BYOB Archive for February, 2009

BYOB Friday

The Jonas Brothers.
Uh…
Did my parents feel this way about The Monkees when my older sisters were into them?
The poor Beatles never had Live At Shea Stadium: The Motion Picture.
Nothing much to say, really..
Less, really.
Peter Scarlet, who never did much with Tribeca except spend money, is out. No great surprise… or loss… there.
Defamer.Gawker.com ran a note from the former editorial cabal that someone found a few bucks to buy the old Movieline name, logo, and URL and that there will now be a Defamer-type site there. I wish them luck – I really do – and I wonder why they think they will be ok launching a site like that in the middle of a recession. They do have the advantage of less infrastructure – half the revenues minus payments on Nick Denton’s multi-million dollar condo = enough for these guys to live on – but getting half the revenues will not be so easy. Micropublishing is not dead… but the niche better be nichier than “Snark About Showbiz.”
Speaking of snark, I quite enjoyed the Nikki Finke interview in I Want Media. When someone so passionately owns their own little patch of reality like that, you just have to sit back, relax, and appreciate the power of modern pharmaceuticals.
We did find this rare image from an interview Nikki did with Letterman during the WGA strike which never aired

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BYOB Thursday

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BYOB – Catching Up…

The days after the Oscar season end feel a bit like the first days getting back to school after months of summer vacation… waking up on a different schedule… new people, many familiar, but different… work to do but somehow, not as quick to get out the pen… even the feeding schedule (and the food itself) is different.
It’s a hangover, but not unpleasant that same way. Just an “Oh yeah… there is something else other than the Oscars and Watchmen going on….”
Then there is the real downside

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BYOB – Oscar Sunday

You are pretty much going to be on your own today… be nice to each other… have a good time… I’ll see you on the other side…

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BYOB – Friday The Pre-Oscarteenth

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BYOB – President's Day

If you are waiting for your mail today…
If you really need to get quarters at the bank…
If you are overestimating the day for Friday the 13th’s Monday…
YOU MIGHT BE A BYOBer!

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BYOB Friday The 13th

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Another BYOB

Truth is… most of my impulse to write today was to explain why other stories were wrong or silly, whether it was positioning opinion as fact or a writer screaming about everyone else being silly and then participating in a circle jerk about the Oscars… there were some serious things too… but really, I am sick of being part of the circle myself.
As long as I am writing about others and not primarily the ideas, I am failing.
And so, your space to run with…

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BYOB

Been obsessing on building a DP/30 video blog most of the day… my apoogies…
Here is some space for non-Watchman discussion.

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BYOB Weekend 020609

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BYOB For Humpday

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BYO(Super)B(owl) Sunday

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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