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
For God’s sake Poland, who the fuck cares what this 17 year old thinks about abortion? Why is this even news?
So he thinks that aborting a baby is not reason enough even in cases of a rape. It’s an extreme opinion, but you know what? It is an opinion and he’s entitled to it.
It’s people like you and people who bring up rape absolutely for no reason who deseve to be pitied.
It’s not enough enough for you to understand that he’s anti-abortion. It’s not enough to gather someone’s opinion on the matter. You have to ambush and guilt the other person into finding a loophole in their views.
You are scum. And the fact that you are posting this about a 17 year old kid, who you should damn know better,
is one thing. But it takes a real special kind of a scumbag to twist what he actually said.
“I don’t know how that would be a reason.” REFERS TO him second guessing what he previously about everything happening for a reason (which is the most questionable thing he said, by the way).
And you know what, you haven’t been in that position either. So save your faux-self righteous anger and go feck yourself.
Jeff Wells is a creep and has a fat fixation. I think your rape fixation is far more disturbing though.
You’re scaring me a little with that one, Proman. Seriously. Restraining order tone there.
holy shit proman, DP and i can be like chalk and cheese at times but i’ve been reading his column/blog for quite a long time and accusing him of having a ‘rape fixation’ is rather ludicrous. the two recent items on this blog pertaining to rape in some form have been on several other movie blogs, and i only visit a few so it’s not exactly an isolated case here.
and btw proman (and other ignoramuses including silly little dweeb canadian singing sensations who don’t know their ass from their elbow), it is IMPOSSIBLE to abort a baby, which by definition is a human child from BIRTH to one year. the vast majority of terminated pregnancies are of embryos, or very early fetuses, the fetus being in utero until birth.
I have no real problem with Beiber having an opinion – opinions are like penises, everyone has one.
The kid was going to lose as soon as the question was asked – no matter what his opinion, it was going to piss someone off. Given his army of handlers, I’m fairly shocked no-one jumped in at that point. And I’m even more surprised at the “correction”, which isn’t an improvement and only serves to draw more attention to the comment.
In the same interview, Bieber also called Americans “evil” over healthcare, so there were plenty of idiotic comments to rile up both conservatives and liberals alike. Why is there no mystery left in celebrity? I’m sure Bieber could really care less about these issue, so why must we know?
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that this was a topic for a kid to be asked about for Rolling F-ing Stone. And I could care less what he thinks.
I’m just agog about the idea that this was “corrected” and it seems even worse to me.
I think it’s the ambiguity of “that” in the corrected version that’s makes it seem worse. I believe it was referring to him sort of questioning the reason behind the existence of evil rather than coming up with a valid reason to consider abortion.
Personally, I think there’s enough reason to hate the guy if one so chooses than to try to create a controversy by using his words against him, only for personal (company) financial gain. If it was Rolling Stone who conducted the interview then THEY really need to be called out over Justin or his peeps.
It could well be that this is conjured controversy for the specific intent of keeping Bieber’s name in the headlines while his flick is still in theatres, but it strikes me as fairly callous in its treatment of Bieber as a person.
I find it difficult to believe that he’s not going to be spat out of the machine in a couple of years’ time covered in tyre tracks and a mass of personal issues.
No, he stated we have an evil health care system, which we do. It’s fucking evil, it only focuses on helping the insurance companies get richer as millions of us slowly fucking wither on the vein with either health problems or financial problems. Also, the kid is entitled to his opinion but he is dating an 18 year old, and the world will make him a lot more WORLDLY soon enough.
Let me get some popcorn and crack a beer, this thread is gonna be hot…
Not exactly what he said… the quote was “You guys are evil,” referring to Americans. Sure, he MEANT what you said, but it’s an equal testament to what DP posted from the other side of the political aisle–the way all this has been said/presented is in a way grotesque.
re:Foamy Squirrel says:
February 17, 2011 at 9:44 pm”
Yeah, I thought of BOTH of those things while typing. 1) It wouldn’t be beyond someone doing it for promotional reasons, which I hoped no one would be so brazen and exploitive. And 2) this kid’s gonna want to start drinking and druggin’ just to have an excuse and a way of processing the probable chewing up and spitting out that’s gonna happen to him.
I don’t know, not to take it TOO far afield, but isn’t the narrative of “child star hitting the skids when the evil industry spits him out”? kind of dated? Kind of a notion from a bygone Dana Plato/Leif Garrett age?
Maybe it’s because of the wholesale infantilization of the whole culture, but don’t kid actors and kid pop stars just… keep being famous? Yeah Britney’s had some rough, embarrassing patches, Lindsay’s a train wreck… But they’re still working, still famous, now for 11, 12 YEARS.
Timberlake WAS Justin Bieber ten years ago, today he’s starring in a Best Picture nominee. Ryan Gosling was a cheeseball kid actor from MMC and Breaker High, today he’s the most acclaimed young actor of his age range. Backstreet Boys are on a huge comeback tour; They may have had some lean years, but I don’t recall like HOWIE from Backstreet robbing liquor stores, or Nick Lachey shooting up a crack den.
