Awards Watch Archive for November, 2006

Best Screenplay Chart

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Writer(s) – Film Comment Little Miss Sunshine No question here Babel Guillermo gets it The Queen An elegant piece of work World Trade Center Pushing helps get a very smart script in Volver Viva Pedro! The Prestige Very, very clever script… could leap Borat A script or a performance… that is the…

Read the full article »

Best Actress Chart

BEST ACTRESS Actress – Film Comment Helen Mirren – The Queen The frontrunner Meryl Streep – The Devil Wears Prada Does she take the gold when people tire of Mirren’s brilliant restraint and melt under the giddy fun of Streep’s Wicked Witch of Couture? Judi Dench – Notes On A Scandal The restraint of a…

Read the full article »

Best Actor Chart

BEST ACTOR Actor – Film Comment Will Smith – The Pursuit of Happyness Strong… Peter O’Toole – Venus Scariest Promotional Ad Ever Leonardo DiCaprio – The Departed Stars are lining up for him Forrest Whitaker – The Last King Of Scotland Strong performance, but really supporting George Clooney – The Good German Depends on the…

Read the full article »

Best Director Chart

BEST DIRECTOR Director – Film Comment Martin Scorsese – The Departed Smells like a winner Steven Soderbergh – The Good German Black and white and read all over Bill Condon – Dreamgirls If the sense of the film being a remarkable pastiche of style, as well as storytelling, turns out to be accurate, could surge…

Read the full article »

Best Picture Chart

BEST PICTURE Picture – Studio Comment Dreamgirls It’s always doubter before the dawn The Queen The top cat of the second tier Little Miss Sunshine As the expession goes, the one that wins on Saturday and loses on Sunday The Departed Well into the race… WB needs to remind people around Thanksgiving, not letting ti…

Read the full article »

Week Four- 115 Days to Go The Rules: Episode One

There are all kinds of rules that really do have significance in the Oscar season. None of them are made of stone. Each of us must bring our own experience and circumstance to the table when navigating the waters. Salty old sailors die at sea sometimes, so they don’t have all the answers. But give…

Read the full article »

Awards Watch

Quote Unquotesee all »

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