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By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

BYOscarB

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52 Responses to “BYOscarB”

  1. Joe Leydon says:

    During the next few days, we’re going to be hearing a lot about the drop in ratings for this year’s Oscarcast. And I’m sure we’re going to hear people offering various explanations for the drop, ranging from the lack of mass-audience hits among the major nominees to a possible boycott by African-American viewers. My prediction: Next year, we go back to 10 Best Picture nominees. And at least four of those nominees will be American Snipers, not Birdmen.

  2. movieman says:

    You know an Oscar telecast is in serious trouble when the highlights are musical production numbers (Gaga; “Glory;l” “Everything is Awesome”).

    And NPH was as disastrous a choice to host as Seth MacFarlane.
    He’s as unctuous as Seth and even more self-satisfied (his underwear bit was narcissism writ large).

    For what it’s worth, “Birdman” has got to be the wiggiest movie to ever win BP.
    And boy, they really didn’t like “Boyhood,” did they?

  3. Joe Leydon says:

    Also: The ring-wingers predictably have their shorts in a bunch over the political comments by various winners. Funnily enough, none of these people seem to object when football players credit God for their Super Bowl wins. Like God cares about football (However, God does care about Oscars. Just ask Common.)

  4. Stella's Boy says:

    Right-wingers rage against actors being political when the politics are liberal, but then they hire people like Stacy Dash and frequently feature commentary from the likes of Jon Voight and lots of country singers. Selective outrage. And the speeches seemed pretty tame to me, all things considered. Calls for wage equity and an end to mass incarceration, I don’t know, those aren’t all that radical.

  5. Stella's Boy says:

    Oh I know those crazies objected to the speeches, but that’s to be expected. But did sane conservatives really have a problem with them?

  6. Joe Leydon says:

    Trouble is, sane conservatives aren’t doing much these days to raise their voices above the crazies.

  7. Hallick says:

    The crazies have been dominating most of the big political battles as long as I’ve been alive. I can’t believe they even care about awards show speeches at this point. Sore winners.

  8. Hcat says:

    Never thought I would hear the name Blumhouse mentioned so often on Oscar night. Good on them for branching out, this should only encourage them.

    And I know it’s beating a dead horse but the best animation category should just be abolished. They compete against a field of maybe twenty? Seems like a walk in the park compared to what the docs need to go through. If the smaller nominated films recieved a significant bump in viewership it might be justified but is there any evidence of that happening?

  9. theschu says:

    I’m so sick of the same complaints about the Oscars every year. “It’s too long”. “There weren’t enough surprises”. “The host wasn’t funny enough”. “It’s not like it used to be”. Even though all the Billy Crystal hosted shows got bad reviews too. No one who writes about the show seems to have any perspective and seems to keep hoping that a 3 hr plus show show just zip by. For all the speculation and writing that goes on in the months before the Oscars, the nature of the commentary post-show is just insulting. By the way, did anyone notice that only once (Ben Affleck) did anyone refer to the show as The Academy Awards? It seems to officially be called The Oscars now.

  10. poet67 says:

    Liberals seem to be more upset about Patricia Arquette’s comments than conservatives.

  11. leahnz says:

    lots of WTF in the telecast — i’d like to hear the rationale of going back to full-length best song nominee numbers and musical extravaganzas (not to mention the 15 minutes spent blathering about a plastic case in the corner) but somehow the time to highlight each best pic nom with a little clip can’t be eeked out for a MOVIE AWARDS show… which appeared to be written/produced by dingleberries.
    a few personal awards:

    ‘biggest shitmouth of the night’ award: sean penn

    the ‘i give zero fucks’ award: arquette (with accompanying ‘best reaction shot’ to streep & jlo, the latter of whom also wins the ‘best obscure sports finger signal’ award; i now await soderbergh’s streep/jlo buddy cop movie)

    the ‘highest on ecstasy or possibly mescaline ‘ award: terrence howard

    the ‘i think i have a little crush’ award: pawlikowski (who also wins the ‘just try to play me off, fuckers!’ award)

    the ‘maybe jack black should have hosted’ award: jack black

    the ‘having a bi-racial presenters pool (which is lovely) is like a putting a band aid on the cancer that is the pathetic bias of your aryan nation boy’s club reflective of the film industry in general’ award: the academy and its show organisers

    forthwith ban all megabucks ‘campaigning’ for these film awards – no more media glad-handing or advertising etc – and funnel those considerable resources instead into actually getting the films SEEN – malcolm x style, by any means necessary – by voters and the moviegoing/watching public; members must have seen all the films in any given category (how this can be monitored i don’t know but seems doable somehow) or you are not allowed to cast a vote; push the show back to march to give people (voters and the public alike) time to see the movies and give the show some breathing room away from the incessant line-up of the 87 ‘precursor’ awards before it that make the oscars seem tired and weary and less special as the last in a long line of the same people and speeches

  12. Hallick says:

    “Liberals seem to be more upset about Patricia Arquette’s comments than conservatives.”

