MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Quote/Counterquote

“I truly believe that the wisdom of the people will be revealed on (election) day.”
Sarah Palin
“I agree.”
David Poland

Be Sociable, Share!

8 Responses to “Quote/Counterquote”

  1. Blackcloud says:

    Hmmmm. What if you’re both wrong?

  2. IOIOIOI says:

    Cloudy once again bringing everyone down. Seriously sir… what’s up with that?

  3. Blackcloud says:

    Not trying to bring anyone down, IO, just suggesting that merely because the American people take your side, that doesn’t make them wise, nor you wise because they agreed with you. It’s the same principle that requires me to say that if the American people disagree with you, that does not make them stupid and ignorant. Something I think has been forgotten too often in recent years.

  4. Stella's Boy says:

    Blackcloud you should hear the stuff my conservative father-in-law and brother-in-laws are saying on a daily basis. “Obama will immediately disband the military and all servicemen/women will be out of a job.” “Obama will tax the wealthy at a rate of 50% or more.” And of course he’s a Muslim. And so on. They truly believe this stuff. It’s frightening.

  5. Stella's Boy says:

    For the record I don’t mean to imply that all conservatives are like this or that they are no loony Dems out there. This is just my own personal experience based on having solely conservative relatives on both sides of my family (other than my parents).

  6. jeffmcm says:

    Also for the record, the top income tax rate was over 50% until Reagan’s tax cuts. So I guess Nixon was a socialist too.

  7. RocketScientist says:

    Everyone can agree there are absolute batshit insane people of both parties. The idiocy factors in when people start presuming outliers can be used as generalizations for a whole populace.
    Also, the deluge of e-mails I have gotten from my family and a few of my friends (re: Obama) demonstrating a complete inability to comprehend how taxes actually work is grotesque.

  8. Blackcloud says:

    Stella, I would say in response to you: 1) neither side has a monopoly of believing the worst about the other; 2) much of the hidden beauty of politics is that so often it depends on disappointment, not only of one’s hopes, but of one’s fears. Although I suppose that is more a beauty of history, and not merely of politics.
    Regan’s tax reform was the last time the tax code in this country even remotely resembled something rational. Before that, it was riddled with loopholes and exceptions, which is why the official 90% rates which existed at one time did not actually yield 90%. Since then, the code has steadily proliferated once more with loopholes and exceptions and grown irrational. Anyone who believes the government does not or ought not discriminate against citizens, need only take a brief glance at the tax laws of the country to be disabused of that childish notion.

The Hot Blog

Quote Unquotesee all »

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