MCN Columnists
Noah Forrest

Forrest By Noah ForrestForrest@moviecitynews.com

Woody Allen Will Never Be Finished

It has become inevitable that with every new release fromWoody Allen, there will be hundreds of stories written about him that will say either “Woody’s officially finished,” or “Woody’s back!”  The man has been written off and then welcomed back so many times at this point and I’m just happy that it hasn’t stopped him…

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12 Spring Movies To Watch

Trying to distance myself from the Oscar fervor, I decided to sit down and take a look at the schedule to see what worthwhile movies are coming out in the next four months.  This is a notoriously terrible time for quality films to be released, since the majority of the “prestige” films have been rushed…

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If I Had An Oscar Ballot…

We’re a little more than a week away from the announcement of what films were nominated by the Academy Awards and so I decided to write up my own ballot of the top eight categories.  The films that I nominate are not necessarily the ones I believe will get nominated, but the ones that I feel should…

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The Best of 2007

To me, top ten lists are forever changing. I keep detailed lists of every movie I see, keeping them in order by the year in which they were released and sometimes when I go back and look over my ordering, I inevitably make some changes. So, while what follows is currently my top ten lists,…

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Forrest

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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