    Perfectionist morons.

  13. Hallick says:

    “‘biggest shitmouth of the night’ award: sean penn”

    How do you mean?

  14. Hallick says:

    Apparently everybody is upset about every single beautiful or ugly thing anybody said or did on the Oscars last night. Even the guy who won the screenplay award for “The Imitation Game”, the guy that charmed so many people who HATED his movie, even that guy’s getting crap for his “stay weird” statement. Can nothing ever be taken in the spirit that it was meant when the words aren’t perfectly crafted for every OCD armchair activist watching a glorified gift exchange?

  15. leahnz says:

    hallick i thought penn’s ‘who gave this son of a bitch his greencard’ (or whatever it was, something like that) quip while presenting the best pic Oscar was ill-advised and smarmy; obviously they know each other from 21grams and the comment wasn’t meant in a serious way, but i don’t know, call me old-fashioned i just think there’s something to be said for a smidge of class and decorum at a high-toned event, penn trying to sound like a red-neck trucker just grated on my nerve (also, i’m kind of starting to wonder if it’s not a big fat lie that the producers of the show don’t know the category winners beforehand, between penn’s (i assume) friendship with alejandro and Streisand’s bit presenting to kbig on her historic win, it seems a bit on the nose)

    ETA after reading the above comment (which wasn’t showing earlier when i typed), how exactly do you give someone shit for saying ‘it’s ok to be weird and different, it’ll get better’? IT DOESN’T GET BETTER YOU LIAR SO STOP BEING DIFFERENT RIGHT NOW AND COMFORM MOTHERFUCKERS! I don’t get how that works

  16. EtGuild2 says:

    Are people in my area the only people who thought this was the best ceremony this decade? Or maybe there’s a generational gap at play since I saw it with a bunch of liberal twenty-somethings, but this was the first year in a long time there wasn’t a bunch of complaining about the Oscars being boring and stuffy (DeGeneres, Crystal), straight up unfunny (Franco/Hathaway and Baldwin/Martin), or wildly uneven (MacFarlane). I thought it was generally fun (the Streep/JLo shot had me cackling).

    Jon Chait has a funny roundup of the PC police in overdrive:

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/10-angriest-reactions-to-things-actors-said.html

  17. Hallick says:

    “ETA after reading the above comment (which wasn’t showing earlier when i typed), how exactly do you give someone shit for saying ‘it’s ok to be weird and different, it’ll get better’? IT DOESN’T GET BETTER YOU LIAR SO STOP BEING DIFFERENT RIGHT NOW AND COMFORM MOTHERFUCKERS! I don’t get how that works”

    Slate.com is running the headline “The Real Problem with Graham Moore’s ‘Stay Weird’ Oscar Speech”. He apparently talked out of turn because he wasn’t also gay, or black and gay, or black and female and gay, or black and female and gay and handicapped, or black and female and gay and transgendered and handicapped and left-handed and homeless and non-conventionally attractive?

  18. movieman says:

    I’m still trying to figure out how Graham Moore even landed the “Imitation Game” gig.
    Checked out his IMDB page and was surprised to read that his only previous professional credit was writing an episode of “10 Things I Hate About You.”
    Bizarre.
    Did the producers assume he was British because of his Brit-sounding name?
    Not knocking him (or even his speech), but that has to go down as one big Cinderella story, no?

  19. EtGuild2 says:

    @Hallick, I’m offended by your use of the term “handicapped.”

  20. Stella's Boy says:

    movieman listen to DP’s interview with Graham Moore. He talks about how he got the gig.

  21. Hallick says:

    “@Hallick, I’m offended by your use of the term “handicapped.”

    No worries. I really only meant it in a bowling context.

  22. brack says:

    Just don’t get why people get all upset over what Sean Penn had to say, especially when he really is a guy who comes across as not giving a flying fuck what anyone thinks of him at this point.

