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
Having now seen “Funny People,” I think they’ve got bigger problems than the date for that one.
And I loved the “Julie & Julia” book – particularly the pretty shocking reveal you’re kind of anticipating the entire text (Julia Child’s reaction to the blog) – but it seems like this is sneaking in pretty quietly for what could potentially be this summer’s “Mamma Mia!” Has ANYONE seen the flick yet?
Isn’t calling Funny People “Apatowian” akin to calling Hamlet “Shakespearean”? Funny People IS Apatow.
Sorry, jeffmcm is away and asked me to fill in.
I suspect LOTS of people have seen “J and J.” There seems to be a pretty significant screening program for it. Anyway, I’ve seen it. Streep nails it, Adams is terrific, they’re both likable as all get out, and I’d bet money it’s gonna be extremely, extremely popular.
Think you guys might be over-estimating the potential for Julie & Julia to break out. I can’t imagine any males going to see this (obviously), and it doesn’t seem to have the cross-generational appeal of something like Mamma Mia, either. I think it’s going to play very, very old.
I’m a male that’s interesting in seeing it, but only for the Meryl Streep parts, which look entertaining as hell. It’s the contemporary bits with Adams that are making my eyes, liver, kneecaps, what-have-you, roll and roll and roll.
Heigl looks hotter than EEEEEEVER in “The Ugly Truth.”
Between her INSANE HOTNESS and that remote-orgasm clip Poland posted last week, consider one ticket sold to this male moviegoer. Plus the hook of smarmy, sexist Butler telling women what they need to hear will make it more tolerable to guys in general.
“Julie and Julia,” I wouldn’t go to see that shit in a theater if Christina Ricci and K-Stew personally asked me to escort them so they could stretch out on my lap on one of the sofas at the Landmark.
NO WAIT I’M LYING I’D TOTALLY GO IN THAT CASE HA HA
Personally, I’d be tickled if the admittedly elegant and classy-looking posters for “Julie & Julia” had “From the director of ‘Bewitched,’ ‘Mixed Nuts,’ and ‘Lucky Numbers'” emblazoned across the top of them. Has any “A-list” director ever had a lower batting average or gotten more career mileage out of one hit than Nora Ephron? Just asking.
“The Ugly Truth” opens against two programmers so it should do well.
“Funny People” is being promoted by name-checking other Apatow releases. Apatow looks more and more like a Johnny One-Note doing nothing but dirty movies. One of these days it’s gonna bite him in the ass and I mean hard.
“Julie and Julia” has a genuine chance to open at #1. Its competition? “G.I. Joe”.
Hey, Chucky, can I inquire as to what your expert credentials are in the field of programming and distribution?
By Johnny One-Note, do you mean directing two of the most popular and beloved comedies of this decade? Because 40-year-old-Virgin is a certified classic and Knocked Up is pretty damn close, if a bit overlong.
If Funny People produces as many laughs or can show as much heart as either of those, he’s set. The one thing about Funny People is that he’s looking like he’s teetering a bit too much in James L. Brooks territory of ‘isn’t this precious and insightful?’
If he needs one thing, it’s a great editor to maximize some of the absolutely golden moments in his films.
chucky, Julie & Julia has no chance of opening at number one. Crap or not, G.I. Joe will beat it opening weekend, handily.
Lex, you seriously need to start a blog, stat.
Rubinstein, while it could obviously make more, hasn’t The Proposal sort of filled the “2009’s Mamma Mia!” spot? They’ll end up nearly identical numbers ($144m for MM!)
Julia/Julia and the Ugly Truth sounds like a double feature in hell.
The Ugly Truth looks terrible. The trailer is painful to watch. I saw it again in front of Bruno and was marvelling at Gerard Butler’s awful attempt at portraying a regular guy. And Heigel’s performances make her come across like a stuck up bitch. Maybe it works for this role, who knows.
After i groused about how bad Butler was in the trailer, my wife repled “He doesn’t have to say much.” and then smiled.
oh, and on the “Apatowian” thing. It’s funny how a brand becomes watered down. Because even though the graphic on the screen said “The 3rd Film from Judd Apatow”, my wife still said “hasn’t he done a lot more than 3 movies?”. There are a lot of people i hear name “Superbad” as an Apatow film.
There were a lot of people who told me Quentin Tarantino directed Hostel.
it’s all about the marketing, baby.
Not to get further into the superficial here, but Lex saying Heigl looks hotter than ever in these Ugly Truth ads… for serious? She was plenty good-looking in her other movies but in half of the ads I’ve seen for Ugly Truth, she looks vaguely like an alien, with her pulled-back ultra-blonde hair and weird eyes… yikes. I don’t know, I think she’s sexier is regular-chick mode.
It wouldn’t bother me if I found her appealing but there’s something vaguely Jennifer Aniston/Julia Roberts about her — in that she seems to play characters who are supposed to be smart and loveable and who the screenplays don’t really acknowledge as actually kind of stupid and smug and humorless and sometimes self-pitying. Or maybe that’s just how she plays them.
