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
I don’t know…the more interviews I hear with him the more he seems just unstable. He needs a male influence besides Michael Bay.
Ah, yet another “actor” who found that stardom comes with certain downsides.
“No, man, don’t conform.”
How hard was it for the reporter not to laugh in his face when he said that. This is why I could never do entertainment “journalism” – there’s no way I couldn’t then go down the “60 Minutes” path in responding.
“Brother, you make movies based on cartoons about cars that become robots. There are some that would say you couldn’t get any more conformist mainstream than that.”
Sometimes, though, I wonder if LeBeouf understands just how unlikely his star status is and that it’s going to end the second he can’t find another high concept tentpoler to headline. He knows the day is coming when the next ex Nickelodeon star is the “young man who finds himself…” and he desperately trying to reinvent himself on cable or Sundance-bait movies.
My hat is sincerely off to you, Kim. I’ve read enough of your stuff to know you are rather intelligent writer and how you can deal with the BS that comes from covering the industry. Especially the junkets.
People who make their living reporting gossip complain and pass judgement about a couple of non too shocking “revelations”. And then they repost them.
We truly live is a very strange world.
Roy, thankfully I don’t cover junkets anymore. I’ve been to enough of them to know that kind of stuff is not my cuppa tea.
And Proman, assuming that was intended as a dig against me, I’m not sure what your point is. I don’t report gossip. If I find something that interests me, I write about it, or sometimes pass on things I think others might find interesting. These days, if it doesn’t interest me in some way, I just don’t write about it. I’m immersed in other projects right now — a daughter’s wedding, a film I’m hoping to get off the ground — and life is too short to spend time on things that don’t have some kind of value to me.
I’m very grateful that David gives me the latitude to write about pretty much anything that strikes me as worth writing about, and that I no longer have to troll the internet desperately looking for yet another gossipy topic to rework in some way in order to meet an arbitrary quota of posts. Sometimes people find what I think is worth writing about these days interesting, sometimes not. If you don’t find it of value, well, no one’s forcing you to read or comment here.
Strange world indeed.