MCN Columnists
Leonard Klady

Klady By Leonard KladyKlady@moviecitynews.com

21 or Bust…

The card counting added up to an estimated $24.1 million as the debut of 21 ascended to the top of weekend movie going. The solid bow coupled with a better than expected $9.4 million opening for Superhero Movie still could not stave off another box office erosion as the movie experience hunkers down in the…

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Easter Lays an Egg…

The second weekend of Horton Hears a Who led weekend film going but not as definitively as it had in its debut. The Seussical sophomore session rang up an estimated $25.3 million while the debut of Meet the Browns from niche auteurTyler Perry was within striking distance at $20.2 million. The Easter weekend (not one…

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Who’s On First…

Doc Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who translated best to the big screen audience this past weekend with an estimated $45.3 million. It was sloppy seconds for the frame’s two other national freshmen with the teen martial arts yarn Never Back Down generating a respectable $8.8 million to rank third overall and the Apocalyptic adventure Doomsday…

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35.1 Million B.C. (Big Cume)…

History be damned, 10,000 B.C. went to the head of the class with an opening weekend estimated at $35.1 million. In an otherwise depressed frame, there was also positive spin for College Road Trip that debuted in second spot with $13.8 million and a rather respectable $5.4 million launch for the ripped from the headlines…

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So What!?

Wednesday morning Motion Picture Association of America president Dan Glickman got on the phone with (by my count) 15 or so entertainment business journalists. He told them a few things they probably knew, a lot they could have guessed and a panoply of things of no great significance. The seeming important news was that the domestic…

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Semi-Po’ and Con…

Despite topping the weekend box office chart with an estimated by $15.4 million, Semi-Pro provided slim comfort in a depressed post-Oscar frame. No Country for Old Men added close to 1000 theaters and saw its revenues rise 63% but other winners saw no immediate benefit in the domestic arena. The frame also saw a strong…

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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