She was good in Knocked Up, and I find it funny that it’s *that* one she complained about being sexist. Not as progressive, I guess, as 27 Dresses or Women Do This, Men Do This — err, The Ugly Truth.
jesse, my main issue with heigel is how unlikable she comes across. There is no real vulnerability there. I never feel like i can root for Heigel. She’s stunning, but not in a friendly way. Between her acting like a raging bitch in the Ugly Truth trailer and Gerard Butler trying to act ‘manly’, i think we’re in for a painful experience.
Heigel’s acting is frigid. She’s always believable, but i never feel like she’s giving much back. She just kind of exists in the scene and is nice to look at, but it feels as though she’s performing rather than interacting with other characters.
That’s sort of how I feel about Roberts, anghus: even in her better movies, her scenes tend to be all about how delighted (or not) she is, not any kind of give-or-take with the other people onscreen.
The reason I don’t like Heigl much in her movies is the same reason I don’t like her character much on Grey’s Anatomy, and the same reason I don’t like HER much in her interviews. She’s 100% whining with zero accountability. If “Knocked Up” was sexist claptrap to your eyes, then you know what? don’t sign the contract. What? Was the script for it wrapped in a copy of Pride and Prejudice? Did you think Catherine Breillat was attached to the project? Don’t do the movie! But if you do, don’t be an asshole and attack it for something that’s always been right in front of you and everybody since its inception. Do you go to the front row of a Gallagher performance and cry about the watermelon spatter on your clothes?
Watching Heigl is like watching a spoiled child who hates cake demanding that she get the biggest piece, eating it, and then spending a week BITCHING about how bad it tasted. If she’s so above what she does, then why doesn’t she go the producing route and show us what she really wants to do and shut up in the meantime.
Funny People clocks in at 2hours 25mins. Seriously. Remember when comedies where to the point, funny and F***ING less than two hours.
“Remember when comedies where to the point, funny and F***ING less than two hours.”
I could probably count on one hand the number of movies in the last 20 years that needed to go past the two hour mark. What I don’t understand is how a movie like Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, which ostensibly had to hack away tons of material from the book in order to stay movie-sized, can still wind up draaaaaaaaaaaaagging its butt across the screen for large sections of its 153 minute running time like a worm-ridden dog.
I still marvel at the fact that Back to the Future is 1 hour and 50 minutes long. It’s one of the best pop cinema movies of the last 30 years and is just expertly edited.
…just listening to Butler try and sound “American” in the “UT” trailer makes my ears bleed.
Yes, Heigl is over-opinionated, seems diva-ish and sometimes has a cold persona onscreen; I was a big fan in her “Bride of Chucky” days when she’d appear on some men’s jack mag ever single month, so seeing her reborn as some feminist Voice of Artistic Integrity was strange.
But her rack seems to be a bronzed orange in this new one, plus Butler is going to break down her cold veneer and show her how to be a FUN, HOT CHICK, which is a great premise. Only thing that would be better is if they replaced Butler with TOM LEYKIS.
It’s all about the degree of SHININESS, and she seems to be lit more glowingly here than in the drab looking Apatow flick or on GE, which is of course in that gauzy ABC color that looks like a dusty hallway from 1974.*
*Note how SCRUBS was all bright, NBC-y and cheery on NBC, but looks like an underlit episode of QUINCY on ABC, the Bad Lighting Network.
Interesting to read these comments. I thought I was just in a foul mood when I saw the Ugly Truth trailer. Yes, it came across as incredibly grating, and something about Butler as that character feels off. Maybe this is a case where the trailer does not do the movie justice. But if it’s 90 minutes more of the same, oh man that would be tough to sit through.
Scrubs had to lose some of its budget on ABC, hence the more realistic lighting and the toned-down plotting (which was a good thing, restoring to its lower-key first three seasons).
I find it delightfully ironic that there’s a movie called FUNNY PEOPLE in which almost all of the people involved are, you know, not funny.
HEIGL ON LETTERMAN!!!! CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARMING.
Cadavra: I beg to differ.
Sandler: LEGEND. Extremely funny.
Rogen: EXTREMELY funny.
Jonah Hill: Extremely funny.
Jason Schwartzman: FUNNY.
Leslie Mann: FUNNY.
I’m the first one to call out comics and comic actors who suck, but there’s no one in that cast who isn’t good at what they do.
I’m a big fan of Heigl, but then I was a Roswell nerd in high school. I was gay then and even I wanted to marry her. And, well, Bride of Chucky is incredible. 27 Dresses was far better than it had any right to be. Ugly Truth, however, does look bad (just like Gerard Butler’s face – did he gorge himself after 300 or something?) I still don’t understand why they have that stupid Flo Rida song on the trailer, too.
What about “G-Force”?
Does that thing look bloody awful or what?
I can’t imagine anyone over the age of 8 who actually wants to see it.
And is it just me, or does Vera Farmiga look weirdly like Sarah Jessica Parker in the “Orphan” trailers?
“there’s no one in that cast who isn’t good at what they do.”
