By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Remember That Flies Must Also Vomit On Their Food Before Eating It; From Jay Weston, Publisher Of “Jay Weston’s Restaurant Newsletter”

Posted Thursday, November 29th, 2012 - Comments Off on Remember That Flies Must Also Vomit On Their Food Before Eating It; From Jay Weston, Publisher Of “Jay Weston’s Restaurant Newsletter”
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“This movie is the most thrilling film I have seen in many, many years, perhaps ever.

Remember, I have been in the movie business in various ways, mainly producing, for 60 of my 80 years, and have worked with some of its best talents, ie. Billy Wilder. I must have seen several thousand films in my lifetime, and I happen to believe that the British magazine which last month proclaimed Hitchcock’s Vertigo the best movie ever, over Citizen Kane, is bonkers.

Neither of them hold a candle to A Place in the Sun, Red River or Godfather I & II. But Les Mis is another kettle of fish altogether. I think that it lifts the movie ‘art’ to a new dimension of excellence and excitement, which has not been seen before since perhaps Abel Gance’s tri-screen Napoleon in the ’20s.

3D is exciting and important when handled well (Ang Lee’s Life of Pi), but it is a technology more than an artistic achievement. Here, from the moment the screen opens up to reveal a long line of convicts hauling a ship into drydock in early 19th century France, we are caught up in spectacle that is both majestic and intimate. The fact that all the dialogue is sung immediately sets the mood that we are in for something special…

Think of the songs which have enthralled you over the years, and then be prepared to be astonished at how they sound when sung by these talented people against the realistic settings of torn-apart France. “I Dreamed a Dream,” “Bring Him Home,” “One Day More,” and “On My Own”… just glorious and moving. I must admit I cried many times throughout the film, and I was not alone. Someone today said there was a poster in the works: The film that makes grown men cry.

I read that it has taken 27 years to bring this version of Les Misérables to the screen. It was worth the wait. It is the cinematic musical experience of a lifetime… and I am thrilled that I finally got to see it on film. (No digital here.) You will be too, trust me.”
~ Remember That Flies Must Also Vomit On Their Food Before Eating It; From Jay Weston, Publisher Of “Jay Weston’s Restaurant Newsletter”

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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