Press Releases Archive for May, 2015

SLAMDANCE LOOKS FORWARD, GROWING YEAR ROUND ENTERPRISES

Submissions open for the 2016 Film Festival, Slamdance Alumni returns for Manager Position, and programs expand through Slamdance Cinema Club, Slamdance Studios on HULU, and beyond (LOS ANGELES, CA—May 29, 2015) Following last year’s record breaking submission numbers, Slamdance Film Festival is now open for 2016 entries with a new program called DIG and the return of…

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Seth McFarlane Gets A Non-MacArthur “Genius Award”

CRITICS’ CHOICE TELEVISION AWARDS ANNOUNCES LOUIS XIII GENIUS AWARD RECIPIENT SETH MacFARLANE MAY 18, 2015 (Burbank, CA) – The Broadcast Television Journalists Association (BTJA) today announced that Seth MacFarlane, creator of long-running Emmy Award-winning TV series Family Guy and the Emmy Award-winning series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, will receive the Critics’ Choice LOUIS XIII Genius…

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ORSON WELLES’ UNFINISHED FINAL FILM ‘THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND’ LAUNCHES INDIEGOGO CAMPAIGN  

 The film to be released in 2015, the centenary year of Orson Welles birth LOS ANGELES, CA, May 7, 2015 – Forty five years after the first scenes were filmed and 30 years after his death, legendary director Orson Welles’ never-before- seen final film THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, has launched a campaign today…

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Chicago Underground Film Fest “Bar Talks” Moderated By Ray Pride

Where Filmmakers Meet The Audience Moderated By Film Critic Ray Pride The Logan Lounge at Chicago’s Logan Theatre May 13-17, 2015 The Chicago Underground Film Festival, the world’s longest-running underground film festival, presents the fourth edition of “Bar Talks,” presented by Tribeca Flashpoint College, an informal series of talks among local and visiting filmmakers during CUFF….

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Press Releases

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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