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’ve been waiting for this movie since I first heard about it. I don’t care how much flack The Cell gets, that movie is astounding. I just hope they release here within a year. We’re finally getting The Painted Veil released in cinemas next week! :/
The story device – a sick soldier telling the story to a little girl in order to trick her into getting him drugs that he wants to use to commit suicide
Is this a spoiler?
“Unless your date is studying film at Columbia, you may not get laid until you wake him/her up and get her to another movie. But if you love the visual, you owe it to yourself to suck this one back.”
And if you do get laid, you owe it to your date to suck them back too.
Okay, I didn’t think The Cell was horrible like a lot of people do, but Singh (I’m not going to indulge the pretension and call him ‘Tarsem’, screw that) needs to prove that he can transcend the music-video director ghetto and actually show command of character and narrative and then we’ll take it from there.
No, Eugenen… pretty much laid out from the start. The story is not terribly sophisticated in that way.
I would never go out with a film student from Columbia? Have you seen their tuition?! I like to go Dutch.
“The story device – a sick soldier telling the story to a little girl in order to trick her into getting him drugs that he wants to use to commit suicide
Is this a spoiler?”
I gleaned as much from the trailer, so I doubt its a spoiler.
When does this come out, or screen, in LA?
The hosting site (apple.com) shows a release date of May 9th. The trailer looks amazingly beautiful, so here’s hoping.
I don’t think every director needs to show command of character and narrative…that’s just a limiting view of what a film can be. I wouldn’t ask Jodorowsky to make a film like that, although it could be argued that he has. But it’s not what seems to interest him.
Sure, but I think it’s an undervalued trait today. And I don’t think Jodorowsky is a good comparison because his movies were never pretty for pretty’s sake like so many music video directors seem to think equals art.
The poor man’s Gilliam.
I’m often surprised that the people who argue that Tarsem’s visuals make the Cell worth watching alone, so it doesn’t matter how bad the story is, often don’t extend the same latitude to Michael Bay. Likely it’s because Bay is not an Artiste!
There’s a big difference between Singh’s visuals and Bay’s visuals. Bay hires good cinematographers and points the camera at pretty things, and that’s all. Singh at least shows some signs of having had an art history education.
Not every director needs to show command of character and narrative… but if the director chooses to tell a narrative, with characters in it– as Tarsem has!– it would certainly help.
As Harry Cohn memorably said to an art director requesting more money to make a set look less chintzy: “If they’re watching the sets instead of the actors, we’re fucked.”
Damn straight.
The final 30 minutes or so (it’s been a while) of The Cell has some of the most fascinating character work of that year.
My very favourite review of that film is the one below. It’s a great read whether you like the film or not.
http://www.nicksflickpicks.com/thecell.html
The Fall is opening in New York and LA on May 9th and then rolling out from there.
Anyone up for discussing this again now that it’s been out a bit?
While I admired so many of the visuals, it felt like I’d seen this story at least twice in recent years, those it occupies a curiously indifferent middle ground between the atrocious “Tideland” and the fine “Pan’s Labyrinth.”
Tarsem certainly has a way with a striking, usually sinister image, but the characters in the real-life story were pretty underdeveloped and not particularly sympathetic. Odd that in its day “Blade Runner” was considered cold and “style over substance”; That film looks warm and fuzzy compared to the ciphers on hand here. No one ever likes to pick on a kid, but the lead girl is pretty cloying in spots, and even much of the fantastical “epic” story is kind of dorky and embarrassing (I’m thinking of the GOOGLY bits and that part where the soundtrack song sings the dialogue a beat after it’s spoken.)
I was fairly bored through long stretches, though THE BLUE CITY fucking RULED, and things pick up nicely at the end when every starts getting THEIR ASSES OWNED.
Amusingly, the classical piece– Beethoven’s 7th, I believe– that plays over the beginning and end credits and repeats throughout is the same piece used by Boorman in ZARDOZ and Gaspar Noe in IRREVERSIBLE.
I guess when you hear the 7th in a movie, you can now safely assume some maniac director is about to drop some seriously pretentious idiocy on you.