MCN Columnists
Leonard Klady

Klady By Leonard KladyKlady@moviecitynews.com

Booooooooo!

More treat than trick commercially speaking, Saw III sliced through the marketplace with an estimated $34.2 million to take command as weekend movie favorite. The frame had only one other national debut with the political thriller Catch a Fire at a low spark of $2.1 million. Activity was torrid in limited and platform bows with…

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Presto … Chango

The Prestige apparently had the magic to ascend to the top of the box office chart with an estimated $14.8 million. In a session that had anticipated Flags of Our Fathers would take the weekend, the saga of the “greatest generation” struggled to $10.2 and ranked third overall. A glut of new product contributed to…

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Death and Taxes…

There’s nothing quite like receiving bad news to set your week up wrong. So, when the phone rang Monday morning with the news Sid Adilman had died, I at least could anticipate nothing worse happening immediately. Sid Adilman was for many years the entertainment editor at the Toronto Star. He was also the Canadian bureau…

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Very Scarrrrrry

The Grudge 2 chilled an estimated $22.5 million to take top honors in the weekend movie going derby. In a status quo frame, freshmen entries ranged from a disappointing $12.5 million ballot for Man of the Year to a fair $7 million pin for The Marine and a rather upbeat $4.2 million encounter with One…

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More Bang For The Bucks

The Departed left the station with an estimated $26.5 million to claim weekend bragging rights as the session’s top attraction. There were also upbeat returns for freshmen entries The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning that ranked second with $19.1 million and a fourth place finish for Employee of the Month of $11.7 million. Additionally Trailer…

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P.S. Toronto…

I began my annual journey to Toronto with a degree of ambivalence and a week after its conclusion I can’t seem to shake that feeling. However, distance has at least provided a glimmer of perspective. Somewhere hidden in the deluge of movies presented this year and in other recent incarnations is a great festival. For…

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Seasons Greetings!

Open Season animated an estimated $23.3 million to lead weekend movie biz with the watery actioner The Guardian not far behind with $17.6 million. The combo registered sufficient muscle to provide a double-digit boost from 2005. The session also featured an OK $8.1 million bow for the comic School for Scoundrels. Additionally limited bows for…

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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