MCN Columnists
Leonard Klady

Klady By Leonard KladyKlady@moviecitynews.com

Some Enchanted Turkey …

November 25, 2007 Weekend Estimates Domestic Market Share The Thanksgiving holiday frame was definitely rich on stuffing with the time travel princess ofEnchanted emerging most magical with an estimated $34.8 million during the weekend and $49.5 million from its Wednesday launch. The table was overflowing with new entrees and scant on sides. The Afrocentric This…

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Wulf at the Door

November 18, 2007 Weekend Estimates Domestic Market Share The venerable Nordic saga Beowulf handily led the frame with a debut estimated at $27.5 million. However, other premieres proved less fulsome including just fair results of $9.9 million for the family friendly Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium and a dull $1.9 million for the long gestating adaptation of Love in…

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Sting Like a Lion, Float Like a Santa

November 11, 2007 Weekend Estimates Domestic Market Share Last weekend’s leaders switched positions with the animated yellow jacket Bee Movie edging out the crime saga American Gangster with respective estimates of $25.7 million and $24.5 million. That left weekend freshmen scrambling for patrons with holiday family entry Fred Claus corralling a solid $18.5 million while political thriller Lions for…

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Honey in the Bank …

November 4 , 2007 Weekend Estimates Domestic Market Share The multiplexes were abuzz with American Gangster leading the frame on an estimated $46.5 million tally and the animated Bee Movie adding a stinging $38.9 million to a turnaround session at the box office. The leaders didn’t leave much more for the national debut of Martian Child that ranked…

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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