April 25, 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
OK, I get it.
“Morgan” is a dumbed-down version of “Ex Machina” on steroids, but why did literally no one (except me) go and see it yesterday?
It’s not like it was a stealth opening. The trailers had been running for months, and it opened on 1,500 more screens than Fox’s “The Other Side of the Door” did in March.
The movie isn’t terrible, the cast is strong, Luke Scott does a reasonably okay job of imitating his dad and the whole thing clocks in at a svelte 86 minutes.
Freaking weird how some movies simply refuse to even open.
I don’t get it either. Morgan looks decent and I plan on seeing it this weekend. What happened? The cast is decent, the trailer is solid so why didn’t people go and see it?
Why didn’t anyone go and see it? It’s a tired, played out genre full of bullshit, Movie. Oh. It’s the evil artificial intelligence/life movie, because artificial intelligence/life has to always be a dick. Yeah. Sure. PASS!
Enough of this fucking nonsense. Also, too MUCH DAMN MYSTERY BOX! This is FOX, so they can’t sell movies worth a shit anyway, so assuming them to be able to sell this movie. May be a fucking stretch. Nevertheless, glad it failed, because Hollywood needs to stop being so god damn old man afraid about space, artificial intelligence, and artificial life.
Good on Kubo, for hanging in there.
BAD MOMS hitting $100 million today is just an incredible accomplishment….getting your first $100 million hit is so elusive for a studio, it’s almost unheard of now, and in the recent past took unbelievably high-profile efforts to get over the hump compared to this. It’s something no other recent upstart…Relativity, Overture, FilmDistrict, CBS, etc, has been able to do. The last 3:
Weinstein Company-INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, 2009
Summit Entertainment-TWILIGHT, 2008
Lionsgate -FAHRENHEIT 9/11, 2004
My daughters and I just saw DON’T BREATHE. It was fun. And when I think back on the 2016 movie year I will think of Black Phillip. I will think of the toaster scene in The Lobster. I will think of the final shot of Green Room. and I will probably think of something that happens in Don’t Breathe. I’m not gonna post a spoiler but it was one of the most revolting and hilarious things I’ve seen in a while. Stephen Lang is a trooper.
HWK- Yep, quite a mystery.
I bet Screen Gems could have easily scored a $10-million or better opening weekend.
Apparently it’s going to join “We Are Your Friends” (which I loved) and “Rock the Kasbah” (ugh) as one of the worst 2,000+ print breaks in recent memory. “Morgan” is no classic, but it isn’t appreciably worse than, say, “Don’t Breathe” or “Lights Out” either.
And look at that “Yoga Hosers” opener!
Wow; I guess “Kevin Smith” is truly, completely, irrevocably over as a brand.
I quit on Smith after I suffered through Tusk. I will never ever ever watch Yoga Hosers.
I went and saw Morgan to a mostly empty house yesterday as well. I don’t think it helped that Yahoo had a blurb on the homepage that spoiled the ending. I usually avoid reviews before films, but that was right there on the homepage without having to click on it.
Anya Taylor-Joy is fun to watch though. With The Witch, Morgan, and the upcoming Split, I hope she doesn’t become stuck in just Horror.
Don’t Breathe was a blast and probably the first true horror film I have seen in a theater in a couple of years….and we need MORE Stephen Lang! He was the best thing about Avatar and would be well-suited to take on more grizzled action roles.
Wait someone said comic book movies are tired and played out right? That has to be it.
Don’t Breathe didn’t do much for me. I didn’t like any of the characters in it so I didn’t find it suspenseful. Lang is OK as long as he isn’t speaking. That dialogue. Yikes. People seem to really like it though, and I’m glad it continues a summer of strong horror box office and I look forward to whatever Alvarez does next. He’s very talented and I like that he wants to forge his own path and develop his own material.
i don’t know how similar they are but when I saw the trailer for Morgan I was thinking Ex Machina. Only Morgan looked like more of a horror movie, which I don’t like, so the odds of me checking out Morgan were already slim.
I know some people are hyped for Snowden. Thriller/espionage are totally my thing but we’ve already had the documentary and seen/read a couple of interviews. Fine if Stone wants to cover new ground but I don’t want to see a reinterpretation of what was previously presented as facts.
Do you think “Snowden”‘s box office will resemble Zemeckis’ “The Walk”? How soon do moviegoers want to see a new interpretation of th same story?
Why are Magnificent Seven and Deepwater Horizon opening within a week of each other? I think either one one on their own has the potential to be a breakout hit in start-of-Fall slot that The Martian made it’s own last year. But you can’t help wondering if they will cannibalize each other’s core demographic.
