MCN Curated Headlines Archive for October, 2017

variety

“It’s very clear to me now that when someone does what Harvey Weinstein did, the devastation goes far beyond predator and victim.”
Robert Rodriguez, At Length, On Casting Rose McGowan In Grindhouse Despite Harvey Weinstein And Her NDA

NY Times

Guia Soncini On Asia Argento And “The Failure of Italian Feminism”

daily beast

“It was gross, kind of pathetic. He had no bearing on my career, so I wasn’t scared, just sort of grossed out… ‘Go find someone your own age,’ I thought. He was twice my age. It was all lecherous and gross.”
New Accuser: Serial Harasser Mark Halperin Targeted College Girls, Too, As Recently As 2011, Contrary To His Friday Statement

“I am profoundly sorry for the pain and anguish I have caused by my past actions. I apologize sincerely to the women I mistreated. The world is now publicly acknowledging what so many women have long known: Men harm women in the workplace. That new awareness is, of course, a positive development.”
At Least A Dozen Women Now Claim Mark Halperin Sexual Harassment explicit

hollywoodreporter.com

“The Academy’s Board of Governors is concerned about sexual harassment and predatory behavior in the workplace, especially in our own industry. We believe our Academy has a role to play in fostering a safe and respectful atmosphere for the professionals who make motion pictures. To this end, we are taking steps to establish a code of conduct for our members, which will include a policy for evaluating alleged violations and determining if action regarding membership is warranted.”

One-Hundred-Seventy Documentary Features Submitted For Oscar

indie wire

“I Was An Extra In Wong Kar-wai’s 50-Second Remake Of Lumière’s Workers Leaving A Factory, Shot By Chris Doyle“

NY Times

“It feels like Rome is burning. I’ve been reeling like everybody else. I don’t know when the fire is going to stop. I don’t know if I want it to stop.”
“A global conversation about sexual harassment, toxic masculinity and the institutional sexism that envelops the industry is much needed.” A woman shouted, “Topple the patriarchy!” A few men shifted uncomfortably in their seats.”
A Report From The Tenth Anniversary Celebration Of Women In Film

“These stories aren’t news to women in Hollywood. For years, women have whispered about Harvey Weinstein, about James Toback and so many others. They whispered but they didn’t speak out. Women in Hollywood knew that to say anything in public about this guy or that guy was to risk a reputation as being crazy, or difficult. Not fun. When women are 51 percent of the population but less than 30 percent of the faces onscreen, the last thing you want to be thought of is hard to work with.”
“I Was a Child Actress in Hollywood. There Were Always Whispers” By Quinn Cummings

NY Times

Errol Morris On “The Man Who Photographed Ghosts”

“Deckard fathers a new race, and Blade Runner 2049 ends on the brink of a race war. Kill the killers was an easy fix. The Blade Runner movies rehabilitate the replicant, turning it into an image of life subordinated, denied its sacredness. Replicant lives matter. Convincing humans to accept it, however, will take some doing. As an allegory of contemporary race relations, Blade Runner 2049 anticipates difficult times ahead.”

“It’s depressing that the unnecessary grandstanding behind the re-ousting of Richardson actually served a purpose and staved off his impending return for at least a little longer. But just like Harvey Weinstein in Hollywood, Terry Richardson isn’t the main problem. He’s a symptom of a broader, much more sinister issue in the fashion industry, where sexual harassment or even assault is considered an occupational hazard.”

Board Of Governors Drops Another Oscar On Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Emerging Canadian Filmmakers Converge At Vancouver 2017

LA Times

Rent Hikes And Evictions Drive Artists From Los Angeles Arts District

“We are pure! We are strong! We are brave! And we will fight!”
Rose McGowan At The Women’s Convention In Detroit 1’24” vid

variety

“I think he should go to jail. I had extraordinary experiences with him — not illegal ones, just brutal ones, but what I’ve read and what I’ve heard, that’s criminal. And there are many others, right up to the top, who I think have to be taken to task for that kind of behavior. He’s getting his just desserts. What can I say?”
Julie Taymor

USA TODAY Tallies 58 Harvey Weinstein Accusers

variety

Harvey Weinstein Files Suit Against WeinsteinCo

the wrap

Twenty-two Potential Buyers Reportedly Examine $300 Million Ask For Dregs Of WeinsteinCo, Minus Bob Weinstein

TriBeCa Grill Servers Chronicle Weinstein Booze, Caviar And Tantrums

hollywoodreporter.com

HBO Dumps Mark Helperin Election Miniseries

Selma Blair And Rachel McAdams Add To James Toback Annals Of Sexual Harassment 

NBC And MSNBC Relieve Admitted Serial Sexual Harasser Mark Helperin

daily beast

Weinstein Lawyer Lisa Bloom Reportedly Told Ronan Farrow They Had Files On Weinstein Accusers

“When you are written about since you were little, you sort of feel like — when someone pins down an identity for you then it’s almost like you have to make some kind of a statement to just be who you are, which is complex and not only that one thing… Then there’s all of a sudden a person out there, that you didn’t create.”
Sarah Polley’s 20-Year Path To “Alias Grace”

“Seeing Clearly in the Dark: A Profile of Monte Hellman in Present Day Los Angeles”

the wrap

When Can a Nondisclosure Agreement Be Broken?

