BYOB Archive for November, 2007

BYOB – November 26

Running around New York today… hoping that the Broadway strike ends so I can see Brian Cox in Tom Stoppard’s Rock-n-Roll tomorrow night. If not, The Gothams could await!
Here is some room for y’all to stretch.

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BYOB – Post-Thanksgiving

Still flying about… but the weather in Bermuda was lovely and NY, upcoming, is cold and wet, so I gather… still, quite a lot to be thankful for…
Here’s room to stretch out. I don’t think we’ll be obsessing on box office on MCN until Saturday, so feel free to start here…

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BYOB – Another Day, Another Airport…

You know, much as I love my own voice. if I were you, I would invest some time listening to the WGA strike discussion… and Holbrook… and Adams… and another couple LWDs that are coming up this week. But that’s just me. (Sadly, you’ll get stuck listening to my voice again in the process, but hopefully I get out of the way of some very smart, very interesting people who have something of real value to say.)
My internet access will be spotty until the weekend. I’m sure I’ll turn up a few times. But as ever, you have the floor while I am gone. Play nice and enjoy the run for the gobble gobble… even you foreigners!

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BYOB – November 18

It’s a travel day… and though I have figured out how to post via iPhone, I will be flying when box office numbers land. So here’s some space for you.

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BYOB – Nov 14

It’s funny how even an internet project can start to feel like “real” television.
We continue to knock out Lunch With Davids that will, I am told, arrive soon… we swear. Very time consuming, but very, very pleasurable. Amongst the LWDs that are in the editing bay right now are the entire Diving Bell & The Butterfly family, Hal Holbrook and Emile Hirsch from Into The Wild, Phillip Bosco from The Savages, Todd Haynes & Christine Vachon from I’m Not There, the director of Hairspray, Adam Shankman, and more.
Right now, it’s a little like a production. I’ve done my work. Now it’s in post. Then we have to get it out to you. The team is getting better, in front of and behind the camera, each week. And tomorrow, we’re shooting A Very Special LWD.
In the meanwhile, sorry if I am not as blog attentive as usual. I also missed my weekly Hot Button this morning, which I am still working on. But you all have been great in your responses to a couple of the recent posts.
And again

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BYOB – Too Much

Just a note and some free space before I run off again.
This week has been relentless and the blog has suffered. On the other hand, I have no interest in being a Disposall for every e-mail that comes my way regarding the strike. God bless those who wish to position themselves so, but there is so little discussion of the real issues and so much discussions of celebrities on picket lines, alleged “secret meetings.” firings that never happened, etc.
The sad part is that everyone knows that very few people are interested in a serious discussion of the issues… even less so when the strike ends.
I wish it were a lot more complicated than knowing that when WGA actually struck, the studios went into a well-planned mode of response, which will actually make about a month of the strike profitable for the studios. If you want to know why there is so little coverage of the strike in town, it’s because there is no news… just more rumors and personalities. The borderline for some between gossip and news seems permanently busted.
Meanwhile, careers go on, production continues across the globe, and the story of how this strike is all about working writers making another $10k a year isn’t really playing. The stakes just aren’t high enough or important enough to make it a national story more important than whether you’ll see a new Leno next Monday. And remember, all the talk shows combined reach less than 10% of the American population these days.
Sigh… off to another screening…

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BYOB – November 7

My entries are getting longer and rantier… so here is some space for you to relieve yourselves.

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BYOB – November 5

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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