May 19, 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
This just looks awesome. Absolutely awesome.
YEP YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.
Please GOD let me get to see this in a theater instead of having to do DVD post work on it before it’s released.
Damn Natalie, you a crazy chick.
SHE’S TURNING INTO A SWAN! A SWAN! A BLACK SWAN!
KUNIS >PORTMAN.
You know this thing’s gonna have tons of feet.
YAY
Lex, uh no.
The only thing that could make this movie more arousing is if they also had ROONEY MARA and they made it a threesome and were like “Hee hee, heee heee, I know, LET’S PAINT OUR TOENAILS!”
“YAAAAAAAAY!”
“Wow, your feet are so pretty, YAAAAAAY Heee heee!”
“Let’s have a pillow fight! And eat LOLLIPOPS! And PRACTICE KISSING, YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!”
“Heee, heeee, heeeee, (singsong) I’ve never done this with a GIRRRRRRRRL before!”
“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!”
“Heeeeeee heeeee, this is fun! I like kissing girls! Now let’s give each other foot massages!”
“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! Do you know my OTHER FRIEND, Kristen?”
AROUSING STORY.
Lex, you make me sad, but also very angry! HOW DARE YOU BRING ROONEY INTO THIS! HOW DARE YOU! Seriously, the daughter of the Steelers and the freakin Giants. Good lord, that’s reason enough to root against her.
STEELERS 4 LIFE. BIG BEN POWER.
It would RULE if all women could be GIRLY and PLAYFUL and NOT HAVE TOO MANY OPINIONS.
Lex, uh, no.
Weird man. I didn’t even know about this thing until a couple of weeks ago. I thought Aronofsky was doing a boxing movie with Walhberg and Norton.
This looks like Showgirls meets Suspiria meets The Fly. I’m there.
Single White Feathery Ballerina
JBMoore, yes, you nailed it. Especially THE FLY. All those abrasions… on her shoulderblades… and that feather… my God, could she be…
It feels like pulp. Balletic pulp, but pulp all the same.
Yet, I guess a lot us will “BE THERE”… but where is Winona? A namecheck on the credits tell us she’s an “AND” and so I went back to check and glimpsed her for all but a few frames about 1.26 and that’s it. Is this the beginning of her redemption?
“Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to the Light.”
im amazed at the career progression of mila kunis.
did anyone see this coming from her work on That 70s Show?
I always thought Kunis could be good if given a chance, but admittedly, that was based on how smoking hot she is. I’m actually kinda shocked she’s given a shot here alongside Portman just because of what you said, Anghus. From AMERICAN PSYCHO 2 to Aronofsky….go get em, Mila!
I also can’t imagine this film doing well….what common folk wanna to see Natalie Portman turn into a swan?
Wasn’t Mila in Book of Eli? Couldn’t that role have helped her land this (as opposed to going straight from Amer. Psyco 2 to this)?
I thought Book of Eli was underrated, and Mila Kunis was very effective in her role. I always found her shrill on That 70’s Show…but of course, that was her character. She was the Veronica.
She seems to be doing better at finding projects than other actresses of her generation, like Rachel Bilson.
My comment just got swallowed, so I apologize if this is a rehash:
I always found Mila Kunis shrill on That 70’s Show, but that was her character — she’s the Veronica. She was very effective in Book of Eli, especially opposite heavyweights like Oldman and Denzel. An underrated movie, IMHO.
Ah, an object lesson in editing.
Having not read a synopsis before seeing the trailer I actually thought this was going to be about pirates. This looks amazing, but I had pictured the cast dressed as pirates in my head and it was really working for me.
Last years Brothers had soured me on Portman a bit but this looks like something she could knock out of the park.
What no Pirates? Having not read a synopsis before seeing the trailer I actually thought this was going to be about pirates. This looks amazing, but I had pictured the cast dressed as pirates in my head and it was really working for me.
Last year’s Brothers had soured me on Portman a bit but this looks like something she could knock out of the park.
Sorry for the double.
