Gurus o’ Gold Archive for November, 2011

Gurus o’ Gold: November 29, 2011

By The Gurus of Gold - Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

The Gurus start this week with three questions about the award season itself, primarily about the early awards and nominations coming out in November.

Then it’s on to Best Picture, where Hugo is the big mover, and Supporting Actress & Actor, which hasn’t changed much at the top in the last month… but for which the field keeps narrowing.

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Gurus o’ Gold: November 22, 2011

By The Gurus of Gold - Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011

As we head into the holiday weekend, The Gurus offer their weekly Best Picture projections.

And this week, the unlikely nominations for which each guru would be thankful. And which choice is being hoped from by 5 of the 14 Gurus? Take a look.

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Gurus o’ Gold: November 15, 2011

By The Gurus of Gold - Tuesday, November 15th, 2011

There’s not a lot of movement in the slotting of the Best Picture chart this week, though there is incremental movement all over the place.

Directors are back… though Mr. Eastwood is no longer on the chart.

And The Gurus take on Original & Adapted Screenplay for the first time this season, with 2 comedies not on top of the BP charts landing firmly in the writing Top 10.

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Gurus o’ Gold: November 8, 2011

By The Gurus of Gold - Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

First, welcome our newest Guru, the esteemed journalist and writer, Mark Harris.

This week, buzz titles from two of our best working directors, J Edgar and Hugo, rolled out for the media. How will this affect Best Picture and Best Actor? Also, with The Academy announcing their short list of 15 for Best Animated Feature, The Gurus take on the category, looking for 5 potential nominees.

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Gurus o’ Gold: November 1, 2011

By The Gurus of Gold - Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

The Gurus are back for their weekly look at the awards races.

As they do every week, they start with Best Picture. And this week, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, and Best Director to boot.

The top of a lot of these lists will look very familiar this week. But as the next couple of weeks progress, a clearer shape to the season should emerge.

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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