When Strike… the Writers!
The latest news about the WGA writers’ strike is that formal talks with the producers are to resume on Nov. 26th. I thought I’d take this opportunity, however, not to provide the latest updates, but instead a little historical context.
Back when films were silent, there was no need for elaborately written screenplays. Directors, therefore, were the source of films’ stories. Sometimes they’d write them down, sometimes not. Writers were only brought in to throw in some half-assed captions after the movie had been shot. Once sound was added to movies, however, the role of the writer became infinitely more important. Audiences could hear the characters talk, and therefore those characters had to have something to say. Stories of a necessity became more complex, creating a need for, yep, you guessed it: screenplays.
Unfortunately, rather than adapt to a new reality, Hollywood’s thinking remained stuck in its silent film past, and never became un-stuck. That’s why the industry — and the public at large — continues to treat directors as though they are the authors of “their” movies, even though those directors are merely realizing a vision carefully crafted and laid out by a screenwriter. Think of it this way: would you refer to a builder as the architect of a structure if that builder was working from someone else’s blueprints? Of course not. The architect is the one who drafted the blueprints. Yet in ass-backwards and thought-deprived Hollywood, directors are considered the architects even though someone else drafted the blueprints!
This intellectual inflexibility is a great deal of the reason why writers in Hollywood are treated so unfairly, why the WGA is necessary, and why they must go on strike to get even a fraction of the revenue pie that they deserve.
November 18th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
The odd thing that Hollywood has always displayed in it’s attitude towards writers is schizophrenia. You mention the relative absence of need for writers in the silent era, but that’s not entirely true. While Hollywood writers were seen as unneeded less then nothing, Hollywood’s silent era did lean heavily on pre-existing stories. Some were old fables, but many more were plays, “modern” era books or classics of literature. In other words, Hollywood sought out the works of writers.
As talkies became big, Hollywood still cribbed from literature. Hollywood even promoted their works as adaptations of classic works by (fill in the blank) whenever they could. The Maltese Falcon, Gone With the Wind, Heart of Darkness, Casablanca, Robin Hood, The Three Musketeers and others were all partly promoted as “based on the book/works of” some well known writer. Why? Well, it added prestige to the work and it maybe added a bit at the box office.
Even now, Hollywood sees writers as $$$$. They just don’t see their own as worth dirt. What’s getting the big advertising blitz now? The Mist. Only, it’s not merely The Mist, it’s Stephen King’s classic story, The Mist! Harry Potter was advertised from day one as “from the books” and any number of other releases from the last few years and the yet to be released films get the big “based on the book/story by” banner. Writers are money. Just so long as they’re not Hollywood writers.
For some reason, even when an “in house” writer has a track record of huge hits, Hollywood could care less. The writer is treated like dirt and his or her accomplishments are never played up unless the writer also wears the hat of actor, director or producer. While you’ll see King’s name all over the ads, posters and video packaging, you’ll only find an in house writer’s name in tiny print where the credits usually are.
And it’s funny who else Hollywood will promote. Hollywood puts out a film or TV show with a storyline that hooks the masses, quotable lines that become THE lines to crib in pop culture for a time, creates characters that everybody is begging to have spun off into new movies or programs and the writer is just about the only member of the creative process who is shunted to the sidelines in the PR hustle. The actors, directors and producers all get time on the chat shows and accolades out the whazoo while the writer gets the bum’s rush. Even later projects give everyone else but the writer credit. The new movie that sucks is billed as by the producers, director or such and such of the good movie that was great. And due great largely due to the script created by the writer who is almost never acknowledged for his previous work in his next film. But Hollywood plays it up big when it’s yet another great, good or sucks pond scum bad adaptation of a “writer’s!” pre-existing work.
But Hollywood just keeps displaying its schizophrenia towards its treatment of writers. I know that Hollywood can’t afford to write checks for the amounts they pay King, Rowling and others to every writer out there, but they really need to treat their “in house” talent better then they do mow. Beyond just payment, giving writers the recognition that they deserve could only help them in the long run. Guys like King have a huge following because they’ve put out plenty of popular works that have created a loyal fan base. Hollywood could only benefit from trying to create that fan base for its own writers as well as giving them at least a little extra motivation to give Hollywood another piece of the fruit of their imagination.
November 19th, 2007 at 1:10 am
Everyone looked at Star Wars as the work of a really great director and a really great writer. While the basic story IS really good, Lucas didn’t write most of the most quotable lines in it. He had a few script polishers to tighen it up. Have these people ever gotten famous? Seriously, I’ve never seen their names.
Look at I Am Legend. A lot of the early buzz that I saw on this was “They’re remaking Omega Man!” Guess what? Omega Man was a remake. The original was from a book. Wizard of Oz? Book. Red Badge of Courage? Book. To Kill A Mockingbird? One of my favorite books. And movies, for that matter.
Sometimes, though, even the best book wouldn’t make very good screentime. A lot of people want to see PAD’s New Frontiers filmed. While I’d probably enjoy it, a lot of that series is in the text, the irony and humor that doesn’t really translate well to screen. I’d say look at Hitchiker’s Guide, but there are so many versions of that, book, radio, old movie, new movie, all with things in their favor. Stephen King’s It? As far as I’m concerned, a waste of film. Nowhere near as detailed as the book and visually just not very scary. Pet Sematary? Scares the crap out of me, both book and movie. That kid just breaks my heart.
The director of a film is in charge of taking the written words and putting them on the film. Sometimes they add, sometimes they take away. Opening scene of Nightmare on Elm Street? The sheep was supposed to run across, give you a sense of the surreal nature. They couldn’t get it to do it, so, while it’s wierd, it’s not what Craven was initially going for. The differences between Amityville Horror, either version of the movie, and the Anson book are pretty extensive. The directors thought it’d be scarier THEIR way.
Certain screenwriters do get recognized, but it is usually the directors that get all the credit. A lot of people give Spielberg all the credit for Poltergeist. He came up with the basic story, but the other two guys wrote it. Jaws? How often when that comes up do you hear the name Benchley? Braveheart? Mel Gibson, not R. Wallace. I just finished watching all the Halloweens. Carpenter and Hill wrote the first three. Couldn’t tell you who wrote any of the others. How often, though, do you see a new movie or TV show out there advertised as being from such and such writer? Director, actor, producer, yeah, but with the exception of the Coens and the Farrellys, I don’t know that I could remember that happening very much.
November 19th, 2007 at 6:19 am
Bill, I think you are being a little harsh toward directors. But I suppose you are reacting to the gap of appreciation between directors and writers.
Sean, I was wondering where does the job of the writer ends and the director begins in so far as staging a scene. In your script you give cinnematography instructions but you don’t describe the characters’ appearance. (in a way this is also relevant for comic book writers and artists)
By the way, I recently saw Empire Strikes Back. The script was written by two people, but I only remeber the one who became a director: Lawrence Kassadan. Coppola wrote Patton. I think the guy who directed and wrote Crash was doing scripts before. Didn’t Jos Whedon start as a script writer?
One exception to the rule in Charlie Kaufman, who, I think, became a kind of superstar script writer.
November 19th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Micha, I might agree with you about Bill being a bit harsh on the directors if only I hadn’t seen so many of them taking the lion’s share of the credit that they don’t deserve on the chat shows.
Chat Show Host: “So, where did the idea for this scene come from?”
Director Giving the Wrong Answer: “Well, I knew that you had to have that little extra uhmf here in order to make the whole thing work later, so I tried to create the {fill in the blank} mood for the scene.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.
There are cases where the director and/or an actor create something that wasn’t in the script. There are cases where a writer has a brain fart and misses something vital that isn’t caught until filming is underway, but usually the director is being asked about a scene that is in the script. Now, maybe the director thought that a scene rightly needed more emphases then the writer originally, but the correct answer, the one that is all too often not given, is the one that starts out crediting the writer rather than discussing the scene as though the director was the one staring at a blank piece of paper or computer screen and then suddenly had a creative epiphany.
Directors do have a purpose and talented directors can sometimes make the works of merely passable writers seem like a slice of fried gold, but they do not create in a vacuum. It all starts with the writer or the writing process. Hollywood would do better to acknowledge that more often.
November 19th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Brent Spiner, who played Data on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” was asked about the success of the show as it was wrapping up its seventh season and the Next Gen cast was about to take over the movies. He said there’s a saying in theater that he believed also applied to the small and big screens: “If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage.”
November 23rd, 2007 at 3:09 pm
I was watching ET on TV from the middle. What a great movie. And I was wondering how much of it is the writer, how much the director, how much other people, like the composer and cinematographer.
November 23rd, 2007 at 8:34 pm
That is an interesting point. There was a program that I was watching one time that was exploring the how music effects human’s perception of what is around them or what they are watching. As an example, it twice showed the same footage of a Komodo Dragon, but they played different music each time. The first time they showed the footage, it was very funny. The second time, the footage they showed was very ominous.
Music can absolutely make or break a scene.
However, music can also be unnecessary and irrelevant. Mission Impossible had one of the single most tense, edge of your seat scenes I had seen in theaters that year. For six to ten minutes, no one in the theater took their eyes off of the screen as the main character hung from a wire and tried to make absolutely no sound whatsoever. Music, even if done by the best composer, would have been a detriment to the scene. In that instance, the director took an artistic gamble and it paid off in spades.
A good director, a good composer and a good cast can make an ok script a great movie. A bad director, a bad composer and a bad cast can make the greatest script a dreadful movie. Everybody has a part in the creation of a movie and everyone deserves the credit due them.
