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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

BYOB: Hard To Write

Ah, I remember the days when I would stay up all night writing, not hiding under the blanket to keep the light from waking the toddler.

Shoulld have time to catch up tonight. I hear something happened in the UK this morning. I hope it wasn’t a tornado.

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13 Responses to “BYOB: Hard To Write”

  1. torpid bunny says:

    Saw Tron on a Blu-Ray on a good screen in monastic privacy at my parent’s house this weekend. Not all of us have a blu-ray/sweet flat screen set-up you know. My brother did a nice thing and brought over his P3 for me.

    Anyway Tron was AWESOME. I loved it. It looks amazing, but it’s also a terrific movie.

    Retrospectively the critical reaction to it, which I remember as rather hostile indifference, is a mystery to me. It’s not a perfect film, but it is absolutely a peer to movies like the Matrix, Avatar, District 9, and yes, a tip of the cap to 2001. And I’m bothered that people can say it lacks a human element when it is anchored by yet another fresh and generous performance by Jeff Bridges as both aged wisdom and youthful error.

  2. IOv3 says:

    Torpid word up and the critical response is easy to explain: laziness. Sheer and utter laziness to think outside of the box they put this film in. Devin Farci at least has an excuse for not liking the film because he was drunk off of his ass while watching it, but everyone else is just came across as lazy.

  3. storymark says:

    Or, they just didn’t like it as much as you. I know, I know, you can’t grasp that, but there it is.

    I was about halfway on it myself. Not nearly as bad as some made it out to be, but not as great as others claim.

  4. Krillian says:

    Saw Tron: Legacy in IMAX 3-D, the best way to see it.

    Taking the kids (age range 4-7) to the $1.50 theater tomorrow. Should I go with Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2 or Mars Needs Moms? If it’s not cold and cloudy tomorrow, will likely opt for park instead.

  5. IOv3 says:

    Story, you remain under the assumption that a fan lacks the ability to criticize something, or criticize those criticizing that something. Seriously, who can critique the Yankees the best? A Red Sox fan or a Yankees fan? The moment you understand this is the moment you finally GET IT.

  6. Anghus says:

    I really liked tron legacy. Best big budget tentpole film I saw last year.

  7. sanj says:

    Original Cast Returning For Terminator 5 in 2012
    with Arnold Schwarzenegger and director Justin Lin

    http://www.horror-movies.ca/2011/04/original-cast-returning-for-terminator-5-in-2012/

  8. sanj says:

    Year Of The Carnivore …comedy ..

    there were 2 things that were shocking / funny
    which are in sorta in the trailer

    the lead actress Cristin Milioti was pretty good
    but this small movie needed way better writing ..
    …it jumped all over the place .. it could have won a few movie awards

    here’s the trailer

    http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2007276825/

  9. torpid bunny says:

    You can poke big holes in the premise and point out bits of leaden dialogue sure. There are various dead ends or headscratchers in the story. And I get it’s not everyone’s flavor. But for what it is, it’s a home run. Beautifully paced, clinical development of intrigue, awesome art direction, delicious sound track. Oh by the way a damn good action movie. Just an extremely well mounted movie. And amazing that, like Blomkamp, Kosinski shows such command of storytelling in his first movie. I’m very impressed.

  10. sanj says:

    hey PD – with gas prices getting higher isn’t doing DP/30’s more expensive ? or do the movie studios give you money to pay for gas / hotels / food when you do these things ..
    and how much feedback do you get for 2 years or longer DP/30’s ..are people still watching ?

  11. samguy says:

    I saw “Fast Five” this afternoon and it was everything I could have hoped for! Loud and stupid and an appalling performance by Vin Diesel which is what you expect from this kind of entertainment. When he and the Rock or whatever he’s called these days meet, I giggled wondering how it would compare to the meeting of Pacino and DeNiro in “Heat.”

    Alas, there was one major disappointment: Vin & Paul Walker still don’t kiss!

  12. sanj says:

    hey DP – where is your weekly rants about netflix and huffpost ? those are fun to read

    also missing are actors who haven’t done DP/30’s for at least a year – lots of great interviews but at this point
    does anybody still care ?
    its hard for average people like me to get excisted about
    interviews when there are so few new interviews ..
    it also helps none of actors i want are doing dp/30’s..

  13. Krillian says:

    There is no huffpost; there is only http://www.colbertnation.com/ColBuffingtonPost in my world.

    Saw Mars for Moms on Saturday. Not great. Probably the weakest image-capture movie to date.

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