April 16, 2024
BYOB
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BYOB: 235 Years Of Relative independence
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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
Just a completely random thought. I wish that whoever is in charge of putting profile images up on IMDb would do a major overhaul.
Not only are a lot of them incredibly bad, but well-known actors don’t even have one! I mean, it’s the IMDb! That place should be right on the money. And if it’s these actors publicists who need to get their act together then so be it, but Ewan McGregor having his profile image still as Obi Wan Kenobi is a tad ridiculous, no?
Also, why doesn’t Linda Cardellini have a career?
I know DP head-over-heels about Tony Gilroy at the moment, so I’ll mention that I had the chance to read two drafts of his next film, Duplicity. Let’s just say Gilroy better hope that A) the strike’s sewn up soon or B) Universal offers him Bourne Four.
OMG there’s gonna be a sequel to “Cloverfield”. Get out the barf bags!
[i]Also, why doesn’t Linda Cardellini have a career?[/i]
She’s a regular on the television show ER.
I guess those tags don’t work here?, huh.
You have to do it HTML style, angles instead of brackets…
kami,
imdb charges for placement of photos on their site. i guess famous people don’t see the point as everyone knows what they look like anyway.
ah, thanks JBM.
Cloverfield could very well be on the short list of most polarizing movies of the decade.
I’ve heard two opinions on it (I haven’t seen it)
a) Lots of fun! or
b) I @#$%*&! hated it!
Of all the top 6 Academy Awards categories, I say there is one Wild Card: Best Supporting Actress, and the rest I think are pretty much figured out.
My pic for it: the girl from Atonment who’s name I can’t pronounce correctly.
Since you bring it up, Hopscotch (and “pic” is only short for “picture”) it does seem that it has become a toss-up for Best Supporting Actor in a female role since Ruby Dee came out of fucking nowhere. Poor Ryan, on track to get the one award the pretty consistently avoids the urge to star fuck except when it does (and always does badly).
Too bad you can’t get a drunk Sean Young in the front row for that win to yell out: “Lifetime Achievement Award!” and “Hey, it’s a gold Oscar for a dead Ossie!”
That was a horrible scene in AMERICAN GANGSTER, when if felt like Denzel Washington had accidentally wandered onto the set of a USA movie.
ABOUT THAT DOWNLOADING STORY:
Funny that it took them to admit they were wrong when media herd failed back in 2005 to ask the most fundamental question for all such things: how the fuck did you get that number? There is almost never any methodology listed.
It’s like when they do a story about anything involving illegal activity – bet your last dollar that the number is inflated at least 100%. That load of pot is supposed to have “a street value” of $6M? It ain’t a dime over one million. Hollywood loses $5 billion a year from bootleg DVDs? More like $20M.
Why does David think the Michel Gondry “Sweded” trailer is “Craptastic”? Watching it made me think Gondry could be a pretty funny character actor if he wanted to be.
Cloverfield 2 should be titled CLOVERFIELD TWO: WE STILL CANT KILL THAT OBLIVIOUS BITCH OF A MONSTER! What a stupid bloody film. Good lord. The balls of Mahooney that flick. Nevertheless, Camel, you love Paris and may have not seen Freaks and Geeks. That may answer your question.
‘The Balls of Mahooney’?
My question is, will Cloverfield 2 be the adventures of a second group of video-camera-wielding morons in New York, or will they move the monster to Washington to have it face off against an all-new creature a la the Godzilla movies? Rip out the Washington Monument to use as a club?
It’s a rare movie that would be improved by a worse director.
Cloverfield 2 will be directed by James Cameron and will feature multiple monsters and make tons of money and be one of the best action pictures ever.
Hey, it’s what he does.
Why does Luke assume DP wrote that headline?
I’ll definitely check out a sequel to Cloverfield. I loved it.
Brack — WE KNOW ALREADY :D! Jeff; the monster was successfully killed. Of course you have to visit the cloverfield site to notice the pictures of a smoldering hunk of Cloverfield flesh to know it die. Yet they killed the fucker off in New York. This leaves me to assume Cloverfield 2 would be about more people in the city surviving the monster’s attack, or maybe an even more insulting movie towards the military. Which seems more likely than more idjits runnin around with a 100,000 dollar HD camera.
IO, you’re an arsehole, so just shut the fuck up and don’t direct messages towards me, okay? I’m sick of you.
