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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Hereafter, writer Peter Morgan

I really like Peter Morgan. I like his work, but I also find that I really like the guy. This DP/30, which goes about 40 minutes, including a dissertation by me on the state of the internet (because he asked), makes it pretty clear why. No bullshit. He talks about the film and its rough edges. He talks about the process of writing it and then how it ends up with Eastwood, who wouldn’t let him rewrite, creating a bit of panic. And he talks about the good, bad, and odd about what he does for a living. Straight.

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3 Responses to “Hereafter, writer Peter Morgan”

  1. Bonnie says:

    Bravo to Clint Eastwood and writer Peter Morgan. This is a deep Movie and not for the shallow. I saw it 3 days ago and am still thinking about it. The 3 sub plots were gripping and beautiful. This is for a thinking person. If you are into Jersey Shore or Miami Vice you won’t like it. This is true life and death, grief, loss, hope and love. Dramatic beginning and beautiful ending. One of the best movies I have seen. Just beautiful. Thank you!!!!

  2. Shawn-Marie Nichols says:

    I watched your play with deep interest. It was very moving and I sat and cried at the end.
    This is a difficult subject to address in any way. I really enjoyed it.
    Clint Eastwood once again did a great job. Peter wrote a wonderful play or story.
    Dickens and Shakespeare are equally revealing.
    Best of luck in the future.

  3. David Allevato says:

    I wrote a movie very similiar to this. I still have it in incomplete form from a story structure class I took in 2004 at CSUF the same year as the Tsunami you claim inspired the movie.

    I wonder if my story leaked out somehow via classmates since we students had to share our stories in class and make some kind of a thesis? I didn’t give a full account to the class, only tid bits for fear of being ripped off. I did tell a heavier account to the Professor where it counted.

    Hereafter is supposed to be a spin off from the film 6th Sense?

    At any rate the Afterlife genre exists. I think I can add more to another film like it because I actually had a near death out of body experience in an accident when I was 15 years old.

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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