MCN Columnists
Leonard Klady

Klady By Leonard KladyKlady@moviecitynews.com

Bring in the Junew …

December 30, 2007 Weekend Estimates Limited Releases Domestic Market Share National Treasure: Book of Secrets maintained top spot in the last weekend of 2007 with an estimated $35.8 million. The frame experienced double digit expansion with more than a few surprises as several new titles entered the fray in wide and limited release. Alvin, Will Smith…

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Eye of the Navel 2007 …

The thing about top 10 lists is they tend to be relevant only at the moment they are compiled. A couple of weeks ago I sent in such a list to a poll conducted by the Village Voice/L.A. Weekly and in the brief time that’s followed it has gone AWOL. While nothing catastrophic has occurred in…

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Charlie, Sweeney & Dewey vs. Alvin, Wilie & Nick

December 23, 2007 Weekend Estimates Limited Releases Domestic Market Share National Treasure: Book of Secrets led pre-Christmas movie shopping with an estimated $46.2 million. However, while the news was good for last week’s chart toppers I Am Legend and Alvin and the Chipmunks, initial biz for the glut of seasonal debs ranged from problematic to dire….

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Will Power

December 16, 2007 Weekend Estimates Limited Releases Domestic Market Share They’rrre baaack! Film going rebounded with a vengeance as debuts of the sci-fi classic I Am Legend and the animated Alvin and the Chipmunks entered the marketplace with greater drawing power than expected. The chart toppers opened respectively with estimates of $78.1 million and $44.8 million; paving…

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December 9, 2007

December 9, 2007 Weekend Estimates International Grosses Domestic Market Share No column today. Weekend Estimates – December 7-9, 2007 Title Distributor Gross (average) % change Theaters Cume The Golden Compass New Line 26.2 (7,410) – 3528 26.2 Enchanted BV 10.8 (3,070) -34% 3520 84 This Christmas Sony 4.9 (2,610) -38% 1879 42.7 Fred Claus WB…

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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