But they all would be working with nothing if it weren’t for the writer. It’s the writer’s idea and the writer’s vision that gives the director, the composer and the cast the general idea of what they’re doing and where they’re going creatively. It’s the writer’s creation that sets the stage and creates the cues for everyone else’s creativity.
In a perfect world, the writer would be getting everything that they deserve and a little more in terms of credit, money and fame. As it stands now, the writers are having to fight for everything that they’re given and they’re still be given only a fraction of what they deserve.
I’ll give all sorts of credit to lots of people in the process, but I’m for crediting and rewarding the writer a lot more then the system currently does.
November 24th, 2007 at 11:03 am
I completely agree that he writers deserve much more credit. But I’m curious about how the different members of the creative team work together.
In mission impossible was it the writer who came up with the idea of having Cruise hanging like a trapeze artist, or was it the director. Did the writer just write that he was braking into the vault, and director fill in the details? Or did the writer decide that he would descend to the computer from above so the ground won’t be touch, but the director decide that he should descend like a trapeze artist, shifting on the string? Or maybe the writer came up with most of it and director just decided that everything will be quiet and to focus the camera on Cruise’s face? I think whatever the answer, we should know who wrote the script as well as we know who directed and who starred. But I would like to know who deserves credit for what. It’s possible that it’s different for different movie.
I E.T there are memorable lines that are definitely the result of script writing, and memorable direction as well. At this stage I’m certain that the script writer’s deserve credit. In a way I’m more curious about how much credit Spielberg deserves.
November 24th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Micha, the answers to your questions vary not only from film to film, but from scene to scene within a film. Directors, producers, and even actors will often re-write portions of a film as it is being shot. Sometimes stuff is cut out during the editing process. It all depends on how much power each person has within the process. If the writer is also the director and/or producer, he or she will have a great deal of creative control relatively speaking. If not, the director, producer(s), and even big-name actors can — and often will — alter (read: butcher) the script.
Because Hollywood’s thinking remains stuck in its silent-film past, with writers still being considered glorified caption-writers, screenplays are often considered “raw material” to serve as a director’s “inspiration.” Yet a well-written screenplay will contain everything that is needed for the creation of a good movie, both in terms of images, dialog, and most important, the STORY that ties all of them together. This doesn’t stop directors from acting as though they retroactively created the film from whole cloth, unfortunately.
Micha, I agree that directors play an important role in the filmmaking process. I never said they didn’t. I’m simply saying that most directors have an inflated sense of what their role is, and fail to give proper credit to writers. Think of it this way: artists play a vital role in comic-books, but that doesn’t mean they should take credit for writing the story… unless they actually WROTE the STORY.
On a final note: I wholeheartedly believe the dearth of good stories in Hollywood (and frankly, it’s a rare film I see that isn’t at least somewhat flawed in the story department) is due to the fact that directors who aren’t talented writers take it upon themselves to “improve” (read: piss on) screenplays.
November 24th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
If I could chime in again, another reason for the dearth of good stories coming OUT is that too much of film-making is business. Hence all the remakes of TV shows that might have lasted 3 episodes and umpteen sequels that have nothing whatsoever to do with the original besides name-recognition. Also, it’s rare that something REALLY innovative gets green-lit, unless you’ve made your mark some other way.
November 24th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Micha, it is, as Bill noted, an example by example answer. With Mission Impossible, the scene was more or less described in the final script. The credit that the director deserves for the way the scene turned out would be for fighting for his vision of a silent scene VS the prevailing wisdom of the day that said that scenes like that had to have dramatic music cues to really grip the audience. I tend to agree with the director that music would have decreased the effectiveness of the scene.
And, yeah, we can look at other examples for improvements on the script or story. It’s well known that, owing to the hell that the shoot became, Apocalypse Now was heavily ad-libbed. Two of the best scenes that Harrison Ford had in Star Wars (“I love you.” “I know.”) and Indiana Jones (Shooting the guy with the whip.) were ad-libbed by Ford. There are any number of behind the scenes things where I’ve seen them discussing a scene or an exchange that I really liked in a movie and discovered that, for one reason or another, they had to improvise on the fly and created a really cool scene that worked to improve the movie and was nowhere in the script.
But my POV is that no ad-lib or improvisation is possible without the story already in existence to guide the creative process of everyone else. Well, they’re possible, but they’d likely end up creating something that seems like a random series of skits rather then a complete and coherent movie. Ford’s improvisation in Star Wars was based on the fact that Leigh Brackett’s scripted line as written (“I love you too.”) didn’t strike him or Lucas as particularly Han Soloish. That judgment could only have be made because of how Solo had been written for a movie and a half and how the interpretation of that character’s written actions and dialogue were then acted out by Ford. Without the prior story already there as a guide, there would have been nothing for Ford to feel wrong about with Brackett’s too mushy Solo line.
Let me try this tortured and long winded example.
Take away the writer’s story and you end up with a really expensive version of the old creative writing class exercise where you start with student A writing a paragraph and then handing it to student B to write a paragraph and so on around the class. No one has any idea what the others have written until they get it and then they hand off what they’ve written to somebody else who may trash the concepts that could have come from a previous students intentions. If you, Bill, Bill, Sean and I were to discuss a plot concept, brainstorm a plot, email script pages back and forth for a few months and agree to work toward a common goal, we could probably come up with something really weird, but pretty cool. If Bill just started a thread by writing a paragraph and said that we had to add one paragraph at a time each, order determined by the first letter of our first names, before starting the next round over again… Well, we would have a really interesting mess. Bill would start a story out that would speak to the heroic ideals of mankind, Mulligan would then show up and have a zombie eat Bill’s character in paragraph 2, I’d add a twist that would ready like comedy done by Lovecraft, you might throw in a vampire, Sean would have a deranged Highlander attacking sheepherders with an axe and then Bill would come back and have his character wake up from a nightmare since none of that stuff is really his bag. Then Mulligan would come back and start round two by having a shaken and tired main character stumble over to his bedroom window to get a breath of fresh air, pull open the curtains and look down on the city streets filled with Roman Space Zombie Invaders from Uranus.
It’d be a mess.
The first idea, jamming on an outlined idea, is a bit like doing a movie with a script. We all know what we’re working on, we know where we’re going and we know what we’re working towards. Everything we create is guided by a common goal and everything we do is, hopefully, designed to strengthen and support the already existing outline. Take away the outline, and we get the interesting mess.
I’m not saying that everybody else doesn’t have a place in the creative process or that credit should be taken away from others. I’ve seen too many piece of crap films that would have been pretty good popcorn films had the actors or the director been better.
Sci-Fi Channel’s Saturday night crapfest is often a great example of this. Let me throw a scene at you. A pirate’s ghost has come back to fulfill the curse on his treasure. On a dark, cold night, the pirate enters into a home that overlooks the sea. After taking the head of the woman inside, he exits the house, the head in a bag slung over his shoulder, and disappears into the cold fog of the night. As he disappears, he sings a pirate ditty in a low, gravely voice that itself fades out as the fog fills the screen. You can see this in your mind and set it up to make a chilling scene, can’t you. Too bad the director couldn’t. The scene on the screen was a long shot to get the pirate walking down the long set of steps from the door towards the camera. The actor playing the pirate sang his ditty like a Disney character singing “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” at a Disney film’s happy moment and the music cues in the film were… crap.
The writer wasn’t that great to begin with, but a good cast and crew could have elevated his work. But, no matter how pedestrian the script is, even the great cast and crews are elevating them by using them as their guide. They’re building their work, and any improvisations that they do along the way, on the writer’s original vision. The success of an E.T. may well have had many parents. That’s the nature of the collaborative and multi-talent dependant medium of film and TV, but it all starts with a creator’s vision, a writer’s vision, turning a blank page into a script, a guide, for everyone else’s creative visions to be set loose on. That being the case, they should get just as much of the rewards and recognition as the actors, directors, producers and composers. Hell, these days it would be a step up for the writers to be seen as equal to the stunt men or the FX guys. Hollywood has elevates lots of people who come along later in the creative process and makes minor or major celebrities out of just about everybody else. Why not give the writers a little more of the $$$$ and credit that’s owed them.
November 24th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Sean,
First, I haven’t forgotten your script. I’m on the second read through now. Like I told Myers about his, I have to read things in raw script formats two or three time to get them straight in my head. It’s just taking a bit more time with your script since for some odd reason you went and wrote enough pages to fill a movie rather than the first issue of a comic book. Can’t for the life of me figure that one out.
Now, I’m going to disagree with you about why so many movies and TV shows are utter and complete crap these days. It’s not so much that the industry is a business as it is that most creators don’t know what the hell they are doing anymore. No one is taking the time to learn what makes their craft work and why.
Too many people in the industry these days are fans making films rather then filmmakers who are fans. There’s a huge difference between those two things and the difference shows through in spades on the screen.
I’m going to mostly stick with horror here because it’s my favorite genre. Take a look at the average zombie film. Most of the newer ones are, while sometimes somewhat entertaining, absolute crap. The reason is because the creators really have no idea what they’re doing. They talk about how Romero, Fulci or Argento inspired them and how they used to watch their films over and over again, but they then turn out “product” that shows that they were fans of guys like Romero, but that they were never students of Romero. Romero’s films are cool because, while the zombies are there, they’re cool and they do some really gory/cool stuff with them, his films are not about the zombies. Romero used the zombies to create a setting where he then explored humans in a pressure cooker and to poke fun at or comment about aspects of the human condition. In some ways, his films are universal in their concepts. Night of the Living Dead could just as easily be turned into a war movie or a western. The main conflict in the film was about that band of survivors in the house and how they did or did not work together under the stress of what was happing outside and not about them fighting the zombies.
