By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Writers Guild President Howard Rodman Remarks On Writing And Responsibility; Calls For Trump Resignation

Posted Wednesday, August 16th, 2017 - Comments Off on Writers Guild President Howard Rodman Remarks On Writing And Responsibility; Calls For Trump Resignation
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August 16, 2017
Dear fellow Guild members,

Writing in 1915, Theodore Roosevelt reminded us that Dante “reserved a special place of infamy in the inferno for those base angels who dared side neither with evil nor with good.”  It’s a caution that hits with shocking immediacy when the President of the United States can look at a mob of Nazis and white supremacists and say “I’ve condemned many different groups… You also had some very fine people on both sides.”

As a labor union, and as a guild of those whose job is to craft the narratives of our time, we refuse to “side neither with evil nor with good.”  The issue transcends politics: it is, rather, a fight for the soul of our nation. By what he says and what he will not say, the President encourages the violent and murderous acts of the worst among us. In declining to condemn in unambiguous terms those who believe the white race deserves to be paramount above all others, our President – and his enablers – have abdicated any claim to moral leadership.  He should resign.

Leadership needs to come from us: collectively as a guild, and individually as writers.  Let’s take this awful moment in our republic’s history as a reminder of the power of our union, the power of words – and of the necessity for using them in wise and crucial ways.  It is time more than ever to take heart from James Baldwin: “You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t… The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter the way people look at reality, then you can change it.  If there is no moral question, there is no reason to write.”

In solidarity,

Howard A. Rodman
President, WGAW
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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