BYOB Archive for September, 2008

BYOB – Crash: Episode 3

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BYOB

Sorry… one of those days that got away… please self-amuse…

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BYOB – Thuuuuuursday

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BYOB

Long day’s journey into LA…
I was greeted on my flight to the McCain campaign dropping yet another bombshell into an impossibly dense cycle of other news… this time, the choice to deny her cooperation on Troopergate… Harvey Weinstein hocking his very worst films for Oscar until the bitter end has NOTHING on these guys… truly singular in history…
And if you want to know why Karl Rove slapped McCain yesterday, it was the same exact strategy as the Hillary Clinton campaign… attack relentlessly until the crowd starts to resent it, then confess that BOTH sides are doing it and try to make your attacks seem just the same as the other sides when they are not really even close.
It makes the movie business seem sublime.
And as far as the movie business and the funding business, the short answer is… not the biggest deal ever for movies. The movie business’ list o’ suckers had already been thinned out before this week’s loud implosions. But what this may lay out is an even faster run for the auction house for the corporations that are not 100% committed to the movies. It could also make a Reliant/DreamWorks deal for MGM move along, as the giddy hopes Harry Sloan had for a big sale are now even more unlikely.
Anyway… morel tomorrow…

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BYOB Weeekend

Heading off to Steven Soderbergh”s 4.5 hour epic biopic of New Line co-founder Bob Shaye as the closer for this year’s TIFF. Can’t wait to see if the John Waters years are really better than the Lord of the Rings years or vice versa. But with Ben Kingsley as Tony Kaye, Robert Downey, Jr. as Wes Craven, Brett Ratner in a duel role as Michael DeLuca and himself, Noah Emmerich as Toby Emmerich and of course, Lyn Shaye as Bob… well, it should be interesting.
Leaving the rest to you, for now…

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BYOB – 9,10,8

No time to discuss how scary it is that anyone in their right mind without strong right-wing ideas would consider voting for a ticket with a VP who can’t be allowed to talk to press…
What are you are talking about these days?

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BYOB – Weekend

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BYOB – Apolitical

Toronto begins in a few days and the movie coma will begin… no doubt, to the relief of many of you.
Here is some space to get the conversation moving in a movie direction…

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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