The Hot Blog Archive for October, 2007

BYOB – Halloween

I am out for most of the day today, though there is a new Hot Button going up sometime today, as well as Gurus 2.0 on MCN.
Let me also say that while her coverage is extremely narrow because of how it is being fed to her, Nikki Finke’s site is clearly worth reading in these early pre-strike days. She is getting propaganda from both sides and running it. She seems to have no idea when she is being played or not, but if you can parse it, there is some great stuff there and she is clearly working her ass off lately to be the one on top of this all. So credit to her… and let’s hope the fools are still letting their working members work this time next week instead of pretending to be heroes of the working class who are driving their Porsche SUVs to the rallys to bring down the system that they simply want a bigger piece of. (Strike when it’s right… not when expedient.)

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Noah's Frenzy Lands On Ridley

Some angry, angry mail came in on Noah’s column this week. I thought it would be good to open up the floor.
Personally, I find his feelings about this a bit 20something and short-sighted… really as simple as “he doesn’t get it.” But then again, he doesn’t “get” Kingdom of Heaven‘s director’s cut, so how can you argue with him. The heart wants what the heart wants.
After the jump, a particularly angry letter that has in its opening graph, “I felt COMPELLED to write this e-mail, to tell you in fact, what a jackass you are…
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Ridley Scott – Overrated?
I know that in some circles, I would be torn limb from limb for saying this: Ridley Scott is simply not that great.
There, I said it.
Alright, yes, he’s a competent filmmaker and is not exactly a blight on the cinematic landscape, but I don’t really see why Ridley Scott is deified while his brother Tony Scott is vilified considering their styles are remarkably similar. Let’s say you switched the material that each of them directed, do you think that Tony Scott would have ruined any of the films that Ridley has directed? Could Ridley have elevated D

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Yes

If the Teamsters are really going to honor WGA picket lines, as per this Variety story, the horror show strike will not happen. There may be weeks of negotiations to come, but the entire dynamic changes.
But here is my question… when has this ever actually happened when SAG wasn’t the striking union?
Anyone?
Add: The Teamsters in ’88
Teamsters in July
The Teamsters website

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Need To Know

This is an example of a letter being sent out to WGA members in an information gathering process that has raised some hackles. Names and projects have been redacted.
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Dear XXX,
As you know, we

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BYOB – October 29

A new week… lots to wonder about… I’ll be posting, but here is some space for you to Bring Your Own Blog…

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LWD – No Country For Bardem & Brolin

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Two goofy men on one serious film… the interview

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LWD – Patricia Clarkson & Emily Mortimer On Lars & The Real Girl

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Talking Lars, opportunities for women in film, what men want, etc…
The discussion
Earlier – Ryan Gosling & director Craig Gillespie

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Weekend Estimates by Klady – Oct 28

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Strike Coming?

I am not in town this week and not staying obsessively absorbed by the hour-to-hour non-news non-movement of the possible – and some say inevitable – WGA strike as of Wednesday night.
I say again… for clarity’s sake… that the huge mistake many of the writers keep making is that they believe, 1) they will bring the studios to their knees by striking mid-TV-season, and 2) that they studios don’t believe the strike will happen and therefore, that is why they aren’t giving up anything at the negotiating table already.
The reality is, 1) that millions will be lost, but hundreds of millions are at stake and the WGA is not the studios’ biggest problem and 2) that the studios will continue to hold out on anything with the WGA that will been seen as precedent when they seriously negotiate with SAG next spring/summer.
Everyone gets so caught up in the details that the big picture gets lost. WGA can strike. WGA can settle for a deal that doesn’t have rollbacks, but doesn’t force much progress either. But what they can not do is to win new, industry-changing concessions by striking while everyone else keeps working. In the end, it is always the people in the union who can least afford to be on strike who spend all the time on the picket lines and end up leaving town by the time things settle down while the well-paid writers cut back on travel and extravagances before making up for the downtime in a hurry when the strike ends, either juggling multiple high-profile projects pushing for start dates or selling that spec they wrote during the strike.
I am not against the unions taking an ax to the studios. But they must shut it down all at once and they must be willing to win a war of attrition. You can’t win a war of attrition one union at a time. And this crap about “don’t let the studios prepare themselves” is more crap… as though they hadn’t anticipated this coming… back to misconception #2. Smart business people consider all the possibilities and contingencies before they decide how to position themselves. It is not emotional and it is not reactive.
I wish I could say that I believe that a strike is a winning idea, but not only don’t I see it, but every time someone explains why it is a good idea, it seems to be based on the notion that the “other guys” are dumb or short-sighted or acting purely out of arrogance. “They” may be those things, but “they” are the buyers, not the sellers and they know it.

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Friday Estimates by Klady – 10/26

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Based on Klady

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Box Office Space…

Here on the east coast, they have these crazy times for sports… so I’m off to a college football game at 7am L.A. Time and will be back at the computer until about 3p. So keep an eye out for Len’s Friday estimates… or the other ones… and we’ll talk when I get back. All and all, it should be very uninteresting.

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20 Weeks/T-Minus 19 – Whning While Mining

Look

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BYOB – Oct 25

That last BYOB went back in time… sorry.
In New Jersey/New York… lots on the agenda for the next week, including 6 shows (no musicals… sorry). I should catch up with some actual thinking tonight for the blog.
Until then, it’s all yours. Be kind… if not to me, at least to each other.

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Another Early Screener Break

Word came through another web journalist that Universal’s American Gangster has already hit the internet.
In spite of perception out there, it is still fairly unusual for films to turn up weeks before theatrical release. Now and again, a copy of a film being distributed internally at a studio and shared with vendors working on the film will pop up, loaded with timecode and other frame-breaking images in order to discourage piracy or any other recreational viewing. But for the most part, the studios have kept pretty good hold of their films before prints are shipped. Once prints are out there, it is inevitably a matter of hours before the first off-screen bootleg appears on city streets for $5 or less.
The studio is already on the hunt in this case, but it does remind those of us who are in the business of seeing films before release that all those irritating and, for some, personally insulting security precautions in screening rooms and theaters with recruited audiences do have a purpose.
I always think that 10 of us – who the distributor knows and has invited into a room way too small for anyone to run a camera without others seeing and hearing it – being monitored by men with goggles is a bit much. But corporations infamously can only move at one speed and “secure” is the one that is responsible to shareholders these days. And really, the guys at SEM and other security firms hired to do these events have gotten to know those of us who attend regularly by sight and have a more relaxed attitude, I find, when we see them for the third time in a week. They know we are not the danger. (That was kind of like asking for a strip search the next time, huh?) But still, the problem continues.

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BYOB – Oct 14

Another travelling day…

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The Hot Blog

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