MCN Curated Headlines Archive for May, 2018

NY Times

“Roth’s work had more rage, more wit, more lust, more talk, more crosscurrents of thought and emotion, more turning over of the universals of existence (in his case, Jewish-American existence), as if tending meat over a fire, than any writer of his time.”
Dwight Garner On Philip Roth

“The total awareness. The ferocity. The joyous awfulness. And the utter, annihilating fearlessness.”
Nicholas Meyer On Philip Roth

“When Roth is in the mood, he is a deft mimic; he is funny in the way a great Catskills comedian might be were that comedian also possessed of an immense linguistic gift. But on that summer day, while the country seemed to rock between pious concern and giggling fits, Roth was not at all in the mood.”
From 2000, David Remnick‘s Epic New Yorker Profile Of Philip Roth

“How could a street as modest as ours induce such rapture just because it glittered with rain?”
From 2010, Scott Raab Goes Home To Newark With Philip Roth And Philip Roth Plaza

“Factual human beings are fiction workers – it’s the only way they can make actual sense of themselves and the people around them, by, as Roth put it in ‘Pastoral,’ always “getting them wrong” – and Roth was to be among the most dedicated of all wrong-getters, his life’s work thus paradoxically a fight against the formal closure that gave shape to the many masterpieces he wrote.”
Twelve Writers On Their Favorite Philip Roth Novels, Including James Schamus

An Anecdote On Philip Roth And “Empathetic Design”

“Vanity Foul: In Celebrity Profiles, The Puff Piece Makes Way for the Power Piece”

hollywoodreporter.com

Comcast Prepping “Superior” All-Cash Bid To Foil Fox Buy By Disney

wsj

Excess Disney Execs Exit

“They don’t make anti-authority action films such as RoboCop any more. By the turn of the 21st century, the action genre had lost sight of who the bad guys were, arguably because we now live in even more politically confused times. So modern-day plots have become convoluted and steeped in idealism. The difference between good and evil is often a matter of perspective, and the traditional, one-dimensional villain has been replaced by complex individuals who demand – shudder – sympathy.”

GLAAD Suggests 50% Of All H’wd Movies Should Feature LGBTQ Characters

wsj

Federal Prosecutors Investigating Whether Harvey Weinstein Lured Women Across State Lines for Sexual Crimes

“The Parenting Internet Is up in Arms About a Movie Critics Say “Grooms” Children for Sexual Abuse.” Slate Says “They have a point.”

NY Times

“Mr. Roth was the last of the great white males: the triumvirate of writers — Saul Bellow and John Updike were the others — who towered over American letters in the second half of the 20th century. Outliving both and borne aloft by an extraordinary second wind, Mr. Roth wrote more novels than either of them.”
NYT Philip Roth Obit Incorporates 2011 Video

PHILIP ROTH WAS 85

“How We Made The Blair Witch Project“

“To trade in Harrison Ford’s craggy visage for a younger model is the equivalent of giving the Millennium Falcon a trendy new paint job and an obtrusive rear spoiler.”

timeout.com

Ian McKellan On Being Mistaken for Dumbledore

“They only use digital photos now. Anybody who can use a computer thinks they can do this. Having computer knowledge is very different from being an artist or an art director or a marketer.”
Sampling The Movie Posters Of The Late, Great Bill Gold

NY Times

Pop Artist Robert Indiana Was 89

“Pope Francis has an uncanny ability to create that nearness. I was given an incredible chance to be near to him: four sessions, two hours each, face to face, eye to eye. I knew I couldn’t have this experience just for myself. So I tried to find a way to share the experience. That was the whole task: to create nearness, to translate it to the audience.”
Wim Wenders

Donald Glover’s Lando Calrissian Movie Would Be “‘Frasier’ in Space”

hollywoodreporter.com

Sony Corporation Set To Raise Share In EMI Music Publishing to 90% In $4.75 Billion Deal With Abu Dhabi Mubadala Investment Company; Michael Jackson Estate Apparently Owns Remainder

“My films have to mean something to me, but I don’t need to tell anyone else what that meaning is. I always say it’s like an author who’s passed away. You can’t dig him up and ask him what he meant by the book. You just have the book. And the film or the book is the thing. So as I always say, you finish a film and right away they want you to start talking about it in words. And unless you’re a poet, words are going to fail you. So nothing should be added to the film, nothing should be subtracted. It is the thing. The film is the same at every screening, but the audience is different, so it’s a completely different feeling every screening. People make up their own minds with their own feelings, and I always say every one of them is valid.”
David Lynch

“Denis, who turned seventy-two last month and can’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds, wore stiff selvedge jeans and a Levi’s denim jacket buttoned all the way up, like a tiny Edwardian greaser. A recent throat surgery had roughened Denis’ already gravelly voice—it sounded at times as though she were impersonating a sexily androgynous Frenchwoman, instead of merely being one.”
The New Yorker Goes Nearly 6,000 Words In Claire Denis Profile

“In its most compelling form, artwork is done by people who made something without purpose. They don’t have a direct, clear purpose so they’re making something in a more abstract way. They’re not thinking about a show, about an audience, about a concert, about an album. They’re making something without a purpose.”
Fifteen Years To The Day From Its Cannes Debut, Ray Pride‘s 7,000-Word “Me and Roger Ebert, Vincent Gallo and The Brown Bunny“

“When I look at these photos, I’m not seeing me. I’m seeing the photos themselves. They’re very interesting and well-shot.”
Debbie Harry Looks Back At Indelible Images Of An Era

“How The Recording Industry Hid Its Latest Attempt To Expand Copyright”

“Culture is the Foundation of a Democratic Society”
Germany To Boost Arts Budget By $356 Million

“The new battle over journalism’s digital legacy: When an online news outlet goes out of business, its archives can disappear as well.”

ny post

“Interview’s financial woes steadily worsened amid consolidation in the magazine industry, with rumors cropping up regularly that it was on the verge of closing and up for sale.”

“These days it sometimes feels as if the battle for the future of the United States’ soul is between Donald Trump and Janelle Monáe.”

“Betty Gabriel trained at Juilliard, has enjoyed a fruitful career on the stage, is set to co-star in a summer action film, and stole key scenes in last year’s Get Out. But for all that, Gabriel might be more well-known now as a GIF than an actor.”

Eric D. Snider On The Mixed Blessings Of Press Screenings (After Getting Barred From Them)

hollywoodreporter.com

Twenty-Five Years Later, An Oral History Of The Final Episode Of “Cheers”

Orion Classics Returns

deadline

New Owners Of Relativity Media To Compensate Ryan Kavenaugh As Consultant

“Interview Magazine Shuts Down After Raft of Wage, Harassment Lawsuits”

Patricia Morison, 103, Roles Include Original “Kiss Me Kate”; “The King And I,”  Song of the Thin Man, Tarzan and the Huntress, Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood, The Long Day Closes

Eighty-One-Year-Old Actor Brian Blessed, Dressed As A Tudor King, Causes Commotion Over Badger Culling

“China’s quota system allows 34 imported movies a year to be shown in theaters, while overseas producers get a 25 percent share of box office takings (less than in other international markets). Since 2016 a handful more have been allowed in via a ‘cultural exchange’ channel. In a government document provided to the U.S. delegation in Beijing two weeks ago, Chinese negotiators said that opening up the market more for U.S. movies was a concession China could offer to Washington as part of a broader trade deal.”

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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