May 4, 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
Given how much I’ve hated big studio films this year, it’s kind of shocking I already have a running Top 10.
10. Spring
9. Faults
8. Jauja
7. Something, Anything
6. What We Do In the Shadows
5. Ex Machina
4. The Duke of Burgundy
3. It Follows
2. Predestinaton
1. The Clouds of Sils Maria
Any thoughts on “Duke?” This is a pretty out there statement, but I think Peter Strickland might be the most cinephilically talented filmmaker working today, even if I can’t totally connect to his conceptions on a visceral level.
This list depresses me because it reminds me how many movies I have not seen. I have seen It Follows and it definitely lived up to the hype.
Strickland is also very articulate about what he’s up to. I wish I had gotten a couple of hours to talk to him for this interview.
So what’d everybody think of this Avengers thing?
Wow, thanks Ray. Nice piece, and yeah, “Duke” and “Berberian” are movies i could talk about for hours.I wish you’d asked him about the mannequin gag; I assume it’s meant to highlight the artificiality of everything outside of the characters’ relationship, but could be wrong.
Is “Katalin Varga” worth checking out? Aka, going to the extraordinary lengths required to see it?
Thanks! We had thirty minutes and beyond this mostly talked about sound design and Fassbinder; a later, planned phone conversation woudl have been entirely music/sound design, but alas.
I liked “Berberian,” but it felt like a significantly less interesting version of “Amer.” Is “Duke” really that much of a huge improvement?
What’s an Amer?
“Amer” is great. I thought of Cattet and Forzani immediately after seeing “Berberian.” But they seem like one trick ponies given the mediocrity “The Strange Body of You Color’s Tears” and their contribution to “ABCs of Death.”
DUKE is a step up from “Berberian” and it’s the best of this occasional genre of “olfactory cinephillia” (“Stoker” would fall there too). Peter Strickland seems like a less pop version of Tarrantino…bursting with so many ideas and referential art that he can barely contain himself.
On the other hand, nothing will ever top the backseat cab scene in “Amer.”
I’ll definitely have to check “Duke” out then.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the latter sequences, but the first quarter of “Amer” is just about the only other sequence of film that can stand alongside the endings of “2001” and “Come and See” as the absolute embodiment of purely cinematic storytelling.
‘the first quarter of “Amer” is just about the only other sequence of film that can stand alongside the endings of “2001” and “Come and See” as the absolute embodiment of purely cinematic storytelling.’
I dunno…have you see Ernest Goes to Camp?
Boom. Dum. Tish. Chris’ll be here all night folks.
Have we gotten to the point on this blog where a BYOB generates so little interest? Re: the top 10 i Have:
*What do you think was the level of Assayas’ direction in a lot of the scenes in “Clouds”? He likes to let his actors roam free, but the dynamic between KSTEW and Binoche is so electrifyiing I couldn’t get whether it was scripted or not. THey deserve the MTV movie award for best couple. Also, what’s the over/under on LEXG’s in theater masturbation efforts ?
*How the hell did a Heinlein based script finally get greenlit and produced with stars…and then get shelved/dumped commercially?
*What was the Oscar Isaac negotiation process like for his crediting on “Ex Machina?” Did he know he was on the verge of stardom when he signed and so inserted the “and Oscar Isaac” clause?
*Is approaching Viggo Mortensen ever weirder than Bill Murray when it comes to making a film? Because his recent filmography is schizo. And amazing.
*Will Mary Elizabeth Winstead ever get her much deserved breakout? I suspect not.
Also, “Hot Pursuit” and “D Train” have to be the most baffling “comedies” in recent memory. Hey! Sofia Vergara is tall and Reese Witherspoon is short! Let’s make a movie about this!
Also (SPOILERS?!)…..I wasn’t sold on Marsden and Black banging. Sorry “risk takers,” who spent big bucks pretending this didn’t happen/apologizing for it the rest of the movie….you really fucked up. What makes it even worse is Black somehow underplays his role, something that’s totally contradictory to the trailer, while Marsden nails it. It’s like their parts were shot on separate green screens.
Two movies getting VOD and limited theatrical run this month that I strongly recommend: I Believe in Unicorns, the debut feature of a filmmaker (Leah Meyerhoff) I suspect we’ll be hearing more about; and Slow West, an offbeat western that I found to be one of those rare movies that actually gets better as it goes along.
Also: I’ll be curious how people react to Sunshine Superman, a documentary in which everyone involved appears to be going to great lengths to ignore the obvious.
Slow West looks great. Plus it’s got Ben Mendelsohn. That’s all I need to know.
I’m all torn up about Avengers. At first I thought it was just harmless vanilla fun, basically Whedon likes to do a kind of big men-in-tights party and the laffs keep coming plus there were some cool shots and who gives a shit about all the other guff? Yeah it was the same movie and the villain sucked but I resolutely refuse to even try to be critical because being critical of a dumb movie is itself dumb. But then the fanboys started to get to me and yeah the plot makes no sense-is even perhaps, inexcusably incoherent-and Ultron completely blows as a villain (does he hurt or imperil one person in the movie before the utterly contrived death of Quicksilver?) so there is absolutely no menace and so no real courage and you know like growth. And then I honestly started to wonder how Avengers is kind of eerily similar to Team America: World Police with the hyper-destructive battles and gleaming modernist headquarters and the superjet transports and the fey older gentleman boss type. And I’m just hopelessly confused about it all. At least Kim Jong Il had a good song.
Spoiler! You forgot to say spoiler!
Didn’t we already know the song was good?
Ultron is an amazing villain. Absolutely amazing, but you keep on going with that line of thought. You keep going.
“Ultron is an amazing villain.”
Make the case – how so? what makes him amazing?
Please God no more collapsing CG buildings in clouds of 9/11 dust. And a floating collapsing city was truly teh dumbest thing ever. I like a lot of what Whedon did but this was just too top heavy. Like a floating meteor city.
Ultron’s whole schtick was how homicidal and dangerous each iteration of him was. I think the comic books went through multiple generations of him until he gets so intelligent he turns the corner as it were. SPOILER for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet-I think David misses the point of Vision…Ultron is our first attempt and of course wants to destroy us like Skynet, but what he and us build together forms another stage in our evolution, kinda like Sam Worthington in Terminator Salvation.
He sucks in this movie. He’s a petulant child who lets Captain America alone push him around. His plan blows. He never so much as frightens any of the Avengers with his power. He’s got an army of supposedly Iron-man level robots and the Avengers chew through them like candy. Hydra was more of a challenge in the first five minutes. At least they drew blood on Hawkeye lol.