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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

BYOB Sunday Night

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27 Responses to “BYOB Sunday Night”

  1. mysteryperfecta says:

    Don’t know how many of you caught this “news” item from The Onion:
    Michael Bay Signs $50M Deal To Fuck Up ‘ThunderCats’

  2. mutinyco says:

    “Breach my levee at your peril!”

  3. Hallick says:

    That is one surprisingly weak article from The Onion, with a headline and opening sentence that scream “written by an 11 year old who just learned how to spell the F word!”. Big letdown.

  4. Jeffrey Boam's Doctor says:

    Hey ONION meet EASY TARGET.
    Is THE ONION even relevant in this day and age? It was a lot of fun years ago and even some of the recent video content is innovative but the rehashing of similar articles by replacing the object, person or activity is really beginning to show signs of lethargy from all involved. This BAY piece is really the nadir, with the strongest writersleaving to take decent pay elsewhere, we’re now getting college kids who think rehashing populist flame material is cutting edge humor.
    I do like the AV Club a lot though.

  5. Bay is making a “small” movie that’s a “cross between Fargo and Pulp Fiction” if you can believe it. It’s about bodybuilders too. Blegh.

  6. christian says:

    Is the joke that THUNDERCATS has no beloved fan base?

  7. CaptainZahn says:

    Anyone have any thoughts on the growing controversy over The Last Airbender casting?
    http://www.margaretcho.com/blog/2009/04/14/the-last-airbender-is-the-last-straw/

  8. It won’t be a controversy, I’m sure. Asian non-casting rarely rates a mention. There was a brief hubbub over 21, but that quickly dissipated and there was that issue about Zhang Ziyi being cast in Memoirs of a Geisha, but by the time the final product came about nobody gave a damn because it was so crap.
    I hope they keep it up (and I love Margaret Cho so here’s hoping she gets out there and tries to raise awareness), but I imagine people just won’t care. It’s directed by Shyamalan, “isn’t that enough?” or whatever. :/

  9. Martin S says:

    SWEET GOD – is this Kiera Knightley?
    http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB124018425311033183-lMyQjAxMDI5NDEwOTExODk0Wj.html
    http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MK-AV622_FOREIG_DV_20090419212622.jpg
    I honestly thought one of the producer’s in the article was a trans. Then I re-read the caption.

  10. Wrecktum says:

    Seems to me people would be trying to FLEE a Shyamalan project, not lobbying to be in one.

  11. LexG says:

    KEIRA KNIGHTLEY is GOD.
    BOW Martin. BOW.

  12. Hallick says:

    “I honestly thought one of the producer’s in the article was a trans. Then I re-read the caption.”
    Kind of Doug Henning meets Vidal Sassoon.
    “BOW Martin. BOW.”
    BOW WOW Lex. BOW WOW. (in this pic at least. They can’t all be winners I guess…)

  13. LexG says:

    WHOA “The Imposters” comes out this weekend????
    And “Fighting,” “Soloist,” “Obsessed” and “TYSON”????
    Man, is this clearinghouse weekend or what?
    And yet I’m more excited about three of those than 90% of the summer movies you guys are all stoked for.
    UNRELATED TOPIC: I am watching Carson Daly, and Dr. Drew Pinsky is on. IS there a bigger, more self-serving TOOL in all of showbiz than this exploiting, TV-hungry quack, with his bogus advice and easy answers?

  14. LYT says:

    Lex — no. I’m pals with Drew’s former “best friend” the Poorman, and the shit he has to say about Drew makes me loathe the dude.

  15. LYT says:

    Been at the Fangoria convention all weekend; might as well promote my newest movie here too:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3o30FcuXbs

  16. christian says:

    Lex is right (thunder rolls) – -Dr. Drew is a total tool, and always has been. I actually saw this egomaniac exploiter on the Glenn Beck show last month talking without irony about our cultural narcissism. With Beck. And Dr. Drew. Irony!

  17. yancyskancy says:

    I always thought Dr. Drew seemed okay, until he became so ubiquitous. The Celebrity Rehab thing is really a bit much. And didn’t he play the Olsen twins’ dad in some movie? Sheesh.
    Remember “Late Date with Sari,” that sex advice show from around 1995? The host, Sari Locker, was kind of a cute little minx. Wonder what she’s up to these days? I’d rather look at her than Drew any day.

  18. christian says:

    Dr. Drew “jumped the shark” with that re-hab show, human exploitation of the lowest order. I wish Dr. Phil would analyze Dr. Drew and they would both explode.

  19. CaptainZahn says:

    I want to hear the dirt, LYT.

  20. yancyskancy says:

    I’m guessing that being pals with the Poorman just increased LYT’s OWNAGE quotient with Lex by at least 20%.

  21. LexG says:

    Yeah, that’s a cool namedrop, but it’d be more awesome if LYT was friends with Colin or Dino from COLIN’S SLEAZY FRIENDS.
    Dr. Douche was indeed slinging that “cultural narcisissm” bullshit on Carson. And offering these grim predictions and diagnoses for certain “troubled” (ie, AWESOME) celebrities, which seemed to be downright irresponsible. And of course offering his all-too-easy stock psychobabble 101 and support-system lecturing.
    He also fails to recognize that drinking is AWESOME.

  22. LYT says:

    Poorman — who created Loveline — introduced Drew to his now-wife. They were best friends, and Drew promised he’d stand by the Poorman no matter what. But when Poorman got into a prank war with Kevin and Bean, and KROQ fired him, Drew did nothing to stand by him.
    Also, let’s just say Drew is not as clean-cut as he seems, or at least, has not always been.

  23. Josh Massey says:

    Terminator: Salvation has officially been rated PG-13.

  24. ployp says:

    I didn’t realize Terminator 3 was rated R.
    Up is rated PG (???) for ‘Some Peril and Action’. Interesting…
    http://pixarblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/up-rated-pg-by-mpaa.html

  25. LYT says:

    That means Moon Bloodgood’s breasts got cut.
    And almost certainly an Unrated DVD “director’s cut”

  26. ployp says:

    I didn’t realize Terminator 3 was rated R.
    Up is rated PG (???) for ‘Some Peril and Action’. Interesting…
    http://pixarblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/up-rated-pg-by-mpaa.html

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