People have been humming about the success of Bella. Far too many have simply written it off as “a Jesus thing.” Unfair. The film, which I still haven’t seen, has been very successful as a feel good audience favorite, winning at places like Toronto, where films as edgy as C.R.A.Z.Y. and Ginger Snaps have won in the past.
Anyway… got a remarkable press release for the film today, which really offers a lot of information about the people who do love this film.
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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
I saw Bella and I have zero clue what “Jesus thing” they are talking about, because to these eyes the film had nothing at all to do with that. Unless they mean the guys had long hair like Jesus. Or maybe I just missed a big unspoken metaphor at the center of the film?
Is it a “Jesus thing” or just a “hispanic/latino thing,” as if anything the film would seem to fill a void in the marketplace where Latinos simply don’t have many options if they want to see stories about themselves. African-Americans have been given a lot of options for films, but Latinos seem to be the forgotten market.
I’m not saying, just asking.
The film itself was not very intersting, but was definitely postive. The lead male was appealing. The lead female was a bore IMO. Definitely too sentimental for my tastes. A little corny. But with some very nice scenes about family, I recall a wonderful sequence where the guy takes her home to meet his folks.
Anyway, to me, the film would be better classified as “spiritual” than “religious”…
Not a great film to me, but not terribly surprising that it’s doing well considering the lack of product for what would seem to be a very large underserved audience.
“*Bella also has a higher box office per screen than
I haven’t seen this (and judging by the trailer, I have no immediate plans to), but after reading through the press release, I’ve come to a conclusion: Audiences hungry for a film, ANY film, that is either subtly or blatantly anti-abortion and/or pro-war (or at least stridently pro-troop) are really, really, REALLY hungry for such a film. No matter how crappy, amateurish and simplistic (or in the obverse, subtle, sophisticated and thoughtful) it may be. As an experiment, I would love to see the studios glut the market with such pictures, much as they have the (to one degree or another) anti-war parade of releases that we saw this fall. Whether they stumble or soar, they would finally shut the pie-holes of those bitching for such product. I, for one, would be happy if they all sucked (in equally painful measure) as much as DePalma’s abysmal REDACTED, but who knows? Maybe we’d actually get an unexpectedly great piece of cinema out of it.
Saw the film the other night. It was better than I expected.
I think my wife figured out the disconnect between audiences and critics. It’s a good, solid movie so audiences love it, but it’s not a “beat you over the head” with a message movie and its lack of a harsh edge makes it seem too simple. It’s a movie about a difficult time in people’s lives and it didn’t have any swearing or portrayals of real anger. I guarantee that if Bella had an R rating, critics would have loved it.
Didn’t “C.R.A.Z.Y.” (which I loved btw and could never figure out why no U.S. distributer ever bothered picking it up) and “Ginger Snaps” win awards in Toronto’s “Canadian” film categories?
“Bella” won the big kahuna “Audience” prize in 2006 (the same award that went to “Eastern Promises” this year). Weird, huh?