April 16, 2024
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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
You will never ever understand how awesome this is and I sort of feel sorry for you. You just can’t handle awesome. Tear.
Not bad. But, frankly, I am more geeked by this photo.
http://www.cowboysindians.com/blog/post.jsp?id=1886
Very understandable Joe but I have seen what many thought would go unseen. IT HAS HAPPENED! THE AVENGERS HAVE ASSEMBLED! MAY THE HULK HAVE MERCY ON THEIR SOULS!
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Ruffalo finally got into a Superhero movie. BOOYAH!!!!
its like a geek dream come true. it could be a giant car wreck and i wont even care.
if you would have said 10 years ago: Avengers movie directed by Joss Whedon, you would have been laughed off the internet.
Then you would have had someone show up at your house and punch you in the face Anghus. Seriously this is just a ridiculous thing that is going to happen in two years, that I may freaking weap tears of joy at that midnight screening!
Seems like it would have worked better with a few more cast members along the lines of Robert Downey and Samuel Jackson, and fewer “who is that guy” types. Shouldn’t have gotten rid of Norton.
You bad mouthing Renner and Ruffalo? You better not be bad mouthing Renner and Ruffalo! Yes I get your point but as a fan of those two guys, and having them play two of my favourite characters, knowing they are in that film made my day. Sam Jackson is on the stage. That counts for something!
Good actors, but no one knows them. An assembling that’s supposed to be HUGE should feel huge and not like a Roger Corman movie.
Joe, I’m 100% with you. That shot is a million times sweeter.
Also Renner sucks. Weaksomesome.
Pete… don’t make me have to go smoke monster on you.
IO: Don’t get me wrong: I think the whole idea of an Avengers movie really is kinda-sorta cool. Remember, I’m old enough to have bought the first Avengers comic book. I can remember when it was a really big deal when, in Issue No. 4, Captain America was revived from suspended animation to join the lineup. I can even remember when, later on, some of the original members went on hiatus so new members (like Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye) could join the outfit. I’m assuming the movie will feature a mix of the first and second Avenger lineups. But where the hell is Ant/Giant Man?
In jail for spouse abuse?
Foamy: ROFLMAO.
Not really sure what The Big Perm is getting at. I’m pretty sure the people on that stage are well known. Those that aren’t now, will be by the time The Avengers hits screens. Personally, I’m ecstatic they dumped Norton and went with Ruffalo.
No one knows who Mark Ruffalo is.
Mark Ruffalo has not been in any thing. Sure. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0749263/ Someone saw those movies and if people still do not know him then they will get to know him. He rules, the end. The same with Jeremy Renner, Pete, and don’t you forget it!
I’m sure I’d recognize more people if it were a larger picture, but since I haven’t been paying any attention to Avengers casting my recognition in that photo from left to right is (I think only one of these is right):
1. Hipster douchebag from Marina District bar.
2. Apparently short Jason Segal
3. Unknown woman
4. That guy who played opposite Jimmy Caan in that Vegas TV show.
5. Don’t know.
6. Sam Jackson
7. Courtney Cox’s husband.
8. Wouldn’t know (but based on comments must be Ruffalo)
9. Louis CK
10. My uncle Keith, apparently out on parole early.
What’s the big deal? They made this thing already:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO-gEjeBHcQ
IO, go to ten random people in the street and ask them who Mark Ruffalo is, and then ask them to name a single movie he’s done.
Of course people in Hollywood know who he is. I know who a lot of local actors in the Baltimore area are, but you don’t. I’m saying for a bigger than big movie…supposedly…like the Avengers is going to be, they need a few more A-list actors out there and of that whole line up, they have two and a bunch of other guys. Shit, in that Will Ferrell cop comedy they have bigger names! Kevin Smith movies have bigger names. I know name value ain’t everything, and a lot of times it means jack shit, but it means something for a supposed EVENT.
To be fair, Avengers compares pretty well to X-Men in terms of casting. Jackman was an unknown at the time, as was Marsden, Famke Janssen’s claim to fame was being a Bond villain 5 years earlier, and Anna Paquin had hardly been seen since her Oscar win 7 years earlier.
That left Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, and Halle Berry (and her role got shafted something fierce), which is roughly matched by Robert Downey Jr, Samuel L Jackson, and Scarlett Johanssen. Plus Chris Evans has had a fairly high profile with Fantastic Four.
Yeah it’s an event with a base who know who Jeremy Renner and Mark Ruffalo are. You also have to figure that after Cap and Thor have their movies next year, Evans and Hemmingsworth will be bigger names, and that’s your star power. Of course you don’t need star power to sell the Avengers as much as you need THE AVENGERS to sell the Avengers, if that makes any sense.
Sure, maybe having Norton in there would give one more recognizable face in the pack for the rank and file to recognize. But who cares? By the time the movie actually comes along in 2 years, no one will not know who the Avengers are. It’s not a concept contingent on names.
Mark Ruffalo? He’s the guy who was in 13 Going on 30, right?
What a weird thing to be arguing about. While I’m sure the makers of WATCHMEN were second-guessing their casting choices before the first week’s grosses were tallied, I suspect it’s hard to draw the big names for these ensemble superhero flicks. I’m sure Marvel knew they couldn’t get Cruise, Pitt, Smith, Damon, whoever (I doubt they even tried), so they went for solid actors with a little cachet and unknowns that maybe the public will be excited to “discover.” There’s a lot of built-in audience for THE AVENGERS, and at this point I doubt there’s a dollar’s difference between Norton and Ruffalo’s b.o. clout, especially for a project like this.
Damn straight, yancy, it’s a weird thing to be arguing about.
It’s silly to argue that the cast needs more names and it’s silly to argue that the names on display (save one) matter at all.
