29 Weeks To Oscar
It’s that time again. The horses are being walked to the gate. The jockeys, trainers, and reporters are talking strategy. In a few weeks, the race will start… and just 6 short months later, someone will win.
Oy.
May 19, 2024
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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
Apes was a disappointment for me. I had no problem with the apes it was how stupid the humans were.
I finally saw MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, and it’s a shame there’s not an Oscar for Best Cameo, ’cause Adrien Brody is a riot as Salvador Dali.
Why was Oldman blackballed for a decade?
al, Oldman supposedly raised some ire for criticizing the editing of his performance in The Contender during its release. To say he was blackballed for a decade isn’t really accurate though, considering Potter and Batman.
Sorry Tim, but it’s absolutely accurate.
He was an actor at the top of his game who was being heavily buzzed for Oscar. That nomination went away and Jeff Bridges got one for the same movie, for a lovely, but less showy performance. Oldman didn’t work in another studio movie for four years, until he got a small role in the Potter films. Then he got another supporting role in Nolan’s Batman films. The Unborn, Book of Eli, Christmas Carol.
But look at 2002 – 2008, which includes the small Potter & batman roles, and the ONLY other films are 3 direct-to-dvd titles.
A decade after The Contender, Oldman will be in his first studio released lead in a decade… Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
He didn’t “supposedly raise some ire.” He nastily attack his employers, in public and even more so in private. He f-ed with the wrong master of the universe and he was shoved right out of the game for a long time, in terms of a career that he felt was about to take off after The Contender.
I had no idea Rod Lurie was that powerful.
Oldman’s side of it is in the early part of this lengthy interview from 2008: http://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.com/2008/02/gary-oldman-hollywood-interview.html
Back in ’06, I spotted Oldman with two kids and their nanny at the Bookstar in Studio City. One of the kids was showing Oldman a copy of a “Family Guy” book, and after a moment’s perusal, Oldman returned it to the shelf saying, “No, it’s a bit inappropriate, that.”
Well, my interpretation of “blackballed” was “you don’t get work in studio films.” Was his career really expected to take off with The Contender, after 25 years? It seems to me he was always destined to mostly play second or third-billed roles in major studio releases,(his last lead in a major studio film was 1992’s Dracula) great actor though he is.
Well, Tim… he didn’t work in studio films for years.
He was 42 years old. Now he’s 53.
He would have been Oscar nominated and may have won.
He was also ready at that time to start playing the Hollywood game more. He wanted fame at the same time he was sent into purgatory.
And let me say this… I believe that for Oldman to even get the jobs he’s gotten, Spielberg had to let it happen. Pretty sure Zemeckis wouldn’t have hired him for Christmas Carol without considering how Steven was feeling about it.
And yancy… that interview is some truth, some spin. It is true that everything was okay until the recutting after it landed at DW. And it got really ugly, privately. Urbanski is a handful… more so than Gary. And there were also drug issues that became somewhat public when Gary split from his wife a while later, as I recall.
I’m going to stop talking now, as much of what I know about this story is off the record, on both sides, and it’s been a long time and it’s hard to remember where that line is and everyone is still working. But… he was blackballed. And he’s now free to work… in his 50s.
And unless there are other non-work problems, I would bet that Oldman’s over-50 career becomes a legendary one.
shit; thanks all
Could the, um, elephant in the room be the perception (or perhaps reality) that Oldman was a conservative? Lurie says he was; Oldman says he had no political affiliation. But his apparent desire to give his Republican character layers and dimensions other than the usual ‘evil right-winger’ tropes may have left a bad taste in Hollywood’s collective mouth.
To slightly paraphrase Aaron Sorkin, “Everyone thinks Hollywood is liberal. Hollywood is owned by corporations, and there are no liberals in corporations.”
Yancy… nope.
This is a pretty basic “call your employer a cocksucker and pay the price” kinda situation. (Not Rod.)
It’s all well and good for the righties to be paranoid in Hollywood. My sense of it is that they all work plenty, but no one makes movies about rightie causes… just as they don’t really make movies about lefty causes.
But that’s another argument.
This case is not about politics… well, except personal politics.
cadavra: Then kudos, I guess, to those conservative corporations for hiring so many liberals, and blackballing only for reasons other than politics. 🙂
Thanks, Dave. I was just curious after reading Oldman’s version.