MCN Columnists
Leonard Klady

Klady By Leonard KladyKlady@moviecitynews.com

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Robert Altman was a scoundrel. It’s perhaps not quite the way one might expect to recall someone that I personally considered the greatest living American director. To be certain it’s said with a large degree of affection. I don’t believe he could have survived and prospered within the film industry if he were any less…

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Turkey Trot

The Thanksgiving frame was putting on a happy face as Happy Feet once again pushed ahead of Casino Royale by a beak with the film’s grossing $38.1 million and $30.1 million respectively during the three-day portion of the holiday. The table was heavy with new sides but patrons were only enthusiastic for third-ranked Déjà Vu…

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Shaken and Brrrrrrd!

They’re called estimates … but more on that later. The battle between a spy called Bond and a penguin named Mumble (aka The Battle of the Tuxedos) in, respectively, Casino Royale and Happy Feet concluded in a statistical dead heat with each film grossing an estimated $41.1 million. It was heady news for each title…

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Khazakh on Fire!

Something Borat but definitely not blue was elevated to an estimated $28.6 million to lead weekend movie options. Freshman entries however were on the soft side with the off center comedy Stranger Than Fiction proving best in show with a $14.2 million debut that ranked fourth overall. The genre entry The Return had no better…

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Jagshemash!

Records fell as Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Making Benefit Glorious of Kazakhstan posted an estimated $25.9 million to ascend to the top of the list for weekend movie going. The session also featured good openings for family fare The Santa Clause 3 and Flushed Away that ranked second and third with respective grosses…

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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