A week ago I did a Doom & Gloom blog entry about the state of the biz after from a dead American Film Market and realizing that indie films and indie genre films are in big trouble these days... and studio movies? Well, it seems like movies today are now an ancillary of toy companies - Hasbro is a film producer now! For real. And Marvel comics is a film producer, they have a deal with Disney. And this just sucks for screenwriters who don't want to write GI JOE 2 or SLINKY: THE MOTION PICTURE...
The biggest mistake of my career is that I am a writer who really wants to tell his own stories and seems to have a bunch of stories to tell. I would much rather write an original script than adapt someone else’s material - and have turned down jobs I should have taken. I always joke about ANGELS & DEMONS, but had I said yes instead of no my name would probably be on a big Ron Howard / Tom Hanks movie right now instead of on some cool spec script I wrote instead that still has not sold. Hey, and that was *before* movies had become just an ancillary right of Hasbro and Marvel and Sony Playstation.
They are making MONOPOLY THE MOTION PICTURE and Ridley Scott is directing.
They are turning a guy’s *Twitter account*, SHIT MY DAD SAYS, into a TV series.
I have a Script Tip called Writing For Toys that gets me a dozen angry e-mails whenever I run it, because it says we should consider the ancillary rights when we write our original screenplays, because that is an elements that the producers are considering. If they have two specs on their desks and one is a perfect for games and toys and Happy Meal tie ins and a Saturday morning cartoon spin off, and the other can only be a movie; guess which one will make them the most money? Hey, you may think this is art, but the guys buying our scripts are businessmen and are making an investment in our screenplays with the hope of making a good return on that investment. They are going to pick the screenplay that will make them the best return. That Script Tip is now out of date because movies are the ancillaries now. They aren’t looking at our spec scripts any more, they are looking at what board game hasn’t been filmed yet, what toy line can be a summer tentpole, what comic book might be the next IRON MAN. It’s long past thinking about the ancillary rights when you write a spec...
Depressing, huh?
As I said in the Doom & Gloom blog entry - Uwe Boll is a genius! He was the one who figured this out before anyone else, before any of the studios, and began making the movies of video games while studios were still thinking the business was all about making movies and then making the videogames of movies.
Terry Rossio (and Ted Elliott) have a column on their site called Mental Real Estate that foresaw all of this a decade ago. This column used to be one that I understood but disagreed with - my theory was that popular movies required original ideas, not some idea so worn out that everyone on the globe knew about it. Of course, that little PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movie and its sequels proved me wrong. The Mental Real Estate model is the one Hollywood loves right now. “Hey, everybody knows Solitaire! We play it on our computers when we’re supposed to be working! And old people play it with actual cards! That makes SOLITAIRE: THE MOVIE ‘four quadrant’! We get the young *and* old audience! And SOLITAIRE has built in sequels that are also part of our Mental Real Estate - I can’t wait for the scary excitement of SPIDER SOLITAIRE, can you?” If you have an idea on how to turn solitaire into a movie, you can sell that to Hollywood. The business is more interested in the Universal than the Unique right now.
Depressing, huh?
Everything runs in cycles, so this trend will eventually burn out... but it may takes years, probably a decade. Now, the way we land a job like SLINKY: THE MOTION PICTURE is to write a great original spec with an amazing original idea... and that leads to writing a movie that is just an ancillary for a toy or game or comic book. So we still need to be writing original material... unless you can crack that SOLITAIRE movie (because that games is public domain). But this doesn’t satisfy someone like me, whose motivation is to see *my* scripts on screen. Though I have realized the error of my ways and would now probably take the ANGELS & DEMONS assignment or any of the others I turned down, because for some mixed up reason the biz respects the guy who adapts a popular novel more than the guy who can actually create their own story and characters... and more than the writer of that popular novel. I have learned that I need to play well with others rather than go to my own little corner in my own little room where I can be whatever I want to be. But am I going to write stuff like ETCH-A-SKETCH: THE MOTION PICTURE for the next decade until this trend dies out?
Depressing, huh?
So, Bill from Pulp 2.0 and I were talking about this... and instead of looking at this as The Death Of Cinema, we've decided to use this as an opportunity. To make lemonade out of the lemons. Basically, I’m taking my own advice and looking at projects with strong ancillary possibilities. I have a script called ANDROID ARMY that is often a bridesmaid, but so far has not been a bride. People keep *almost* making this script. The great thing about it is that it’s affordable sci-fi, and has some really strange characters. It is the only thing I've ever written that screams: "Action Figures!" It also screams video game and comic book and game cards and all of that other stuff. The stuff that used to be ancillary rights but now seems to be driving the market. So, we are going to try to set it up as a video game and a comic book and maybe even a toy line *before* we try to set it up as a movie. Instead of looking at the movie first and the ancillary stuff second, the plan is to reverse that - and look at video games and all of those things that used to be “after markets” as equals to cinema. To play this ancillary game Hollywood seems to be playing.
