Note Pad Archive for June, 2005

Key Dates Announced for 78th Academy Awards®

Beverly Hills, CA — The 78th Annual Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, March 5, 2006, and it will start on the hour — 5 p.m. straight up on the West Coast, 8 p.m. on the East. The traditional red carpet arrivals pre-show that precedes the Oscar telecast will start at 4:30 p.m. on…

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Academy Invites 112 to Membership

Beverly Hills, CA — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has extended membership invitations to 112 artists and executives who have distinguished themselves in the field of theatrical motion pictures. The group will be the only new voting members invited to join the organization in 2005. “Our decision to slow the growth of…

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AMPAS Board Votes Against New Category

Beverly Hills, CA — The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted Tuesday night not to grant the request of a consortium of stunt performers’ organizations for an annual Academy Award category in their field. “At a time when the Academy is trying to find ways to reduce the…

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78th Academy Awards® Rules Voted by AMPAS Governors

Beverly Hills, CA — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences continues to clamp down on the numbers of Oscar® statuettes that can be handed out, further tightening restrictions on recipients in the Best Picture category this year and establishing a cap for the first time in the Original Song category. The 78th Annual…

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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