That’s what made them horrifying. It wasn’t just the zombies that scared you, although they’re still the only horror movie creation that I will occasionally have nightmares about, it was the humans that scared the spit out of you. That’s why 28 Days Later was such a great film while 28 Weeks Later was just run of the mill. 28 Days Later focused on the horrors that we become to survive in an insane situation. 28 Days Later gave us deranged, infected maniacs for thrills, but it was ultimately the humans that were the most terrifying monsters.
A filmmaker who is a fan knows this. They’ve studied the works that they loved and they’ve studied their craft. They step up and make a film that can stand shoulder to shoulder with the films that they themselves hold up as great. The fans making films are amateurs pretending to be professionals. They talk about all these great films and the great scenes in them, but they don’t really know what made them great. They’ll remember the shocking scene here, the gore scene there and the scary bit thrown in just there and try to replicate them without seeming to understand that all the stuff that guys like Romero did in between those scenes and with the moods and settings around those scenes is what made the scenes themselves work. And without understanding that, they go about making a pastiche of scenes with no real meaning or purpose. And then, because they “know” what made those older films classics, they set out to make their films even better by cranking the meter to 11 on all those scenes in their movies to increasingly pointless results.
A perfect side by side comparison of a horror film made by someone who knows what they’re doing VS someone who “knows” what they’re doing would be The Haunting (1963) VS The Haunting (1999). Both are based on Shirley Jackson’s story, but one is great and one blows. The 1963 version did just about everything right. Robert Wise created mood and atmosphere with his camera and directed the cast perfectly. The terror in the haunted house was created for the viewer by the cast’s skills, the director’s skills and that greatest tool of all time. The terror was built on suggestion. The director, the actors and the composer created mood and atmosphere that was then used to enhance the most minimal of things. You never saw the ghost, but you heard the sounds it made in the manor, you saw the effect that it had on the characters and you created so much more in your mind then what was ever on that screen.
In 1999, they put an ok director at the helm and went crazy with FX. They showed you stuff that was so out there that it almost became funny. All the stuff that they thought they “knew’ that was scary from the original they threw into the 1999 version like there was no tomorrow, cranked the FX meter to 11 and they spelled out every “scare” on the screen while leaving no simple suggestions for the viewer to scare themselves silly with. Oh, and they kinda “happyized” an aspect of the ending. The 1999 version was a giant, FX laden crapfest that was laughable at points VS the 1963 version that got into your mind and genuinely scared you.
And many action films are suffering the same fate. The fans making films talk about how cool the big fight, big explosion or huge FX were in the films that they loved and talk about how they’re going to crank the meter up to 11 and do all of that on a bigger scale for their films. The idea being that cranking all of those scenes to 11 means cranking the film’s quality up to 11. Sad part is, unlike the filmmakers who are fans, they’ve forgotten or just never noticed all the scenes that happened in between the action and the fights that set everything up and made you care about the final resolution of the film. By the time you senses have been numbed by one hour plus of nonstop action, fights and high FX explosions, you could care less about that last fifteen minutes worth of underdeveloped characters slapping each other around to win the final fight.
And the FX factor in films these days is driving me nuts. A huge number of the fans making films in Hollywood these days are using the strides made in movie FX as a substitute to real storytelling. Just because you can show things on screen that you couldn’t twenty years ago doesn’t mean that you should. An action scene that’s so FX heavy and so huge on screen that leaves the human element behind disconnects the audience from the film. Who cares if there’s the biggest, loudest and coolest looking explosions ever put to film on the screen if you’ve pushed aside the human struggle and involvement for your “really cool” FX? How scary is something that’s so spelled out and so clearly manufactured on the screen when there’s nothing, NOTHING, about it to reach into your mind and tweak the subconscious horrors that we all carry around with us or to bring us to the edge of horror before giving us that release or that payoff?
No, by my POV, the biggest problem in Hollywood these days is that there are too many fans making films and not enough filmmakers who are fans making the films that could stand beside the films that inspired them as equals. Throw in the “dumb it down” factor that Hollywood all too often lives by these days and you’ve got a recipe for craptacular movie making on a level that should scare movie fans everywhere. And this is coming from a guy who freely admits to being a b-movie…. Ok, more like a z-movie… fan.
Yeah, I know that even in the “golden days” of Hollywood’s past there were more then a few dogs and that the good old days weren’t always that good, but the scales really do feel like they’re tipping far too far in the direction of garbage films rather then good films. And that’s not just my speaking as a grumpy old man. That’s my speaking as a film fan who finds less and less must see and must have films being made each year.
November 24th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Say, where’s Mulligan? His input on the first topic might be interesting, but his input on the secondary mutant topic might be really interesting given his weekend job.
November 24th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
First off, the idea of all of us coming up with a film is at the same time really funny, really scary, and really fascinating. I’m sorta seeing a story-from-5-POV’s.
Second, as to the state of current productions, you raise some really valid points, Jerry. Yeah, a lot of what gets passed through doesn’ have any business being printed anywhere but toilet paper, and cheap toilet paper at that. Somewhere all the characters in films have become characterizations. Now, what I meant when I said that it was a business(and didn’t make clear, I have to start putting complete thoughts into these things!) was that everybody has to have THEIR say. The writer writes the Best Screenplay In The History Of The World and sells it. Producers get their hands on it, absolutely LOVE it, except can we change the heroine to a hero with a speech impediment? Well, the producers are the ones with the money, so Joanne becomes J-J-J-Joe. Oh, and we’re getting a crapload of money from Coke. So, instead of being a complete Vegan who drinks nothing but French Spring Water, throw in a case of Diet Coke here and there. And environmentalism might turn people off, so instead of a bike and an electric car, what if Joe takes the trolley all over like Judy Garland in that old movie, you know the one…! Oh, and my kids need a job, so my daughter’s going to direct, and my son’ll be Joe’s wiseacre nephew who he gets stuck with at the beginning of the movie. Now, don’t forget, we’re PAYING for this…! So, the heartfelt Joanne with her herb garden and save the whales bumper sticker on her EV-1 becomes Uncle Joe with a stutter that only a one-calorie imitation cola can fix.
Now, granted, that’s a BIT of an exageration. A bit.
Now, I love B-movies myself. Strange Invaders–one of my favorites. The Blob-any version-brings a smile to my face. I got really excited when I heard they were doing Beowulf. Then I heard that Angelina Jolie was going to be in it, and all my hopes crashed and burned a horrible death. Too many accountant-types in film and TV companieslook at what makes money every year, and whatever the New And Improved Breakout Trend of the Year is we get a glut of for months. Heck, sometimes you get them at the same time, look at Deep Impact and Armageddon. One is a tension-inducing, edge of your seat popcorn flick, and the other has Tea Leoni. That’s really the only good thing I can think of to say about it. Sure, Deep Impact is slightly more scientifically accurate, but first, NOTHING MUCH HAPPENS and second, you don’t really get a sense for any of the characters. A lot of people I know talk about how good Contact was. Most boring thing I’ve ever seen Jodie Foster do. There needs to be balance between being a character movie and an action movie. I don’t just mean action movie in blow-everything-in-sight-to-crap, I mean, people doing things. There should be a happy medium. When Blair Witch first came out, I wanted to see it because it’s my kind of movie, and I thought Heather Donohue was hot. Now, my sister-in-law saw it, HATED IT. “They never SHOW you anything, it’s all just NOISE, I wanted to SEE something!” This kind of attitude is I think in part responsible for the f/x-heavy stuff coming out. As much fun as Van Helsing and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen were, VH actually had some depth to the story, not just throw some characters in a blender and add some proto-Bond movie stuff.
Now, for the Indiana Jones scene, was that ad-libbed or did they do it because Ford had dysentery? That’s what I’d always heard. And don’t go trashing the new Haunting TOO much. Got a soft spot for that one, PPV’d it on our ship on our honeymoon over the best BLT’s we ever had.
November 24th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
I’d always heard that Ford ad-libbed it because of his dysentery. He got tired of doing the scene and didn’t want to do the fight as scripted. It’s still an ad-lib and it still worked better for the character then the scripted scene.
And, sorry about the POV, but I’m a man IN LOVE with the ‘63 version of The Haunting. I just about cried when I saw what was done to it in the remake, but I was thrilled that the remake came out because I knew it meant that the ‘63 was likely to be re-released on VHS and that new fangled Digital Versatile Discs that were just starting to drop in price.
But, hey, I’m a man with a soft spot in his head for The Final Programme (http://imdb.com/title/tt0070289/). You should be able to ding me bad over that one just about anytime you care to.
November 24th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
Didn’t catch that one. And the only thing the newer Haunting has going for it for us is that we watched it around midnight in the middle of the ocean during the rain right after we were married. Thinner’s the same way, the first movie we ever saw together, although it wasn’t TECHNICALLY our first date.
Never caught Final Programme, myself. Speaking of Finals, anytime Final Countdown was on, my mom and I would sit there and watch it. The looks on the Zero pilots’ faces when the Tomcats fly over them is priceless. Remakes, though, I’m generally against. The only ones I’ve seen that were better than the original are Maltese Falcon, The Thing, and Hitchcock’s second Man Who Knew Too Much. Don’t even THINK about mentioning that Psycho travesty around me. Yeah, it was well done, but the only thing it brought knew was color and a clearer picture of what ol’ Norman was doing as he looked through the spy hole. Didn’t need that, thank you very much.
