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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Question Of The Day – Wither DreamAmount

How many errors of fact can you find in this very tardy L.A. Times article on DreamWorks vs Paramount?
Okay… now how many events of spin can you find in the piece, which after a Brad Grey interview is interestingly willing to shove the blame on poor, old, crazy Sumner?
I don’t have the time to deconstruct right now… but it’s coming.
I will offer my favorite piece of spin before I post and run… In seven years of an 8% distribution deal with DreamWorks Animation (already 18 months old, btw) that Paramount paid for in an additional high 8-figure transaction, Paramount – Ms Eller argues – could earn as much from each DWA movie as it did from Shrek The Third for a seven year potential total of $800 million.
WOW! The giant hairy balls on that one!!!
The story in all these stories, my friends, is who is telling their bestest versions of the stories and who is allowing it.

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4 Responses to “Question Of The Day – Wither DreamAmount”

  1. IOIOIOI says:

    Heat stated; “WOW! The giant hairy balls on that one!!!” There’s nothing else to state after such a statement. Yep. Going to back away now. Going to leave it alone. Yep. Back off. Running now.

  2. marychan says:

    This LA Times article is one of the worst article about DreamWorks vs Paramount I’ve ever seen….

  3. Cadavra says:

    At this rate, in about two years Paramount will have sunk to the level of MGM, fighting for the scraps tossed away by the big guys.

  4. movielocke says:

    This whole Dreamworks Paramount thing just reminds me of an old quote, “I gave an exclusive interview to every paper in town.”

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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