Hey, the economy sucks - games and comic books and all of those things that used to be ancillaries are hurting. We understand that. This is not a case of thinking that setting this up as a comic book is going to be easy, this is trying to break down some other door - find some other way in with this project. If we do all of this and nothing happens, how is that any different than trying to set up the script with a bunch of producers?
I did not start writing screenplays to sell dolls, but many of my favorite films have action figures... no, not CASABLANCA, but ALIENS does. So, for a while, if I have a choice between the story idea that can sell to multiple markets or a story idea that can only be a movie, I'm going to pick the additional markets one. I'm not writing anything I don't like, just selecting from ideas I do like or twisting an idea a little to give it additional chances to be bought and made. I’m kicking down different doors.
And that’s kind of exciting.
Instead of looking at something like SHIT MY DAD SAYS and complaining that some guy sold his *tweets* to Hollywood and they are making it into a TV series... I’m looking at things like tweets as a possible market that can lead to a script deal. Instead of looking at Diablo Cody breaking into the biz because she wrote an amusing blog about working as a stripper, I’m looking for a job as a stripper! Okay, I tried applying for a job at Bob’s Classy Lady in Van Nuys and they wouldn’t hire me to strip, even though my boobs are larger than many of the women on the pole. So I’ll have to blog about something else.
But the thing about Diablo Cody and the SHIT MY DAD SAYS twitter guy is that they are *writers* who are *writing something*, just in a different medium than screenplays. If you think about his tweets, it's not just a basic twitter account - it's very specific and all about one character (or maybe two) and it's funny. I can easily see this as a TV series. Yeah - you have to adapt it, but how is that any different than adapting Ray Romano's stand up routine into a series? This guy is writing 140 character scenes about a character! He has found a way to show off his comedy talents. Of all of the twitter accounts in all of the world, his is the one that will be turned into a TV series. Not mine... not even Roger Avary’s tweets from prison (though, he’s funny as hell, too).
The thing with tweets and blogs is that it's a writer getting attention with *no money* because they found a unique character or world to write about. One of my "FB friends" has a blog with all kinds of attitude and a very distinct voice and "world" - she writes hardboiled kick ass action stuff. Carole Parker, it’s over there –> She's damned smart, and FB spams the hell out of her stuff (usually with a smokin' hot picture of some babe with a gun to get your attention). I know her blog is going to land a screenplay deal because it’s unique and she’s working her butt off to get it in front of people. She has kicked in some other door that may lead to Hollywood. That’s one of those inexpensive things you can do to get Hollywood’s attention. I'm looking at something like that myself - a fictional blog that is really a novel in disguise. Costs me nothing to get that out into the world.
I think the challenge for us now is to find stories that have some sort of additional market. Something that makes this script a "web natural" or a comic book or game or action figure or whatever else *in addition* to being a great screenplay. This ancillary thing isn’t a problem, it’s a solution. Before we only had the one door that we could try to get through - the movie door. Now we have dozens of doors, dozens of possible ways in. We can write a blog or tweet or make webisodes or write a novel or write a comic book or create a game or toy or... well, don’t let me make a list that *limits* the possible doors. Find the door that nobody has thought of, yet. Be like Uwe Boll!
Okay, maybe not that last part.
But find where the door is and see if you can kick it open. The blog thing and the tweets and toys and comic books and videogames and whatever the hell else you can think of are doors. Kick 'em open if you can.
- Bill
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Research - Who Needs It? - and many of my awful films.
Yesterday's Dinner: Fuddruckers bacon cheddar burger.
Bicycle: Rode *West* to a Starbucks with a bad layout.
Movies: PIRATE RADIO - Saw that new PIRATES movie, and it was okay. As usual, Bill Nighy was great, and Jack Davenport was back again as that government guy who tries to capture the Pirates, like in the other movies. But where was Keira Knightly and Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom? Why didn't they come back for this sequel?
