MCN Columnists
David Poland

Pride By David Polandpoland@moviecitynews.com

WEEKEND PREVIEW

BOO-gie Nights is here! (Happy Halloween, kids!) Go now, before you get distracted by Starship Troopers and The Little Mermaid, ’cause it’s gonna happen. I wish that I could say that Paul Thomas Anderson’s feel-good, feel-all epic will take Number One with $20 million, but $10 – $11 million seems a lot more likely. (We’ll…

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COUNTDOWN TO BOOGIE NIGHTS: BOOGIE MINUS 1

Boogie Nights is ready to bring porn to a cable network near you. New Line is shopping a late-night series that would bring the antics of Dirk, Amber, Rollergirl and Buck into your house every week. HBO was the first cable net to produce original sitcoms with “Dream On,” the show that had almost every…

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COUNTDOWN TO BOOGIE NIGHTS – DAY 2

Boogie Nights makes porn stars look far too pathetic according to ’70s artistes du penetration Bobby Astyr and Candida Royalle, as quoted in the New York Daily News. However, they say, the slick producers, bad dialogue and poor production values are right on target. So, the 19-year-old from Iowa who’s getting paid $1,000 by a…

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COUNTDOWN TO BOOGIE NIGHTS – DAY 3

Boogie fever is catching on other film sets. At least according to Netizens. While the mainstream media may sit back and wait for a final print of John McNaughton’s new movie, Wild Things, the twin terrors of the URLs, Matt Drudge and Harry Knowles are already all over it. The news? Kevin Bacon shows his…

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Weekend, 25 October 1997

A neck snapper at this weekend’s box office. After what seemed like some impressive marketing gains by Sony, audiences answered Gattaca with “What-aca?!” while continuing to reward simple, straight-forward genre fare with mondo box office. Both I Know What You Did Last Summer (first with $13.1 million) and The Devil’s Advocate (second with $10.3 million)…

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WEEKEND PREVIEW

Can you hear the distant thunder of the big fall movies? They’re getting closer. But in the meantime, Sony’s giving us Gattaca and I Know What You Did Last Summer instead of Starship Troopers. Fox is giving us A Life Less Ordinary instead of Alien Resurrection. And Disney is staying out of the fray altogether…

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Thursday, 23 October 1997

Sondra Locke’s finally settled her lawsuit against Warner Bros. that claimed the studio bilked her out of a three-picture deal because of former beau, Clint Eastwood’s influence rather than because of the uniquely worthless Ratboy, the first film in the deal. So what does she do? A nasty tell-all book! Oooooh! Just check out these…

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Wednesday, 22 October 1997

You’ve been arrested for sleeping in your neighbor’s bed because you were so high you returned home to the wrong house. You’ve been arrested, high and drunk, with a loaded weapon in your glove compartment and cocaine and heroin in your pocket. You got special dispensation to take a week-long holiday from your rehab program…

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Tuesday, 21 October 1997

Don’t Call Me John Travolta! No, it’s not a personal thing. It’s the title of a new film out of Singapore about a guy who wants a motorcycle that he can’t afford. Inevitably, he turns to polyester and floors with colored lights. Isn’t that what you’d do? Well, in Ah Hocks case, he is after…

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WEEKEND REVIEW

Not many surprises at the weekend box office. At least not for me. Despite the big names (Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves) and big publicity push, The Devil’s Advocate came in just an OK second, conjuring up $12.2 million. The good news is, it may be another Pacino scenery-chewing camp classic. The easy winner of…

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Weekend, 18 October 1997

Jenny McCarthy and her boyfriend-manager Ray Manzella are squirming more than a buck naked blonde in a Playmate of The Year video these days. (Oh yeah, that was Jenny.) Now that Jenny’s sitcom is breaking the wrong kind of ratings records, they are setting their sights on feature films, which has set off my Hot…

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WEEKEND PREVIEW

Hollywood makes bizarre bedfellows. As Miramax was busy suing Sony over their use of “from the creator of Scream” to sell I Know What You Did Last Summer, they were bidding to win the rights to make the tri-quel to The Terminator following T-2, one of Sony’s biggest hits ever. Speaking of hits, I expect…

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INTERNATIONAL B.O.

It’s not a joke about the French! The foreign (to America) box office has become equal to or greater in importance to the overall bottom line of the movie business. So, take a gander. L.A. Confidential finally debuted in France and disappointed, managing no better than third place. The reason? The distributor waited too long…

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SECRET AGENT WEDNESDAY

The stories that Sony was in pursuit of the Bond franchise started last February. After a week or two of evasion, newly seated Sony Chief John Calley finally spoke to me about the situation and categorically denied that Sony was pursuing the Bond franchise. From all the tap dancing, it seemed that Calley had indeed…

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Tuesday, 14 October 1997

Are you a man-hater or a misogynist? You have your choice with these two hot, hot, hot spec script purchases! You say it’s too good to be true? Well, bite into Dog Eat Dog, a romantic comedy about a woman who hires a trainer for her dog and (get this!) her boyfriend. Wacky! And it…

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WEEKEND REVIEW

Kiss The Girls was the surprise of the weekend, holding onto the top spot with $11.1 million. Dropping just 16 percent is an extraordinary accomplishment for any wide release, much less a thriller. Then again, it’s clearly Adult Time at the box office, with Seven Years In Tibet (second place: $10 million), Soul Food (third:…

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WEEKEND PREVIEW

It looks like an ugly weekend at the box office. Four new films hit theaters nationwide, but they all look like short-term players. Brad Pitt’s Seven Years In Tibet should lead the charge grossing more than $10 million. If Tibet passes the $13 million mark, it will be a shock. If it somehow dips below…

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Thursday, 09 October 1997

Roman Catholics in Chile are organizing a boycott against film festival screenings of Abel Ferrara’s Black Out because of its explicit lesbian sex scenes featuring German Ÿber-model Claudia Schiffer. Jewish-American groups are also upset that the film helps us imagine the nausea-provoking, reality (I guess) of the sexual relationship between Schiffer and David Copperfield (nee’…

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IT'S IFFY IDEAS WEDNESDAY!

First up is Frosty, Warner Bros’ slowly melting live action/special effects project continues to send talent running for their rubbers. George Clooney passed on the opportunity to don the carrot and top hat. Next, John Travolta decided against becoming a three-balled hero. Then, Warner decided Independence Day star Bill Pullman wasn’t a big enough star…

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Tuesday, 07 October 1997

Woody Allen gave a very rare interview to the New York Daily News this week. Guess he wanted to make sure not to lose any ground to the returning Roman Polanski as America’s Favorite Cradle Robber. Apparently, the U-Turn press junket was a lot more interesting than the movie. First, there was Stone vs. Stone,…

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Pride

Quote Unquotesee all »

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