BYOB Archive for March, 2008

BYOB – Weekdays

Still Bermuda-ing…
I keep thinking I will sit down and write an opus, but the Bermuda International Film Festival, which is low on star power but big on international filmmakers this year, has kept me on the run – okay… walk, in shorts – pretty much all day, from films to wine parties to Dark & Stormies… hey, someone’s gotta do it.
So… some space for you…

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BYOBermuda

I am still having password issues with posting to the blog on anything but my iPhone…. we should have it worked out soon. I really don’t want to write about the fine work at the LAByrinth Theater Co without some space and the ability to edit the piece properly.
In any case, I’m off to BIFF for the eighth year. Like many festivals, they are having a tough year with sponsorship… but the festival’s interest in international cinema and emerging filmmakers will surely trump the less glittery celebrity line-up.
See you on the other side…

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BYOB – Peace Zone

Hey…
I have had some computer issues, so I have just read the bloody mess around the fun conversation about the old HBO days when movies played 50 times and there were few other channels. (Homebodies, anyone?)
I will try to get it together on this end. Please use this space for good, not evil. Namecalling is weak, even when I feel the need to smack down a pompous regular now and again.
Be nice.

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BYOB – Travel Day

Eastward ho!
I’m heading to Pennsylvania, where I will be…
Just kidding. NY and then on to Bermuda for the Bermuda International Film Festival, my annual jaunt to the island of scooters, fish sandwiches, Dorothy’s burgers, and quite a good little film fest. It ain’t Berlin, but for a place with three screens on the island and a world of reasons to stay outdoors, they find all kinds of world cinema and fill theaters year after year.
But first, a stop in NY and a look at David Mamet’s political comedy and Phil Hoffman’s latest directorial effort.
And a long flight… so bring da noise, bring da funk…

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BYOB Weekend

I know… it’s been a rather slow blog week for me… and Bermuda is just a week away…
Here is some space for y’all to put up when I shut up…

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BYOB – Wed

Hours away… the helm is yours…

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BYO Civility

Feel free to use this space for whatever conversations come up.
But please… I have noticed a few people who seem to be spoiling for a fight and taking some otherwise valuable conversations someplace personal and petty.
Let’s please vent our anger into our opinions and not get into the measuring of body parts.
Your turn…

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Bring Your Own Friday Blog

The weekend is coming… does anyone old enough to spell care about Horton Hears A Who?
Does anyone really care about Garry Shandling’s ugly divorce from T-Pel?
Wouldn’t it be nice to skip to May?
Is there a reason why we have to be treated to an idiotic survey that states the obvious every single frickin’ spring??? (The wider the audience interest – which things like profanity, nufdity, and the use of your brain limits – the higher the gross. F-in’ DUH already!!!!)

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BYOB Thursday – Long Week

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BYOB Lives!

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BYOB – 3/6/8

I am still getting used to being back in Los Angeles… amuse yourselves if you must….

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BYOY Back

Back in LA… breathing in that air… sea legs wobbling on land…
We’ll catch up soon…

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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