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
Good for you, David. Seriously. If you can take a few minutes (or hours) and step back and breathe, and let the movie work its magic on you before you write something, well, that’s a luxury to be savored. Unfortunately, deadline pressures being what they are, it’s a rare luxury.
…and it can help you avoid errors like the Todd McCarthy one about it opening with a Job quote and then never referring to Job again. (A minister delivers an entire sermon about him.)
MIGHT be a SPOILER? Though nothing the trailer doesn’t show pretty specifically and Poland doesn’t ask in the posting, but…
WHAT is going on with Penn?
Is he BIUTIFULLING, or having the longest DELAYED REACTION to a tragedy (guessing 35 years MINIMUM) since Bob Geldof moped in a hotel room having a nervous breakdown about WWII in 1982?
TWICE in ONE DAY?! If only I could have that luxury…
While I’m carefully tip toeing around these articles so as not to spoil TREE OF LIFE, I’m getting incredibly excited to watch it, regardless of what I ultimately think.
Here’s to hoping Searchlight gets it out in a timely manner, and I don’t have to wait forever to see it.
TWICE in ONE DAY?! If only I could have that luxury…
Amen to that, Actionman.
It’s significant that critics either love or hate “Tree of Life”. As a matter of fact, the reviews I’ve read are as metaphysical as the movie seems to be. Can a movie be so cryptic that its review must be as cryptic as well? So far I haven’t read a profound review of the movie. Is “Tree of Life” a film akin to Bergman or Tarkovsky? Is it the first time that Malick tackles the contemporary times in the Sean Penn scenes? Badlans was in the 1950’s, Days of Heaven (late 1880’s), The Thin Red Line was in World War Two, The New World was in the XVI century and now Tree of Life.
What alot of these comments and what DP wrote are what I slept on and came up with. The film is about the inner conflict we all face. It’s also about nature -vs- grace. But within the film (for me anyway) there’s conflicts as well. I didn’t like the Sean Penn sequences at all but loved the ones with Pitt and Penn’s character as a boy. The film is CGI and planetarium wow one minute and a pastoral flashback to youth another. It’s all contradiction wrapped in contradiction wrapped in a poem.
Yet for all the intrigue and vast layers the film has, I’m still not sure I actually *liked* it. Which is just more inner battle and contradiction. Does this make TREE brilliant or mean I need to lay off the sugar?