    So sick of the predictable complaining on the show’s length, host, music numbers, etc. So many people watching must me masochists. The show is never going to get “better”, so why bother watching something you are going to hate? It’s like watching a film franchise you hate and expecting it to be something you will like one day. No it won’t.

  23. Bulldog68 says:

    To many the weirdest moment was on one onf the red carpet interviews, and a female reporter was interviewing Melanie Griffith and her daughter Dakota Johnson. The reporter asked Melanie if she had watched 50 Shades, and the look on Melanie’s face was priceless. It was like are you fucking nuts, that’s my daughter you stupid vapid reporter. Eeeeewwww.

  24. Bulldog68 says:

    Sorry for all the typos. Sheesh.

  25. John E says:

    Let me be the first to congratulate Star Wars Episode 7 on their Best Picture nomination in 11 months.

  26. Hallick says:

    “Just don’t get why people get all upset over what Sean Penn had to say, especially when he really is a guy who comes across as not giving a flying fuck what anyone thinks of him at this point.”

    Writers getting their shitters in a twist on behalf of Mr. Inarritu, who said it was funny to him, so they turn against both of the guys and whine that private jokes like that one made on a public stage hurt EVERYBODY.

  27. Mike says:

    God, I read that Slate article and wish I hadn’t. It seriously came across as though the writer wanted to say, “No, I’m the bigger victim!!!”

  28. YancySkancy says:

    The yearly complaints are beyond annoying and pointless. I don’t think I can even bring myself to look at the Brooks Barnes/Michael Cieply article, just based on the teaser that appeared on the MCN home page. EVERY FREAKING YEAR people complain about the “elitist” Oscars, which is literally absurd on the face of it. You’d think only 14-year-olds would be calling for more nominations for hit movies, not grown-up reporters and media types. OF COURSE the Academy used to nominate more hit films — back in the day when more good films were hits. And of course the main point is, or should be, the Academy is the voting body, and what the public wants shouldn’t be an issue. If the Academy decides that the Oscarcast is more important than the actual awards, then I’m sure that will some day be reflected in the nominations. Until then, they should at least pretend to vote for their favorites and let the chips fall where they may.

  29. YancySkancy says:

    movieman: “And boy, they really didn’t like “Boyhood,” did they?”

    I will never understand this line of thinking. Six nominations, including Best Picture, one win, and still when you Google “boyhood oscars,” half the resulting headlines are talking about the Boyhood “snub.” People don’t know the definition of “snub.”

  30. movieman says:

    That’s my two cents worth, Yancy.

    I think the biggest problem “Boyhood” may have had w/ Oscar voters is that they might have had a hard time relating to the working class lives it depicted.

    A movie about actors (“Birdman”), despite its magical realist flights of fantasy, must have seemed more relatable.

  31. Mike says:

    On Boyhood vs. Birdman, I’m sure many people liked Birdman more (and I’m not detracting from the merits of the film), but I also think the Searchlight people are much better at campaigning than the IFC people. Boyhood was already out of theaters and on DVD by the time the race got really hot – what interest did IFC have to spend more on it? It’s unlikely they would sell that many more DVDs. Searchlight had a much more vested interest in spending on the campaign.

  32. EtGuild2 says:

    Speaking of “un-PC” Latino-related news, I can’t help but wonder what Guillermo Del Toro thinks about all the awards being showered on his fellow “Three Amigos” directors (as well as Lubezki). Back in 2007, Del Toro was considered to be the most promising following “Pan’s Labyrinth,” with Cuaron considered (unfairly) overlooked in comparison, and questions swirling about whether Innaritu was even a real filmmaker following the dissolution of his relationship with Guillermo Arriaga.

    Now with several creative projects falling through (Mountains of Madness, his vision for The Hobbit, TinTin), Del Toro has basically become a glorified horror/monster movie director/producer whose appeal remains limited to fanboys, while Cuaron and Innaritu are rock stars.

  33. MAGGA says:

    Oscar coverage takeaway:
    It’s hypocritical for people to care about issues they themselves don’t suffer from, once you make money you can’t relate to anybody, if you like a movie more than the winner, then the winning movie is an insult to the art of cinema, the voters should join the race to the bottom by casting their vote after looking over the box office statistics and choosing accordingly, and it’s a hypocritical statement to vote for a movie that says there is a world beyond comic book adaptations if you yourself take a paying job on a movie that appeals to the less discerning viewer.

