April 24, 2024
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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
When the long day closes on von Trier, his ‘talent’ will be found wanting. Technically very capable, there has been an incremental degeneration of content with each new release. The only question remains, at what point will he reach zero?
A puerile charlatan, he has long since wallowed in the ‘controversial’ because, as a puerile charlatan, it is the only way he can beguile people into thinking there is anything of any interest going on inside his films.
Which is a great pity, because in each film he shows great command of the medium… but not his content.
Amen Pope (no pun intended) – von Trier’s shit is getting quite old and Breaking the Waves was 17 years ago now.
It’s too bad (and partly von Trier’s fault, I suppose) that people get so hung up on the “controversial” stuff that they forget about beautiful and meaningful his films often are — “Melancholia,” for just one example. (And that was only two years ago, Geoff.)
Well, he’s the closest thing we’ve got to a living Fassbinder, so I’ll take what I can get. Even if it DOES look like a porno financed by Chanel…
Chris, but that’s his own fault – is there any one who doubts that he said that questionable stuff at Cannes just to stir up publicity for Melancholia? Dude loves stirring up shit….when he kept hyping Dogme ’95 for Dancers in the Dark (even though he didn’t follow the rules)) or how he pushed the anti-American subtext in Dogville to any journalist within earshot.
PcChongor,
I can’t agree with you about von Trier being the closest thing we’ve got to a living Fassbinder.
Fassbinder made an astonishing 40 (forty) feature length films in 15 (fifteen) years. Von Trier has made I think 13 in 30. RWF lived incredibly fast, was addicted to all manner of drugs, all manner of relationships and above all himself.
But you’re right on these aspects: he did court the media in controversial fashion, his films, despite so often having female characters as the leads, were often charged with misogyny, despite his bi-sexuality, the gay community criticized they way he represented gay men. He also savagely beat up one of his (many, many) female partners and as for his male lovers, as far as I can recall from a biography about him, none of them outlived him. I think two of them committed suicide.
Reading the book, I was reminded of that terrific line in Almodovar’s All About My Mother when Cecilia Roth says to Lola, “you’re not a human being, you’re an epidemic.”
Fassbinder was a phenomenal talent whose films probed the human experience and at the same time he was an incredibly charismatic yet loathsome man. But his films were never shallow, he was no charlatan and I have to disagree with you… von Trier doesn’t hold a candle to him.
Agreed, but I also think that Fassbinder’s main saving grace was his prodigious output. For every “Ali,” “Marriage,” and “Lola,” there was a slapdash gimmicky curio like “Gods of The Plague,” “Whity,” or “The Third Generation” to go along with it.
Bottom line is that today even the trashiest Von Trier flick peaks my cinematic interests far more than any of the summer blockbusters do. And tits are always a nice bonus too.
P.S.
On second glance, I think Takashi Miike might be a much better comparison to Fassbinder than Von Trier.