DVD at the very least.
Slipstream is hardly a studio indie – it might have “studio” talent in it, but if you saw it, you’d see that it’s a solopsistic mess, a truly “indie” film in spirit and even in financing. No studio would have ever put ANY money into that insanity.
I do agree that nobody would be talking about LAFF if it wasn’t for TRANSFORMERS but still agree with Dave that it’s just bunk. Yes, it gives teh LAFF some press, but that’s the ends to the means. YOu’d hope the ends was getting more butts in the seats to see real indie films, but it’s not, it’s just to get press for a sinking festival.
True story: Some years ago at Cannes, I attended a panel discussion on “independent cinema.” (It was on the rooftop of a posh hotel, BTW.) The moderator suggested that “indie cinema” was a difficult term to define — and that, gee, didn’t movies from Troma qualify for the label? Henry Jaglon, one of the panelists, nearly went postal. He wasn’t mad, he was friggin’ outraged that someone brought Troma into the discussion. LOL.
Incidentally, I think it was that same year when, at another Cannes event, Jim Jarmusch opined that, unless you’re talking about a filmmaker who uses his/her own money to finance his/her film, there are no indie filmmakers. That’s a bit broad for my taste — sort of like Godard’s statement that every film is a political act — but he does have a point.
so, what is the point of the LAFF? to get noticed? hell, let’s not single them out because pretty much all festivals do this. does the fact it works to gain publicity actually do any good for the films? or does it just help out the festival?
I’ve been with my site for YEARS and have honestly never heard of the Los Angeles Film Festival. Granted, I only lived in L.A. for 2 years but it’s really not much of a blip on the festival circuit radar…until now.
“The fact there is anticipation at all for a Michael Bay movie makes my head spin.”
It’s less “Oh wow, Michael Bay has a new movie coming out!” and more “Oh wow, an action movie about robots is coming out!”
Get. Over. It.
“The fact there is anticipation at all for a Michael Bay movie makes my head spin.”
It’s less “Oh wow, Michael Bay has a new movie coming out!” and more “Oh wow, an action movie about robots is coming out!”
Get. Over. It.
Well, Pet… you apparently haven’t been on MCN, where we have covered the festival with multiple writers for years.
And Ed, if LAFF booking Transformers to bring in the masses and have some of them discover other works were likely to happen, I would be fine with it.
You want to know EXACTLY what will happen? There will not be a single seat for a civilian in the Mann National and they will sell about 600 seats to civilians (if that) to sit in the crappy little houses that also dot Westwood, paying $25 to see the film a few days early.
This will be followed by a party at which no one without a high powered badge will get within a block of the cast or crew of the film.
Paramount is the master on this one. LAFF/FIND is the monkey. And Paramount is doing NOTHING wrong… they are behaving as a studio.
And frankly, when someone is not outraged by this is why I am outraged by this… slippage, slippage, slippage. Hey, why not have Indie Spirit Awards for all films under $40 million? Or $200 million?
The old joke… we know what we have become, now we are just negotiating price.
AND Pet… does Anthony Hopkins paying for his film out of his own pocket make that a “studio indie?” Because he is, what, Anthony Hopkins? Are you distributing his film for him, as no one else has stepped up to date?
If you don’t know LAFF after two years in LA, there is something wrong with your movie radar if you give a single shit about indies. Being in LA and not attending is absurd. Same as AFI. And that being the case, I’m not sure of why you even have chosen to offer an opinion about the festival.
Finally… Ed… who is marginalizing whom? Sounds like you are marginalizing yourself and making it some personal issue. Nothing wrong with the Troma biz. But the indie world, like the studio world, has always been filled with repetition. Always will be.
And the doc business isn’t doing that well. Deliver Us From Evil, which won at LAFF last year and was picked up out of the fest leading to the Oscar nod, underperformed terribly at the box office. The doc wave is pretty much over, aside from the hardcore arthousers (and those 3 million people who saw An Inconvenient Truth… or about half as many as saw Music & Lyrics), Michael Moore being a genre of his own.
Anyway…
Good thing you cleared all that up.
For the record, Mann no longer operates the National.
I was using my time at Troma as an example of what’s wrong with independent cinema and those who create it. For every Andrew Bujalski, someone who tries to breathe new life into the tired genre of the dramatic comedy about aimless twentysomethings, there are a thousand wannabe hacks inspired by Tarantino’s stupefying monologues who think all you need to do to create cinema is to turn on the camera and let your stupid friends talk for ninety minutes. For every Justin Channell, someone who tires to breathe new life into the tired genre of zombie films, there are five thousand hacks who think that all you need to do to create cinema is do what you saw on the pages of Fangoria and drip a lot of colored Karo syrup on your idiot friends for ninety minutes.
I think we are seeing the term “independent” differently.
As for documentaries… well, all the documentaries in 2007 might not combined make as much as Transformers’ opening weekend, but the age of the documentary isn’t quite behind us yet. If it were, you really think a documentary on crossword puzzles or parrots could do $30K let alone $3M? Deliver Us From Evil didn’t do well because its subject matter was repulsive to many, no matter how well made it may be. Speaking for myself and my wife, neither of us were raised with any church-based religion, so neither of us would be interested in the story of a pedophile priest. But then, I’m just relieved more people care about an obscure musician like Daniel Johnson than they are about an entertaining but ultimately useless film that “exposes” the evils of the MPAA.
The best definition of an indie film I ever heard came from Bruce Campbell: “If you know your release date while you’re shooting, you’re not an indie.”
Poland is right on about the doc business not doing as well as publicity might suggest, certainly theatrically. Outside of Michael Moore, Penguins and Al Gore, no doc has ever made that huge a profit in the theatres, those guys just title the scale.
I again laugh at people I assume are adults going gaga over a “action movie with robots.” Seriously, Transformers were cool when I was 8 years old. By 10, they were lame. Seeing 20-30 year old males drool with anticipation over this stuff is just beyond hilarious. Some of you guys just need to get a girlfriend, seriously. And leave the robots behind…
As for indie film, that Bruce Campbell quote is funny, and there are all sorts of pithy things to say about indie film, but for working purposes, indie film is any film financed outside the studio system, or financed by any of the vanity labels. It means “independent” of the studios.
I’d find the “People going nuts over a robot movie directed by Michael Bay” more laughable if I didn’t just live through two months of grown women going nuts over a Pirate movie based on a theme park ride produced by Michael Bay’s mentor.
I don’t live in L.A. any more for one. And for 2, I have “heard” of the LAFF, but never “heard” anything about it.
“Transformers” will now open on Tuesday, July 3, one day ahead of schedule. Credit the LAFF if you will.