MCN Columnists
Leonard Klady

Klady By Leonard KladyKlady@moviecitynews.com

Flight Fright

The debut of The Final Destination (we can only hope) usurped the competition to lead weekend ticket sales with an estimated $28.4 million. The penultimate summer weekend included two additional national preems. Another old pal, Halloween II, opened in position three with $17.2 million but there was little nostalgia for Taking Woodstock with a $3.7…

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Natzi Schmooks

The alphabetically/historically challenged Inglourious Basterds quashed the Hun with an estimated $38.4 million to lead weekend movie going. The session’s other wide and limited releases were grappling with considerably more downbeat returns. The family targeted Shorts was sixth in the lineup with $6.5 million and the youthful romance Post Grad just tagged position 10 on…

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Property Values

The less than huggable E.T.s of District 9 led weekend box office viewing with an estimated $36.8 million. A clutch of new film releases with varying commercial potency buoyed ticket sales including the romantic sci-fi of The Time Traveler’s Wife that ranked third with $19.3 million. There were passable returns for the comic perspective on…

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The Weekend Report: August 9, 2009

Weekend Estimates: August 7-9, 2009 Title Distributor Gross (averag % change Theater Cume G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra Par 56.6 (14,120) – 4007 56.6 Julie & Julia Sony 19.6 (8,320) – 2354 19.6 G-Force BV 9.7 (2,790) -45% 3482 86 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince WB 8.9 (2,570) -51% 3455 273.8 Funny People Uni…

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LOL

A modicum of laughter propelled Funny People to the top of the weekend box office chart with an estimated $23.2 million. The frame also saw a complete miss for the family targeted Aliens in the Attic of $7.7 million and an OK $3.3 million for the thriller The Collector. The session also included a flood…

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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