MCN Columnists
Leonard Klady

Columns By Leonard KladyKlady@moviecitynews.com

No Room At The Marquee

National Association of Theater Owner’s president John Fithian went on a tear a couple of months back, criticizing the media for taking a myopic view of film going. There’s no question that coverage of dips and bumps in the box office is evanescent, or as folks in film exhibition like to say, “cyclic.” Fithian quite…

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The X-Files … to be continued

Though publicized as the conclusion of a franchise, X-Men: The Last Stand isn’t likely to be the last word on the cinematic mutant super heroes. It led the 4-day Memorial holiday frame with an estimated $120.8 million with second place falling to The Da Vinci Code with $43.3 million. X-Men added an additional $76 million…

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Cannes 2006: Come back, Edy Williams … all is forgiven

May 26, 2006 At least once in every reviewer’s career a story is written to convince to readers – and, implicitly, various editors and bosses – that watching and writing about movies for a living is hardly the picnic everyone assumes it to be. Variations on the same theme are written by reporters assigned to…

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The Indolent and the Indulgent…

Summer 2006 is already shaping up as the season of the train wreck. The May release schedule that was supposed to dispel all talk of a movie going crisis has instead renewed considerable debate about audience apathy, blunted expectations, marketing acumen or its absence, fading stardom, cultural and demographic shifts and myriad other speculations. In…

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Box Office Comes in for the Code

The Da Vinci Code rang up an estimated $77.2 million to lead domestic film viewing for the weekend and added close to $150 million in its international debut. The current weekend also had a strong opening of $37.3 million for the animated Over the Hedge and the combined juggernaut pretty much had a vacuum cleaner…

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'Da Vinci Code' barbs span the globe at warp speed

April 17, 2006 Whew, that was close! Here. I was thinking of flying to Bahrain or Iceland yesterday to get a head start on forming my own opinion on the mysteries revealed in “The Da Vinci Code” — as recommended by director Ron Howard — but no one at LAX seemed interested in accepting my…

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That Sinking Feeling

Mission: Impossible III took close to a 50% hit but that was still enough to keep it ahead of the debut of Poseidon. The Mission statement was estimated at $24.6 million while the upside-down remake soaked up $20.5 million. The marketplace had other soggy starts including a fourth place opening of $5.6 million for the…

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If flap over 'Da Vinci Code' sounds familiar, re-visit 'Baby Doll' and 'Viridiana' on DVD

April 8, 2006 John Waters often credits the Catholic Church’s now-defunct Legion of Decency with steering him toward the sorts of movies that would shape his cinematic oeuvre. If, as a lad of 12, Baltimore’s favorite son hadn’t taken Francis Cardinal Spellman’s loud condemnation of “Baby Doll” as an invitation to calculate the wages of…

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Beat of the Tom-Tom

I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. The good news is that Mission: Impossible III debuted with an estimated $46.8 million to lead the domestic box office and added an additional $70 million from 57 international territories. The bad news amounts to the same thing. Additionally, there was an impressive $5.4 million bow…

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‘Only the Brave’ follows by 55 years Hollywood’s only salute to Nisei soldiers

Look up “Nisei” in the IMDB database and only four titles pop up. Surprisingly, perhaps, the first was made in 1951, when World War II movies were being turned out like so many Fords in Dearborn. The most recent, “Only the Brave,” is struggling for distribution. “Go for Broke!” told the story of the 442nd…

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Stop the madness! Enough on Pellicano, already … wake us in time for the movie

May 3, 2006 Like almost everyone else in Los Angeles, I’ve become so distraught by recent revelations in the Pellicano-gate scandal (there, I’ve said it) that I’ve had a hard time concentrating on the business at hand. By comparison, navigating around Monday’s immigration boycott was a walk down the Yellow Brick Road. I still find…

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Columns

Gary Dretzka on: The DVD Wrapup: Ophelia, Ambition, Werewolf in Girls' Dorm, Byleth, Humble Pie, Good Omens, Yellowstone …More

rohit aggarwal on: The DVD Wrapup: Ophelia, Ambition, Werewolf in Girls' Dorm, Byleth, Humble Pie, Good Omens, Yellowstone …More

https://bestwatches.club/ on: The DVD Wrapup: Diamonds of the Night, School of Life, Red Room, Witch/Hagazussa, Tito & the Birds, Keoma, Andre’s Gospel, Noir

Gary Dretzka on: The DVD Wrapup: Sleep With Anger, Ralph Wrecks Internet, Liz & Blue Bird, Hannah Grace, Unseen, Jupiter's Moon, Legally Blonde, Willard, Bang … More

Gary Dretzka on: The DVD Wrapup: Bumblebee, Ginsburg, Buster, Silent Voice, Nazi Junkies, Prisoner, Golden Vampires, Highway Rat, Terra Formars, No Alternative … More

GDA on: The DVD Wrapup: Bumblebee, Ginsburg, Buster, Silent Voice, Nazi Junkies, Prisoner, Golden Vampires, Highway Rat, Terra Formars, No Alternative … More

Larry K on: The DVD Wrapup: Sleep With Anger, Ralph Wrecks Internet, Liz & Blue Bird, Hannah Grace, Unseen, Jupiter's Moon, Legally Blonde, Willard, Bang … More

Gary Dretzka on: The DVD Wrapup: Shoplifters, Front Runner, Nobody’s Fool, Peppermint Soda, Haunted Hospital, Valentine, Possum, Mermaid, Guilty, Antonio Lopez, 4 Weddings … More

gwehan on: The DVD Wrapup: Shoplifters, Front Runner, Nobody’s Fool, Peppermint Soda, Haunted Hospital, Valentine, Possum, Mermaid, Guilty, Antonio Lopez, 4 Weddings … More

Gary J Dretzka on: The DVD Wrapup: Peppermint, Wild Boys, Un Traductor, Await Instructions, Lizzie, Coby, Afghan Love Story, Elizabeth Harvest, Brutal, Holiday Horror, Sound & Fury … More

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