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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 - 6 Comments »
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New Blood At Fox

This will be quick…

I just wanted to note that Oren Aviv and Bumble Ward seem to be trying a lot of new stuff at the studio. Will it work? Hard to say. But one must appreciate the effort.

Last week, it was an afternoon with the filmmaker behind Chronicle. The movie is a month away and much to my shock, the crew that came to the lot that day didn’t mind that they were seeing six clips that would likely be released to talk shows and the like almost immediately. I mean, it was cool stuff, but in the land of movie publicity, pretty much what you would expect to be pushed out there without a thought. In making it a small event, embracing a mostly geeky group, they certainly created good will, if not some happy press coverage. (The premise of the movie is three teen boys suddenly getting a super power which they can increase the intensity of with practice. Imaging the most violent episode ever of The Big Bang Theory with underage Abercrombie models. So… teen and geek bait.)

I don’t really believe in The New until I see an entire movie (or two). And I reserve my judgement on the likely quality of this film. Clips is clips. But I do think the movie looks like it could break out commercially. And I write that as someone who had to look up the name of the film for info when I was invited to the event.

Having chatted with the duo, I think they understand as well as anyone that throwing a lot of money at a movie is no longer a sustainable model. Bumble, unlike MT Carney, is still tweeting away form her personal account… and now encouraging everyone else at the company to do the same. (She is not responsible for the Rupert tweeting.) Obviously, the cone of silence remains the cone of silence. They are in the business of strategically releasing films. But the idea that she is not afraid of showing her personality in public is counter to how most publicity chiefs play the game.

They won’t admit to the Prometheus stunt release last month. But they are out with a trailer pre-Super Bowl and even standees in theaters. Another studio’s exec pointed out how small the standee was at one theater. But my sense is that it is meant to be an amuse bouche as much as a standee. Anticipation is the money in the marketing game. Baby steps. This film looks like a monster to me. (As you can see, I am a sucker for pedigree.)

Like I say… the proof will be in the pudding. But I have a good feeling about the idea of truly experienced people seriously examining ways to change things up a lot. In a world of the same thing over and over and over again, it doesn’t take much to make something feel shiny and new-ish… mostly intent.

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6 Comments »

6 Responses to “New Blood At Fox”

  1. JoJo says:
    January 11, 2012 at 8:13 pm

    “They won’t admit to the Prometheus stunt release last month.”

    Are you referring to the blurry trailer that was posted online? That wasn’t a Fox stunt, I can assure you.

  2. Geoff says:
    January 11, 2012 at 9:11 pm

    Prometheus COULD be a monster, but I’m very curious as to how much they are going to push the “Alien” hook…..I mean, I half thought they would change the title to “Alien: Prometheus” for branding purposes. Will they bo overt about it in the campaign? At the very least, I’m guessing every ad will start with…”From the Director of Alien.” Maybe they can just push the name-checking into overdrive like they did for Avatar – people forget that movie had one of the most name-checking oriented campaigns in recent memory. Name-checking CAN work well enough to almost have every one thinking you’re seeing a defacto sequel…..another good recent example I’m thinking of is The Hangover. For months, it was nothing but…”From the Director of Old School” over goofy images of the then-relatively unknown cast.

  3. Eric says:
    January 12, 2012 at 7:03 am

    Anyone know how much Chronicle cost? It looks like it was made on the cheap, but in a good way– the trailer is really effective.

    I ask because the movie basically looks like a live-action Akira, minus the futuristic Japanese setting. And apparently Fox has been struggling to make an actual live-action Akira but it’s taken them years to figure out how to do it for less than $200 million.

  5. JoJo says:
    January 12, 2012 at 8:09 am

    Eric, the live-action Akira is at Warner Brothers, not Fox.

  6. David Poland says:
    January 12, 2012 at 10:53 am

    The director of this film cites Akira as a major influence.

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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