MCN Columnists
Leonard Klady

Klady By Leonard KladyKlady@moviecitynews.com

The Audience is Listening

Many moons ago for reasons that have been lost to time, I was attending a film festival in Montreal. While I can still vividly remember some of the selections, I cannot remember the name of the event or its stated gestalt. The program was very alternative with selections from the likes of Werner Schroeder and…

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Mr. Boxoffice Goes To Washington

There was a Spike in the box office both literally and figuratively as Inside Man ascended to an estimated $29.2 million to lead weekend movie going. The frame also provided surprises for other national debuts with the teen thriller Stay Alive having more utz than expected and the big screen incarnation for Larry the Cable…

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V R The World…

V for Vendetta arrived with close to commercial vengeance with a domestic gross estimated at $24.7 million and an additional $8.5 million from openings in 16 international territories. The frame also featured okay results of $10.9 million for the gender-bending comedy She’s the Man and a disappointing return of $520,000 for the crime saga Find…

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Admission Slips

The mantra at ShoWest – the annual conclave of film exhibition – emerged as “we have to look at the long term.” And, on the surface, that’s not an altogether unreasonable statement. Let’s refrain from making snap judgments. What occurred six months ago may not be indicative of what we will see moving forward a…

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Soar Winners…

Failure to Launch surprised pundits with an unexpectedly potent estimate of $24.7 million to emerge the weekend’s top viewed movie. Also stronger than anticipated was the horror remake ofThe Hills Have Eyes that ranked third overall with $15.6 million while the recycled The Shaggy Dog barked up a Disneypointing $16.1 million. Best of the limited…

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The ShoWest Must Go On

These are grim times for theater owners. Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’re well aware that 2005 not only marked a downturn in overall revenues, it also experienced significant erosion in the big screen audience. Then there’s a consolidation in theater ownership that’s put thousands of people back into the job market this…

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16 Block Party…

Medea’s Family Reunion withstood a quartet of new releases as top draw in the marketplace with an estimated $12.7 million. There was a lack of real utz in film going for Oscar weekend with 16 Blocks taking second spot with $11.6 million and the bow of Dave Chappelle’s Block Party trailing the freshman field with…

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All That Glitters

  There are, to be honest, only so many things one can say about the Oscar race in this or any other year. The films and players obviously change and the details have a specificity but the basics are, well, the basics with a few caveats tossed in for color. It is not infinitely malleable….

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Klady

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