MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Huh? The Rest Of NYT's Oddly Brief Story On The Phil Spector Doc

I was reading John Anderson’s story on Vikram Jayanti’s brilliant The Agony & The Ecstasy of Phil Spector, which I loved 18 months ago at IDFA, then wrote about last April after it appeared on BBC2, and the piece was moving along, telling a story about how tightly Spector controlled his library, then…
“The film employs a greatest-hits collection of 21 Spector songs, played or performed in their entirety. And it does so without having obtained Mr. Spector

Be Sociable, Share!

12 Responses to “Huh? The Rest Of NYT's Oddly Brief Story On The Phil Spector Doc”

  1. karina says:

    I had the same reaction reading the story online, and then I scrolled down and saw this in the finest possible print at the bottom of the page:
    “A version of this article appeared in print on June 27, 2010, on page AR12 of the New York edition.”
    Does that mean the story was longer in print?

  2. tholymabe says:

    Yes Karina, read it a long time ago when Ray Pride tweeted it and put it on the home page. If I could get my print subscription to sync with my TimesSelect, I might be able to cut and paste the rest. David, David, David.

  3. Bob Violence says:

    Not to get all anal-retentive, but the (brilliant) Thom Andersen doc was called Los Angeles Plays Itself and should be referred to as such, given Andersen’s open distaste for the “LA” moniker. Plus LA Plays Itself is a ’70s porn film.

  4. David Poland says:

    Not sure why a print version would be longer than a web version. Counter-intuitive. But anything is possible.
    I, too, found the story because of Ray’s link on our front page.

  5. john says:

    Nimrods: Yes, the story was longer in print — replete with Vikram and a whole bunch of other people (you remember sourced journalism, right?) I think the times site also suggests that a subsciption is necessary for the full on-line version. That means paying for people’s work — another foreign concept, I am sure.

  6. tholymabe says:

    David is so easily mistaken, he read the accidental version and ACTUALLY or CONVENIENTLY thought it was a full NYT article, and then asked around for hours — ah, inquiry and jealousy make bad bed fellows.

  7. tholymabe says:

    Dave, did you read the full article yet? Are you going to comment on what a great or terrible piece of journalism it is anytime in the near future?

  8. David Poland says:

    Where can I see it, tholymabe?
    “The accidental version?”
    I am now responsible for publishing the New York Times?
    And, angry braintrust, I was one of the customers who paid for TimesSelect… and pay now for WSJ online. There is no wall at NYT. If this was a partial story, it is a screw up by the NYT and not by its readers.
    And I didn’t accuse Anderson of bad journalism. The piece, as it ran, didn’t make much sense… it was half (or less of) a story.
    I’ll be happy to apologize to John Anderson if it turns out that the paper he was freelancing for screwed up the online version of his story. If there was any indication of NYT limiting its online version of its stories, I would have considered that. But there is no such history… until this…

  9. tholymabe says:

    Of course the NYT link was screwed up, but it’s not anymore. What’s screwy is that you couldn’t tell, as if you just started reading the NYT that day. Take some responsibility for your mistake.

  10. tholymabe says:

    And besides, do you have so little faith in your homepage editor, Ray Pride, that he’d link to a story that, at the time he linked to it, wasn’t in it’s full version? Even if you can’t tell a truncated NYT piece from it’s full one, you know Ray Pride can, nimrod.

  11. David Poland says:

    Let me just be clear, angry man.
    NYT does something that it does not normally do… truncate a story online.
    And I am supposed to research this or I am a putz?
    Just want to be clear… this was my fault, 100%, right? Or is it 50% me and 50% Ray?
    Cause Ray didn’t quite understand what the problem was either. And NYT didn’t fix it a day or two later. And the film’s distribution team (outside of Manhattan) didn’t understand that this was a truncated story either.
    I am perfectly fine acknowledging that, yes, there seemed to be a full story there. But I am pretty sure that NYT truncating stories is not something I have encountered there since the pay wall came down… and there was no indication of it on the page, as the page number for the paper does not include “see the complete piece in the paper… this is just a couple of graphs.”
    Mostly, however, I am fascinated by how seriously you are taking this. Me? I was just trying to clarify the situation with the movie to the rest of the country that doesn’t get the NYT on paper each day… since, you know, they are working with virtually no budget and trying to get the word out as the movie starts to play in non-profits across the nation. Sorry for that.
    And my interview with vikram will be up soon… in which he makes clear that he has never gotten a single inkling of Spector being upset or threatening the film and that Spector offered – twice – all the music for free. But yeah… nothing signed after Vikram was enjoined from speaking to Spector.
    Seems that is in the Anderson story, now up.
    “Thus the film could become the latest flashpoint in the debate over what

  12. tholymabe says:

    Let me be clear, Dave, truncating stories online is not something the NYT does, that’s why with all your prowess in reading the NYT that you put on display here in The Hot (sometimes Hot Air) Blog, when you saw the article in that design format, you should have reasonably been able to surmise it was a technical glitch right away. You’ll take cover that it’s not reasonable, but I contend it is, so since you offered asshole, can we include blind or blinded?
    And, don’t twist it to put blame on Ray, I read the article, in its entirety, off his linkage. He doesn’t know what error occurred any more than the NYT does.
    Publicity for the movie is, of course, everyone’s aim. It’s because of your whining about the article that the problem was fixed by the NYT’s SVP of Digital Op’s office. So I’m sure, in that sense, John can be happy to be of more assistance in getting word out about the doc. Have a happy 4th.

The Hot Blog

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