At WORST the teen idols just seem to fizzle into obscurity (the Olsens, JC Chasez) or workmanlike TV work (the Duffs).
Fuck, we’ve been enduring Bieber’s idiot mentor USHER for like two decades now. He’ll probably segue into acting, but I don’t know, the money these types make, we’re pretty far removed from the child-star nightmare cautionary stories of yesteryear.
He coulda saved himself a lotta grief by simply replying, “None of your goddamn business.” Neither the world nor RS needs to know everyone’s opinion of every single thing.
I haven’t read the whole story, but why was the question even asked? I’m trying to imagine an appropriate context for that question to come up in an interview with a 16-year-old pop star, and I got nothin’. Did they ask what he thought of capital punishment and gun control, too?
Yancy, it’s just some reporter going into business for themselves and trying to hit a kid with these IMPORTANT ISSUES QUESTION.
There was never really a “Dana Plato/Leif Garrett” age – they were kinda statistical anomalies and the large majority of child actors merely came out with a gaggle of hangers-on and the occasional bought of therapy. So it’s not as if there’s been any real “improvement” in the system, it’s just often that the TMZ/Perez/RealityTV system has allowed them to keep earning money even though their lives may be trainwrecks. If you want to look at cautionary tales similar to Dana Plato, just look at the Reality TV “stars” who don’t have publicists to keep them in the tabloids when traditional content tires of them.
So some of them are only really “still famous” for a given value of “famous”.
I have no opinion on the Bieb’s abortion stance, but the way I read the second version of the quote was that he beleives everything happens for a reason but that he couldn’t see what the (greater, cosmic) reason behind something as horrible as a rape could be. And that he would have no way to judge either way.
Again, I don’t care but I think that is one way to read that.
And three years from now, when he’s playing state fairs with the Jonas Brothers, that too will be part of God’s plan.
I steer clear of anybody who utters things like “everything happens for a reason”, of which the hidden premise is, caused by intent by god, the universe, whatever…therefore a GOOD reason. Be it rape, a five year old dying a horrible death of cancer, whatever horror. A lazy and ultimately valueless approach to life.
I agree with JKill. The kid is 16, so he didn’t articulate his point very well, making it easy to misinterpret.
He is entitled to his opinion on abortion in general.
But I will say, someone that age, who is also male and therefore would never be in a position to have to make a choice, doesn’t have enough life experience to really understand the issue. My grandson is 15 and we spoke about abortion last summer. His are pretty much the same black and white views. After we really talked about it, he thought differently, not about what he believes but that things aren’t always cut and dried, there is a lot of gray in between.
I have difficulty though with any male determining for me, if I was to become pregnant, whether I can choose to abort the fetus. Especially in regards to pregnancy as a result of rape. They will never have to worry about being in such a position.
I am pro choice, not because I believe abortion is the answer, but because I want the freedom to make my own choice and I want other women to have the same rights.
I don’t think this will hurt him with the teen crowd though. But is is hard for me to take a 16 year old’s opinion on such a complex subject seriously.
So I’m the only one to give the kid so little benefit of the doubt as to actually have read it that he wasn’t aware a woman COULD get physically pregnant from a rape?
Probably a stretch, but considering how many dumb-ass kids DON’T UNDERSTAND the concept of birth control well into their teens, who knows.
That said, still kind of a cheap shot. Though it might be funny to see how fast the industry conspires to run him out of Dodge for being pro-life, versus the fact that he’s a machine who generations hundreds of millions.
Who is the idiot asking a 16-year old these questions. lol
Look, I am firm in my belief in a woman’s right to choose, BUT, if you sincerely believe abortion is murder, then there really is something hypocritical about saying, “well, you can go ahead and abort [i.e. murder] the unborn child conceived via rape.” Out of the mouth of babes…
I’m pretty sure Justin Bieber got his start singing at church, so I don’t know why this is surprising to anyone.
But what seems like kind of a disconnect is how Bieber plays along–so skillfully, I might add–with Tina Fey and Jon Stewart in skits about people in both straight and gay combos lusting after him as an underage boy. I know grown gay men who haven’t flinched at THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE who were shocked at the SNL skit with Fey’s junior high school teacher lusting after him. It just doesn’t seem like the kind of stuff a conservative church boy would be taking part in on TV.
Change of topic related to Bieber: Has anyone noticed that NEVER SAY NEVER has a 1.1 (out of 10) on IMDb? It’s been long known that young, misogynistic IMDb trolls vote low, and in droves, on any film they think of as a chick flick, obviously without even having seen it–just as a hostile gesture. NEWSWEEK even had a column about it when hundreds of low votes were thrown at SEX AND THE CITY the day it opened by a large young male demographic. Still, it only took the film down to a 3 or 4. How can IMDb’s ratings–which I’ve looked at over the years to decide what to see–have any sense of validity when a movie that got 68% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes can be dragged down to 11% positive there with no adjustment by the moderators, who do supposedly have a formula for correcting such things?