Is It the Writer's Fault When...

A big budget film's script is lacking? This question came to mind recently after seeing the newest chapter in the "Star Trek" opus. The movie was certainly a spectacle, with great visuals and exciting action sequences. However, I found the story and the script lacking. A friend of mine in Los Angeles who works in the biz was more partial to it, and we exchanged a few emails about the merits and shortcomings of the movie.

I won't go into what I found lacking in Star Trek. Perhaps I was expecting something more in line with the old films and the TV series. Whatever it was that did not strike me right got me to pondering the question: can we say the writer executed poorly when a big budget film does not work story wise? It's one thing on a spec script or in an indy setting if the script is not up to snuff, but when hundreds of millions are going into a movie and the writer is being directed by producers, studio executives, a director, and so on to make many changes and go in different directions, can it be said that the writer is to blame if the script does not turn out to be gangbusters?

I guess part of it might stem from how one views the film in question, but I don't think (and maybe this is being generous) I'm an old curmudgeon who does not like blockbuster or big action films. On the contrary, I do. I was quite fond of the first X-Men movie, and I thought WALL-E was one of the best films of 2008. These movies were high budget and worked in my opinion. So when other big budget films don't turn out as well as those, can we fault the writer?

We might not be able to fault anyone in reality. There are so many competing forces in big budget films, and so much is at stake. From the producers to the distributors to the advertisers, perfect storms can become perfect disasters, and it can be hard to tell which link in the chain was the weakest.

Joe and I were working on an action script last year. It was not our strongest genre, but we liked the idea and the producer with whom we were working so we gave it a go. We were pretty much following orders and trying to please the producer most of the time, but we were not mindlessly regurgitating everything the producer asked for. We tried to bring our own voice and style to the script, but in the end it was the producer's idea, and he was the one taking it to the marketplace so why not try to get it the way he wanted it? Looking back on it, I don't think it was that great of a script, so was it our fault?

Sometimes I find a useful way to judge a film by asking: would I use the film in one of my screenwriting classes to instruct beginners in the art of story telling? So maybe 'fault' is the wrong word to use when any film's script doesn't work, and I'm hesistant to say that Star Trek doesn't work (it's box office receipts alone might contradict this assessment). Nevertheless, it's an intriguing topic to explore, and we invite others' opinions and comments.

-Randy

Life Is a Dream, Anime, and Animation

"La vida es sueno" the great Lope de Vega of Spanish Golden Era fame titled his most famous play: Life is a dream. His words were reverberating in my head yesterday as I stumbled upon the Anime Convention at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston: GI Joe and Little BoPeep... Vamps and Vixens... Maids and Mistresses of the night... They were out in force for the Anime Convention. Most were around high school age.

At first, as I appraised the Thor figure, and the Purple horse lady, and the Japanese school girl dressed as a Japanese school girl, I couldn't honestly figure out what sub-group from high school I was observing. They all wore passes around their necks and I was able to ascertain from their credentials that they were aficionadoes of Anime, the extremely eccentric, often violent cartoons originally originating out of Japan, but now - apparently - popular with fans the world over.

The Anime conventioneers had literally taken over the Copley Plaza mall where the Hynes Convention Center is located. At the mall food court, there were Wood Nymphs queuing for Cashew Chicken and Musclemen ordering pizza. In the restrooms, Sci-Fi geeks applied mascara and racy, transgendered Anime figures adjusted their thongs. In the plaza courtyard, all and sundry posed for pictures. The folks at the mall who were not of the convention had the best day of voyeurism ever. One staid couple with a child approached a group of conventioneers outside of the Copley Post Office in the mall and asked what it was all about. "Oh, we came in from New York," a pastoral African-American BoPeep replied. "We come here and dress up. There's a ball tonight. It's a lot of fun."

A friend of mine from high school who is visiting me from New York gave me the first whiff that something odd was in town. When he arrived off the bus from New York, he noticed in the Back Bay station two Asian guys dressed as Warrior Bugs with plastic shields and bug-like armor. We talked about whether in high school any of us could have possibly been part of that subgroup. My friend assured me that I had not been a wannabe Anime aficionado (Anime really only caught on in the States in the nineties and we graduated from high school in '87).

In reflecting on Anime, my friend and I realized that the Bible has epic stories and Anime does too: both are essentially a fight between good and evil. Both are about people who are struggling for the better angels of their souls to prevail... My friend reminded me of an epic story that he wrote that is ripe to be animation...if not Anime. His epic story penned in 1986 - long before we'd even heard of anime - is about a high school graduate who marries his sweet heart and the next day observes from the balcony of his large Victorian home that someone is stealing his tandem bicycle. He confronts the thief who tells him that this is not really his bicycle because it's lacking the bell with his signature snail on it. Instead, the thief was taking Max off to the war.

Max's great adventure begins on a navy ship on Fourth of July. He believes he's under attack but it's really just a Fourth of July Celebration. He ends up in the waters off the South Pacific and about to embark on an endless series of adventures. My friend then drew a picture of Max with sharp teeth and cannibalistic proclivities. "He should be on the big screen," I mentioned to him. It was at that point that I was reminded of a producer the Sages recently stumbled on. This gentleman says he is associated with an investment group that has put up $100 million for new technology and animation. I thought of how perfect a fit Max would be.

Back in our day it was PeeWee Herman's Great Adventure. Maybe nowadays Max could be written for this producer as an animation project with anime overtones. Then, maybe, this time next year I will be seeing Max figures on the T on the way to the Anime Convention.

