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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 - 10 Comments »
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Aside From That, How Were The Critics' Choice Awards, Mrs Lincoln?

It was an odd evening at the Critics’ Choice Awards on Monday night, as the talk going in and after amongst the Publicity Class was the cancellation of the parties at The Golden Globes, the one element of the evening that had been set to continue regardless of the strike. Not only were parties cancelled, but deals with The Beverly Hilton to refund part of the deposits had already been done and reservations for next years parties were already set.
In the meantime, The CCAs had the oddest turnout of talent ever, as some of the biggest stars in Hollywood turned up for the show… and many of the talent you would expect to show up no matter what stayed home. Yes, Brad and Angie, George Clooney and Don Cheadle, Daniel Day Lewis, Sean Penn, Eddie Vedder, Brad Bird, and presumed Oscar nominees, Javier Bardem, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page and others turned up.
But not there were CCA award winners Julie Christie, Diablo Cody, Amy Ryan, John Travolta (in ensemble), The Coens, Jonny Greenwood, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, Michael Moore, Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada, anyone more famous than producer level for Enchanted or anyone, really, for Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (graciously accepted by JK Simmons who joked about being #19 on the call sheet).
By my count, there were 13 of 47 nominees in individual categories turned up for the evening and the phrase, “I accept this for….” was pretty much used in 10 of 18 awards acceptances. Yet the evening was counted as a major success by Team BFCA, as the show moved along, big names were there, and no one really expected to see The Coens or Julie Christie anyway (the two big, big names to win).
But the main conversation in the aisles was about The Globes, which had lost the parties just as the cocktail hour for The CCAs had commenced, so a high percentage of the journalists in the room had no idea that the parties had gone down or just what the details of the NBC deal were.
And a little surprisingly, most of the people I spoke to who were directly involved with The Globes situation were not angry at all

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10 Comments »

10 Responses to “Aside From That, How Were The Critics' Choice Awards, Mrs Lincoln?”

  1. KamikazeCamelV2.0 says:
    January 8, 2008 at 4:19 am

    Way to go BFCA! You correctly predicted all the frontrunners!!!

  2. KamikazeCamelV2.0 says:
    January 8, 2008 at 4:21 am

    Oh, I’m sorry. “Predicted” should really be “gave your so-irrelevent-the-WGA-doesn’t-even-care award to”. My mistake.
    (it’s all in jest, honestly)

  3. adorian says:
    January 8, 2008 at 5:14 am

    The best part of the show for me was the In Memorium tribute, which turned out to be for the big films that died at the box office.

  4. lazarus says:
    January 8, 2008 at 6:40 am

    Julie Christie is a bigger name than Daniel Day-Lewis?

  5. Kambei says:
    January 8, 2008 at 6:46 am

    She has been a star since the 1960s…

  6. TMJ says:
    January 8, 2008 at 7:44 am

    Two thoughts on the CCAs:
    1. D.L. Hughley may be a funny guy, but he wasn’t even remotely funny last night. Dude was dying on the vine from his opening monologue. Right now, he is the most obvious victim of the ongoing writers’ strike. Someone also should send him a copy of The Ladykillers, so he can see that the Coens do employ black people. Unfunny and inaccurate are never a good combo.
    2. The acceptance speeches were moving. Nikki Blonsky’s energy came through the television screen. Javier Bardem’s praise for his fellow nominees was hearfelt. And Daniel Day Lewis proved he really didn’t need George Clooney’s cast-off speeches. He did just fine on his own.

  7. PetalumaFilms says:
    January 8, 2008 at 9:54 am

    Whatever gave you the idea D.L. Hughley “may be a funny guy?” I’ve never seen an ounce of proof of that.

  8. Cadavra says:
    January 8, 2008 at 10:10 am

    Hughley is funny; granted it may not have been his best material, but that room was co-o-old. Personally, I loved his line about why nobody went to see fictional stories about Iraq: “They can just stay home and see them for free on Fox News.”

  9. David Poland says:
    January 8, 2008 at 10:43 am

    But Bardem got the line of the night off when asked how he found the character in No Country… “I just thought of Mr Bush.”

  10. Sunday Silence says:
    January 9, 2008 at 6:09 pm

    As unfunny as he is and as bad as he bombed D.L. Hughley is still too good for that ridiculous show.
    A bunch of junketeers trying to give awards to who they guess is going to win the Academy Awards just so they can say they predicted it is beyond pointless.
    The show also proved that Clooney, Pitt and Jolie will appear at anything, even the opening of an envelope. Which is literally what they did in this case.

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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