November 25th, 2007 at 12:59 am
Oh!!! If you wanna see how to do minimalist FX and still scare the pants off of your date, find a copy of The Woman in Black. It’s a great little ghost story that was done for English TV back in the ‘80s. Very little FX, no computer FX and the most sparingly done makeup job on a ghost that you can do, but it will scare the hell out of you. I’ve loaned it to co-workers and friends and been cursed out for it afterwards. One of our dispatchers hated me for a week for loaning that thing to her. That film is an example of everything that the modern fans making films are leaving out of their films to the detriment of all.
Blair Witch, eh? Again, they did it right for no $$$$ at all. They couldn’t do the big FX garbage, so they got their scares by learning their craft and using suggestion as much as possible. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the film, but I’ll give the people who did it all the credit in the world for doing what they did. And, if you’ll be kind enough to note, the sequel that the studio put out, a sequel based on what it could do with a “real” budget, disappointed just about everybody. All sizzle and no steak that thing was.
I see what you meant on things being a business and agree whole heartedly. The sin of film by committee is getting worse and worse every year and drowning some pretty good concepts at birth. It wouldn’t be so bad if the committee was a group of people who all wanted to create a great film, but, as you pointed out, the committee is more often then not looking at marketing, franchise possibilities and advertising tie ins. It’s not just business, it’s bad business.
That business’s love of focus groups, combined with people like your sister-in-law’s reaction to things like Blair Witch, go a long way towards explaining some of the problems in modern film. Lots of people, and this is going to come off as condescending as hell, have no idea what it is that they really want. They liked a movie, but, more often then not, they don’t understand the craft enough to really know why they liked the movie. There’s the obvious reasons that they can identify, but I’m willing to bet that, like my much hated fans making films, they don’t realize what went into making the scenes they liked so seemingly good. When the studios pander to their focus groups, they’re just giving the people “what they want” when the people don’t know. Then the people get more explosions, more action, more gore, less subtlety and more simplicity and complain about the movies not being all that good. Had, staying with your example, Blair Witch had more money in its budget and had it showed the witch and the gore, odds are that it would have just been a moderate success and that the people who complained that they didn’t see anything, there was no gore, etc would all have watched it and forgotten it like any other low budget indy done poorly.
The Final Countdown!!!! I was broke off my ass when Anchor bay put out the two disc DVD a few years back. I skipped three meals that week to get it. I just wish that the soundtrack cd had been re-issued as well.
The Psycho travesty… I’m still waiting for the heads of the people involved in that thing’s creation myself. I don’t mind the odd good remake, but please do something with it that justifies the remake.
November 25th, 2007 at 1:12 am
Oh, and that first date thing ain’t new to me. One of my buddies at work got the complete Friday the 13th DVD set for his wife as an “I Love You” type of gift not that long ago. How’d he get away with it? Friday the 13th IV or V was the film that they went to on their first date.
November 25th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
“With Mission Impossible, the scene was more or less described in the final script. The credit that the director deserves for the way the scene turned out would be for fighting for his vision of a silent scene VS the prevailing wisdom of the day that said that scenes like that had to have dramatic music cues to really grip the audience. ”
Yes. That pretty much proves your point. The guys who acted and directed this memorable scene are more famous than the guy who came up with it.
However, ironically, the rest of your discussion is about the importance of good direction. This doesn’t weaken your point, it’s just interesting.
“they’d likely end up creating something that seems like a random series of skits rather then a complete and coherent movie.”
See: Star Wars prequels.
You’re right. The script is the foundation on which the rest should be built. If the foundation is weak than the rest might be harmed.
My too cents on the problem with movies today is that people don’t bother coming up with smart scripts, thinking of the way the parts connect. They see it only as a thin framework for flashy scenes, cool stars and one-liners. This is especially apparent in big budget action and/or comedy.
Hoiwever, I get the impression that script writers are sometimes perceived ot\r atre in fact technicians whose job it is to brake somebody else-s vision into a structure workable for movies: filling in the dialogue and details.
Sean, I also didn’t forget your script. I was reading it slowly and adding comments when my computer was liberated. So I have to downlkoad it again and read the half I read and the second half. I hope to have more time in a week or two.
I also have to return to my own story.
“Also, it’s rare that something REALLY innovative gets green-lit, unless you’ve made your mark some other way.”
The truth is I’m not sure II’d enjoy some of the independant artsy films that do not get green-lighted, evenm if they were (which is not to say I don’t like quality too). However, in a way, the movies where frustrated with are not the super original but actually the ones where the task is to make a good and original job doing something in a familiar genre like horror or comics of fantasy or action. People don’t appreciate the craftsmanship involved in making even a standard good movie, so they don’t bother and come up with mediocre stuff that only strengthens the stereotype about these movies.
“Think of it this way: artists play a vital role in comic-books, but that doesn’t mean they should take credit for writing the story… unless they actually WROTE the STORY.”
In my sole attempt on writing a script-sample for a comic, I was concerned that I was not overstepping my role by offering to much input on the visuals of the panels.
November 25th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
”However, ironically, the rest of your discussion is about the importance of good direction. This doesn’t weaken your point, it’s just interesting.”
Well, that’s because I was trying to point out how important the directors, actors and even composers are to the overall quality of the final product. I’m not on the militant side of the pro-writer spectrum. I won’t say that the writer is the only vital component or is the one thing that makes the thing work. Lucas wrote some unbearably bad dialogue in the first Star Wars film, but Alec Guinness made his lines sound like Shakespeare. I’ve expressed my love for Hammer Films’ work on many occasions. Still, there were several films in their library that were saved from crapdom by the strength of Cushing and Lee’s performances or by the directorial skills of guys like Terence Fisher. In a few of these films, the writing was only ok or even poor, but the contributions of others elevated the material. I’ll always give credit where credit is due in these matters. And, as I said above, the mediums of TV and movies are mediums where the final product is the creation of many parents, not simply one.
But my stand on the importance of the writer should be very clear. The writer, even when having a bad day, is the guide for all of those other people to follow. The overall story that the writer creates and that the actors, directors and composers read tells all of them where they basically need to go with their creative energies.
It’s kind of like one of those really big, expensive, artsy looking buildings popping up in cities everywhere these days. They’re hiring art directors, flashy architects and big money interior designers to come in and turn office buildings into overpriced ego pieces. Some of them, even I’ll admit, are pretty cool. But all of that flash, glitz and money would be for naught if the entire building fell down around their ears because it had no true foundation or framework. In movies, TV and, for that matter, radio drama, the writer is your foundation and your framework. Yeah, these other people come along after the writing is done and have a huge impact on the quality, but they can’t change the fact that they’re working from an established foundation and framework that was the product of the writer.
Again, I won’t take the credit owed others away from them here. There are too many good actors, directors and composers who have elevated their craft to the level of art and they deserve their accolades. I’m just of the camp that feels that the writers are getting short shrift in the pay department and the recognition of their contribution and just due accolades. There’s a lot of money and fame floating around in Hollywood that could be shifted towards the writers at least a little bit more then it is now. When an actor can get paid $20,000,000 to read a writer’s lines, have some of those lines become ingrained in pop culture and then be attributed to the actor in books and on online quotation sites while the writer, the one who came up with the clever line that the actor merely read, the system needs some fixing. When the actor, the director and the producer can continue to make money off of a movie for years after it left the theaters and the writer is lucky to get a deal where he gets some extra cash for his troubles, the system is broken and needs some major overhauls.
November 26th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
This is my blog and yet I’m having trouble keeping up with the conversation! That’s a good sign, however, that this forum is beginning to accomplish the goals I’ve set for it.
Sean, if you ever ask “If I could chime in again,” I will thrash you to within an inch of your life. I established this blog to provide anyone — ANYONE — with a forum for expressing their views. If I’m willing to extend that privilege to perfect strangers, then you can rest assured that I’m willing to extend it to you. Not only are your chimings welcome, but I’d be disappointed if they ceased.
God, some people!
Micha, I agree that actors, directors, and producers all contribute something vital to the movie-making process. And yes, they often contribute things that weren’t in the original script. But the bottom line is that without the script, the rest of the process cannot go forward and I’d like to see that acknowledged. It’s that simple.
I think your assertion about people not bothering to come up with good scripts is too simplistic. Oftentimes people do come up with good scripts that never see the light of day, because studio execs and producers and directors and actors and their grandmothers dumb them down.
Movies tend to be born in one of two ways: either a producer or director comes up with an idea (or a property they’d like to adapt) and hires someone to write the screenplay, or a screenwriter pounds out a story and then finds a studio willing to buy it. In either case, there’s a “development” process that usually involves massive rewrites at the behest of producers and/or studio execs and/or directors. In some cases, a producer or director will bring in a different writer to “polish” what someone created. In fact, writers are often fired from projects, even if they originated the idea!
November 26th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
“This is my blog and yet I’m having trouble keeping up with the conversation!”
Yeah, that would be my fault. I’m feeling kinda long winded this month. I didn’t even realize that my posts were so long until I got to spend the entire night attempting to scroll down through ‘em in order to find other people’s replies.
November 27th, 2007 at 10:30 am
I can only speak for myself Jerry, but I have no problem with the length of your posts — they are very interesting. PAD’s blog has become such a wrestling ring, it’s good to be reminded that people can actually have a serious, well meaning, interesting conversations tthat are intended to further knowledge instead of scoring imaginary points.
