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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Hot Button – You Are What You Emulate

Truly original films are a rare commodity. They always were. But upon passing its hundredth birthday, the film industry is evolving in the way all the other arts have. There are plenty of remakes, but more interestingly, there are now more and more films that involve high quality talent, with high end aspirations, that can be tracked back to earlier film, particularly the early 70s era of independent minded studio magic.
There are two different forms of this phenomenon. The first form is film that flatters past greatness by Evolutionary Imitation. Those include:
Network + Erin Brockovich + Syriana = Michael Clayton
Days of Heaven + Heaven’s Gate + McCabe & Mrs. Miller + Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid + The Long Riders = The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
In the first case, there is story subtext in the first act that is clearly reflective of Network. I completely believe Tony Gilroy when he admits he admires the film and when he says he wasn’t cribbing. In the case of Jesse James, there are a variety of wildly familiar style points that Andrew Dominik has built into his own vision of this not unfamiliar story.
The other form, which I find more interesting, are the Completionist Films, such as:
Prince of The City + Superfly + Hoodlum + The French Connection + Mr. Untouchable = American Gangster
Hotel Rwanda + Shooting Dogs + Shake Hands With The Devil (the doc) = Shake Hands With The Devil

The rest…

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3 Responses to “Hot Button – You Are What You Emulate”

  1. hendhogan says:

    i saw one trailer with monaghan in it for “heartbreak kid.” was wondering if i had imagined it.

  2. mutinyco says:

    “You are so self-righteous, you know. I mean we’re just people. We’re just human beings, you know? You think you’re God.”
    “I… I gotta model myself after someone.”

  3. seanwithaw says:

    nice woody quote.

The Hot Blog

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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