The film was *really* episodic, just all over the place. I had no idea what the story was... a kid searching for his dad? They don't spend much time on that plot thread. The whole government vs pirate thing? Well, the problem with that plot thread is that the *people* are supposed to love the pirates for what they do (play rock & roll music) and we even get shots of normal people listening to the radio and dancing... but they never show us *why* the people *need* the music. Hey, it's great music, but I'm not exactly sure why this service is so important when you can just go by a record.
If they showed us why their job was important to all of those dancing people, showed us that this music was the thing that cheered them up and changed their lives (which isn't the same as just showing them dancing) then we would have felt that the pirates were doing a noble job and wanted them to keep doing that pirate thing. But we don't know why the people need the pirates, so what the pirates do doesn't seem to have a real value, and not an *emotional* value. Why do we care if the government stops the pirates or not? Stakes are not established.
And the government guys, including Davenport as a character named Twatt (never gets a laugh) are just pure evil. They just want to stop the pirates because they are pirates - the antagonist's goal has zero motivation, so it is unbelievable. Which makes the whole film seem fake.
The pirates themselves are a bunch of character sketches instead of real people. It's like each has a cliche they are playing. I didn't believe them, either - though Rhys Ifans steals the whole damned film along with some actor who has three lines in the whole film. If you want us to care about the pirates, make them real people.
It's kind of strange to see a divorced actor & actress couple in the same film, even though they are never in the same scenes.
MILD SPOILERS: HOW I WOULD FIX IT
For me, it was a grab bag of amusing scenes put to amazing music from the 60s that were stuck into this "story" of the government talking about going after the pirate radio boat. There's a scene where Philip Seymour Hoffman and Rhys Ifans have a dispute and race/climb the ship's "mast" to settle it - but the dispute seems bogus and not really fleshed out, so the whole scene is just there. We don't care who wins. And we don't care whether the two ever really get along.
I would have begun with the boy, had him kicked out of school for playing the radio station... and used this scene to show how important this radio station and the music they played was to everyone at the time. Establish the stakes right up front. We'd lose the casting reveal of who played his mom, but that might be good - we show his mom as being a frump, and establish his need for a father and to find out who his father is. Then she sends him off to live on the boat... and plant the idea that one of the guys on the boat might be his father. But open it up, so it could be any of the guys old enough - even Rhys Ifan. That gives the kid a goal on the boat which also gives the story some direction.
Later, when mom comes onto the boat, the reveal could be that's she's found her inner babe - and I'd tie that into the pirate radio station - she switches from whatever boring BBC station to the pirate radio station to see how her boy is doing (kinda)... and the music takes her back to that time when she was having FUN as a young woman, rather than as the working single mom she is now. Use this to show how rock & roll really can transform us - make us take risks and have fun and just let our hair down (as they said in '66).
The music in the movie was great - but the movie wasn't ever *about* rock & roll... and rebellion. The ship is rebellion... but that was never really explored except in the most cartoonish way.
Once we get the boy on the boat, the movie this should have been was ADVENTURELAND - a coming of age movie that is about your idols having feet of clay. There are scenes like that - with Nick Frost - but the script is so unformed and vague and all over the place, anytime it does something that could be from an ADVENTURELAND scenario it does it so poorly and without any emotions at all and you don't care - just another incident.
The government plot thread needed to be less silly, more serious. That's the big external thing that really drives the plot - there would be no boat without the government plot thread. But this thread depends on us understanding how important the boat is to the nice people of England and how their lives would be hell without it. It's strange that a movie like FOOTLOOSE does this story a million times better. I would have had one of the guys go to shore, get arrested, go on trial... and show the public outrage/need and give him one of those speeches. My choice would have been the silent guy... though I know Philip Seymour Hoffman would have probably made the speech, because he's the "star".
They needed to make rock & roll and rebellion and just having fun more of the story - shown that this was a period in time where the old was fading away and the world was evolving. People were rebelling. For that - why not show some scenes with those dancing people getting caught listening to the station and having their boss turn the radio to boring stuff and make them get back to work? Another tradition element was Christmas - and they really needed to push that farther and show the pirates rebelling against formal aspects of the traditions and focusing on the more - spiritual seems like the wrong word, but basic human love aspects. Use this to show a strong contrast between rigid society and actual love-thy-neighbor stuff.
Curtis is already a really episodic writer (THREE WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL - title tells all), so maybe he needs someone to keep him on course. This thing looked like a really rough first draft that needed to be parted out for ideas for the next - more focused - draft.
Also, it could have used more sword fighting scenes.
- Bill
SCRIPT SECRETS STORE
Top 10 Films About Underpants T Shirt: SALE $9.99
No comments:
Post a Comment