So long as your posts are not long streams of previous conversations copied, pastted, indented and bolded, I welcome them, the longer the better
November 27th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Ditto what Micha said, Jerry.
November 27th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
There are only 3 blogs on the internet that I read for anything more than head-shaking glad-I’m-not-one-of-THOSE-people value. This is one. Well, duh.
Now, I would paste this, but I don’t want to be one-of-THOSE-people. What they said, Jerry.
Now, I myself, the last few days, have been working on an idea I came up with right after I got dumped in college. Psychos, rich families, cover ups, motorcycles, and people getting shot through bay windows is just a hint. Now, I have two definite messages that I’m trying to convey with this thing. So, once I get it finished, when I try to sell it, say THEY want to make beaucoup changes. Now, if I’m being paid, and assuming they won’t let someone with only a music video or two to his directing credit direct the thing, what do you think? Let them change it? When should a writer just say, “That’s not what I wrote, I want out!” Now, if I’m A) Getting Paid, B)Getting screen credit, thus fulfilling ONE of the messages, and C)actually having something that I can show people and say “I’m a PROFESSIONAL writer,” that’s good enough for me. But do you think there IS a point of diminished returns where someone says, “This ISN’T what I wrote, get my name off it?” Assuming, of course, their name isn’t Ellison. I’ve also been in plays where at one point, my part was given to another guy, a few of the lines were delivered differently, and this completely altered the focus of the scene. Now, how much input do you think a writer should have with how something’s produced?
November 27th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Well, the debate of how much input a writer should have is entirely separate from how much credit they should have or even why so much utter crap is being churned out by the Hollywood and misc. studio systems.
I think that the writer should have whatever input, or lack there off, that the writer can work into his or her contract. If a writer doesn’t care what’s ultimately done to the final product after the check is cashed, that’s fine. I’m not going to look down my nose at someone for trying to make a living. On the other hand, if a writer has the ability to get some say in the final product worked into his contract… Well, more power to him.
I don’t think that anybody who has had even the smallest exposure to the studio systems doesn’t know that almost nothing makes it from the printed page to the theater screen with zero alterations from people other then the writer. I think that it also depends on what you’re doing the work for.
Ellison, seeing as how you brought him up, and his original script for City on the Edge of Forever is an interesting example. I’ve read the original and final drafts for City that Ellison wrote and I have to agree with him that it was head and shoulders better then the version that aired. I still like the version that aired, but his was much better. Well, having read them several times, I agree that Ellison has been unfairly maligned over fictitious tales of the problems with his script. However, there is one criticism that Ellison absolutely deserved and has rather condescendingly dismissed as, ‘Not my problem.”
One criticism of his drafts was that they would cost too much to film. Having read the scripts, his critics are right. Now, if you sell a script that’s meant to be part of someone else’s playground and should have certain budgetary restrictions in mind… Well, I don’t think that you have all that much right to bitch if someone monkeys with your work because you failed to keep your creative juices in check enough to stay in the set parameters of what’s needed of you. You certainly have a limited level input over the final product if the powers that be are not kindly disposed toward you.
Now, had Ellison created the story in a universe of his own creating, wanted the story to see the screen as was and had the script purchased by a studio under that agreement, then I would be all in Ellison’s camp. But he didn’t and he was certainly no virgin to the TV studio system of the time and thus knew better.
I think my views on what level of input a writer should have are pretty much set by those examples. If you play in someone else’s sandbox, you have to expect that your level of input after you turn the final draft in will likely be no more or less then what the powers that be allow. If you’re working on your own creation for your own sandbox and you have the clout to get control… Well, then I think that you should get it. I’m not foolish enough to believe that you’ll always win that fight though.
None of that changes what I think the writer should get in the realm of compensation and acknowledgements. It does add a twist to the conversation about percentages that we’ve not been addressing though. How much additional money should go to the writer of an episode of a TV show VS a writer of a completely original work? I believe that each should get their just rewards, but how does it skew your opinion when weighing the one against the other?
And adding even more to the craptacular way that Hollywood treats its creative talent…
Anybody been able to check out that link I sent that has Max Brooks interviewing Romero at Comic-Con 2007? Man alive!!! I knew that he had been a little screwed over his copyrights, but some of that $&!+ takes the cake.
For those who haven’t yet looked:
I knew that Night of the Living Dead had slipped into public domain and that he had lost the rights to his other works do to the studio system of the time and problems with his partners, but I had no idea some of the other garbage they had done to him to avoid paying him for his later works. He actually gets a better deal as both the writer and director of his Dead movies and the studio shell games him. He starts getting less and less residuals and then almost nothing at all. He asked the studio what was up and they informed him that they had sold the rights for distribution and whatnot, that they were getting paid far less for it now themselves and that his residual payments were thusly that much more greatly reduced. When he goes and checks this out, he discovers that the studio sold the rights to a distribution company that it actually owns. And this is legal. They’re technically separate businesses even if they’re both owned by the same parent company and can thus be used in such a manner to screw creators.
I mean, I knew that Hollywood had more then a few nasty games up its sleeves to screw writers and other creators whenever it could get away with it, but still… I hope the writers can get everything they can out of this. God knows that they’ll barely see any of it after the shell games, so they might as well get as much upfront as they can.
Bill, I don’t believe I sent the link I’m talking about to you since zombies aren’t your bag. However, if you want to check it out (and it’s a real hoot when JMS shows up to join Romero & Brooks) then here it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGdJtSs9CwE
November 28th, 2007 at 2:46 am
I’m not sure if it’s enough to say that script writers should get as much input as they can bargain for. After all, the whole point of this conversation was that the role of script writers in the creative process of a movie or TV show was diregarded — that they were treated as technicians providing raw material to directors and producers — and as a result their bargaining position as far as payment is concerned is compromised.
Shouldn’t the same logic imply to input in the later creative process of a film? if they are the originators and the foundation of the story, shouldn’t they have more input? Shouldn’t the deal they have now be questioned?
Or maybe it is too much to ask? It’s one thing to give them a greater share of the glory and monet, but adding their voice to the already over-crowded list of people that have input might be too much? Would directors tolerate having to receive input from scriptwriters as well as the actors and bean counters?
Of course, if writers asked to have more input, that would require them to be more aware of the constrains that producers and directors have to deal with now.
I’m sorry for the ignorance, but I don’t really know who Harlan Ellison is, although the name does sound familiiar.
November 28th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Micha, in an ideal world the writer would have input throughout the entire creative process. I think it would only enhance the final product, because good storytelling hinges on unity of vision, and who better to keep everyone on point than the person who wrote the story?
In the real world, most directors, producers, and actors would resist giving writers that much power across the board. Certain writers manage to acquire such influence by either becoming directors or producers themselves, or by negotiating a certain amount of creative control into their contracts if their past scripts have been successful enough to provide them with leverage.
Jerry, you are incorrect about “City” having been to expensive to shoot. It’s another of Gene Roddenberry’s many lies, I’m afraid. As Ellison proves through the use of documentary evidence in his book, City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay That Became the Classic Star Trek Episode, the cost of the episode should have been apparent to any producer who read the initial treatment. Roddenberry read that treatment, and green-lit the episode.
Second, it was Roddenberry who had demanded that Ellison add an “Enterprise in jeopardy” scene to the script even though it was superfluous to the story. Ellison initially resisted but eventually gave in to Roddenberry’s pressure. Roddenberry then turned around and claimed it was Ellison who added that scene and made the script to expensive to shoot.
Third, the elements that truly took the production over budget — the period sets, costumes, props, and extras; and the SFX related to the Guardians and their time portal — all made it into the final production, which went significantly over budget despite being substantially different from Ellison’s preferred draft of the script.
Finally, even with the budget overruns, “City” was not the most expensive episode of Star Trek.
I agree with you that Trek was Roddenberry’s property and he had a right to decide what form it took, but not the right to lie about others who, frankly, contributed more to the success of his vision than he did.
November 28th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Oh, and Micha: Ellison is a sci-fi writer who has written teleplays, comic books, short stories, novels, and probably a whole lot more. He is also friends with Peter David.
November 28th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Micha, I’m actually of two minds on that subject. Ideally, I wouldn’t mind seeing a scenario like the one bill describes. Realistically, I don’t believe that every writer should have such power. They are they foundation for everyone else’s creative process, but that doesn’t always translate to knowing what it takes to be a good director, producer or actor. There have been any number of great stories and scripts turned in to Hollywood that had to be changed on the fly because what was written on the page didn’t quite work in the real world. Sometimes, things have to be changed or tweaked because of the circumstances surrounding the filming, and actor’s portrayal of a character or unforeseen accidents.
Ideally, the writer would be on hand to work out whatever needed changing and to guide the story through its new scenes, twists and turns. Realistically, why would the studio want to have the writer on set every day of a four month long shoot just in case he’s needed for five or six days here and there? Yeah, they could call the writer in when needed, but that would delay filming and it may be an issue if the writer has been commissioned for another project with a tight deadline.
