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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Last Word On The Removed Entry

A new day, new information on the allegedly hacked e-mails that Roger Friedman has now said are, “all fake.”
Frankly, I have no idea whether they are fake or not. There are details in the e-mails, which for someone out to embarrass Friedman, me, and others mentioned would be odd to fake the way they are faked, such as leaving out the actual names of certain people who are referred to and actually are friends of Roger’s in situations they may well have encountered. (I will not be naming them here. No one else needs to have added embarrassment.)
In any case, the thickening of the story is that they whole mess apparently came from TMZ.com. Yes, the great success. The great and important step forward for the internet, owned by Time-Warner and AOL. Sister company to Entertainment Weekly and People. The company that has people talking about Harvey Levin as though he is now something other than another scumbag who is happy to live off of the pain of others as a gossip monger.
It has long been a tradition in my work on the web to own ugliness by acknowledging it and moving on. And in this case, just because it is embarrassing to me that anyone – whether the people named in these e-mails or some con artists – would spew these kind of absurdities, it is no reason for me not to treat them as openly as I would were it someone else and I was posting on principle.
So… here is the offending excerpt about me… I note again that Mr Friedman has called the e-mails fake and I can confirm that every single fact about me

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21 Responses to “Last Word On The Removed Entry”

  1. IOIOIOI says:

    Some whacked out cracker-jack stated in an email to some yokel; “David wasn

  2. Ian Sinclair says:

    Foul lies. What would a nice Jewish boy be doing with a ham anyway?

  3. Spank it, apparently.

  4. anghus says:

    Ian.
    i don’t think i’ve ever laughed so hard at a comment on the web in my entire life.
    David,
    can’t you sue them for running false and damaging information without any kind of validation. the fact that it ran at all, even if it was pulled, has to be worth six figures.

  5. Wrecktum says:

    I know peoplw are aggrieved by such misbehavior, but I love this kind of shit.
    One would think Owen would be happy to join in on Poland’s furtive bumblings.

  6. Glamourboy says:

    Dave, don’t let the bastards get to you. And congrats on posting this on your site and facing it upfront. And just know that it’s a sign of your celebrity status when they start coming after you. I could care less who or what you’re attracted to….I enjoy your site, read it everyday, value your opinion, enjoy your mistakes, and appreciate your efforts here.

  7. anghus says:

    “This notion that you can publish this kind of thing and then pull it off your website when someone complains

  8. Joe Leydon says:

    Thanks for nothing, David. Now, for the rest of my life, whenever I hear someone say “brand spanking new,” I’ll think: ham spanking…
    And I’ll have an image inside my head that, frankly, I don’t want there.

  9. Anonymous says:

    Dave, if you decide not to sue them, then try and forget everything about this stupid issue. Do not let them affect you — that’s precisely what people like that want: to know they have made their enemies mad.
    Fucking bastards.

  10. That’s frigging nutty…seriously. Not to cast more speculation and innuendo….but the timing on this coming after the big bloggers 3 blowup (Wells/Finke/DP) couldn’t be more accusatory…

  11. IOIOIOI says:

    They essentially accused Heat of pulling a Sal the Stockbroker. I am thinking that someone has been listening to Howard and paying too close attention to congressional scandals, and decided to cobble together this nonsense about Heat. Seriously… some of the whackiest shit I have ever come across on the next since that other goofy shit a few weeks ago.

  12. Noah says:

    IO: Sal and Richard are both crazy…I wonder when they’ll finally just bite the bullet and get it on.

  13. IOIOIOI says:

    Noah; Sal will get it on with a prostitute before he gets it on with Richard. Those two represent all the latent homosexual silliness, that straight men have been propragating for years. If only Seth MacFarlane or the guys from Entourage could give Sal a job. HE WOULD SHOW THAT ARTIE!

  14. Noah says:

    It’s not that hard to show up Artie these days, as long as you don’t eat days old meatball sandwiches. By the way, IO, I hope you know that I consider you my emotional friend.

  15. IOIOIOI says:

    4-1-3 Noah. 4-1-3.

  16. Ju-osh says:

    First Wells and the infamous nudie pics email, and now this? Dave — do you think that the two are in some way related?

  17. David Poland says:

    Well, first off, the Wells story was 100% accurate… this one is 100% not.
    Second, I still have no idea where this came from. I haven’t even seen the entry from TMZ, as it was down when I heard about it. So I have no idea where it came from. But if pushed, I would guess that the e-mail was real, even if the rumor about me in it was not, even though Roger – who doesn’t really want to get sued – claims it was all fake.
    But no… I don’t think they are connected.

  18. Ju-osh says:

    Well, like the others have said, sorry for your troubles. You’re handling it quite admirably, though.

  19. frankbooth says:

    Could it be the long-delayed revenge of the Hicksville Pod?

  20. jeffmcm says:

    Nah, he was always a suckup as far as DP was concerned.

  21. Ogami Itto says:

    “Apparently, David had an addiction to ‘spankin the ham’ in the bathroom. One day, Owen Gleiberman caught him and let

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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