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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

20W2O: 29 Weeks To Go

Yes, it is that time again.

Like it or not, Oscar season has begun. We’re just 5 weeks from the Toronto International Film Festival, where a whole slew of contenders and pretenders will show themselves to a hungry media throng… and real human beings too!

I have 30 legitimate Best Picture contenders on my list right now. And by the time TIFF ’12 ends on September 16, we who see these movies and give our opinions about their chances, will have seen more than half the field.

Did You Know?: Six of the last seven Best Picture winners had their North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival? And the one that didn’t (The Departed) had its US junket over the last weekend of TIFF that year?

Of course, two of the Best Picture winners that North America-premiered at TIFF didn’t get released until the next year after TIFF (Crash and The Hurt Locker). And, of course, six of the seven BP winners before that had nothing to do with TIFF. Things change. So don’t get overly locked into one idea of how these seasons go.

But let’s start with the Toronto list this year.

The rest of the column & charts…

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3 Responses to “20W2O: 29 Weeks To Go”

  1. Krillian says:

    Hey, everybody! Dave included TED in his charts! Click and go see!

  2. Paul D/Stella says:

    Sweet Jesus there are a lot of promising titles being released soon. So much to be excited about. Wish I was going to Toronto. This year’s lineup looks extra good.

  3. eugenen says:

    DP, not sure if this is “same difference” nitpicking, but ‘The Artist’, ‘The King’s Speech’, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ all played Telluride before Toronto. ‘Slumdog’ was a “TBA” and so not part of the official program.

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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