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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Sunday, September 9th, 2007 - 3 Comments »
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The Trouble With Festivals

I got sucked into a vortex of my own creation yesterday and managed to go an entire day at a festival without seeing a single film. And I whined about it all day.
The thing about these festivals is that there are multiple tracks. If you are on the interview track, you see movies in order to do your interviews and because you are a slave to the whims of the ever-changing schedules of talent, the price is not only the specific time involved in getting to the interview, waiting, doing the interview, and getting out of there, but then trying to deal with the unmoving schedule of the films you want to see.
If you are on the movie track, you just go see movies and Toronto allows about 5 a day, though in the past, a more flexible schedule of press screenings allowed more.
Some are on the movie and a party schedule, which means about three movies during the day and then parties all night, from 6p-2a, which is very doable in this first weekend in Toronto.
I have long been in the Movie Monk camp, putting my head down, nodding to the talent, but selecting only a few people who I really, really want to talk with about their films, and prioritizing movies, movies, movies. Yesterday, three Lunch With David segments ate the day and then one of my happy annual concessions to sitting down and breathing, the Sony Classics’ dinner, turned into a charming by bloated 3.5 hour schmoozefest. This was followed by stops at Fox Searchlight’s 5 hour cocktail and AFI’s 4 hour disco marathon. And this meant skipping events I would have liked to have attended – as I had already decided to do parties for a night – including The Weinstein Co’s event, a Miramax dinner, and another 4 or 5 socials being held.
Crazy.
I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy what we did yesterday, a breakfast interview with The Argentos, lunch with Michael Clayton writer/director Tony Gilroy, and a late day coffee with Neil Jordan. I love having the opportunity to chat in some depth with people this talented and whose work I so often admire. And I am really excited about being able to share the conversation, as best as I can, with people who are similarly inclined. (The experience around the actual interviews can be even more compelling.) But I am really ticked to have missed Eastern Promises, even though I will see it in L.A. or maybe here at some other screening. And today, even with just one scheduled interview, I will have to fight to see three films.
It’s silly for me to even think of complaining. It’s just another odd reminder that everything is a choice… give and take… boundaries in the best of circumstances… and in my tenth year at this festival, learning new tricks year after year after year…

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3 Comments »

3 Responses to “The Trouble With Festivals”

  1. bobbob911 says:
    September 9, 2007 at 7:58 am

    I’m really interested to read what you think about the new Alan Ball film “Nothing Is Private”. Within our group that saw it about half the people loved it and half loathed it.
    (I am mostly in the latter camp)

  2. IOIOIOI says:
    September 9, 2007 at 9:42 am

    Dude… just… dude.

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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