    To me they should have nominated Gone Girl and Nightcrawler and given everything to Whiplash, but I still enjoyed the other nominees and played catch-up before the ceremony, meaning I saw the movies and the Oscars served a purpose. Now who won the last five years again?

  34. YancySkancy says:

    Exactly, MAGGA; none of those things make any sense at all, and yet we hear them year after year.

    movieman: I just meant that it makes absolutely no sense to assume that the Academy “didn’t like” BOYHOOD, a film they honored with several nominations and a win. If you make a yearly Ten Best list, does that mean you like only your #1 choice and don’t like the others? Of course not. In fact, you may even like a bunch of films that didn’t make your top ten cut at all.

  35. Jeffrey Boam's Doctor says:

    The show was a lame duck from all fronts and that’s why I think people are genuine in their hate for this years one. NPH had a terrible writing team behind him. He is strictly theatre. That Carson mysterio gag should have been nixed at conception. Fucking dire. Anyone who thinks this years who was good is either in love with NPH or has severe taste issues.

    The films themselves I thought were a pretty great range and people who complain about the lineup really ought to check out some of travesties only a few years back. Any lineup that has a Birdman or a Foxcatcher or Boyhood in the running should be congratulated.

    As much as I was moved by Boyhood. It’s a very sloppy film in parts with some embarrassing performances jutted alongside some strong emotional heft. As someone said above, people need to learn what snub actually means.

  36. leahnz says:

    just a thought but isn’t it likely the seeming plethora of after-oscar commentary articles this year were simply proportionate to the higher-than-usual and notable ‘social justice’ – if that’s the right term – theme verbalised by several award recipients (after ‘controversial’ nominations)? i don’t read hardly any of that reaction stuff (i like to live in a bubble, with my weed and beer) but it doesn’t seem surprising there would be a lot of dissection/backlash in today’s opinions-are-like-assholes:everybody’s-got-one’ media climate.
    re arquette, obviously she was saying that women as half of humanity and progenitors of our species have fought and continue to fight for the civil rights and social equality of other disadvantaged/oppressed people and now it’s time to join in and return the favour, but her sentiments were quickly and sort of dorkily worded and framed, so flak was probably inevitable. intersectional social justice is seeping into the public consciousness and awareness now so i think people can be quite critical of comments that don’t appear to understand/embrace intersectional complexity. that the response can be so nasty is saddening, especially considering down-to-earth patricia has been such an advocate for transgender people, tireless worker for causes/charities and outspoken representative of single parents after a really rough start as a struggling single mother. it gets people talking though, so i guess you have to be an optimist and hope that somehow greater understanding of complex social issues can be achieved in the process.

    (re boyhood, as very narrowly anecdotal and microcosm-y as this observation is, there were definitely anti-boyhood rumblings in the industry – particularly the LA industry, as a film made completely outside the Hollywood framework in texas by a director who doesn’t appear to give two farts in the wind about self-promotion, so i’m not sure discounting the ‘they sure didn’t like boyhood’ trope completely out of hand is being realistic, considering how much like petulant, need-of-spoon-feeding-and-ego-stroking babies people in the industry can be)

  37. YancySkancy says:

    leah: I don’t discount the notion that plenty of Academy members may have disliked Boyhood. But clearly they didn’t have sufficient numbers to prevent the film from getting several nominations. So I do discount such a sweeping statement as “they sure didn’t like Boyhood.” It’s clearly imprecise. “They sure preferred Birdman to Boyhood” would be closer to the mark.

    Without seeing vote totals, we can’t truly gauge the support for each film, but most prognosticators seemed to think they both had strong support and were neck-and-neck to win.

  38. movieman says:

    Yancy- “Boyhood” losing the one award (besides Arquette’s) that seemed like a lock (editing) is what made me think, “Gee, I guess they really don’t like–or ‘get’–‘Boyhood.'”

  39. YancySkancy says:

    movieman – it just made me think, “Gee, I guess more of the voters appreciated the editing of Whiplash.” 🙂

  40. Daniel says:

    How the f*** do you write a column for 5 months out of the year about the Oscars and then don’t even mention it at all nearly a week after it airs? No post-game analysis, thoughts, engagement with the community who comes here to discus such things. Seems like the height of arrogance to me. Removing my bookmark of your site, which has been on the decline for awhile as you avoid actual blogging in favor of your insufferable video interviews where you kiss ass so badly, it’s painful to watch. You are not a natural or charismatic interviewer, and video is doing you no favors.

