BYOB Archive for February, 2010

BYOB

Thanks for the patience. We’re one week out from the close of voting and I am processing video as fast as I can. Coming up later today – I hope – are Avatar‘s James Horner, Fantastic Mr Fox‘s Alexandre Desplat, The Hurt Locker‘s Barry Ackroyd, and the full interview with Jon Landau (which should be up before 1p).
Tomorrow, computer willing, will be an Indie Day with a new interview with the young, fast-rising group from Easier With Practice, which opens LA & NY on Friday. We have writer/director Kyle Patrick Alvarez, Brian Geraghty, Marguerite Moreau, and Katie Aselton talking about the film, but also getting down the nitty gritty about the opportunities and challenges of building a career in the industry these days. Great group. And a chat with Dawn Hudson, who has been with ifpWest/FIND for 19 years herself and is in production with the 25th Independent Spirit Awards, which is changing things up and switching to Friday night in downtown LA.
And we’ll be shooting 2 more Oscar nominees tomorrow, to go up over the weekend.
So full boat here. Which leaves it up to you all to chat amongst yourselves…

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BYOB Tues 22310

On the run, near and far, shooting… it’s a big week for composers… and by the end of the week, we will have DP/30s with all five nominees… and an interpretive dance by Mr Shankman. Also coming this week, we will fill out the doc nominees list, talk Indie Spirits, and follow The Hurt Locker money.
Aside from rehashing the Miramax fire sale and Alice In Wonderland window debacle again – I honor Disney’s interest in pursuing a next-gen future, but they could end up drowning the baby for the entire industry by trying to hard to show how uncool bathwater is – there really isn’t much going on. So… it’s on you now…

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BYOB for a new week, 222

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BYOB

I’m heading up to Santa Barbara again… and between being on the road and doing interviews (I’ll be doing an in-person Q&A with Oliver Stone along with the premiere of his new doc, sure to be Fox News’ favorite, South of The Border), I don’t know that I will be online, even by iPhone, all day.
So please, have at it…

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BYOB, 2/11/09

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BYOB

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Bring Your Own Blog

Heading up to the Santa Barbara Film Festival for a few days… hoping for less rain than more… limited posting while on the road…

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BYOB

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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