The Disappearing Reappearing Producer or Trust But Verify

In "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" a character, Marvin Acme, writes with his famous disappearing, reappearing ink. Though perhaps a bit obscure, that little snatch of dialogue could be applied to a producer with whom the Sages have been acquainted since he first expressed interest in producing a project we were repping in the summer of '05. He was supposed to be working with a financier to produce a low-budget independent film. At the time, the screenplay we were repping seemed to be an ideal fit. Things were moving along nicely until the producer said his "financier" abruptly decided he no longer wanted to invest in films. That was the end of that...so it seemed.

Two years later, having just returned from LA, we remember getting a call from the same producer saying he had moved to the west coast and was now putting together a slate of films with an investment group that would total in the tens -if not hundreds- of millions of dollars. It seemed so wildly ridiculous a claim that we thought no one could make this stuff up. We decided to keep going and play along --not commiting ourselves in any way but not burning a bridge to something remarkable, in the unlikely event the windy talk was true-- but, alas, eventually the producer disappeared again...

Only to reappear this past month after another MIA period of about two years. The first on the big slate of films is ready to go so he says, and he wants to include a Sages script in the queue. Of course, very few details and no names or terms have been forthcoming, and when pressed for these or any kind of a paper trail...guess what? Disappears again.

In our view, in the end, things are never as good as they seem. There are many pied pipers in the script game who come calling with brassy talk but don't have the chops to back it up. Many writers put aside common sense and bite on big talk and bold claims. The lessons remain: always do your due diligence and always ask for a contract (if necessary, get an entertainment attorney involved). Get as much money as you can up front. Eschew working on spec, because, as we've detailed elsewhere, more often than not, nothing ever comes of back end payments for the small fish screenwriter. Be polite and lead with your enthusiasm, but also be skeptical and verify any claim.

We'd like to hear from you about any similar stories.

-Randy and Joe

Show Me the (Irish?) Money

As we've written in a few posts, the Sages are working on a period piece about Thomas Francis Meagher, the great 19th century revolutionary and orator. Our managers on this project recently suggested to us that the Irish Film Board might be in a position to kick a film about an Irish revolutionary figure into high gear. The Irish Film Board? Hmm... Being half-Irish myself I've often fantasized about how wonderful it would be to retire to a small cottage on the Irish coast for a period of time and pursue my art. Reading, writing, a dip in the sea...

But maybe there's more than a fantasy to that.

A few weeks back in this blog, Randy wrote about the tax credits that have recently lured a spate of Hollywood productions to Massachusetts. Truth be told, however, the tax credits (and their purchase and sale) strike me as more complicated than financial derivatives.

In Ireland, however, they take a different approach: they actually support their filmmakers directly and have been doing so since the Film Board Act of 1980. Operating under the aegis of the Department of Art, Sport, and Tourism, the Bord Scannán na hÉireann / the Irish Film Board (IFB) supports and promotes the Irish film industry and the use of Ireland as a location for international productions. The IFB is involved in major European co-productions and last year, with its support, Irish filmmakers picked up over 100 awards at key festivals including Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and Toronto. In addition, the IFB's website has a searchable database of Irish Co-Producers and acts as a clearinghouse for filmmakers wanting to partner with their Irish counterparts.

As Randy noted in his last post from LA, the economic woes have changed the landscape for film and television productions and the hard times are bringing people together in new ways. Just as the U.S. is not the Goliath it once was on the international stage, neither is Hollywood. The silver lining may be that we could look to models like the IFB for how we might spur the independent film community here. And, as it relates to our own project, rather than try to sell it as a splashy Hollywood period piece, perhaps our first call should be to the Irish Film Board's U.S. representative.

Erin Go Bragh!

The Return of the Native

I'm at the Long Beach Airport (watching the Celts in Game 7), and the CA sun is setting majestically on the horizon. I've been in LA for a few days on business for the Boston University Film/TV Department. We had a screening of student films, at which alumini, industry professionals, and students turned out for a truly wonderful evening.

I also had a chance to have meetings with BU alumni working in the industry--some very successful ones. From Richard Gladstein (exec. producer of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction) to Maria Jacquemetton (writer-producer on the TV show Mad Men) to Jeff Graup a scrappy manager who exec. produced Lakeview Terrace and whose client, David Loughery, wrote the recently released Obsessed.

I talked to many others at all levels at the business, and, from top to bottom, everyone noted how tough things are right now. The economic woes have made an already skittish town positively neurotic. But one independent producer noted to me that it's also bringing people together in new ways. Those in the business are getting thrown out of their comfort zones and are taking chances they might have not when times were more secure. So there's a possible silver lining in the economic downturn.

As it relates to our project we've been posting about (the epic, historic script), I was able to meet with the managers who are guiding us on the screenplay. The meeting went very well, and things are progressing: as we noted in our last post, we need to do a character pass on the script, and that point was made very clear to me. But this meeting reminded me that the last time I met with these managers was exactly one year ago, on my last trip to LA for BU business. What we might be able to accomplish in LA in six months has taken almost two years--that is, to form a closer relationship with a strong management team. I love Boston, but sometimes I lament not having made a go of it in LA. One can write anywhere and be successful, but there's no replacing being able to sit down to coffee with an agent or manager on a regular basis, and that's very hard to do from good old Beantown.

So, as the sun sets on this day and this trip, I see new horizons. Times are changing. It's an internet-world now, and webisodes could be the wave of the future. Massachusetts could become a bona fide film and television development town. Nothing is for sure, but the models of the past are just as shaky.

As I return to Boston, all I can really do is keep working, keep making connections, and keep my fingers crossed.

-Randy