And what about things like the Ford examples from above? Both improvisations worked better then what was on the page. Just do it or run it by the writer first? How about Night at the Museum? I was watching a making of (I haven’t seen the thing yet) where they were talking about an obvious brain fart by the writer. Stiller’s character was to walk into the main area of the museum, see the chaos and have all sorts of crazy stuff happen. Stiller asked a good question on the set. He wondered why his character wouldn’t just walk back out of the door that he had just come through. The writer had written a scene with a huge logic gap in it and filming sorta stopped for a few minutes. Stiller and the director looked around, ran through some options and then came up with the idea of having an ape or something drop down and block his being able to exit through the door. The script directions to the FX guys was corrected and Stiller and the director worked out how he would react to the new bits in the scene. Would it have been worth calling the writer over that? What about on the fly changes when current events (911 on New York based stories, twists and turns in the war, etc.) impact life?
Then of course, there are the larger changes. The writer turns in a script, the script sits a while, the producer decides it doesn’t quite work and then the producer hires someone else to address the new direction that he wants to go in. Maybe the script is junked all together and maybe the original writer’s plot is kept while the script is altered and some scenes are added and deleted. Now, is it better to have a partial credit for your work on the screen or is it better to demand that the story is filmed as is or not at all and thus not have it filmed at all. I would tend to think that it would depend on the desires of the writer in question. Whore that I am, I think that I would be fine with a partial credit and a guaranteed paycheck to support the family.
I’ve never had any ambitions to be a script writer. I’ll leave that headache to Sean. Part of the reason that it never held any allure for me was because of the nature of TV and Movies and their creative process. While I wouldn’t mind creating something and then seeing where others went with it, I think that I would prefer something like novels and whatnot since I can control 99% of what I want the audience to get.
But that’s just me and my coercive authority figure control freak nature I suppose…
November 28th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
City on the Edge of Forever as written would have been pretty up there price tag wise. I know what Ellison offered in the book you mention, but it looked a lot like a numbers game on his behalf as well. The fact that a slightly scaled down version of his vision still cost a pretty dime should go some way towards validating the idea that all the extra whiz bangs from his concept might have upped the price tag a bit more.
Ellison put forth a number of good rebuttals to a number of long held myths about his relationship to Trek in that book, but I was always as skeptical of his use of Hollywood money men in his arguments as I was when they were used by others. Hollywood’s fact$ and figure$ and $pread$heet$ and $tati$tic$ have looonnnngggg been suspect. Go ask Art Buchwald about Coming to America.
November 28th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Harlan Ellison:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0255196/
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/e/harlan-ellison/
November 28th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Jerry Chandler: “The fact that a slightly scaled down version of his vision still cost a pretty dime should go some way towards validating the idea that all the extra whiz bangs from his concept might have upped the price tag a bit more.”
What was “slightly scaled down” about the finished version? It had all of the things that supposedly made Ellison’s draft so expensive: the 1930’s exteriors and interiors, the period costumes, the extras, etc.?
And, again — Gene Roddenberry green-lit the script based on the treatment, which provided all of the information he’d need to accurately estimate production costs. The first draft of Ellison’s script didn’t include anything that wasn’t in the treatment, except for a scene Roddenberry demanded that he shoe-horn in.
The whole “it was too expensive” thing just doesn’t add up any way you look at it.
November 28th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Jerry, if the director and writer were on equal footing, I think it would encourage more collaboration, not less. And for every worthwhile change a director, actor, or producer has made to a script, there are probably ten other examples of changes that were ill-advised (to put it nicely). So I don’t see the problem with giving writers more influence. I mean, it’s not like they could fuck up movies worse than everyone else in the creative chain.
An example: Spider-Man 3. Terrible, terrible movie. The ending made no sense! A good writer with creative influence throughout the process might’ve helped to ensure that that had been, y’know, a good movie.
November 28th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Actually, up until last year, when I dragged that thing out of semi-retirement, it was a straight prose novel. Same with the other script I’m working on. I have three big reasons I turned them both into screenplays. 1)While I think very visually, I didn’t feel it always translated well to prose, 2)To just get the story out, it’s actually much simpler to write FADE IN and describe the scene rather than setting it up in flowing language, and 3) I wanted to see if I could do it and if it would sell. I’ve done storyboards for almost half the movie, which led me to think that I have a couple comic book artist friends that might be good to turn this into the next 30 Days Of Night.
Now, I can see where having the writer and director equal would be beneficial for the writer, the story, and perhaps the final product. But, sake of arguement time, how far does the equality part go? Does the writer have any say as to casting? Would the writer be able to put a stop to the production if it turned out that the producer/director/star bit large hairy objects best not described? What if they come to the writer and say, “This just doesn’t work, what if we did THIS?” Does the writer get to say, “Nope, not how I wrote it, here’s your money back, give me my work?”
I really HAVE to get my hands on that book.
November 29th, 2007 at 9:07 am
Just reading SciFi.com, a piece about Tin Man. It said that the movie “updates” Baum’s book. This I think is part of the problem. Most productions aren’t just simple storytelling. There HAS to be a gimmick. Sometimes the gimmick is good, a la Blair Witch or Cloverfield, sometimes the gimmick is lamer than a three legged horse, a la (Insert favorite turkey HERE.) Even in a sci fi, fantasy, or horror movie, it’s STILL the STORY that people watch, regardless of all the effects. But, whether true or not, producers think that unless they have the flashiest, hottest, newest X nobody’s going to come to see it. Look at the remake of The Fog. Better effects, bigger names, higher production values, it sucked. Why? Because, and Jerry’ll back me up here I think, you can’t shine a turd. It’s almost as though they think video production is like automotive production sometimes. Throw in more bells and whistles and fancy acronyms and people’ll buy it. Now, when I buy a car, my biggest concern is Will it take me from HERE to THERE? followed closely by Do the windows work? Film and video, you’re not looking to impress the neighbors, you’re looking to tell a story. TELL THE STORY.
November 29th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
I’m not sure I’d back you on the Fog example just yet, Sean. The way you have that worded, it almost looks like you’re referring to the fist Fog film as the turd that no amount of later FX could shine. I loves me some original Fog.
I’ll agree with you if your point was about redoing past greatness into present garbage if done with the idea of FX first and story a distant 28th. The first Salem’s Lot was, to me, a great TV mini-series that worked on so many levels. When I read about the then upcoming remake, I was actually jazzed by the idea of some of the casting and some of the early buzz. Then I read an interview with the director about the thing. He spent about half a page of interview space bragging on how they were going to have sooooooo much more and better special effects then what was available to the original. He kept boasting about the number of computer effects that they had per hour of film and pointing out the small total number of FX that the first one actually had. I immediately began dreading the film. When I finally saw it… All sizzle and no steak. just another modern “filmmaker” using modern FX advances as a crutch to replace real storytelling.
I’m not being as hard on Tin Man yet as I’ve really not read too much about it. It doesn’t look incredibly bad be the adverts and the cast isn’t all that bad, so I’ll at least give the first episode a whirl. “Updated” remakes of stories don’t always = bad filmmaking. The Magnificent Seven, Forbidden Planet, The Ring, The Grudge, star Wars and even Dawn of the Dead were all pretty good remakes and updates. Hammer Films did Dracula, The Mummy and Frankenstein with their own spin on them well after Universal did them. Hammer also made a great little film, Quatermass and the Pit based on the idea that they could do a better budgeted version of a pre-existing TV production that was pretty popular with the British masses. Batman Begins anyone?
I’m not anti-remake or anti-updates by any means. I’m just a grump about them when they’re handled in such an inept manner that it becomes obvious that the people involved have no idea whatsoever what made the original source material work on any level as entertainment.
Bill, I’d argue the finer points of why I thought that Ellison’s defense of this particular charge was weaker then his other points in the book’s essay, but I packed my copy of the book up to make room for turd butt’s two and a half plus large shelves of book collection and other miscellaneous stuff. If I come across the box while digging out the Christmas decorations, I might restart the debate via email. For now, I’ll just concede your points as I don’t have the proper rebuttal material.
November 29th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Ok… Where is Mulligan? I was sure he’d have chimed in on one of the mutant topics at least as they’re all kinda up his ally?
Are the rumors true? Have the zombie hordes finally gotten hold of Mr. Mulligan’s brain or have they merely nibbled his finger tips off? An anxious nation awaits these answers…
November 29th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Okay, before I get a care package courtesy of Ian, I wasn’t calling the ORIGINAL Fog a turd. It’s that new one with the Not-Superman and all the depth of a puddle of hummingbird spit that I was calling nasty names.
And where the heck IS Mulligan? Bill, look outside, see if you see a glint off the scope of a sniper rifle in the tree.
November 30th, 2007 at 11:36 am
“An example: Spider-Man 3. Terrible, terrible movie.”
This is a strange but lately quite common phenomenon: a big movie comes out, everybody is expecting it, it’s built on previous reputation of creators, massive budgets and everything. But for some reason it’s bad, a great disappointment; and you have to wonder, what were they thinking? Was it that they figured we’ll all go see it anyway, so why bother with a good script? Was the script originally good but then butchered? Was it the ego of the creators that blinded them to the obvious flaws? I don’t know.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
The biggest problem with Spidey 3 was that they tried to compress two and a half movies into one. Sandman, with all the backstory they gave him initially, deserved his own movie. The symbiote deserved it’s own movie. The degeneration of Peter from Friendly Neighborhood to Neighborhood Bad Guy deserved it’s own movie. The creation of Venom deserved at least half a movie.
November 30th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Micha, I think that it is in same way a problem of giving the fans what they “want” in a movie. It’s a bit like I was saying above in about the marketing people and Sean’s sister-in-law. A lot of the creators behind the big franchise movies seem to always talk about listening to the fans, putting more of what the fans want into the next film and upping the wow factor of the films. Problem is, I honestly doubt that most fans really know what it is that they want beyond what they “liked” in a film.
