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
What a tire fire “In the Heart of the Sea” is. Warners did everything they could to obfuscate the human story of survival in favor of flashing money shots of the whale. I read the book but will probably not see the film until it hits streaming. If everyone involved in the film wanted to bypass the second half of the book in which the survivors of the sinking waste away and result to canibalism why didn’t they just do a straight “Moby Dick” adaptation? At least that film would have been an easier sell with a strong POV character, an iconic character (Ahab), and no need to mangle the source material in order to suit the aims of marketers.
Just a giant head scratcher all around…
A straight adaptation of MOBY DICK these days would run the risk of being taken for an unfavorable documentary about Moby.
What happened to LEGEND? I thought that was supposed to be going wide this weekend.
And for a movie that was purportedly moved from March to December to take advantage of an “Awards Season” release date, WB did absolutely nothing to promote “Sea” for said awards.
At least that I could see.
Didn’t they realize when they switched the date last winter that it was never going to be a legitimate awards contender?
It’s all very pretty and “artistic,” but the damn thing put me into a narcoleptic stupor.
And what was up w/ Hemsworth’s “chow-duh” accent? I would’ve thought New Englanders in the early 19th century would have sounded more like the cast of “Turn” than dress extras from “The Town.”
A big disappointment for me, esp. since Ron Howard was coming off my favorite Howard movie ever (“Rush” starring the same Marvel super hero).
“Awards Season” is code for “different quarter than ‘Jupiter Ascending’.”
“Jupiter Ascending.”
Ahhhhhhh.
Still my favorite head trip of 2015.
One of the few movies in recent history where you can actually see every nickel of its mega budget on the screen.
Too bad that mega budget got wasted on Milla Kunis in the lead role.
Like you, movieman, I was bummed by how mediocre Sea was after Rush, which was one of my favorites that year.
Mila was fine.
It was Eddie Redmayne who stunk up the scream.
He was howlingly terrible.
Really surprised it didn’t have a “Norbit”effect on his Oscar chances last year.
But Academy voters would have had to actually seen “Jupiter Ascending.”
Eddie Redmayne gave my favorite comedic performance of 2015 in “Jupiter Ascending!”