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” ā 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 ā 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 ā he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” ā and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging ā I was with her at that moment ā 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 namedā” “Yeah, sure ā 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 Iām on the phone with you now, after all thatās 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 didnāt seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. Thereās not a case of that. He wasnāt using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had ā if that were what the accusation involved ā 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. Iām not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, āYou know, itās not this, itās thatā? Because ā let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. TimesĀ piece, thatās what it lacked. Thatās 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
Somehow I missed this post until you mentioned it while talking about… I don’t know… Dinosaurs or something, I wasn’t really paying attention… š
Lot of different topics wrapped up here, so I’ll try to break them out individually.
Power and Authority – most academic research around power tends to group it into three main types: Expert Power (people pay attention because doing so has demonstrated effectiveness), Positional Power (people pay attention because you’re the boss and can make their life hell because they don’t), and Charismatic Power (people pay attention because it’s interesting).
I think the trap that a lot of critics fell into was that they thought they had Expert Power (I’ve watched hundreds of movies and have a English Lit degree, therefore I must know what I’m talking about) when actually what they had was Positional Power (people paid attention because if NYT, LAT, EW, MTV, wutevah thought this opinion was important enough to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to put into print and distribute, then maybe they should pay attention too). As Don delights in pointing out, as soon as the Harry Knowles etc. of the world started using the low-barrier interwebs as a platform for their opinions, that positional power vanished.
It’s happened from the other direction too. The Perez Hiltons etc. of the world thought that because they had accumulated a bazillion followers that people would then create meaningful change. Turned out their followers were only interested in the next MSPaint penis on a celebrity photo, they didn’t care about opinions or anything.
If critics want authority back, then their best chance is to demonstrate that listening to these opinions have benefits. But they’re still going to be largely swamped by empty spectacle, because hey – that’s how you get cut through these days.
Which brings me to White Noise. A study two years ago estimated that in the 80s we were exposed to an average of 650 marketing messages a day – on tv, in the newspaper, on billboards, on letterhead stationary etc. By the end of the 90s, that had reached 2,900 – almost every tv show had their own merchandise, Batman had introduced a swathe of movie ancillaries, tech companies were handing out mousepads with logos on them, Nike’s, the majority of sports players had their own lines of endorsed products etc. In 2008 that number was 7500 – and it’s still growing at an enormous rate.
It’s a problem the largest and most successful ad companies in the world are AGONIZING over – how do you get people’s attention amidst all that noise? The only reason WPP and Omnicom haven’t publicly bitched about it is because it’s just nudged out by fighting over penetration for BRIC countries. But it’s no wonder that many are turning to spectacle rather than content to try and achieve cut-through.
Which brings us to the third major topic – are people actually profiting from that noise? Google is still likely to come out with a negative adjusted profit for the lifetime of Youtube. It was bought for $1.65 billion and as of last year was estimated to be losing $1.5million per day. If you want to be cynical about New Media, there’s a good reason right there.
But there are Twitter/MySpace/Facebook ventures that are making money. The most prominent is Zynga – the makers of the much maligned (and widely played) Farmville. It’s estimated that they will make $100million in revenues – real sales, not investor capital – and that’s making “traditional” developers furious.
So, yes, Critics are going to have a tough time and are probably never going to regain their Authoritative Voice. Yes, white noise is a problem, and it’s becoming worse every day. But people are (slowly, with many mis-steps) figuring out how to make a living in the New Media landscape that isn’t all smoke and mirrors.