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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Just For The Record…

I seem to have, somehow, set off a reaction around some parts of town with my “I Broke A Sweat Today” entry of a few days ago.
MCN is going fine, thanks. I don

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7 Responses to “Just For The Record…”

  1. mysteryperfecta says:

    “There are challenges in being a survivor. And if there is any real discomfort here, it’s survivor’s guilt.”
    Spoken like a true lib. :p Feeling compassion for other worthy outfits that have gone under is admirable, but “guilt”? Do you feel personally responsible for pushing other outfits out of the marketplace?
    I think you should focus on the fact that you’re filling a niche, providing employment, while plying a trade you’re passionate about. If you’re still feeling guilty, avoid taking any deductions on your returns, pay extra taxes, and let Obama spread the love. 🙂

  2. doug r says:

    If you guys feel you have too much money, you could always go into TV production, starting with the lunch with Dave and a critics show.
    You could also finance something so Lex can get his WGA and SAG cards.

  3. Aris P says:

    From the very first time I heard about you and your website, 2003, (Mike Binder telling some exec about your review of Upside of Anger) MCN and Hot Button (at the time) were the first sites I checked each morning. Here’s to many more years dude.

  4. jeffmcm says:

    Mystery, surely you’ve heard of ‘survivor guilt’?

  5. mysteryperfecta says:

    Mystery, surely you’ve heard of ‘survivor guilt’?
    Ya. Its not what popped into my head when I read the post. If he would typed “Survivor Guilt” instead of “survivor’s guilt”, it would have clicked.

  6. Cadavra says:

    “Survivor guilt” is what I feel when I turn on CBS every Thursday at 8:00!

  7. frankbooth says:

    Could be guilt is an abstract concept to guys like mystery.

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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