BYOB Archive for January, 2008

BYOB – Jan 31

It’s yet another travel day… here is some room to roam…

39 Comments »

BYOB – Jan 29

Before I leave it to you, a couple quickies…
1. All this talk about the WGA talks being tied to Oscar is ticking me off. Does anyone really think that The Oscars are more important to The Writers than that little thing called, “going back to work?” I have said repeatedly that “Hollywood” will not stand for Oscar being shuttered. But it feels almost as though this is yet another effort by Gil Cates to make the negotiation appear to be bigger than the Negotiating Committee. It is not. Had the AMPTP put this deal on the table in October, this strike would likely have never happened. And this leads to the real question… how much did AMPTP really want the strike to happen so they could force majeur the decks clear?
2. I happened to chat with Anjelica Huston the day of the Oscar nods. There was no coyness about who Daniel Day-Lewis is channeling in his performance. See her here.
3. Juno, which just crossed $100 million, will be amongst the 10 most profitable films of 2007, along with 300, Knocked Up, Superbad, The Simpsons, and Ratatouille.
Now, your turn…

53 Comments »

BYOB – Weekender

The return to LA is about to begin. I am looking forward to sitting down, without the mania around me, and considering the fullness of this last 10 days. There are movies to discuss (Hamlet 2, Man On Wire, In Prison All My Life, Choke, Momma’s Man, and others), business to consider, and the future of indie to think about.
Meanwhile, discussions about strike discussions are fruitless. The deal will soon be done, barring insanity on either side. The deal will be, as it always was going to be, what the studio side was willing to do. The difficult question of whether the strike was necessary will forever be conjecture. (There are pressures brought to bear that go beyond deal points. “How profitable was the strike to the AMPTP side?” is a story that will be hard to write.) But we all need perspective, not inflamatory gossip, right now.
In any case, I have miles and miles to go before I stop drivng. Box office stuff should be up on MCN soon. Have at it all…

17 Comments »

BYOB – January 24

I know… many of you are bored with Sundance coverage… or frustrated that I haven’t had enough time to write in more depth.
Either way, roll your own here…

51 Comments »

BYOB – January 18

I know… some of you are already bored with Sundance coverage and want to discuss how badly 27 Dresses will cannibalize Cloverfield and why both these powerfully marketed niche films are opening on the same day, forcing the teens and 20s to decide whether she is going to be dutiful or if he is going to get laid on Saturday night.
Cloverfield will win the weekend, but I think 27 Dresses, which I hadn’t taken into account in my previous guess that the monster mess will crack the January record, will cost it at least $10 million this weekend. And the lizard lump will have legs much like the movie monster’s… short in comparison to the overall body.
And it will be interesting to see how the expansion of There Will Be Blood, smartly held until after Oscar noms closed, will do.
But hey… discuss whatever you like. It doesn’t have to be box office. I am on the run and will try to check in… but until then, the floor is yours…

106 Comments »

BYOB – Sundance

A space for your stuff.

7 Comments »

BYOB – Travelling

I’m on the road to Park City all day, so be nice to each other and I’ll see you on the other side.

32 Comments »

BYOB – Jan 9

Can you smell the quiet?

45 Comments »

BYOB – J4

18 Comments »

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