DEEPWATER HORIZON might be a studio-sinking endeavor, at least for the Summit division of Lionsgate. Budget at over $150 million…yikes.
I feel that way about Sully Triple Option. Like pretty much everyone else I saw TV coverage of the landing a thousand times, and it feels like that happened a year ago. The movie just doesn’t interest me at all. Having seen the trailer 20 times only enhances that feeling. I’m sure Hanks is great, but I have no desire to see it. Snowden intrigues me more than Sully but I get feeling that way about it.
No idea that Deepwater Horizon cost that much. Was that the budget from the start? This fall sure has a lot of movies about very recent, much publicized events between Sully, Snowden, and Deepwater Horizon, all opening in a three-week span.
As nuts as that seems, it appears so:
https://fastlane.louisianaeconomicdevelopment.com/Film/FilmSearchDetails.aspx?ProjNum=scIvDyz9AIsqS0JEaew%2fnQ%3d%3d
I’m glad I’m not the only one that feels completely disinterested in Sully. I agree with Stella’s Boy. It feels like yesterday and a story I already know.
Am I the only one who would like to see Tom Hanks step back, take a breath and do a comedy for a change? I don’t mean Money Pit 2 but something light and funny, maybe even a bit broad. He’s great in his middle-aged concerned man roles but he can be so much fun. I miss that.
I’ll just be happy to not have to see the trailer for Deepwater Horizon ever again. It’s to the point where I wanna slap someone every time I hear “My Daddy tames the dinosaurs.”
He might have turned into early 90s Abe Simpson, but I love Eastwood as a director. You team him and Hanks, and I am rather excited for Sully. It seems to be a solid piece of character work, about the shit Sully went through. Which is a lot of damn shit. Again, I live for some Fall cinema.
pat says:Do you think “Snowden”‘s box office will resemble Zemeckis’ “The Walk”? How soon do moviegoers want to see a new interpretation of th same story?
Probably. Even though there was the award winning doc, I don’t believe the gen public knew too much about it or the guy going across the twin towers. It’s kind of a wonder that a film wasn’t made of it earlier. I’m not even sure how many people saw Citizenzero but I think there’s more of an awareness of some guy who “leaked a buncha top secret govt files.” I don’t know how much objectivity there is to him. Like, I think a lot of people feel about him how people in the media told them to feel about him. I think if there was some daring escape to get to China or Russia, if he had to go all Bourne to get the word out, even if they were against him, people would really go gobble it up. Which, who knows, maybe there was, but it seems to me the biggest part of the story is out and now a part of public knowledge, or people think they know what there is to know, and so it may be why bother. At least, that’s more how I feel. I’d actually like to know more of the detail of what the NSA & CI was/are doing but it doesn’t seem like there’s anything about agents in Caracas intercepting cell phone towers outside of Parliament meetings.
I don’t know when something is long enough. There’s so much video of every occurrence now it’s hard to tell is the world just so intricately wired or is it that only those stories where there’s footage becomes news. I was actually surprised it took Captain Philips as long as it did to come out. I knew the story of Argo back in the 90s and thought it was going to be made by someone else. I think had it come out in the late 80s it would’ve been fine, although I think the film’s boxoffice and reception was bolstered by the greater understanding people have of the concept of how films get made.
For Sully, it may be cool just to see how they visualize the flight and splash landing. I got a feeling it’s going to be more like Paths of Glory where the big event happens up front then much of the movie will be the followup investigation & “trial” w/periodic flashbacks to show why key decisions were made wrapped up with some And Justice for All/Scent of a Woman who are you to judge speech. I don’t know if feels too soon or there doesn’t seem to be enough there to make a full movie. The best part we already know. Now if someone was to make a film on the missing Malaysian Airlines flight, like say they find wreckage and then theorize how it came to be where it was, I bet people would flock to see it, despite it being so recent.
I hope Snowden is half as entertaining as the NY Times Magazine story on the movie and Oliver Stone. There’s a lot in it I didn’t know about the making of the movie and Snowden’s relationship with Russia. Stone and JGL fought about the dialogue being too preachy. Stone pissed off a lot of people including Greenwald and Poitras (and according to her got a little handsy). I really didn’t know anything about the Russian guy who wrote the novel they bought the rights to in order to get access to Snowden. It’s a great story and I doubt the movie will be as engrossing. Stone is quite a character.
Eastwood loves deconstructing male heroes/archetypes. I imagine that’s how he has focused Sully. I’m still not terribly interested though I’m sure I’ll catch it on cable one day.