Pretty sure that whether it’s Downey and this cast or Downey and the road company of Hairspray, the movie won’t make one red cent more or less than it is going to make.
So everyone’s going to get about 15 minutes of screen time apiece, in which they say some generic expository dialogue until the CGI takes over.
It’s too hard to argue with anyone who thinks The Avengers has a built in audience that’s going to make this movie a big hit. Just like the number one comic of all time, Watchmen, right?
I guess it doesn’t matter, it’s basically going to be Iron Man and his Superhero Buddies anyway, especially when Thor does Hulk numbers at best.
Of course if I cared about this movie I wouldn’t be arguing names and box office numbers, but since I don’t and all I’m going to hear for the next few years is how huge this movie is going to be, I guess I will. I’ll give them this though, they picked a good director in Whedon.
Comparing Avengers to Watchmen is rather silly anyway. Yes, it was the highest selling comic, but that’s as a single storyline. Avengers and the associated characters have cumulatively higher sales by a massive margin. But that’s immaterial, too.
Watchmen was an R rated movie that tried for challenging themes, aimed at a narrow audience and did not have a single well known character or a single name actor, and was not a part of any franchise.
Avengers will be a big franchise-imbued 4-quadrant aiming pg-13 piece of whiz-bang entertainment with a number of well known and lesser-known characters, one mega-star and a few somewhat known actors, some of whom could still potentially become much bigger stars before the movie hits, depending on how their debut entries go.
I don’t wish this movie ill. I agree with those who say that the cast – aside from Downey – is meaningless to its success or failure. If it is a great, fun piece of summer explosion, it won’t matter if you know any actor in it by name. And if it isn’t, it wouldn’t matter if you reassembled the cast of Ocean’s 11.
That said, Alex Stroup for the win, because the image struck me very much the same way. Even knowing every single person up there – and thinking at least half the actors are truly exceptional… it looks like someone grabbed 8 people off the street for this event.
And they look like they are taking bows already.
Even an image of the drawn versions of their characters behind each one would have been 100 times more exciting than this Usual Suspects line-up.
If I was a waiter in a San Diego restaurant and saw this group sitting in my section and didn’t know who they were, I’d be wondering who, if anyone, was going to pay the bill.
(Answer: Not the guy in the monochromatic suit and sunglasses on inside. He’s the type who always skips out when the check shows up. It’s the guy outside on the cell phone, in the baseball cap, pacing.)
Storymark, cumulatively higher sales just means they kept selling books to the same people. Like how all of the Star Wars movies made more than one Star Wars movie…of course it would because the people who saw the first would see the next one. So not sure what you’re saying there.
“Even an image of the drawn versions of their characters behind each one would have been 100 times more exciting than this Usual Suspects line-up.”
that’s a bingo. isn’t that a huge screen on stage behind them? a towering line-up of the comic characters on screen would have put the line-up in context and really made it pop. as it is, it looks like a cast curtain call. i hope at least they took turns stepping forward to say, “hand me the keys you fucking cocksucker!”
What does the last part of your post mean Leah?
That aside, I hate to stress this again but it seems apt given some of the reactions in this thread. This picture is not for many of you. It’s for folks like me, who already see Hemingsworth as Thor and Evans as Cap without a seeing bit of footage. It’s for folks like me that have wanted to see this film happen for as long as we’ve known what the Avengers were. It represents something happening that has never happened before and that makes it awesome.
If you disagree, that’s fine, but that’s the best picture I have ever seen come out of comic-con. Until they make a JLA movie, nothing will top seeing the Avengers assembled together for the first time. It’s just that awesome.
Did I forget to mention Joss Whedon directing this movie? I did? Well guess what? IT’S SUPER DUPER AWESOME!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-f8hwafsIU
whedon is a gamble that could pay off. as a fan of firefly, i found ‘serenity’ as his only feature film (as far as i know) fairly satisfying and from what i can remember, the action in that film is actually quite well-conceived and shot. also, whedon is astute with ensemble. wouldn’t it be a hoot if he actually turned out to be a fledgling action director to rise above the current crop of so-called action directors mired down in their own uninspired, garden-variety mediocrity
Leah exactly.
“Storymark, cumulatively higher sales just means they kept selling books to the same people. Like how all of the Star Wars movies made more than one Star Wars movie…of course it would because the people who saw the first would see the next one. So not sure what you’re saying there. ”
Well then, apparently you missed the part where I said the sales were irrelevant. It’s the characters and their status in pop-culture, which is vastly greater than Watchmen, that matters.
I seriously thought these were wax sculptures at first glance, esp Jackson and Downey.
Chris Evans as Captain America, not good.
Come on, Chris Evans is rather versatile as an actor and he also features one hell of a smile. If you read Cap comics long enough, you realize that Steve likes to smile, and Evans should pull that off easily.
As a big fan of his work in Sunshine, I think Evans is a great choice for Cap. Can’t think of an actor in the age group better suited for the role (though when he was younger I always thought Ed Burns would make a good Cap).
I just don’t know about Chris Evans in this. He’s always going to be my Johnny Storm and this is going to confuse the hell out of me. I can see jumping from a DC to Marvel property but Marvel to Marvel?
Marvel probably figures those Fantastic Four films were so forgettable that they will be faded from everyone’s memory by the time next summer rolls around.
And the Fantastic Four movies aren’t really part of this Marvel film canon they’re trying to build, right? I always figured Marvel would rather they be forgotten, with hopes to reboot at some point if they can get the rights.
Eric you are completely and utterly right. Marvel does indeed want the FF property back and want us to forget the FOX FF movies.
I’m kinda surprised they didn’t include Cheadle. I didn’t figure Rhodes/War Machine would be a big fixture in Avengers, but I assumed he would be present in some capacity.