MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

In Seattle…

It’s Day Six of the 33rd Annual Seattle Film Festival, which opened last Wednesday night with a movie I kinda love, Son of Rambow.
I arrived today just in time to attend a dinner for Anthony Hopkins and a screening with Q&A of his film, Slipstream. Tomorrow night, he gets an award from the festival and I’ll be chatting with him before the presentation. He was pretty feisty tonight, which hopefully portends another intense public outing tomorrow night.
Meanwhile, I’m settling in with some DVDs, as Seattle is one of the few major festivals left that makes a wide selection of their program available for the press to check out on DVD. I expect that I will see at least three films by the time of the first screening public tomorrow… great.

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6 Responses to “In Seattle…”

  1. LYT says:

    Does Son of Rambow still have the weird press embargo on it?
    At Newport Beach fest, it screened on condition no press got to see it. In Seattle, I understand press did not get to see it in advance.
    Seems odd for a film with little but positive buzz.

  2. James Leer says:

    Seems strange as press got to see it at Sundance.
    “Son of Rambow” is great. I grin just thinking about it.

  3. EDouglas says:

    Press got to see it at Sundance because it hadn’t been bought by Paramount Vantage at the time of the press screening. I guess now they own it and won’t be releasing it until next year, they’re trying to control who sees it/writes about it. Not sure why cause it’s a great movie, much better than Black Snake Moan.

  4. Krazy Eyes says:

    I saw the trailer on Ain’t it Cool. It looks very, very violent. Stallone’s going to have trouble getting an R-rating unless they do some serious chopping. I didn’t notice a son character though.

  5. jeffmcm says:

    Not quite the same Rambow.

  6. Glamourboy says:

    “Dirty Gertie said, ‘Now that Charles Nelson Reilly has thought of everything. Instead of making a comeback he has BLANKED.”
    Fannie Flagg says, “Come out”.
    Brett Sommers says, “Got botox”.
    Richard Dawsom says, “Gone to that Match Game in the sky.”
    Unfortunately, Richard Dawsom is right. Bummer.

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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