  41. Hallick says:

    “intersectional social justice is seeping into the public consciousness and awareness now so i think people can be quite critical of comments that don’t appear to understand/embrace intersectional complexity.”

    The problem with most of the overreactions to comments like hers is that the overreactors get pissed off that the person speaking out against one injustice didn’t touch on EVERY SINGLE OTHER INJUSTICE during a short awards show acceptance speech.

    “Why isn’t she talking about THIS problem too?!? I’ll tell you why, it’s because she doesn’t get it since she’s not (black/brown/gay/cis-homosexual/female/transgendered/poor/fillintheblank)!!!” is becoming an utterly exhausting and anti-unifying kneejerk response to people with their hearts in the right place who will “never understand” because they aren’t the victim at ground zero. Is this why these causes never seem to win anything?

  42. David Poland says:

    Daniel… the truth is, I feel like it’s all been beaten to death this season. A lot of my focus has shifted to Twitter. And if you were following me there, you would have found a lot said about the show and the context of the show. But you have a legitimate complaint, in terms of the amount of writing I’ve been doing here in the last couple of years.

    I’m a bit exhausted, after 18 years, repeating myself. And because of the nature of the media right now, I have become the cranky uncle who keeps complaining about what everyone who does this knows is 100% true, but is too busy making a living at it to acknowledge in public. Even completely straight-forward pieces are now taken as contrarian by others, out of habit. That is, until something I wrote a year or more ago becomes mainstreamed because media finally catches up. Then, the way things are right now, I am supposed to scream and demand credit. So uncool.

    I got into this to do something, almost 18 years ago, that no one else was doing… filling a need. I don’t mind competing, but I don’t want to be Log #347 on the fire. There’s not point. At some point, it becomes so niche that it’s kitsch.

    I am working on an answer for myself right now. Changes are coming. No idea what they are. I need to open myself up to the universe for a little while and figure out a way to bring all the passion I have had for many years to this work. I still love movies. I still love the business. But I am overwhelmed by the noise right now.

    But every time I find myself wanting to write about The Noise, I decide that I am just whining and who the hell wants to read that?

    Sorry you find DP/30 insufferable. I’m pretty happy with the content. Whatever your opinion of my interviewing style, I am logging stuff that wouldn’t otherwise exist. There are a few audio podcasts now working the same turf… some to better (or different) effect. But the talent is almost always happy with the result. The publicists too. And the audience keeps growing. So I don’t see the interviews stopping anytime soon.

    And so it goes…

  43. Daniel says:

    Thanks for your thoughtful reply, David. I’m sorry if I was a dick. The DP/30 interviews aren’t my thing, but I shouldn’t have been so harsh about it, and for that, I apologize. I’m glad you’re rethinking what you want the site to be. I’ve been reading it for a long time, sometimes with great interest, sometimes as a bit of a hate-read. But I appreciate that you try to offer your perspective on things, even when I disagree, and I applaud you trying to keep it fresh and interesting for yourself. Sincerely, I hope you evolve it into a model that makes you happy and keeps you curious for a long time to come.

  44. movieman says:

    Yancy- “Boyhood” losing editing (!?) made me wonder if the majority of Oscar voters even appreciated the complexity of Linklater’s “12-year project:” how insanely difficult it must have been to connect the pieces of film shot over a dozen years and make them coalesce into an organic whole.
    Apparently not.
    Not knocking “Whiplash” which is a tremendously effective film and, yes, smashingly edited, but seriously. They really didn’t like, or apparently even “get,” “Boyhood.”
    It also struck me that Miles Teller (unfairly) seems to have been entirely left out of the conversation re: the awards success of “Whiplash.” You’d think J.K. Simmons had done it all by himself. “Whiplash” is principally a two-hander, and Teller comprised one of those hands.

  45. EtGuild2 says:

    Re: Teller, that’s par for the course with the Academy’s bias against young actors though. There have only been three Best Actor nominees 27 or under since the seventies (four total since the fifties); Ledger for “Brokeback,” Gosling for “Half Nelson,” and Eisenberg for “Social Network,” and they all played older than Teller, despite the fact he just turned 28 (Eisenberg had scenes as a freshman, but Zuckerberg is a different animal).

    I think it’s just expected for actors in their twenties to be entirely omitted from the conversation for prestige films, much less nominated.

  46. YancySkancy says:

    ” They really didn’t like, or apparently even “get,” “Boyhood.”

