By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Neon Launches Short Film Division

[PR] NEON launches short film division (NEON SHORTS) with Peter Huang’s 5 FILMS ABOUT TECHNOLOGY, bringing back the long honored tradition of combining a feature film with a short. Premiering alongside Nacho Vigalondo’s COLOSSAL, this will be the first of many shorts to accompany NEON’s slate of feature length films.

5 FILMS ABOUT TECHNOLOGY had its World Premiere at TIFF 2016 and was an Official Selection at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Written and directed by Toronto-based director Peter Huang, the anthology short takes a darkly comic look at the absurd realities of how modern technology affects our lives today. It was produced by actor Jonathan Keltz and producer Evan Landry, and stars a variety of television and film actors, all portraying key roles that illustrate everyday scenarios in which technology has become ever present and overused.

Commenting on the theatrical release, Huang said, “I’m so happy that Neon loves the medium enough to include us with screenings of Colossal. It’s unprecedented and I’m really excited to see what other shorts they wind up attaching to their films in the future.”

ABOUT NEON:                                                                      NEON released its debut film, Nacho Vigalondo’s COLOSSAL, starring Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis in theaters April 7th. NEON was an active buyer at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, acquiring Michael Larnell’s ROXANNE ROXANNE, winner of the Special Jury Breakthrough Performance Award, Matt Spicer’s INGRID GOES WEST, winner of the Wald Salt Screenwriting Award and Eliza Hittman’s BEACH RATS, winner of the Directing Award, U.S Dramatic.  NEON recently announced the acquisition of the French language Belgian thriller, RACER AND THE JAILBIRD, Errol Morris’ latest film, THE B-SIDE and SXSW audience sensation, Aaron Katz’s GEMINI.

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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