BYOB Archive for January, 2009

BYOB Friday

It’s the weekend of movies that studios don’t want critics to see and a Super Bowl that may be great, but is sure to be down in the ratings… go figure…

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BYOB

You ever have one of those weeks where everything is happening… and nothing seems to be happening?

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BYOB

Take me away from all this death…

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BYOB, 012209

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BYOB – President 0, Day One

Less filling… tastes great…

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BYOB 11709

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BYOB – A Man In Sundance

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BYOB – Travel Wednesday

On the way to Park City…

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BYOB With Apologies

It’s dead out there… but for me, the quiet is more about Sundance prep… which continue…

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BYOB – Back to Work

Sorry… runing back to work.
We have a screening of Doubt tonight and we’re shooting a DP/30 with Viola Davis… which thrills me, as I am a get admirer of her work.
Have at it. Be kind to one another and fight the arguments and not the people, PLEASE.

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BYOB – It's ONLY Tuesday?!?!?!

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BYOB – A New Week In A New Year

The NYT on the Blu-ray roll.
I agree with Reed Hastings that there is more time in DVD and Blu-ray than many prognisticators are guessing. But the big block remains the price of the hardware… and I don’t know why the story doesn’t address that more clearly. The education issue is real, but it’s a lot more real when a Blu-ray player is twice as much as a regular player and people don’t have any sense of how to value each machine. Is a Sony better than a Samsung or a Sharp? Is one more forward thinking? What is there to know other than pricing and that they want to sell you one?

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BYOB – Jan 2: The Weekend Begins

Condolences to The Travolta family… losing a child is one of the worst things that can happen to someone… 16…. seemingly past the young danger zone… not quite expected to be in the older danger zone… everything to live for, this kid… so sad…

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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