Talk to most people about the movie that they just saw, like a Spider-Man, and they’ll talk about the wild action scenes, the big moments and maybe a few of the smaller scenes. But most of the things that stick in your head after watching a big popcorn flick is the big moments that make it fun. Talk to them about what they want out of a sequel film and they’ll likely tell you that they want more of the same, just bigger and better. They want more action, more villains, more pow and wow and more umf. They hardly ever talk about wanting more quiet scenes, more pillow scenes, more long dialogue scenes and other stuff like that.
Thing is, all those scenes, when handled well, are the tools that a good filmmaker will use to make all the big scenes mean something and make sense. All those quieter scenes are what keeps you from going numb halfway through the film from nonstop assaults to your senses.
The people behind the Bourne films seemed to know that and stuck to their guns. Their three films either remained of high quality or got better. The last 007 film scrapped everything about Bond that the fans of the series “wanted” and went much harder edged (and back to a Bond closer to the books) to craft a hit. If they stick to their guns as they guide the franchise, things may be looking up for Bond.
Spider-Man 3 was designed to be a crowd pleasing popcorn flick. The problem was that it was designed rather then created. It was everything that the fans and the movie goers said that they wanted in the film. They wanted Venom! They wanted revenge! They wanted villains galore! They wanted super over the top action! They wanted what they wanted damn it!!!!
Of course, all of the things that they needed they didn’t ask for and so the designers of Spider-Man 3 didn’t really work on that unwanted, trivial stuff as much as the stuff the fans WANTED. It’s almost worst then the example I mentioned fans making films in Hollywood. This is Hollywood basically letting all of the fans make the film by committee. Never works. But so long as The Big Summer Film II makes money and the money men in Hollywood think they know why, you will get the far, far crappier The Big Summer Film III stinking up the box office and filled to the breaking point with everything that the fans who are complaining about it said that they “wanted” one short year earlier.
November 30th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick! WHY am I not getting those announcements I used to get that the blog was updated!
I just thought Bill was swamped with work at his new job and hadn’t updated. Then I happen to come here and it’s all World Of Awesomeness. And I missed it!
Where to start?
A lot of the movies I like best are from writer/directors. Kurosawa, Tarantino, Ron Jeremy, the best stuff often comes from a director who can see what the writer saw when they wrote it–something best achieved when they are one and the same.
CGI is the worst thing to ever happen to horror movies. I’ll take a crummy old Roger Corman shlock fest where the monster costume is, well, not so great (ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS) or really cool but clearly meant not to be shown in broad daylight (It Conquered the World, though, in point of fact, he DID show it in broad daylight, which made the guy who built it want to cry), over the idiotic CGI messes that fester on the Sci-Fi channel.
Hell, I just plunked down $20 (American dollars!) for a dupe of NOT OF THIS EARTH, which has, as its monster, Paul Birch wearing dark glasses. Not even real dark glasses; they used black duct tape to make them look bigger. And it’s still cool as all billy-damn!
My point is…wait a minute…
Ok, so directors vs writers. Well…I want to be both so I can see both sides. Writers are always doing shit like writing “And then the giant space armada shows up” and the poor director has to try to show that on a budget smaller than the grosses of Redacted and, when it looks like ass, the writer can gripe about how they ruined his vision. What vision? Watch this: “And then a giant monster, like something from Lovecraft’s worst nightmares, emerges from the oceans and stomps New York into paste.” That’s vision? Now, anyone who can make that happen on film…that’s talent.
On the other hand, being able to write good dialog is something that is a rare and great talent. Being able to, with a few words, tell the audience what they need to know about a character is a great talent. Quentin Tarantino is a great director. He’s an AWESOME writer.
Writers definitely get ripped off in many regards. Ever notice when they do those retrospective montages of great movies they usually show example of great writing? Some director dies and they show clips of his work and 9 times out of 10 it will be those lines you remember–”Here’s looking at you, kid”, that sort of thing–where the director most likely did nothing more than frame the camera correctly (Assuming it wasn’t the cinematographer who actually figured that out. Talk about guys who get no credit. A bad cinematographer can make the greatest picture look like a steaming pile of mandrill dung and that’s all anyone will notice. But when it looks great they credit the director.)
(Yes, I AM doing the cinematography in FISTFUL OF BRAINS. Why do you ask?)
November 30th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
BTW, who held the camera during that Romero clip? The freaking Blair Witch? Janet Reno?
November 30th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Wait, the Blair Witch is Janet Reno? Suddenly that all makes sense…!
See, what Bill’s said about the writer being vague, which is actually recommended to first timers, by the way. Apparently the higher ups don’t want their first string script readers to have to, you know, read. Hence me putting together my own storyboard sheets(which, according to what I’ve been told, are now being used by some guy in Hollywood named Craven or something.) I’ve got the first half of the movie drawn out, just so I know what it could look like. And you KNOW that when the thing’s finished, the storyboard sheets are going along for the ride.
I just got through my annual watch-every-horror-movie-I-own thing. Watched The Devil Bat twice. First for the sake of watching it, and then to see everything that they did right. The effects aren’t terribly good, but between the characters, the lighting(another much underappreciated element) and Lugosi’s generally being a crazed lunatic through most of his individual scenes, it’s really well put together. Wondered what my friend the animator COULD have done with some CG work in that. Now, part of the problem with CG is how good it CAN be. Jurassic Park, the LOTR films, Star Wars. Now, one of the things I kept hearing was how much faster and cheaper the computer effects were than traditional models. Okay, that might be true. BUT, that doesn’t mean that if you do it quick and cheap, it’s not going to LOOK quick and cheap. Sometimes I swear they don’t even run the effects through any kind of filter to try and get the lights and shades right.
November 30th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Bill Mulligan, I updated your subscription preferences. But I’d suggest not waiting for the notifications, as I may be doing away with them. The subscriber plug-in is tied in with registration, which spammers are infiltrating via spam-bots. So I may just shut off the registration function, if I can figure out how.
As for writers being vague, Sean’s hit the nail: in Hollywood, writers are encouraged to be vague with scene description to avoid stepping on the director’s toes. There are script readers at some studios who don’t even read the scene direction when judging submissions! It’s another example of Hollywood’s stuck-in-the-past thinking.
November 30th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Oh, and in case no one has noticed: this is to date the longest thread in this blog.
November 30th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
“BTW, who held the camera during that Romero clip?”
I’m guessing the fan in the crowd who also likely posted it. I didn’t care, it was awesome anyhow.
And now to get Sean on my case again…
See, the thing with CGI isn’t that I dislike it, it’s that I feel that it’s sometimes used just because they can when they should be figuring out how to move the story forward better. LOTR is a great example of CGI done mostly right. There were a few scenes that seemed kind of overdone for no other reason then they could overdo it, but it was, on the whole, well done and well handled.
And then Peter Jackson did King Kong…
A huge number of the scenes on Kong’s island were done in a manner that reeked of, “because we can.” The Kong VS Rex fight where Kong kept juggling Ann just had me rolling my eyes. It was so poorly done as to have been comical. When I had first heard of the project, I had envisioned an epic fight. I kept thinking about the stop motion work in the first Kong done with today’s CGI. I kept seeing a super realistic knockdown-drag out between two fantastical creatures. I got a goofy juggling act and a poorly done “take the stone from my hand” exhibition. The chases and the vine scenes felt somewhat the same to me.
The 1933 Kong had FX limitations that meant that they had to think out as much about the scenes as they could in order to maximize the effectiveness of their “limited” tools. The 2005 Kong had zero limitations on the visual FX possibilities and had scenes that looked like an over the top video game or a bad cartoon. In 1933, they had to think about how to effectively use what they didn’t have as much as they had to work with what they did have. They had to suggest and they had to imply and that got the viewer to create things in their own mind that filled in the shadows and the “blanks” on screen. In 2005, they could do anything and they sometimes suffered for it.
Like I said before, just because you can show or do something on the screen these days doesn’t always mean that you should. Jaws and Alien were suspenseful partly because the visual limitations they had to deal with forced them to hide the creatures of the films for most of the films. You almost never saw the full creatures in the light and fully exposed and that made the mind create terrors that they could never show on the screen. Sci-Fi Saturday Nights is full of aliens and sharks that induce giggles or disinterest because some idiot out there thinks that more and bigger FX means more and bigger scares.
I’d love to see an entire school of filmmakers in Hollywood using the tools of today while taking the approach of yesteryear’s filmmakers. Besides the less insane budgets, the possibilities to invoke complete and utter terror, suspense or joy is just amazing in its infiniteness. It’s such a pity that the art of filmmaking seems to be on life support these days.
” CGI is the worst thing to ever happen to horror movies.”
I’d say amen to that, but I keep hoping that more filmmakers would get it when it came to using CGI in horror. Guillermo del Toro did such an amazing minimalist (yet completely and perfectly horror inducing) job with the CGI in The Devil’s Backbone that I’ve not give up all hope just yet. He knew that he could show more, but he chose to show what he needed only and it made for a wonderfully memorable visual.
December 1st, 2007 at 9:43 am
Watched The Devil Bat twice.
You sir, are a fine example of what’s right about America.
Now, have you seen DEVIL BAT’S DAIGHTER where they totally whitewash the Lugosi character to make him seem like a good guy???
Bill Mulligan, I updated your subscription preferences.
Thanks. I’ll just keep checking it daily now. I feel like a chunkhead.
Also, the blog design looks way cool.
