MCN Columnists
Noah Forrest

Forrest By Noah ForrestForrest@moviecitynews.com

Review: Halloween

Let’s just get it out of the way: Rob Zombie should not have remade Halloween. That being said, however, I don’t think it was a terrible idea for Rob Zombie to make this movie … let me explain. I think most remakes are usually bad ideas, but I also think that if you’re going to remake a movie…

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Who Will Be… The Next Scorsese?

About seven and a half years ago, Esquire Magazine asked five film critics to nominate a young director to answer the question, “Who is the next Scorsese?”  The man himself even offered up his own nomination. What does it mean to be the next Martin Scorsese?  I’m going to say that it means a filmmaker of unique…

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10 Movies To Keep An Eye On This Fall

Like most lovers of quality films, I love turning the calendar page from August to September.  I love to say goodbye to the big-budget behemoths that had crowded the multiplexes for the past four months and say hello to the movies that have something to say.  As the weather gets cooler and cooler, the films…

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The Horrific State Of The Horror Film

Like most cinephiles, I have a fondness in my heart for horror movies.  I would not go so far as to say that it is my favorite genre, but I find horror films to be the most visceral experience one can have in a movie theater.  When we see something on screen that scares us,…

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No Reservations? No Leading Lady

Catherine Zeta-Jones is an extraordinarily beautiful woman and a pretty good actress.  It is quite unfortunate for her that she was not born fifty years earlier because would have been one of the premier movie stars of the forties and fifties.  That beautiful face of hers, the slightly exaggerated mannerisms in her roles, that husky…

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Steven Spielberg: A Defense

Steven Spielberg has been the center of much talk lately, little of it having to do with his filmmaking.  There is the controversy about his being the artistic director of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, something that Mia Farrow has blasted him for, even calling him the “Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing games.”  There is also much…

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Forrest

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