MCN Blogs
Kim Voynar

By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com

Posted Monday, July 20th, 2009 - Comments Off on Out of the Frying Pan
Be Sociable, Share!

Out of the Frying Pan

There’s this piece in the New York Observer today speculating that Little, Brown delayed the release date of Julie Powell’s newest memoir to December so as not to bump against the upcoming release of the film Julie and Julia, which is based on Powell’s first memoir. Why? Well, because the movie includes Powell’s loving, supportive husband (played by Chris Messina), while the second book details Powell’s “insane, irresistible love affair with one of her close friends” and thus might make her appear a bit less … sympathetic.
Little, Brown denies that this is the reason they’ve delayed the book release to December. Powell’s publisher, Judy Clain, was quoted by the Observer as saying, “Honestly, the number of people who would have read the book and would have been bothered by it—I mean, in our dreams!” she said. “Anyway, it wouldn’t bother me. You don’t want people to be confused, but personally I think it just makes it a little more interesting and exciting and fun.”
Really. It makes it more “interesting, exciting and fun” that Julie Powell made a choice to screw around on her marriage with a close friend? Hoo-boy! I know there’s nothing I find more entertaining — not to mention sympathetic in a real-life character — than the betrayal of a marriage. That’s some fun and exciting stuff, there. Is it unreasonable to think that a lot of women might find Powell memorializing her affair in a book distasteful and less-than-sympathetic? Hey, I screwed around on my marriage, hurt my partner, and now I’d like to make some money off that choice by selling you a book about it! Uh huh.
Maybe a lot of folks will find that somehow bold and courageous. Whatever. I wasn’t terribly interested in this film to begin with other than for the sake of Meryl Streep’s and Amy Adams’ involvement. This doesn’t make me any more interested.

Be Sociable, Share!

Comments Off on Out of the Frying Pan

Comments are closed.

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