yeah...(feeling old and despairing at the same time) that is so incredibly sad to me....
-------------- Original message -------------- From: Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Keith, maybe it's what the youngsters today like. Short-attention spans seem to be de rigeur. he makes some good points, but i've seen enough modern music video directors' work to stand by my apprehension. that he uses Michael Bay as an example really worries me: i hate Bay's directing style. If i didn't already know he directed music videos, i'd have guess. What I see from a lot of such directors is a lack of understanding of telling a story slowly, a penchant for too many quick cuts and over active closeup shots that force the action down my thorad, instead of slow pans and long shots that fill the screen. Look at some of the old classics like "Lawrence of Arabia" or "The Bridge on the River Kwai", and note the long pans and camera angles. Then contrast those to some of the stuff music video directors make. Of course, much of my feeling stems form the fact that i hate most modern music vidoes: I just don't get why you have to have about a dozen camera cuts in a dozen seconds, why the picture changes angles constantly, why the color hyperactively moves from black and wh ite to full color. That being said, I haven't seen any of this gentleman's work, movies or music videos.... -------------- Original message -------------- From: Daryle I met Garrett Wang at LAX Airport yesterday morning. It was a very cool conversation. If you¹re ever at a Trek con and see him there, by all means strike up a conversation with him. He asked if I knew about the project. Apparently he¹s being considered for one of the roles. As of yesterday, he hadn¹t read the book So I described it for him. So if he ends up in the movie I¹ll be pretty excited. I am all for this project being made, and Khan¹s Britney Spears work is completely irrelevant. He directed music videos, he didn¹t write the songs. Steven Spielberg directed ³1941² and ³A.I². If any of us had done those pictures, we¹d never work in Hollywood again. It¹s time for directors to branch out and do challenging work. That¹s enough of Brett Ratner doing everything. There is apparently a lot of backlash about Khan getting the project, which is reeeeally interesting to me. Music video work is better than film school sometimes. His commercial work is really good! I don¹t know if any director would ever be ³good enough² to take this project on, and apparently Khan agrees. The following is from Joseph Khan¹s MySpace blog: ³Variety blew my cover over the weekend. This is the screenplay I've been working on for the last two years. As to the backlash. There's going to be a backlash. You have to be nuts or stupid to take on a monster like this. I knew what I was getting myself into. Stanley Kubrick could take this on and he'd have a 14 year old in Iowa blogging on how wack the cgi effects were in 2001, and then on the other hand a 45 year old child molestor completely insistant nothing will ever look as good as the visuals in his own head. And they'd both hate Torque. I could see how the combination of the Britney Spears director with William Gibson is a controversial choice. But the problem is, the summation of my career is not Britney Spears. I've done plenty of "cred" videos: Moby, Chemical Brothers, Korn, U2, Muse to name a few. The headlines sound attractively pessimistic to slap the successful pop example of my work to a supposedly nihilistic work like Neuromancer. It really just demonstrates how little most people know of the music video world and how it pertains to filmmaking. For instance, before David Fincher became the dark auteur that fanboys salivate over, he made his name doingPaula Abdul videos. And hard core Michael Bay with his rumbling guns and explosions madeMeatloaf videos, as well asThe Divinyls "I Touch Myself." Those of you in the music video business know the score and understand why this is. I guess this is turning into a defense of myself, so I will defend myself. The other complaint lodged at me is that my movie Torque basically sucked. It's either a sell out piece of commercial crap, or an incompetant long form music video, or both, and it's a sure sign I'm clueless as a filmmaker. And to all of this, I'll say: they're wrong. Making your first movie under the Hollywood studio system is hard. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. I'm telling you honestly with no exaggeration: you have no clue what it's like to be put through that studio grinder and retain any sort of authorship. The politics, the pressure, the scapegoating, the interference, the pure physicality of an intense 70 day shoot, the budget hysterics, the permeating sense of fear and negativity from everyone. Torque is not 100% of what I wanted, but I'm proud of what it is, because at the end of the day, after going through this studio machine that blends movies together into mediocrity, it split people. Some hated it, others loved it. Some actually had both reactions at the same time. Whatever it was, it wasn't safe. The ice cream on the cone couldn't be digested without a strong opinion. That's a tall order for an Ice Cube biker flick. Your welcome. So that's one of the reasons why "they" hired me to do Neuromancer, and make no mistake, Gibson is one of "them." There's no way in hell I'm on this without at least a half disinegnous grunt of approval from him. Yes, Chris Cunningham was attached to this years ago and you may think him as a far cooler director than me, but he quit. HE QUIT. Understand? Sorry. He abandoned the baby on the doorstep, and it will never come to daddy again. I'm on it because I am nuts, and I am stupid, and I will throw everything I have at making a book that's been ripped off left and right and considered impossible to adaptwork. I've spent my whole life making things. People who don't know me seem to dismiss me as some cliché blinged out music video director, and even if that jealous perception were true then remember this - I started with nothing. No contacts in Hollywood, no money, nothing. All I've ever had to survive is the dedication to my craft. All I know how to do is make things, and if Neuromancer is on my plate, I am going to make it. That's why this film finally has a chance at getting made. Now here we are and all I know is this: the movie in my head rocks. I've already watched it, I just need to execute. Is it Gibson's vision? Not quite. There's no way this film can ever achieve what Gibson did. He practically changed the world and how we imagined ourselves growing up into it. The novel is always going to be the superior work of art. The book's a legitimate work of genius in a millenial way, not the Richard Roeper thumbs up way. I'm working on a two hour movie, so it's my distillation of his vision into a much shorter form. Compomises and interpretation will be required, and the personal issues I chose to focus on will be the things that turn me on about the book. So at the end of the day, there's wiggle room: the good shit is his, the bad shit is mine. But when it gets made, maybe on some level, everyone will be ecstatic to see some version of it moving on a movie screen, like when a parent is happy to see their toddler draw a crayon of the sun. If I'm lucky, maybe even Gibson himself will dig it. So there it is. I only have one more thing to say. When Variety broke the story, this is how they described me: Joseph Kahn, a Korean-American commercials director who made "Torque" for Warren Bros., has inked to direct. What the fuck does my race have to do with directing Neuromancer? - Joseph Kahn² On 11/26/07 10:13 PM, "Martin" wrote: > > > > > No, Bosco, this is the first I recall of it being mentioned. > > Bosco Bosco > wrote: > Read a rumor that Gibson's Neuromancer is being brought to the big > screen which made me jump for joy until I read that it would be > directed by Joseph Kahn who directed a Brittany Spears video. > > Did this get discussed here already and I missed it? If not, does > anyone know anything further? > > Bosco > > __________________________________________________________ > Get easy, one-click access to your favorites. > Make Yahoo! your homepage. > http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs > > "There is no reason Good can't triumph over Evil, if only angels will get > organized along the lines of the Mafia." -Kurt Vonnegut, "A Man Without A > Country" > > --------------------------------- > Be a better sports nut! Let your teams follow you with Yahoo Mobile. Try it > now. > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Yahoo! Groups Links "There is no reason Good can't triumph over Evil, if only angels will get organized along the lines of the Mafia." -Kurt Vonnegut, "A Man Without A Country" --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. 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