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
So, the story that Peters is releasing a tell all book news, but the content of the pitch is not?
Is that the line?
PETERS PLANS TO RELEASE TELL ALL BOOK = News
PETERS PLANS TO RELEASE TELL ALL BOOK AND HERE ARE DETAILS = Not news?
Because posting excerpts from a book proposal is nothing more than restating facts. The fact that you deem it as “gossip” seems to come more from the source than the content?
Last year the National Enquirer ran stories about Jon Edwards affair. It wasn’t until it spilled into mainstream news that it was considered actual news and not gossip. So does what changes the story from “news” to “not news/gossip” more reflective of the material or the source?
Well… the first scary thing is that we’re now – and I really mean We, as in a majority of editorial thinkers – are discussing John Edwards and Jon Peters as though there is some similarity on inherent news significance.
A presidential candidate who is running, in part, under the banner of his brave and intellegent wife’s cancer battle cheating on his wife AND having a child as a result of that infidelity is most certainly news. The notion of privacy is overwhelmed by the request for public acceptance – votes – by Edwards.
The great question of that situation is why the media failed to tell a story that was not a well held secret. In fact, it was inexcuseable. And I would suggest that a part of that was Old Media closing ranks and reverting to 60s rules in a misguided attempt to maintain the old school ways.
Jon Peters? Barely news that he is writing a book at all. If it turned out, upon completion, to be an insightful book from one of Hollywood’s great all-time hustlers… there might be news in there. But trying to get a book deal… not news.
Publishing his pitch? Immoral, on its face. Probably couldn’t be prosecuted as illegal, but bad pool. Work product, assuming itbis not of real significance to the public good or bad, not just what we want to know, should not be considered media fodder. That is just gossip. And we should be ashamed of ourselves as a profession, wrestling over who got the first e-mail from someone out to bury Peters and decided to run it.
An industry is in the middle of real, serious issues that has cost thousands of jobs and will cost many, many more and what is the hubbub? A busted testicle and whether we will read what position Barbra liked after a fight.
Blech!
PS… In case it wasn’t clear enough, testicle ref was the con trier at Cannes and the Peters thing was a silly swing in the dark… I have not read any if the acquired alleged proposal.
I read the proposal. It was pretty graphic. It read like something you’d see in an interview with Larry Flynt of Bob Guccione. I could almost hear some lower east side guy in a sweatsuit chomping on a cigar going “Dis is the guy that F-ed up everyone in Hollywood”.
You’re absolutely right. The book deal isn’t news. The implications that he was going to name names about scandals and at the same time mentioning that everyone working in Hollywood somehow owes him a debt was strange. It read like:
“Jon Peters is going to dish on EVERYONE. Did i mention Jon Peters knows EVERYONE?”
You read it and the first thing you think is “wow, Jon Peters is writing a tell all book.”
Then you think for a few hours and suddenly you realize, 99% of the filmgoing public has no idea who Jon Peters is. To mainstream America you could say “The guy who produced Batman” or “He used to date Barbara Streisand”.
The proposal mentions the Sony deal, but they didn’t mention driving it into the ground.