Dave, one question about your new Oscar column:
How do you figure “So if the inevitability of No Country is said enough, it will become a self-fulfilling prophesy.”? Do we not remeber Brokeback Mountain?
Brokeback was always a problem movie, even if the studio was in denial. I ate a lot of shit for saying it, but there was always a large group – and it grew – who simply didn’t feel the way about the film that so many passionate people did.
Brokeback was always vulnerable and the only movie that fought for the win was Crash, which won.
In this case, No Country is not being arrogant or assuming. They are just plowing along. This strategy hasn’t always worked, but the circumstances of this season seem to be going its way.
Huh huh…you ate shit?
IOI, if it wasn’t in the movie, it didn’t happen. They can put whatever they want on the website and they cna change their minds a week later.
To be fair to DP, Brokeback was the frontrunner in a way that No Country isn’t right now. It’s not a social-issue message movie that people can rally around or be repelled by, and it’s not a simplistic, easy-to-digest message movie that others can coalesce around.
Well then he should’ve worded it differently. I thought it was that inevitibility that was what lead to it’s loss. Or, at least, partly.
Latest sign of the Apocalypse: “Over Her Dead Body” opens today with print ads that reference a picture nominated for Razzies.
There is no question that Brokeback is in a different position than No Country. But what I keep telling you and everyone else is that the perception of Brokeback’s front-runner status was ALWAYS greater in the media than in reality. Always… especially after people started actually seeing the movie in December.
And Brokeback was neither a simplistic message movie or just a social issue movie. Crash was. But I’m not sure what your point is.
Camel, I’m an asshole for pointing out how fucking bogus and lame it is to bag on Linda Cardellini when you love a no-talent gism bucket. Keep your pikey nonsense to yourself.
That aside, Jeff, the website can be as canon as the flick. Again it’s not like the military would not figure out after about 12 hours how the freakin monster could be killed. So the next flick could be about a regular family dealing with surviving the monster’s attack.
Sure a website “can” be as canon as the film. But it can also be tantamount to fan-fic. If they don’t want the moster dead in a sequel, no one will give a second thought to contradicting a website.
Chucky: so that means we should all see it then, right? That’s the corollary of your standard ‘if it references an Oscar campaign it’s crap’ theme, right?
DP: You got my point mostly right; Crash was the simplistic message movie, Brokeback became the social issue movie as touted in the media which meant that people could fall into pro- and anti- camps relatively easily. No Country is neither of those things and therefore isn’t as polarizing, except for maybe the ending.
Re: Cloverfield, Storymark hit my point. Also, IOI, was your family killed by monsters or aliens?
Awww. Jeff tried to make a funny. Awwwww.
No, not really. I’m trying to understand why you go bugshit on apocalyptic attack movies.
Jeff, it’s best not to question anything IO says. Because he is right. He is always right and everybody who disagrees with him (or who he misunderstands for that matter) is clearly wrong and is a worthless pathetic human being.
Geez, Jeff! What were you thinking?
HE’S NOT MY DANCING MONKEY!!!
Jeff, he’s referencing “The Host”.
And I’m referencing Spielberg’s War of the Worlds.
If Stella’s Boy is out there: Saw Rambo tonight. It’s your basic orgy of violence, justified by a white man’s burden pretext of war crimes in Burma. Pretty much what you would expect. Anybody who says they hate torture porn movies but liked it is a hypocrite.
“NCFOM”‘s front-runner status reminds me of the “inevitability” of “The Departed” last year. It’s a solid, artfully crafted genre film by industry veterans (the Coens/Scorsese) who have never won the big kahuna. They’re overdue–just like Scorsese was–and the consensus seems to be, just like it was in 2007, that it’s finally time to honor them.
Can’t say that any of the other nominated best pictures have that sort of heat going for them. If “Michael Clayton” somehow manages to sneak in (which I don’t think it will), it’ll be like the “Chariots of Fire” upset in 1982 when “Reds” and “On Golden Pond” looked like the presumed favorites.
Until the backlash started, I actually thought that “Juno” had a legitimate shot at being the spoiler. Now I’m not even so sure about Cody Diablo winning for original screenplay: that could be the crumb tossed to “MC” if “NCFOM” does what seems preordained.
Thanks Jeff. I figured as much.
Jeff, stop being so goddam literal. You know with the Razzies you can’t buy the award — you’ve got to earn it.
Maybe Mrs. Longoria Parker will get a Razzie nomination next year.
You’re the guy who insists on judging a movie by its ad campaign and you’re calling _me_ literal?