April 27, 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
Surprised, DP, that you didn’t add some editorial comments on today’s news that Luhrman will be adapting The Great Gatsby next, something I imagine will be pretty divisive.
I’m a big F. Scott fan, and could certainly think of worse directors this could wind up with. And considering how flat the Jack Clayton/Coppola version came out, a new take on the material could use a bit more flash and style.
The problem with the Clayton version of Gastby was how tacky Gatsby’s parties were and how the characters were viewed with contempt. The thing I find odd about Luhrmann’s take is that he said in the Hollywood Reporter:
“If you wanted to show a mirror to people that says, ‘You’ve been drunk on money,’ they’re not going to want to see it. But if you reflected that mirror on another time they’d be willing to.”
I’m sorry, but that’s not what The Great Gatsby is about and I find it tragic that he’s going to use this literary masterpiece (set in my hometown) as some kind of parable for the current economic crisis. Gatsby is a classic work, a timeless one and it seems like a mistake to rejigger the themes to fit what Luhrmann wants to say rather than what the novel actually says. I’m more worried than you, Laz.
This will infuriate David Poland, but:
Dave, you’re better than this.
I worry for this adaptation from the get-go. Baz started out brilliantly, but it appears to me that he is becoming more and more a one-note director.
I think if Baz is to bring this fantastic novel to the screen, he is going to have to be something he has never been before: SUBTLE. Fitzgerald dazzled his readers with beautiful prose and behind his he hid all the venal, nasty, brutal violence of The Jazz Age. Mostly, it is away from the page, but when it erupts it really is shocking (when Tom breaks Myrtle’s nose for example).
What I am most concerned with is his notion as to who Gatsby is. Gatsby made his fortune from bootlegging. He was a gangster. He hung out with and made a fortune from the Chicago crowd (if you’ve read the novel, please note the number of times he is called away to take a call from Chicago… hmm, now who could they be?)
Also, when Nick meets Gatsby for lunch in the city, who bumps into them but Meyer Wolfsheim (Meyer Lansky) and mistakes Nick for the man with the “gonnection.”
I would hazard that if George Wilson did not get Gatsby first, the Mob would have taken care of him soon enough.
And the wonder is that Gatsby is now considered to be such a romantic figure.
Sorry. When I typed Meyer Wolfsheim and in parenthesis I put Meyer Lansky, I should have typed Arnold Rothstein, the guy who fixed the 1919 World Series. Fitzgerald even has Gatsby explain that to Nick in the restaurant when Wolfsheim leaves.
I’m still waiting for Baz to make as fine a film as “Strictly Ballroom”.
I REALLY like Moulin Rouge! and Romeo and Juliet.
maybe hopefully he will score a hit with the Great Gatsby.
Hey, why not start with a great script?
Then worry about the brilliant visual frisson.
Just a wacky thought.
Jeff, please explain?
As an unabashed Luhrmann fan I appreciated this, Dave. Somebody not just kicking him when he’s down and trying to see something else in him that the cliched mad professor idea that so many paint him as.
I haven’t read The Great Gatsby so I can’t comment on that.