    I still don’t “get” your point. 🙂 I hope someday to make a film that the Academy will dislike enough to award six nominations and a win.

    EtGuild2: Isn’t part of the issue the general dearth of award bait leading roles for young actors? Stories about young men tend to be coming-of-age type stuff in which the most interesting characters are the ones they encounter on their road to growth or whatever. The lead is often a more reactive type part that doesn’t show the kind of “Capital A’ acting beloved by awards groups. I’d also argue that Eisenberg, as good as he was, was kind of a coattail nomination since he was the lead in one of the Best Pic frontrunners. If Whiplash had been a popular hit, Teller might have gotten in, though it certainly wouldn’t have been guaranteed in a field that included Keaton, Cumberbatch, Cooper, Oyelowo, Gyllenhaal and eventual winner Redmayne (who, at a young-looking 33, may have been thought to be under 30 by many voters).

  47. movieman says:

    Their inability to grasp the complexity of what went into editing a twelve-year project like Linklater’s speaks to their “not getting” the genius of “Boyhood,” Yancy.
    Sorry for repeating myself. Again. Lol

  48. EtGuild2 says:

    @Yancy, I think that’s part of it, no doubt. Often female leads are paired with older make counterparts (J-Law’s Russell films are good recent examples). But the Academy and Guilds seem much more willing to shower praise on younger females in awards bait, regardless of the merits of their co-stars’ performances. I loved Quvenzhané Wallis’ performance in “Beasts” as much as the next guy, but is she more deserving than Asa Butterfield was for “Hugo” in the same year? Should Saoirse Ronan have been the only nominee for “Atonement?” Does Jennifer Lawrence having more nominations than all under 27 male actors combined in the last half century make sense?

    There’s definitely something to the idea that “ladies mature faster,” but there used to be far more awards-worthy notices for young actors. Some of that is definitely a lack of willingness to cast young for sure.

    Given all the rumors about “going really young” for the new Spider-Man its telling that buzz is focused around Donald Glover. He turns 32 this year. And yeah, Redmayne looks young, but he’s been around for years. Voters know him from some period piece or other.

  49. EtGuild2 says:

    One performance that really stood out for me last year was 13 year old Evan Bird as a burnt-out, disillusioned Justin Bieberesque brat in “Maps to the Stars.” Yup, the distributor buried that movie, but I really doubt he’d have gotten attention even with half a campaign.

    Sadly, he has no projects even in the works.

  50. YancySkancy says:

    EtGuild2: I think the reason it’s not as much of an issue in the Best Actress category is that most years there are fewer “award-worthy” leading roles for women. The Academy sometimes seems to have trouble filling out the category, so all age ranges get consideration. If the studios built more films around female leads, or the Academy gave more consistent consideration to smaller female-centered indies and genre films, it might be harder for young women to make the cut.

  51. Stephen Holt says:

    And now less than a week, later comes the exciting news that Eddie Redmayne flew back to London to start shooting “The Danish Girl” were he plays the first transgender, Lili Elbe in 1930’s Denmark under the direction of “The King’s Speech” Oscar winner Tom Hooper. The picture has been posted all over the internet. `There is something absolutely HYPNOTIC about Eddie’s eyes. And that’s an incredible, perfectly styled wig. He lost three Stone, which is something like 36 lbs. And yes, I think this means he’ll be back at the Dolby again NEXT February with another nomination for a transformative role.This picture just nails it.
    It about a Danish husband and wife, both painters, who one day when the wife’s(Alicia Vikander, also in a star-making role) asks her husband (Redmayne) if he would mind posing in her model’s female clothing, one day when her painting subject doesn’t turn up. And he finds he just can’t stop the music…
    Vikander was the beautiful young, blonde ingenue in “Anna Karenina” with Keira Knightley. And in those days, the late-20s, early 1930s, sex change operations were unheard of and very, very dangerous, bordering on butchery.And what were female hormones like in those days? The journey was fraught with peril.
    And today we have Bianca Jenner, who just seems to be flying through it all with nary a care in the world. Bianca was formerly Bruce Jenner, the step-father, and now mother on “Keeping Up With the Kardassians.”
    “The Danish Girl” I think will show every single step of this process that we now call “transitioning” or “Sexual Re-assignment Surgery.” The part of Lili Elbe requires ANOTHER tour-de-force, bravura turn from Redmayne, and we all know now that he’s totally capable of it.

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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