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
I’ll be sticking with the Kindle for reading simply because reading books on a light-emitting screen wears me out, I usually can’t read for more than 20 minutes in a session.
But yeah, for people who don’t have that problem and don’t mind the increased size (I can’t quite just ask my wife to carry an iPad for me in her purse like I do with my Kindle) there’s not much advantage to the Kindle beyond the free internet access.
I was going to ask about the point Alex makes above. Am I the only one who gets eye-strain after reading for more than twenty minutes on a back lit screen? Happens to me on an iPhone anytime I try to read in bed.
Backlit screen in a low-lit room: the contrast hurts my eyes.
Backlit screen in direct sunlight: too washed out and reflective to read.
I can think of a lot of neat things to do with the iPad but reading a book wouldn’t make my top ten.
DP, let us know what you think about reading on iPad vs. Kindle after you’ve spent some hours with it.
I know this is a bit left-field, but have you tried reading books? You know, ink on paper!
http://www.lapl.org/
OWN.
What is this “paper” of which you speak?
I will forever be grateful to Amazon for allowing me to self-publish wacky horror novellas straight to the Kindle as it has been a hoot to do just that. There are a lot of Kindle users out there just looking for cheap stories – have gotten “fan letters” from kennels and sci-fi reading groups, even a note from someone who read one of them on her iPhone in London where the Kindle is still unavailable. There’s even a woman who reviews “a Kindle book a day” that’s posted pretty full reviews of two of the stories.
It’s nothing to take too seriously, but I’m glad Amazon developed that Digital Text Platform for writers who wanted to try it out.
I enjoy reading tremendously and have a couple thousand books at home that I have picked up over the years, and since I have relocated fairly often, I have picked up those books many times over the years.
A few years ago I took a job in West Africa and found getting those paper and ink books I like so much to be a bit difficult and even more expensive. My first vacation out of the continent I heard about the Sony Reader and the Kindle. The Sony looked a little slicker so after thinking about it a couple of weeks I finally bought it. It took all of two days back in Africa being able to download just about any book in the world I heard about to realize that I could not remember why I hesitated. Whenever someone came by my office and wanted my opinion about going electronic books, I just opened my wallet, took out and gave them 4 hundred dollar bills and said that they should take that and buy whichever device they were thinking about and if they did not like it to give it to me. If they like it, pay me back. So far everyone has given me back the money.
There are a few discouraging aspects mainly with graphics. It appears that those problems will be decreased significantly with the iPad, a device I will be buying on my next vacation out of Africa.
I still love “real” books and am actually able to indulge my paper and ink collecting habit even more than in the past. My reading copies are electronic, the collecting copy is real world. From Charles Lyell through Aldus Huxley, Raymond Chandler, Dashel Hammet, John Updike and Jonathan Franzen, they are all available in both worlds.
SJRubinstein: Since I have been a Sony Reader person I did not know about the Amazon self-publish to Kindle Digital Text Platform. There are a great many interesting stories here in Africa that would never make any sort of “real” published book and I am too busy with my normal job to indulge in a blog, but an occasional story in a DTP format might actually work. Thanks for the tip.