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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

More Windows

It was a quiet story, but as Apple’s iPad and it’s E-Book Store was being discussed as a threat to Amazon’s e-book store and the Kindle, Michael Lewis had a new book come into the marketplace, The Big Short.
And it isn’t available in the Apple store.
And it isn’t available in the Amazon Kindle store.
In fact, according to the Amazon site, the paperback won’t be available until February of next year.
Those publishing MANIACS!!! How dare they mess with the speed of delivery that has become standard in the new millennium!
When the book goes to paperback, pricing will be almost exactly the same as the electronic download… 10 bucks.
MEANWHILE…
A bunch of local TV stations, including NBC and Fox O&Os, are setting up a joint business to push content to all non-broadcast digital delivery formats. (Here is NYT’s reportage.)
Makes great sense.
Just what “transmissions of live newscasts, local sports and other shows” ends up meaning… aside from the local newscasts… is a real question mark. But it is one that local stations have to start considering seriously and preparing for immediately… especially with NAB and MIPTV both happening this week.
A big part of this effort is to maintain control of broadcast spectrum, which is how this group is saying it will deliver the content. There has been a move afoot to give some of that spectrum to wireless companies so they can… wait for it… better broadcast video. But I think there is a bigger idea than that in play.
The next generation of syndication deals pretty much have to include at least the serious consideration of digital delivery rights, however broad or limited. Right now, there is all kinds of unexpected competition with the syndication market, some legal and some not. The future could use some rules.
It’s a double-edged sword for the studios who produce the shows. The benefit is that by giving digital delivery rights to a national syndication conglomerate for, say, a hit sitcom, they can keep prices high or raise prices that were dropping. The downside is that if digital transmission rights are a piece of the syndication deal, the studio can’t – presumably – stream the shows as well, whether on their studio’s individual site or on a group site like Hulu or the nascent Epix.
It’s competition. There are many ways to skin this cat. but skinned it will be. And for local stations, they desperately need to start watching out for themselves and considering what their way of staying in business will be in a post-affiliate universe… because it is coming… it just makes long-view business sense for the networks.
The challenge in evolving from where we are now is to deliver content in every possible delivery format and to raise the overall value of content…or at least not devalue the content. You also have to make it all as easily accessible to consumers as possible. Challenging.

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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