I’m sure the heavy editing makes this story seem like five different things, but it almost looks like an arthouse remake of the anime Princess Tutu….
Hcat, I was gonna ask who plays the Tyrone Power role, but you kinda-sorta beat me to it!
I groaned when I saw Kunis was in Book of Eli which is typically my gut response whenever I see a television personality attempt the jump to film, who the hell was she to be sharing the screen with Denzel. Then I remembered that Denzel first made his name through series television and thought I should let go of my preconceptions. She was quite good in the film.
On an somewhat related question, has there ever been a series that launched two of its cast members to long movie careers? Aniston, Denzel, Clooney, Harrelson all came from large television casts with multiple actors trying the movie route, and the casts of Arrested Development still seem to be seeing who will be the last one standing, but for the life of me the only show I can think of that helped launch two long time movie stars is all the way back to Maverick.
hcat: can you clarify which series you mean? Ashton Kutcher, Topher Grace, and now Mila Kunis have all made their run… Topher prob the most talented (and succesful, movie-wise?). Yet no Clooney or Denzel on the horizon among them.
And re: Maverick. James Garner and… Roger Moore? Who else are you thinking of?
Topher is probably done, Kutcher works only sporadically, so while Kunis is hardly a superstar she is certianly the only one with a bright future in features. Like the Cheers and Friends casts, as long as that 70’s show was on the air there were multiple cast members trying to make it in movies, but once the show folded up the tent only one cast member managed to make a go of it in theaters. It just seemed odd to me that with all these shows with talented casts you never know who, if any, will be able to make the leap to movies.
And yes Moore was the other I was thinking of, though his time on the Saint was likely what qualified him for Bond.
Cool. Maybe the two of us and Joe Leydon are the only ones who know that about Maverick, hcat.
And, I take it you’re not counting Howie Mandel and David Morse among the “movie stars.” Which, you know, I respect. The only other exception might be Anthony Edwards, but he was in movies like Top Gun before television.
And I hope that Topher isn’t done. The work he’s done is interesting — he was really good in In Good Company, for example.
Yeah, weren’t they actually talking about Moore for early Bond like Dr. No?
I don’t think Topher is done, he was just in a movie and seems to have a few more in the can. He’ll probably never be a headliner like Clooney, but he’ll be around for awhile.
As for tv shows spawning movie stars…I’d say Taxi gave some of the best character actors in movies for the 80s. Could you technically say the cast of the original Star Trek since they got long movie careers of, at the very least, Star Trek films?
Good call on Taxi… although only Christopher Lloyd and Danny DeVito come close to the company enumerated by hcat. Lloyd hasn’t done much recently, but DeVito has his fingers in a lot of pies as a producer — and he drinks limoncello with Clooney.
I thought Topher was good in Traffic, and he has a pretty funny cameo in Ocean’s Eleven.
In re: Moore as Bond, my wife has read both the Ian Fleming and the Saint novels, and is of the opinion that Moore was perfectly cast as the Saint and a disaster as Bond. My understanding is that Moore was contractually obligated to do the Saint when the Bond films were casting… which led to Connery as Bond.
I actually think Lazenby got a raw deal. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is one of the top five in the franchise, if you ask me.
Looks like Lloyd is still in a lot of stuff, just lower profile and tv stuff. But he’s still constantly working. Oh shit, and he’s in Piranha 3D, that’s gotta count for something!
I’d have to see Majesty’s Secret Service again. I remember being sort of bored with it as a kid, but of course as a kid stuff like Octopussy were the better ones because they had weird villains and gimmicks. I bet I can appreciate it better now.
FREAKS AND GEEKS introduced us to James Franco, Seth Rogen, and Jason Segel. It was also the first time I ever noticed Ben Foster (channeling a Gilbert Grape-ish Leo), though I didn’t see LIBERTY HEIGHTS until it was on video.
All this Mila Kunis talk and no mention of Forgetting Sarah Marshall? Surely her break-out role, no?
It looks terrific, and definitely seems like Aronofsky’s most commercial film to date (which ain’t necessarily a bad thing).