Oh, and in case no one has noticed: this is to date the longest thread in this blog.
And we did it without any whack-a-troll.
“BTW, who held the camera during that Romero clip?”I’m guessing the fan in the crowd who also likely posted it. I didn’t care, it was awesome anyhow.
Oh, I agree. Shaky Romero is still Romero.
One of the reasons he got so ripped off is that NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was apparently never copyrighted under that name. The name was a last minute addition so the paperwork is for NIGHT OF THE FLESH EATERS. This is why everyone and his brother can release the movie for $4 in the giant Bin-O-Videos at KMart. Hell, we could all get together over beer and chips and record our own commentary and release it–The special Bill, Micha, Bill, Sean and Jerry edition.
Now, part of the problem with CG is how good it CAN be.
And I wasn’t trying to trash CGI, though it came out that way. It’s an awesome tool for filmmakers. Imagine Lord of the Rings without it.
It’s when they use it on VAN HELSING that you begin to realize that it’s being used unwisely and without need. Personally I think they should use it more for enhancements than for the whole freaking show. imagine the transformation of AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON with just a few CGI touches on top of Rick Bakers amazing practical effects.
Jacksons’s KING KONG has exactly the problems Jerry points out. Way too much “Do it bigger!”. The Apatosaurus stampede was ridiculous. The TREX fight…oy.
On the other hand, kudos to the folks who gave Kong himself so much personality. He saved the movie. There are a few shots that almost brought tears to my eyes. (I like big monkeys. So sue me.)
ALIEN was scary as hell, despite having a suit that was not terribly mobile. JAWS kept a generation out of the water, despite having a shark robot that sank and looked as frightening as Charlie Tuna if shown for longer than 5 seconds. So Spielberg…never showed him for longer than 5 seconds! THAT’S why he’s a genius.
And every sequel to both movies has solved the problem of the monsters and shown them early and often…and not been scary one single bit.
December 1st, 2007 at 1:47 pm
“On the other hand, kudos to the folks who gave Kong himself so much personality. He saved the movie. There are a few shots that almost brought tears to my eyes.”
Yes. Best supporting ape or monkey in a motion picture. Unfortunately his career has not gone well since then. He’s been type cast. The stronger scenes were the quiet scenes that showed his personality. The weak parts of the movie were the over the top special effects — too many animals — and the long exposition.
Gollum was also excellent, but the gigantic battle scenes weren’t as good. Peter Jackson is not a good battle director, I think.
The old muppet Yoda had more emotional range than the CGI yoda. But then again, the masked Vader had more emotional range than the unmasked Anakin, and so did everybody else. so this might not be a CGI problem.
But certainly the good thing about CGI is that it made it possible to create comic-fantasy-scifi-horror like never before. Unfortunately, you still need a good story, a fact that’s all too often forgotten.
December 1st, 2007 at 1:49 pm
“Oh, and in case no one has noticed: this is to date the longest thread in this blog.
And we did it without any whack-a-troll.”
Yes. Hurray for semi-intelligent not antagonistic conversation.
December 1st, 2007 at 2:12 pm
On a mostly non-related point: The movie “the Golden Compass” is coming out soon. I’ve read the book (but not the others), and didn’t really care for it. It’s not that I hated it, I just didn’t really care. Am I missing something?
December 1st, 2007 at 4:57 pm
”The old muppet Yoda had more emotional range than the CGI Yoda.”
That’s an interesting comment as it sort of underscores one of the issues I have with the over reliance CGI by some filmmakers today. Must animatronic puppets and whatnot have polished glass (or glass-like) eyes that reflect the light and the world around them in a perfectly real way. Their eyes react to their environment, as far as reflectivity and whatnot, in the same manner that a living creatures eyes will. This tends to create a much more lifelike look of emotion and intellect then the flat eyes of a CGI creation. Even where the animators create reflections and nuance in their CGI creation’s eyes, it never really looks right in the setting that the CGI creation is in or when compared to the living actors around it. CGI eyes just don’t seem to have the same spark that living eyes, or even, strangely, glass eyes, have that allows a connection with the audience or creates a feeling of true menacing intent for the audience to pick up on.
In a lot of cases, a small amount of CGI enhancing the physical effects seems like a much better why to do things. CGI may one day become so photorealistic that it’s almost impossible to tell a CGI human from a real human, but I think that some part of us will still always pick up on the fact there’s no life there. It’ll be a weird variation of the theory that humanlike robots will always, no matter how well they’re created, slowly drive us up the wall to have around because of the hundreds of infinitesimally small flaws that will always clue us in on the fact that the “human” next to us has in fact no life force to animate it. I think that much of the CGI work that we’ll see in our lifetimes will suffer the same problem and will therefore always have at least a slight disconnecting effect for the audience.
Uhmmmm… Trying to tie this into the idea that Bill started all this with… It doesn’t matter how good the writer’s work or the work of anyone who comes after the writer, the movie just won’t work if the biggest trick that you’re using disconnects the audience from that work. Yeah, that kinda worked.
” Am I missing something?”
Probably not. While the novel has won a number of awards, the idea of the narrative being designed to slowly shift towards the removal of religion in life probably doesn’t strike the right subconscious cords with any number of people. Even people who have given up on the idea of religion themselves still seem to react the same to narratives designed to mimic or tap into those constructs. Since the writer’s stated intent was to deconstruct those things, it likely feels like something isn’t quite there.
And, ooooooh how the nculture warriors are lining up to go off their meds over this one. My inbox is filled with dire warnings of what this movie will do to our poor, precious children if they’re allowed to watch a movie series based on an atheistic point of view.
December 1st, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Anybody wodering what I’m talking about with The Golden Compass and its background, follow the link.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp
December 2nd, 2007 at 12:35 am
Jerry, you didn’t drive me up the wall, you just basically said the same things I did. So much for the really long non-antagonistic thread. Sorry, Bill.
As for the eyes not looking right–since I’m an eye man, I love people’s eyes, there quite good on toast–When you look in someone’s eye, you’re not seeing the structures of the eye, you’re seeing the clear covering, There’s a bit of a recession in an actual eye from the rest of the facial surface. Now, you can copy every ocular structure, even go so far as completely map out the retinal veins and pupilary thingies, but until you get that clear overlayer, it’s not going to look right.
Now, for the suggestion factor, in my non-Triangle movie, most of the things are going to be suggestions, shadows, character reactions, with glimpses of what’s actually taking place. The big exceptions are the bug/snake attack and the compressing elevator, since those are both (relatively!!) easy to do as practical props. Just watched Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, and some of the creepiest things are the things that have the least done to them. Hordes of people chasing you where you can’t see their faces and they don’t SAY anything–MAN that’s creepy. But even in Romero’s original, there were HOLY-CRAP-DID-I-JUST-SEE-THAT? moments, like the woman eating the worm, and Karen chowing down on Harry.
I have very little patience anymore, not that I really ever DID, for these “Protect the children from Hollywood!/Real Life!/The World!” types. Now, even though the first Narnia book was one of my favorites, I didn’t see the film. Why? Well, I was busy. But I literally had to laugh at all the Aslan-as-God whining. Yeah, it’s a metaphor. People have been using metaphor since at least Greek theater. Now, would I have a problem showing Brian that movie? Only in that he has no interest right now in anything that isn’t animated. Parents should have a little more faith in themselves and slightly more in their kids that they’re doing a decent job in expressing their own values, and a movie’s not going to really get anyone to change religions or start talking to groundhogs, wolves, and lions.
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Jerry, you’re right about Yoda. I also think the muppet Yoda had more subtle small movements that felt more real.
I’m not sure that my problem with Golden Compass was the atheistic point of view. Actually, if I was aware of it, or if it had played a more visible role in the first book (thew one I’ve read), I would probably have enjoyed it more. My own currently quite pathetic attempt at writing has similar intentions. The book didn’t work for me for some other reason. I’m not exactly sure why.
As for the whining of the religious: grow up already. Oh my deity of your choice or none at all, are your children’s heads going to explode if they are exposed to a narrative that is different than the one they got at home. If agnostic children could read or watch Narnia, with it’s religious themes, or the recent Superman with its heavy handed christian symbolism, surely religious children can watch a movie presenting a non-religious point of view. The young ones won’t get it anyway. The older ones would benefit from expanding their horrizons. And anyway, sooner or later you should teach them about the birds and the bees — there are other things in the world other than people like you, such as birds AND bees.
Anyway, the whole point of fantasy/sci-fi is to open your mind to other options. And if you find it offensive don’t read it/watch it. Which is not to say that they are not allowed to criticize the movie/book if they find it offensive. It’d judt the save the children rhetoric that’s dumb.
For example, the comic Fables has a very strong right wing slant. In the past it was fun, but has become harmful to the quality of the stories of late.
By the way, the thief wgo broke into my parents house was captured. However, I don’t think they found the computers just waiting there to be returned to us in tact unfortunately.
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Sean,
I just figured that my picking on poor Kong would catch me a little flack from your direction. I suspect that I’ll actually like the movie a little better the next time I see it. I was just so under whelmed and annoyed by a lot of the Kong Island scenes (especially given Jackson’s work on LOTR) that it kind of colored my perception of my first viewing of the film.
Micha,
That’s a good point. Puppets, muppets and animatronic creatures are constantly moving, even if it’s almost unperceivable, due to the movements of the puppeteers, the controllers and the environment around them. The stoic nature of a CGI creation’s body language combined with the absence of the real, natural and hard to replicate movements th