By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Page 14

Link to the List

Sean Means
Salt Lake Tribune

1 Rachel Getting Married
2 The Dark Knight
3 Wall-E
4 Slumdog Millionaire
5 Son of Rambow
6 Hellboy II: Golden Army
7 Tell No One
8 The Visitor
9 Let the Right One In
10 Frozen River
Link to the List

Kevin Laforest
Montreal Film Journal

1 Che
2 Australia
3 Pineapple Express
4 The Dark Knight
5 Wall-E
6 Slumdog Millionaire
7 Afterschool
8 Silent Light
9 The Wrestler
10 Miroir Noir
Link to the List

Tom Long
Detroit News

1 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
2 The Wrestler
3 Frost/Nixon
4 Revolutionary Road
5 Synecdoche, NY
6 Wall-E
7 Man on Wire
8 Slumdog Millionaire
9 Elegy
10 Doomsday/Wanted
Link to the List

Chris Hewitt
St. Paul Pioneer Press

1 The Edge of Heaven
2 The Dark Knight
3 Man on Wire
4 Be Kind Rewind
5 Slumdog Millionaire
6 Wall-E
7 Synecdoche, NY
8 Surfwise
9 Hunger
10 OSS 117: Nest of Spies
Link to the List

Michael Sragow
Baltimore Sun

1 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
2 Wall-E
3 Slumdog Millionaire
4 Happy Go Lucky
5 The Edge of Heaven
6 What Just Happened
7 Rachel Getting Married
8 American Teen
9 Flash of Genius
10 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Link to the List

John Serba

1 Wall-E
2 The Wrestler
3 In Bruges
4 Happy Go Lucky
5 The Dark Knight
6 Revolutionary Road
7 Slumdog Millionaire
8 Doubt
9 Milk
10 Rachel Getting Married
Link to the List

James Verniere
Boston Herald

1 Slumdog Millionare
2 Wall-E
3 Changeling
4 Frost/Nixon
5 Gran Torino
6 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
7 Happy Go Lucky
8 Tell No One
9 In Bruges
10 Mongol
Link to the List

Sonny Bunch
Washington Times

1 The Dark Knight
2 Slumdog Millionaire
3 The Wrestler
4 Wall-E
5 Gran Torino
6 Let the Right One In
7 In Bruges
8 The Strangers
9 The Bank Job
10 The Promotion
Link to the List

Dan Sallitt
Auteurs Notebook

1 The Tracey Fragments
2 Ballast
3 Still Life
4 Une Vielle Maitresse
5 Nights and Weekends
6 Woman on the Beach
7 Avant que j’oublie
8 The Wackness
9 Silent Light
10 Poor Boy’s Game
Link to the List

Carla Meyer
Sacramento Bee

1 The Visitor
2 Wall-E
3 Milk
4 Slumdog Millionaire
5 Wendy & Lucy
6 Happy Go Lucky
7 The Wrestler
8 I’ve Loved You So Long
9 Frost/Nixon
10 Man on Wire

Sonny Bunch | Chris Hewitt | Kevin Laforest | Tom Long | Sean Means | Carla Meyer | Dan Sallitt | John Serba | Michael Sragow | James Verniere

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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