Hot Button Archive for August, 1997

What's Labor Day all about? Theme-itis hits The Hot Button!

GOING INTO LABOR
Oliver Stone‘s novel, A Child’s Night Dream, will hit bookshelves soon. Stone says that the story, about someone named Oliver Stone, is not autobiographical. Let’s hope not. He writes about he and mom being “entwined like snakes of desire…” And of dad? “I hate you, I’ve hated you from the day I was born!… I’d like to kill you.” Come on, Ollie, light that fire!

LABOR PROBLEMS

WGA West presidential candidate Lynn Roth on unfairness to screenwriters: “They wind up writing a first draft, second draft, studio draft, network draft, director draft, actor draft,” she said. “Same pay, too many drafts.” As usual, the most important draft is forgotten. The good one.
WORKING STIFFS
Vivid Video had its first-ever critics screening recently, promoting it’s latest opus, the XXX rated, Bad Wives. Vivid deleted all the sex scenes in order to emphasize the storylines, plots and dialogue. They also went mainstream with their lavish Hollywood after-party, featuring whore d’oeuvres, music by Axel Hose and 25 cent actress rides.
THAT JERRY LEWIS WEEKEND
The spirit of Jerry lives in Hollywood. Someone is actually going to produce a movie called Flying Tigers vs. Flying Saucers, about the WWII Flying Tigers’ attempts to shoot down a Nazi-recovered alien spacecraft carrying Adolf Hitler. No word on whether Jerry will make this a sequel to his infamous The Day The Clown Cried, about a clown in a concentration camp. Hey Naaaaazzziiiii!

Geena Davis Filed for Divorce

Geena Davis filed for divorce Tuesday from Finnish director
Renny Harlin. Her next relationship, uh, I mean, role, is not
yet set.

Kim Basinger appeared in Albuquerque, NM, railing against flawed
animal welfare laws. “These animals are kept in horrific conditions.
They’re dragged around cities, suffering in the name of entertainment,”
she said. The 50 reporters flown in for the event were fed miniature
Snickers and coffee as they waited without bathroom access for two hours
in a 10 foot square press pen, whose boundaries were enforced by four
armed security guards, anticipating Ms. Basinger’s two minute appearance
(“No questions, please.”). No injuries were reported.

Kathie Lee Gifford‘s son Cody appeared this week on her morning
TV show, adorably engaging viewers with his distaste for Sabrina,
unhappy that Harrison Ford portrayed “a kissy man.” His dimples
deepened coyly as he also stated a distaste for publications in which
his father, Frank Gifford, portrayed “an unfaithful, over-the-hill
oral-sexy man.”
Christian Slater is set for Very Bad Things, a film about
a bachelor party that gets out of hand when a guest kills a hooker.
The film offers Slater a chance to share one of the important life lessons he’s picked up in rehab: It just ain’t a party `til someone kills a hooker.

For more of David Poland’s work, check out Whole
Picture
.

Future Projects

Steven Seagal, musician, (are you laughing yet?) is doing a Fire Down Below blues music tour, inspired by his latest film. Unfortunately for stud boy Seagal, he hasn’t seen anything “down below” since his “pregnancy” — apparently, he’s having triplets. Now if only Warner Bros. can get Brando’s Apocalypse Now cinematographer to light him for the press junket.
“I Dream Of Jeannie” is coming to the big screen with either Lisa Kudrow or Cameron Diaz. Whose navel would you pay to watch for 2 hours? Hello. Hello! Get that sick grin off your face, you lowlife!
Jeff Katzenberg has used his $250 million unemployment claim (a.k.a. lawsuit) against Disney to get an early look at the first draft of Michael Eisner‘s as yet unpublished autobiography. Lucky guy. Page 782: “…after all that, I still graduated elementary school with honors, but more on that later.”
Fargo star Steve Buscemi recently directed a series of commercial spots for Nike and the WNBA. Production was delayed when producers underestimated how much basketball player a wood chipper could chip if a wood chipper could chip basketball players. (Answer: seven minutes a foot)

From the Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Cigar Dept.

Jim Belushi, Peter Weller and David Caruso have committed to James Orr‘s Blowing Smoke, a cigar club Swingers for the over-40 set. If cigars are a symbol of career virility, maybe these three should be sucking on Virginia Slims.
Quentin Tarantino‘s heading for Broadway. I’m sure he’ll kill them. literally. Maybe he’ll end up doing the Pulp Fiction musical, Royale With Cheese. I can hear the first song now…
“Hitmen, heroin, sodomy/ Scenes not in order like they’re s’posed to be/ Career resurrections everywhere you see/ Royale With Cheese. Royale With Cheese…”
Warren Beatty is being sued for $425,000 by screenwriter Aaron “A Few Good Men” Sorkin. Beatty kicked him off “Bulworth” because, Sorkin’s suit claims, Beatty has “irrational, incomprehensible, and unwarranted personal animus and hostile feelings toward Sorkin.” If you think he hates you now, try being a camera without any soft focus Vaseline on your lens, Aaron!
Buzz is that the location for the upcoming Superman‘s Metropolis will be none other than Pittsburgh, PA. I guess Tim Burton’s vision has Supes as the Man Of Bankrupt Steel.

This is what's under our skin today in Hollywood.

This is what’s under our skin today in Hollywood.
Would 11.1 million dollars thrill or appall you? Depends whether you spent $100 million on G.I. Jane or $30 million on Money Talks.
Audiences will be pleased to know that Masterminds’ $1 million start will cause almost as many moans at Sony HQ as the retro-1983 trailer did in theaters.
Air Force One’s Gary Oldman and his wife had a baby boy last week. After being slapped, the infant wrapped the cord around the OB/GYN’s throat and demanded three wetnurses and a change of diapers.
Twister 2: Cash Control is on the way. Maybe this time the script won’t blow.
The “Headless Mickey” lawsuit against Disney by former Mouseketeer Billie Jean Matay was thrown out of court. Her lawsuit against her parents for shattering the illusion of Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy and J. Edgar Hoover’s heterosexuality is pending.
For more of David Poland, read The Whole Picture.
E-ME.

That's Entertainment

Robert Redford and GCC are starting a chain of theaters for independent film only called Sundance Cinemas. But what’s going to happen to the real indie experience?
It’s 2 A.M. You arrive at the abandoned hot tub factory. You and your date get out of the car, keeping an eye out for muggers and murderers. The smell of urine wafts through the air. A trail of blood and popcorn leads you to a massive sheet metal door. You knock. A skinny guy in a T-shirt opens the door and welcomes you to “Bob’s Place” and asks for your credit card. You sign a blank slip. You’ve just rented a camera crane. There is no candy counter, just a craft service table full of M&Ms and two day old bagels. You go into “Theater One,” but find a 13″ TV and two folding chairs. “Uh, we don’t have a print yet, just half inch video,” says your host. You watch it. When your date stops crying, you leave.
E-Me.

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