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
Right Fucking On. Who the Fuck is David Clennon anyway? Is he even still working in movies? Nice publicity stunt, jerkoff. Now fade back into obscurity like you deserve.
WHAT CLENNON SAID, ACTUALLY, from another website, if anybody cares:
(not saying he’s right, just to show what she’s supposed to be denying; basically what he said, before she said) —
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
My name is Dave Clennon.
I work in the entertainment industry.
I’m deeply troubled by two recent products of our industry.
The older one is the long-running television series, “24” produced and broadcast by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Television.
Kiefer Sutherland, as 24’s hero, Jack Bauer, became America’s poster boy for torture. Sutherland’s Jack Bauer character did more for torture than Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld could ever have done on their own.
Sutherland’s Bauer became the heroic model for American military and intelligence personnel in Guantanamo, at Bagram Air Base and in black sites around the world.
Michael Chertoff was the second Secretary of Homeland Security. In his book, “Torture Team” Phillipe Sands says of him “Chertoff liked a tough approach and was a fan of Jack Bauer and his counter-terrorism colleagues.”
The chief legal officer at Guantanamo stated that Jack Bauer had many friends at Guantanamo. “He gave people lots of ideas,” she said.
Phillipe Sands says the message of “24” was clear to Guantanamo interrogators: Torture Works. The chief legal officer says, “We saw it on cable. People had already seen the first [season]; it was hugely popular”.
Today, Jan. 11, 2013, another product of the entertainment industry will be shown in thousands of theatres around the country. The heroine of the movie “Zero Dark Thirty” is a woman who assists in the torture of at least one detainee at a black site in Pakistan and later supervises the torture of another detainee herself.
It’s clear in “Zero Dark Thirty” that Jessica Chastain, as the character, Maya, is to be admired by the audience for her courage, her intelligence, her tenacity AND her toughness in her pursuit of Osama bin Laden.
Chastain’s Maya never expresses regret for what she and her colleagues have done to the detainees at their mercy. The film clearly shows that Maya and her mentor succeed in extracting a key clue to bin Laden’s whereabouts from one of their victims.
So, torture is clearly shown to be effective, if only in the world of film fiction. But “Zero” portrays torture as more than effective. Torture, committed by Chastain’s character, and her cohorts, is portrayed as necessary, acceptable and even admirable.
In simple terms, the good guys are the torturers. The heroine is a brutal thug who should have been prosecuted for her crimes.
Today, on the 11th anniversary of the first prisoner’s arrival at Guantanamo, I ask my fellow members of the Motion Picture Academy to Vote with Conscience for the Academy Awards.
Yes, we are instructed to consider the artistic merits of films and their creators. But artistry cannot be divorced from morality, so I hope that my fellow Academy members will consider the morality of each nominated film.
This call to Academy members is seconded by Ed Asner and Martin Sheen.
We do NOT want “Zero Dark Thirty” to be censored.
We do NOT want to tell Academy members how to vote. We simply want to remind them that it’s OK to listen to the voice of your conscience
In the end, as you mark your ballot, you may agree with my judgment of “Zero Dark Thirty” or you may vehemently disagree, but your conscience will be clear when the votes are counted.
Vote with Conscience for the Academy Awards!
A Screenwriter With a Social Conscience Responds to Amy Pascal
Sony President, Amy Pascal, accuses David Clennon, Ed Asner, and Martin Sheen of using their “voting status in AMPAS as a platform to advance their own political agenda.”
I suppose “advancing their own political agenda” is just another way of saying “acting according to their conscience in order to advance us to a better world” – which is exactly what they have asked Academy voters to do.
But it irks me that she makes that sound like that’s something bad.
What’s bad, Pascal? For cultural workers to have a social conscience?
Or for them to advance it? I hope, if you have a political agenda like human rights or world peace, that you take action to advance it.
Or maybe, since she uses the words “their own,” she’s upset that they’d advance their own “political agenda” instead of someone else’s.
Or is her problem simply with their using “their voting status in AMPAS” to advance it?” What makes this organization off-limits when violations of human rights so urgently need to be addressed, particularly when it is an issue pertaining to the Academy?
Accusing one of having a “political agenda” often implies their having a “secret agenda” – one that differs from what one puts out. Is she so accusing them? Or is she simply “outraged” that these three threaten to make people question where our nation is going at a time when we’re supposed to be basking in our glory?
Clennon hit the point precisely in his statement:
“If the deeply racist Birth of a Nation was released today, would we vote to honor it? Would we give an award to Leni Riefenstahl’s brilliant pro-Nazi documentary, Triumph of the Will?”
I wish he could get an answer to that from Pascal.
I don’t know anything about Pascal other than this comment of hers, but it makes me wonder if she has any social conscience.
cflpeace