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Ray Pride

By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

The Assassination of Caryn James By The Cowardly Sub-Editor


Who knew that the New York Times would let lazy surmise and reinforcement of lazy cliche rule the roost? Doing her best impersonation of a pigeon in the park flying overhead, Caryn James starts her year-end characterization of the movie world like this: “Who knew that Ben Affleck could direct and Josh Brolin could act? Or that Casey Affleck could act and Johnny Depp could (sort of) sing? Even as the entertainment world splinters into ever-smaller niches, 2007 was a year when stars broke free of their confining boxes, when the most appealing work often came out of nowhere, while big names landed with giant thuds. Mr. Brolin burst out of a niche you could kindly call small time. Hardly anyone — except the Coen brothers — took him seriously before his crafty portrayal of a not-too-smart but not-too-stupid guy who stumbles across millions in drug money in their magisterial “No Country for Old Men.” Add Mr. Brolin’s dynamic performance as a sinister cop in “American Gangster,” and it’s clear that his strong screen presence is no fluke, that he won’t have “James Brolin’s son” or “Barbra Streisand’s stepson” trailing after his name anymore. Ben Affleck’s career had become a tired “Gigli” joke, and his first film as director had the trappings of a vanity project. He shot it in his hometown and even cast his kid brother, Casey, in the lead. But the joke was on the skeptics. “Gone Baby Gone,” about a child who goes missing in Boston, turned out be a sharply made, psychologically astute thriller.” To use Doris Lessing’s memorable neologism, James is sounding an awful lot like an unemployed, unemployable “blugger.” Further insult is added to Casey Affleck’s performance (and family) in a few words about The Assassination of Jesse James by The Coward Robert Ford; it’s just too painful to go on.

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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