By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Sundance, Or What's Left Of It

Posted Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 - Comments Off on Sundance, Or What's Left Of It
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As most buyers pack their bags to head home, Spread, I Love You Phillip Morris, The Greatest and World’s Greatest Dad could sell by tomorrow… if sellers are to be believed.
The reality is that by Wednesday at any Sundance, bidding wars are replaced by wars of attrition. Buyers know they have the upper hand and can afford to be patient – the 800 job cuts at Warners and stock market dive yesterday didn’t put the wind in anyone’s sails, reminding distribs that their slates could be cut back by corporate overlords in a few months anyway.
But that’s not to say Sundance has been disappointing – far from it. The magic number seems to be $3 million – the approximate check from Lionsgate for The Winning Season and Sony Pictures Classics for An Education – certainly not disappointing considering their lack of star power. The nearly $5 million Brooklyn’s Finest raked in from Senator (plus hefty p&a and back end) can be viewed as a good sale given some fiercely negative reaction to some of it, and that the film still needs work.
Even if there’s no $10 million-plus buy like Little Miss Sunshine or Hamlet 2, people seem happy the films are good, and that slower sales will mean better deals on films likely to have legs with audiences.
In the rumor mill, Summit’s name is being floated for both Spread and Morris, but back-end deals for those films big stars seem to be dragging things along. Push has Weinstein Co. and BET potentially circling for a joint deal. The BET side will presumably help assure buyers the film won’t get dumped or sold elsewhere like several other TWC buys in the past. If talks drag, a distributor like SPC could make a post-fest buy.
Nervous sellers of smaller movies might be more quick to accept a modest, early deal on a gem like Don’t Let Me Drown, Peter and Vandy or several others picking up acclaim.
What’s making buyers most hesitant, it seems, are documentaries. They can afford to wait for such acclaimed films as Passing Strange, The September Issue or Art & Copy, given home audiences saturated with nonfiction fare.

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Posted in 10 Days of Sundance, Festivals | Comments Off on Sundance, Or What's Left Of It

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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