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Ray Pride

By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Wong Kar-Wai naked… in a manner of speaking

WKW unshaded.jpgWong Kar-Wai choreographed Tony Leung and Carina Lau’s wedding, administered by monks in Bhutan; a Chinese site expresses shock at a shot of WKW without his customary dark shades: “This is the first time that I have ever seen Wong Kar-wai without his trademark sunglasses. I never realized his face was so big; evidently the shades he wears occupy a good part of his face… [H]e looks like such a regular postman dude in the picture that I was left scratching my head…so that’s WKW? How could this be? I hope he dons his glasses again soon.” Oh, here’s a huge version of the portrait of the bride and groom at Ugyen Pelri Palace. dddddddddding125.jpgReports Alexandra Seno of Far Eastern Economic Review, WKW lavished himself on calibrating the soundtrack as well: “At the relatively intimate wedding today at the Uma Paro in Bhutan, the admirably tenacious Hong Kong paparazzi outside may be doing all they can to get pictures of the ceremony and parties (ivory Vera Wang wedding gown chosen by William Chang Suk-Ping), but we can give you more: the sounds of the celebration. Since signing up as unpaid (and outrageously over qualified) “wedding planner” for the nuptials of Carina and Tony, Wong has been consumed with selecting just the right tunes to set just the right mood. Wong and his regular crew are essentially planning and executing this wedding—running it like one of his movie sets with his usual film cabal. When it rained during an open-air wedding portrait shoot last Saturday, Wong ordered his regular producer to scout for another “set” immediately. A good thing that the crew were used to the director’s improvisationational working style… [H]ere are the songs and artists that the filmmaker and his crew have lined for the wedding: Can’t Take My Eyes Off You; Mendelssohn’s wedding march; Happy Together; Even If; Songs by Sergio Mendez; Songs by Abba; Songs by the Bee Gees; Songs by Stan Getz; Live performances by Faye Wong and Tony Leung.” A dispatch from IHT. China Daily’s version. [Portrait via Jet Tone Films.]

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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