MCN Blogs
Kim Voynar

By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com

And Speaking of Patrick Stewart

Well, we weren’t really speaking of him, per se. Just talking about a picture of him being beheaded by Queen Elizabeth II, who appears to be wearing, for the occasion, some sort of blood-spatter-proof granny robe. But seeing Stewart in that photo, smiling bravely moments before what he surely thought was his imminent brutal demise, reminded me of one of my favorite things that happened in NYC, way back before we relocated out to the Left Coast to the Socialist Republic of Seattle.

Years ago, when my daughter Meg was ten years old (she just turned 26, which makes me officially O-L-D), we took her and my mom to see a few Broadway plays. One of them was The Tempest at the Broadhurst Theater, which we (and Meg) were very excited about seeing because Patrick Stewart was playing Prospero and of course we are all Star Trek geeks around here (especially ST:TNG — do not get me started on my rant about why Picard is far superior to Kirk). We managed to score four seats, two in the front row and two right behind those seats in the second row, and we put Meg and my mom in the front row seats.

Patrick Stewart strode out upon that stage, larger than life, rippling with muscle and, speaking perfectly objectively, looking altogether studly and debonair, and then, miscalculating his trajectory — or, perhaps, modestly unaware of his own manly strength — he kicked sand all over my daughter and her fancy dress. And for a second, he actually broke character and looked down at Meg, all covered in sand and round-eyed and beaming, and smiled at her apologetically before carrying on.

She never wanted to take a bath again.

Be Sociable, Share!

2 Responses to “And Speaking of Patrick Stewart”

  1. AMERICA says:

    Needless to tell you, America hated this britshit faggot knockoff of an American legendary television character, and despite the brit attempts to socialize America through the dems, Seattle, Washington is not communist and never will be. America won that war and will win it again. So you lose on all bases.

  2. Kim Voynar says:

    Hey, is that Michelle Bachmann? No? Oh, just a troll? Hard to tell the difference.

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