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Kim Voynar

By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com

Posted Monday, March 8th, 2010 - Comments Off on Today's WTF Moment: Variety Axes McCarthy and Rooney
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Today's WTF Moment: Variety Axes McCarthy and Rooney

I am stunned by the news that Variety has let go full-time film critic Todd McCarthy and theater critic David Rooney. It’s no secret that Variety has used — and I mean that in the fullest sense of the term — freelancers for a long time in filling its review space. But when Variety can afford the fancy digs out of which it operates while it’s letting go of full-time writers with seniority and benefits — the very people who, one might think, the paper that purports to be the most important in Hollywood ought to want to have writing for them — as a “cost-cutting measure,” that is a sad statement about Variety’s priorities.
Variety would be better served trimming down management or getting rid of the fancy office space and transitioning to mostly virtual offices, having people work from home and saving on infrastructure, than saving money by getting rid of its lifeblood, the writers who write the words without which, there would be no Variety. Or better still, cut in half what they’re paying president Neil Stiles, who had the audacity to say, “… the critics were cut as a cost-saving measure.”
Well, thanks for clarifying, Mr. Stiles. That speaks volumes about Variety’s priorities. Someone needs to axe Stiles as a “cost-saving measure” and pay the writers. What a sad, sad day. It would be great if freelance critics would unite in boycotting writing for these assholes at all, but sadly, that’s not going to happen. Even though Variety has repeatedly shown it won’t think twice about screwing writers over right and left, there will always be someone who will think the perceived value of writing for them is somehow worth it.
There are some things you cannot put a price on, and integrity is one of them.

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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