Welcome, Luddites!
So now the two biggest internet bashers in entertainment journalism, Patrick Goldstein and Peter Bart, are bloggers. All I can say is
April 26, 2024
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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
If you can tap dance around embargoes,
when you’re told not to that night by screening honchos,
If you can pick the Oscars eight months out
while everyone’s calling you an obnoxious lout,
If you can win a word war with a adolescent geek
who gets under your skin by calling you “homo-freak,”
If you scoff at weekend box office numbers on one day
but have charts and graphs on Friday, Saturday and Sunday…
Then yours is the Internet and everything that’s in it,
And, which is more, you’ll be a Blogger, my son!
That is genius. Crow, if you wrote that, you too, are genius.
Genius… maybe. But his words are, in effect, doing exactly what he is smacking at. Dumbing it all down.
I’d say his form and content are in agreement with each other.
I asked this at Elsewhere too to no avail, it’s only mildly related:
Did Newsweek officially cut movie reviews and Ansen down to ONLINE ONLY? I get the magazine, and if there’s been more than three film reviews in there in the last six months, I’ve surely just missed it. It’s like they cut out the “Cinema” section altogether. So I go to their site today, and lo and behold, Ansen’s been reviewing shit all along, just none of it makes the page. Was there an official reasoning for this?
On topic:
I like Goldstein, btw, and wish that old grump Turan were hep enough to start a blog. Imagine that- a TURAN BLOG, where one could respond in a comments section about his every tired, grumpy, bored, squeamish, old-school, unsurprising, A-list-sucking-up, self-copying review.
Anyway, Goldstein’s “comments” section is indeed too vague and generic, and won’t attract a lot of sensible industry voices or witty regulars… just the hoi polloi in the most faceless, IMDB/Yahoo kinda way.
Gee Lex, you don’t normally sleep at the wheel. You don’t need to actually retain this info, you can google it: ansen newsweek buyout — you could even do it without “buyout” since that requires info. I like you Lex. Dave really hits some jazzy notes here. Wondering if he’ll do a piece on exhibitors… those ShoWest guys… those hanger on-ers… those fat cats.
Didn’t mean to confuse you; I don’t know where yung comes from.