MCN Columnists
David Poland

20 Weeks to Oscar By David Polandpoland@moviecitynews.com

20W2O: 27 Days To Oscar – The Racial Thing

By David Poland - Tuesday, January 29th, 2013

The movie about slavery has no Black nominees. The movie about the abolition of slavery has no Black nominees. The movie about Gulf coasters devastated by Katrina has a little girl as its only nominee. And the movie about a young Indian man has 1 Indian nominee, who happened to write lyrics for a song.

I have never felt like racial politics and The Academy Awards go together well. But I also don’t see any step forward in this year’s nominations from any other year.

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20W2O: 4 Weeks To Go – Quid Pro Quo, Clarice

By David Poland - Monday, January 28th, 2013

I would argue – and have forever – that these groups are following the same bouncing ball as everyone else during the award season. There are years when consensus winners are quite close to undeniable. But there are usually 2 to 3 contenders who would not really be shocking winners of awards. Except for the issue of every award as a stepping stone to the next.

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20W2O: “They” – The Oscar Morning Sequel

By David Poland - Thursday, January 10th, 2013

While there are people/films out ahead in many categories, they are all still open. And there is now a super-idiot-sized Phase 2 in which the fight can be fought. And fought it will be. The public dissection of Lincoln‘s historic veracity – fair or not – has commenced while you were getting your 7am coffee.

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20 Weeks To Oscar: Nominations Morning – Follow The Voting

By David Poland - Thursday, January 10th, 2013

The entire list of nominations is a checkerboard, which speaks to the mess The Academy created with the January 3 date (which subsequently changed to January 4 when The Academy bothered to look at the calendar sometime in December.)

An argument could be made that this is exciting… that the nominations being all over the place, with the exception of Lincoln, makes for a more interesting night. Perhaps.

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20 Weeks To Oscar: 6 Weeks To Go – The Great Rush To Judgment… And Subsequent Settling

By David Poland - Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

As of today… as of the parade of opinions once nominations are announced on Thursday… It’s William Goldman Time, baby. No one KNOWS anything. Not yet. (But that won’t keep us all, me included, from spouting off.)

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20 Weeks to Oscar

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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