“I believe I dissociated during the time he was having sex with me. I played dead.”

Apple Hires Brit Big TV Exec From 
Channel 4

“During this period, I did pursue relationships with women that I worked with, including some junior to me,” Mark Halperin said in a statement. “I now understand from these accounts that my behavior was inappropriate and caused others pain. For that, I am deeply sorry and I apologize. Under the circumstances, I’m going to take a step back from my day-to-day work while I properly deal with this situation.”

variety

“This test could be the first step towards a pricing model that drives incremental revenue in peak periods and incremental attendance in non-peak periods.”
Regal to Test Demand-Based Pricing for Ducats

“There will be no mention of the name Weinstein on the Wind River video release through Lionsgate, nor will there be evidence of Weinstein when the drama streams on Netflix. Acacia Entertainment, the main financier, backed by the Tunica-Biloxi tribe of Louisiana, will fund an Oscar campaign that will focus on best picture, writing, directing and acting.”

NY Times

“Part of Colony’s calculus appears to involve the likelihood that other women will sue the studio. More than 50 women have come forward. Mr. Barrack said that sorting through which potential liabilities ‘are attributable to the company on an ongoing basis, and which aren’t, is a Rubik’s Cube.'”
Colony Capital Won’t Paper Weinstein Company After All

Wind River Blows Away Weinstein; Weinstein Name Erased From Leap! And Tulip Fever

“Hanks-the-actor is cushioned; Hanks-the-author is not, and after humbly asking what other writers I’ve interviewed recently (Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis) barks with incredulous laughter. ‘Oh, shit,” he says.”

“These kinds of things deserve to be judged by their own merits, seen with good humor. After all, not every Tom Hanks movie is sentimental garbage. In a way, it’s a low bar to clear, as all we ought to ask of Tom Hanks the writer is stories (all of them with titles like “The Past Is Important to Us” and “A Junket in the City of Light”) that play like miniature Tom Hanks movies. There are worse things. Or so I thought. Then I read the sentence ‘We kissed a lot and touched each other in our wonderful places; and realized I was in hell.”

Veteran Tech Speaker Robert Scoble Ignores Counsel And Defends His Behavior Toward Women

Profile Like It’s 1999
“His life is already mythic in scale and incidents. But Toback’s cinematic reputation is more mixed. He has remained independent of ‘big, ugly, stupid Hollywood events.’ He has made nine personal films over 20 years by raising finance from independent producers – such as Michael Mailer, son of Norman, for Two Girls, and ex-Island Records owner Chris Blackwell for Black And White. But only his first film, Fingers, [financed by Brut], has risen to cult status.”

“Unlike other filmmakers who fight shy of reductive autobiographical parallels, Toback has always embraced the idea of living his life as a kind of wild, novelish fiction, while using his films to blur the boundary between reality and fantasy. ‘I barely find a distinction,’ says Toback. ‘I see my films as a continuation of what I’m thinking about, while my life is a preparation for the next film.'”

And 1998: “Anything Downey’s gonna be good in is gonna involve duplicity. There are very few people on earth who are more duplicitous. What kind? Well, sexual duplicity is among the most interesting and painful forms. So I know what the movie’s about. Probably a triangle. OK.”

And – Gawker‘s Toback Archive

“In 1960, when Fats Domino could have built a mansion anywhere on earth, he chose the corner of Caffin and Marais in the Lower Ninth Ward, a few blocks from where he was born and raised. Over the previous decade, he’d sold more records than anyone but Elvis Presley, and, unlike many contemporaries, his record contract entitled him to royalty checks. He was a star, hailed around the world. But he felt like the same person who’d delivered ice by wagon on Marais Street, before it was paved. He was living across the river in Jefferson Parish when he died on Wednesday.”
A Beauty of Remembrance

Members of Turkish Film Industry Launch “Rogue” Parallel Fest After Scrapping of “National Film Competition” Category at 54-Year-Old Antalya Film Festival for Alleged “Political” Reasons

Stephen Cone Criterion Top-23s

“Why Hedy Lamarr Was Hw’d’s Secret Weapon”

“Two-and-a-half weeks in, there’s zero sign that any kind of general soul-searching, much less systemic changes are in store.  The thing about the Harvey charges is that they are so ‘American Psycho’-esque that they can almost, kinda be dismissed as an anomaly. And then there’s Roy Price, but you know, that’s Roy Price. So instead of really dealing with our cultural problem here, we’ll just keep our heads down and die a death of a thousand tweets as every week another poohbah is brought down by new accusations.”

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“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.”

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

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?

WEEKEND READS ON MEDIAQUAKE

Tribune Trolley Problem

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