Lex, if by “what they do” means 30-somethings behaving like unruly children–farting, puking, pooping, getting kicked in the balls, smoking weed and droning on about “Star Wars,” the constant shouting of “Fuck!” in place of actual dialogue–and supposedly intelligent women who find all this arrested-development irresistible, why, then, yes, we are in complete agreement.
Cadavra, you have to admit that there’s a long comedic tradition of just about everything you listed above being considered hilarious.
Kam, LeahNZ and I discussed Gerard’s *face change* from his firm masculine loveliness in Dear Frankie to his current state of elasticated squishiness! Very peculiar.
The Ugly Truth trailer…a bit forced & it isn’t my kind of movie even though I like the actors.
Cadavra, you do appear to come from the Jeff Wells school of not wanting comedy to be too broad, or silly, or, you know, funny.
Actually, I’m a little puzzled by some of your comments, because I’m not particularly a fan of scatological humor, but I find Rogen and Hill and most of the Apatow boys pretty funny, sometimes hilarious. Sometimes they have profane or dirty dialogue, but Apatow rarely does visual gross-out gags a la the Farrelly Brothers.
I guess Sandler indulges in some of that — and has a way more uneven filmography to show for it, though I really enjoyed Zohan, his funniest broad comedy in ages.
Rogen’s humor comes more from his delivery. Ever see him on Freaks & Geeks or Undeclared? No swearing, only some allusions to getting high, and certainly no gross-out, and he’s hilarious. Wrote good stuff on Undeclared, too. I do wonder if Apatow and company place undue emphasis on the ability to go R-rated — sometimes restrictions can help your creativity. Undeclared has some terrific dialogue and riffs that can match a lot of material in 40-Year-Old Virgin or Knocked Up. Regardless, Rogen is funny. Hill can be blazingly profane, but his performance in Superbad is terrific and very real. Actually, Superbad has a lot of the Freaks & Geeks/Undeclared qualities I missed in the movies Apatow actually wrote (though I enjoyed those, too).
No, I love broad comedy. Not just The Three Stooges and Wheeler & Woolsey, but some of the unholiest lowbrow silent comedians ever. (Google Ham and Bud.) And I’m second to no one in my worship of Mel Brooks.
But they all are FUNNY. They have jokes, sight gags, plots (sometimes minimal, but they’re there), and even attempts at characterization. I can tolerate bodily function humor if there is at least a tiny reason for it, but 99.9% of the time there isn’t.
Example: Sandler’s FIFTY FIRST DATES. There’s a very large walrus in the seaquarium where Sandler works. At one point, the walrus projectile-vomits all over a transsexual co-worker. There’s no build-up, no reason, no pay-off. Someone just said, “Hey, let’s have the walrus barf all over the tranny!” And so they did it. But what does it add, other than a very cheap laugh for people who find this kind of thing funny? It’s pandering to the basest instincts at the expense of anything resembling genuine humor.
As it happens, I saw JULIE & JULIA today, and loved every second of it. Now THAT’S comedy.
Lex will hate it.
The two released films Apatow has written and directed to date are full of characterization. In fact, a large part of the humor in those films comes from character. Not much of the scatology is there for its own sake, but there’s a lot of recognizable human behavior that, yes, many of us find funny.
Sandler doesn’t generally work in that vein, but Funny People is clearly Apatow’s attempt at a James L. Brook type joint, and Sandler has shown that he can tone down the crassness when he wants to (for Brooks and P.T. Anderson), so I’m not worried. I hope the film is as good as its predecessors.
Apatow is closer to an R-rated Leo McCarey than something like the Stooges, Wheeler and Woolsey or the typical Sandler vehicle.
Yeah, I’m sure McCarey is spinning in his grave that he didn’t come up with that vital scene in KNOCKED UP where Leslie Mann and the black club doorman scream endless variations of “Fuck you!” at each other for three or four minutes. Or the crucial yammering of Jonah Hill and the other slackers about shaving their balls and “pubes on the toilet seat.” Why waste time with that tired limey fuck Noel Coward when you can have priceless “character comedy” like that?
If The Awful Truth had contained a vomiting walrus, it could only have improved the movie. It’s a small corollary to the ‘every movie is better with a chimp’ thesis that I’ve been working on.
Sandler rules.
Also, for those who don’t like reading long, negative paragraphs, allow me to paraphrase Cadavra’s points and cut to the heart of his argument:
“I’m old.”
The scene with Leslie Mann and the bouncer is completely rooted in character. Doesn’t mean you have to find it funny, of course.
If the slackers traded Cowardian bon mots it might be funny, but it would certainly be out of character, and therefore bad writing.
All IMO, because comedy, as a few million other people have probably pointed out tonight elsewhere on the internet, is subjective.
Lex: I’m iddle-aged, though I understand that in your world everyone over 25 is “old.”
Yancy: Yes, comedy is subjective to a great extent. And yes, most of what I state is a personal opinion. But I still think it’s a pretty safe bet that 50 years from now, people will still be watching DUCK SOUP and HIS GIRL FRIDAY and BLAZING SADDLES, while The Collected Works Of Judd Apatow and Adam Sandler will be gathering dust alongside such giants of their times as HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL and DON’T KNOCK THE ROCK.
Sorry for the double post.