MCN Columnists
Leonard Klady

Klady By Leonard KladyKlady@moviecitynews.com

Click… Clack…

The Adam Sandler fantasy-comedy Click bowed to an estimated $39.7 million to top weekend movie going charts. However, the frame’s big surprise was an unexpectedly potent debut for the urban thriller Waist Deep of $9.2 million that ranked fourth in the lineup. And another puzzler wasWordplay that filled in the blank spaces in 45 niche…

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Location, Location, Location…

  There’s an odd disconnect when you contrast the domination of event movies playing at the neighborhood multiplex during the summer months and the proliferation of film festivals that cater to idiosyncratic tastes this time of year. One isn’t necessarily the antidote to the other. Nonetheless, the two solitudes co-exist in a state of anxious…

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High Gear .. with Salsa

Cars maintained the lead in weekend movie going with an estimated $31.5 million but it definitely had competition. Freshman entries Nacho Libre with Jack Black and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift rang up impressive numbers of $27.5 million and $23.9 million respectively. Other new entries ranked high in the pecking order with good…

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Rrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!

Cars got its motor running as it shifted up to an estimated $60.3 million and crossed the finish line way ahead of the pack in the weekend movie going rally. The frame also saw debuts for the new incarnation of The Omen and an aggressive premiere for The Prairie Home Companion that had tuneful dividends.Cars,…

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Breaking Up Is Easy To Do

The Break-Up surprised pundits with a potent estimated bow of $38.9 million to rank at the top of the box-office chart. The frame also featured strong response for the eco warning An Inconvenient Truth and a passable bow for the French action thriller District B-13. And while business registered a slight increase from 2005, it…

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Klady

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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