It’s also great seeing Barbara Hershey again, even if she’s just playing “the mom.”
And did everyone forget how terrific Kunis was in the underrated “Extract” last summer?
Taxi, shit, good example, same with freaks and geeks. Shoots my whole ‘there only seems to be one’ theory completly to hell.
Have to say though I was looking forward to it I found Extract really disappointing. I thought Kunis was a little too slight to be playing the heartbreaker role she was in. There was some funny stuff in the film, all the bickering on the factory floor worked well but the movie never seemed to work up any energy. Judge always has a lot of great ideas and a good eye for satire but I always think he needs someone else to direct.
Though I wholeheartingly agree about Hershey, I am sure he will give her plenty to do. Look at what he got out of Burstyn, Tomei, and Connely. This guy has certainly got an eye for female talent.
Judge needs someone to take his script and generally keep the first 45 minutes, then add a story that makes it work and ramp up the stakes. I thought Office Space is brilliant until the “plot” kicks in where it becomes sort of boring and unfunny, a movie like that doesn’t need the whole theft plot. And Idiocracy is also perfect for awhile before it also just loses steam. Although I don’t think Extract worked at all, I can’t believe that was a Judge movie. Usually the brilliant stuff makes the rest worth it, but Extract was completely flat for me.
The fundamental problem with EXTRACT (and to a lesser degree, with OFFICE SPACE) is that Judge is too nice to his characters — all of them. That, combined with a lack of ramping up the stakes, as Perm said, means the second half falls flat. Everybody gets a happy ending and it all seems so insignificant… which might be OK for a half-hour sitcom but is a failure for a movie.
In a way, I kind of like that Judge is nice to his characters…it sort of goes against the tone of a lot of comedy these days which is just harsh and mean-spirited. Like Judd Apatow is also nice…I remember watching 40 Year Old Virgin before I knew of his work and kept waiting for the friends to fuck over Carrell or be planning some ulterior, hokey motive. But it never happened, they were just good guys trying to help him out. Judge just needs to figure out his third acts.
I don’t remember a single funny thing about Extract, so that one was doomed from the start, I think.
Great looking trailer.
By the way, I too, was reminded of the Fly. In fact, that scene is so similar that I’m inclined to think that it’s more than just a coincidence.
Another movie that this trailer reminded me of is Polanski’s “Repulsion”.
I also have to say that Mila has never looked hotter than here.
‘as the world turns’ farted julianne moore, meg ryan and marisa tomei out of its womb (not that i’ve ever watched it as such, just heard that over the years), if soap operas count as tv series
(obviously ‘the fly’ is heavily referenced in that trailer; one can only hope the ballet film gets as fucked-up and icky as cronenberg’s flick in its own way, that would be something. ‘requiem for a dream’ is enough to convince me that aronofski can go there and go there pretty hard-core, but something tells me he’s going to go the more subtle, mainstream route with this)
Does that mean we won’t get to see Natalie Portman’s face get pushed off the swan-billed monster mug beneath? More subtle than that?
And…
Anyone else reminded of that one episode of Angel that introduced Summer Glau to a grateful world? You know, the one where Agent Booth gets it on with Lee Christmas’s squeeze?
i for one would love to see portman’s face get pushed off a swan-billed monster mug beneath – or something equally skin-splitting/hellraiser-esque – but somehow i doubt it’s gonna happen. ‘swan’ looks sinister but in a ‘pact with the devil/rosemary’s baby/split personality schizo/demonic possession’ kind of way (not that that’s a bad thing). flayed flesh and appendages rotting off might be too much to hope for, but if she actually sprouts wings i guess that’s a start. hopefully the last shot won’t be of her paddling around in a duck pond in central park, oblivious to having morphed into a big black bird.
Actually, Joe Straat’s reference to “Princess Tutu” rang a bell with me. I’ve only seen bits of it mysef but I sort of know what he’s talking about.
An even better starting point might be Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue. Aronofosky already made a nice homage to that film.