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Kim Voynar

By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com

Posted Friday, August 12th, 2011 - 1 Comment »
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Dear Internet: You are Depressing.

Dear Internet,

I think it’s time we had a little talk. Your negative attitude is seriously bringing me down.`Just this week, we had:

The London Riots, footage of which is beyond depressing. But even more depressing than the riots themselves: the overt racism and classism permeating many of the conversations happening in the comments sections of stories and opinion pieces on the riots. Oy.

Texas governor Rick Perry, He-Whose-Fabulous-Hair-Shall-Not-Be-Named, is apparently the anointed Presidential candidate of God, according to these people, who think they are modern-day prophets. Among other things, the various pastors who are involved with this group think that natural disasters are God’s judgement on the ungodly, that the emperor of Japan had sex with a sun goddess, and that the Democratic Party is run by Jezebel and a couple of lesser demons. And I’m not even making that up.

Casey Anthony is the most hated person in the US, beating out OJ Simpson and Paris Hilton. Quite an accomplishment.

Our House of Representatives appears to have been taken hostage by a pack of incompetent boobs. Oh wait, we elected those guys, didn’t we? On the plus side, Wall Street seems to be bouncing back a bit.

Sesame Street insists that, in spite of all appearances, Bert and Ernie are not now, and never have been, gay. They’re just BFFs who’ve been living together. For FOUR decades. Okay, whatever.

The US Postal service wants to lay off 120,000 people and cut benefits. No word of if they plan to reboot the Pony Express as a cost-saving measure.

In movie news, The Help is either Oscar-worthy, or it’s a racist film, and/or another example of Hollywood white-washing history. Guess I’ll have to go see it for myself and see what I think about that.

Fortunately, TIFF is coming up soon, so we’ll be able to bury our heads in films for a week and ignore the world. At least temporarily. Until then, Internet, if you could maybe lay off the bad news for a while, that would be great. Thanks.

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1 Comment »

One Response to “Dear Internet: You are Depressing.”

  1. Rob says:
    August 12, 2011 at 12:34 pm

    “But even more depressing than the riots themselves: the overt racism and classism permeating many of the conversations happening in the comments sections of stories and opinion pieces on the riots.”

    Lemme just head it off at the pass:

    “Harrumph blather thugs blah blah you Americans shouldn’t say anything about anything harrumph thugs thugs sneer we hate the darkies.”

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