MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Into The Breach

Morning…

There are all kinds of kinks being handled this morning, from font sizes to graphic tweaks you’ll see in the weeks to come to making it easy for people who don’t have Word Press accounts to get them, so they can comment. (Add: There will even be line spacing in The Hot Blog!!!)

The toys I am most excited about are the MCN Newslinks, which give you all the headlines most of you could ask for, split by topic, the Movie Pages, which are still developing, but will offer all kinds of content for each film as we move into the future, and the “MCN Tweets” Twitter feed should be fun. It will remain conversational. We have other tools to promote content. We’d like this to be, along with blogs, headlines, and feature articles. another layer of the conversation… and immediate one.

Okay… I’m diving back into the test drive… again, welcome… and thanks for your patience.

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26 Responses to “Into The Breach”

  1. IOv2 says:

    Edit button, where are ya?

  2. David Poland says:

    Do you see it now? I see one right next to the date on your comment… or is that because I am an administrator?

  3. The Pope says:

    I’m loath to pass any comments on the layout because it could be a teething problem. I think though there is too much blue. Black on white background for reading headlines etc is better. Otherwise, the whole thing looks a helluva lot beefier.

  4. IOv2 says:

    Yeah there is no edit button for me. I am also wondering if there is supposed to be some registration thing for the blog now, because our names clearly have a space for an avatar next to them. That aside, once everything is in place, we should be fine and dandy like sour candy.

  5. hcat says:

    All change scares me.

  6. IOv2 says:

    Here’s some things we need:

    1) EDIT BUTTON!

    2) Registration or whatever so we can have avatars! Come on, let’s get crazy!

    3) The who posted to what thread column that was on the right hand of the old blog. If you cannot bring that back, do something that let’s us know that a thread has a new post to it.

    That’s all I got at the present time as I struggle to breathe. ACCURSED FLU!

  7. Foamy Squirrel says:

    So you’re finally embracing your inner USB cat?

  8. IOv2 says:

    Foamy, I have no idea what you are referring to, and I am just going to wave my hand at you because of it. Waving now.

  9. Foamy Squirrel says:

    “we can have avatars! Come on, let’s get crazy!”

  10. Just testing it out on the new format. Pay no heed…

  11. Good luck with the transition. Long time coming, I imagine.

  12. Whoa, my WordPress avatar popped up. Nice.

  13. IOv2 says:

    Oh you mean LOL CATZ? Yes Foamy, I am, an LOL CAT!

  14. leahnz says:

    how DO we get an avatar? i want an avatar avatar

  15. IOv2 says:

    Oh jesus, you want an Avatar of Avatar? Really? THE LAST AIRBENDER IN THE HOUSE! BOOYAH!

  16. David Poland says:

    Sign up with Word Press… which apparently you have done… should be able to set it up…

  17. Al E Ase says:

    Is there any button we can press (no pun intended) to take us straight back to the Hot Blog main page? I find I have to hunt for it, which is a bit annoying. (If not, may I suggest just clicking on the red The Hot Blog at the top?}

  18. Al E Ase says:

    Erm is there anything we can click on to take us straight back to the Hot Blog main page?

  19. Al E Ase says:

    Aha! First official double post! EDIT BUTTON WHERE ARE YOU?!

  20. Foamy Squirrel says:

    Home button – just to the right of the MCN “Flame”, silver bar, “The Hot Blog”.

    Edit button – apparently have to sign in through WordPress (you get a shiny avatar icon too).

  21. Al E Ase says:

    Thanks for the home button Foamy! WordPress is eluding me though, where do I find it?

  22. Joe Straatmann says:

    My ADHD while require some time for adjustment….

  23. Al E Ase says:

    Thanks Leah, didn’t realise it was offsite!

  24. Tim DeGroot says:

    working?

  25. IOv2 says:

    Thanks for making the thing at the top of the page happen, David. Nice to be able to follow whose posting what again on the blog.

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