Movie City News Archive for October, 2017

Jeremy Piven Denies Allegation

Jeremy Piven Denies Allegation

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Page Six Alleges Harvey Weinstein Told Confidant “‘he was born to take the fall for his behavior in order to “change the world.” He is resigned to his punishment — as a martyr for social change.'”

Page Six Alleges Harvey Weinstein Told Confidant “‘he was born to take the fall for his behavior in order to “change the world.” He is resigned to his punishment — as a martyr for social change.’”

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Alec Baldwin Calls Glenn Whip To Talk James Toback

“I never knew of anything where Jimmy assaulted or bullied or pressured. I’ve never heard anything other than that Jimmy was somebody who hit on a lot of women in a very vague way. He had an appetite for going up to women and saying salacious and provocative things to them and introducing himself with his…

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Rob Hardy, Dean Cundey And Jim Hemphill On The Thing

Rob Hardy, Dean Cundey And Jim Hemphill On The Thing

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Greta Gerwig Conversing In The Wilds Of Manhattan

“I feel like movies are presents, and credits and fonts are bows and wrapping paper. I like everything to feel like it was given a lot of time. I hate it when I watch movies and it seems like they just went and picked a font and, like, called it a day… I put into her the…

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A. O. Scott Leads Team Lady Bird

“I wish I could convey to you just how thrilling this movie is. I wish I could quote all of the jokes and recount the best offbeat bits. I’m tempted to catalog the six different ways the ending can make you cry. I’ll settle for one: the bittersweet feeling of having watched someone grow in…

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John Carpenter Returns to Halloween

John Carpenter Returns to Halloween

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Egyptian Filmmaker Reem Qotb, Recent New York Academy Graduate, Reportedly To Be In Prison For Almost A Year For Drone Camera In Luggage

Egyptian Filmmaker Reem Qotb, Recent New York Academy Graduate, Reportedly To Be In Prison For Almost A Year For Drone Camera In Luggage

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Late Producer Peter Macgregor-Scott On The Making Of Batman & Robin

“So I sent Tommy Lee the screenplay down in Texas, and two hours later, he calls me up and he says, ‘I don’t get it.’ I said, ‘Why don’t you reread the fucking thing and remember that the Academy Award-winning actor Tommy Lee Jones is playing the fucking role!’ And I hung the phone up. A…

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Facebook, Twitter, Google Offer A Lot Of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ To Congress

“Yeah, we’re working on the best approach to getting to know the clients and getting to know who’s behind the entities that are signing up for advertising.” Facebook, Twitter, Google Offer A Lot Of  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ To Congress

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CBS Looking Into “Entourage”-Era Allegations About Jeremy Piven

“We are aware of the media reports and are looking into the matter.” CBS Looking Into “Entourage”-Era Allegations About Jeremy Piven

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Screenwriter Robert Getchell Was 81; Screenplays Include Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Bound For Glory

Screenwriter Robert Getchell Was 81; Screenplays Include Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Bound For Glory

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Before AFM, Gregg Goldstein On Int’l Distribution In The Amazon Studios-Netflix Era And How AFM Attendees Are Getting Squeezed And Sometimes Shafted

“Digital platforms are taking top projects off the table, new ventures including Endeavor Content are helping finance sales companies’ transformation into producers, and online dealmaking and fests such as Toronto are turning film buying into a 365-day-a-year business that could become far less dependent on markets or sales agents.” Before AFM, Gregg Goldstein On Int’l…

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London Metropolitan Police Investigating Harvey Weinstein Allegations By Seven Women Over 11 Incidents From The 1980s To 2015

London Metropolitan Police Investigating Harvey Weinstein Allegations By Seven Women Over 11 Incidents From The 1980s To 2015

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How The Grauniad Found 800,000 Paying Readers

How The Grauniad Found 800,000 Paying Readers

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Joint. Joint Venture: MGM and Annapurna Pact Joint Deal For U. S. Distribution; Bond In Play?

METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER AND ANNAPURNA PICTURES FORM JOINT VENTURE TO DISTRIBUTE FILMS THEATRICALLY IN THE U.S. MGM Returns to Domestic Theatrical Distribution LOS ANGELES (October, 31 2017) – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and Annapurna Pictures (Annapurna) have formed a new joint venture for theatrical distribution in the U.S., it was announced today by Gary Barber, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer…

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“House of Cards” Production Suspended

“They are two weeks into a production schedule that would extend well into 2018 even if they had not shut down Tuesday. Contracts totaling millions of dollars for everything from actors to catering are already signed. Who eats all that financial loss if production never resumes? Even the best insurance won’t cover all of it.”…

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Oreskes

Accusations made against @npr's top editor, @MichaelOreskes:https://t.co/fKg9ae83YsHe was at @nytimes when this allegedly occurred. pic.twitter.com/uVIWsONujV — Ben Mullin (@BenMullin) October 31, 2017

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NPR Top Editor Accused of Sexual Harassment

NPR Top Editor Accused of Sexual Harassment

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“I might have kissed somebody on the cheek to say goodbye and then licked them. That’s my thing.” Andy Dick Fired From Movie

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Movie City News

“I don’t think it’s cruel to say this, because John himself would undoubtedly have turned it into a gleeful anecdote: When he had the stroke that killed him, he was at a local dinner theater. Hell of a review.”

“I am inclined to aver that every activity needs its critics, from narcissists bloviating in Washington to exhibitors of knee holes in their blue jeans by way of following a fad. So, too, tennis players and others wearing their caps backward. There is, to be sure, only fairly innocuous folly in puncturing pants or reversing caps, but for political or artistic or religious twisting of thought or harboring holes in the head there is rather less excuse. I have always inveighed against the bleary journalism practiced by newspaper reviewers, as opposed to the real criticism performed by, well, critics.”

“I often felt a twinge of grief at the idea that John Simon had devoted his life to a method of work that could only make him increasingly unhappy. Here was a man, elegant, articulate, and vastly knowledgeable, fluent in at least half a dozen languages, whose gifts of mind gave nothing back to the arts he wrote about except a few unkind remarks that made fun of someone’s performance, ethnicity, physical attributes, or, with a pun, on his target’s name. (“If this is Norman Wisdom, I’ll take Saxon folly.”) Other theatre critics keep such darts in their rucksacks for occasional use; John lived by them.”

“One person’s critic is another person’s crackpot. That they are not united in their opinions is ascribable to the Latin saying: quot homines, tot sententiae. I myself prefer being considered a creep, but that is what you get for having what Vladimir Nabokov called ‘Strong Opinions.’ It is odd that in a country so wallowing in negativity, starting with mass shootings and climaxing with Trump, such an unimportant matter as theater criticism should generate so much hostility. The only target patently more important is lead in the drinking water.”

Review: Little Women (no spoilers)

The DVD Wrapup: Cold War, Betty Blue, Official Secrets, Demons, Olivia, American Dreamer, Land of Yik Yak

20 Weeks To Oscar: Cinema, Trump, and Oscar

E. Scott Weinberg On Youthful Fangoria Encounters

Rome Bookstore Closes

With a Grauniad-Alleged $300 Million Budget, Could The Yet-Unseen But Surely Weird Cats Pass A Billion Dollars at The Box Office?

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