Movies
The Sky is Blue, Water is Wet, Vampire Scripts Wanted
Got a nice little solicitation email this morning from a screenwriting listserv:
VAMPIRE SCRIPTS WANTED FOR TEEN/YOUNG ADULT AUDIENCES Dan Films Ltd is looking for completed feature-length vampire scripts for teen/young adult audiences. In other words, a film for the “Twilight” age group.
The story can be set either in the U.S. or internationally.
Budget will not exceed $8 million USD. WGA or Non-WGA writers may submit.
Our credits include “Triangle” and “Severance.”
That vampire bandwagon is getting crowded. I don’t really blame the producers of vampire movies for cashing in. I am a little concerned about our young adults’ taste in movies, though.
Whenever there’s a craze like this I think every screenwriter considers shitting out a spec script about X, but then thinks, “By the time I finish the script it’ll be over.” But then thinks, “Well it doesn’t have to be a good script.” But then thinks, “But I’m better than that. I can write a sell-out script and still make it good.” But then thinks, “But then I’m still kind of a sell-out.” But then thinks, “I do want to make money. Maybe this is a good career move.” But then thinks…
And by then the craze has ended. It’s the people who already had a vampire script sitting in their bottom desk drawer who end up cashing in on these things. Which is why I’m hoping a craze about racist green blobs from outer space sweeps the nation.
Hollywood Loves Bad Business Models
Hollywood made record box office revenue this summer but had the lowest attendance since 2005. If I remember correctly that was the year of the so-called “slump”. The higher take comes from inflated ticket prices for now ubiquitous 3-D and IMAX screenings. Unfortunately, the quality of movies just sucks and no one’s interested in paying more for Marmaduke 3-D.
I’ve noticed a distinct slide in movie quality over the last 5 years too. While I used to spend entire weekends catching up on new releases, these days I’m barely motivated to leave the house. Shrek Ever After isn’t worth the 25 cents of gas I’d spend driving to see it. It’s disappointing that the Hollywood business model boils down to this:
Pay more, get less!
This should be economics 101 for the studios. There are quality scripts out there. I know this because I used to read them for internships and 20% of the stuff out there wasn’t all that bad. A small percentage of it was actually pretty great. That may seem like a small number but there’s thousands and thousands of scripts, so there’s more than enough decent material to fill up a year’s worth of releases. The studios seem to be eschewing quality original material to invest in known franchises however. These days, only a proven director like Chris Nolan can get good original material greenlit, and in a way that’s sticking to a franchise (Chris Nolan being the “franchise”).
The box office will go in one of two ways from here: 1) Same bad movies, ticket prices come down. As 3-D becomes less of a novelty audiences will not want to pay more for the technology and start to shrink. Eventually audiences bottom out and Hollywood adjusts ticket prices to bring people in again. Audiences will return, but not enough to sustain the industry in the long-term. Hollywood hits a financial crisis.
2) Better movies, ticket prices come down. 3-D is poised to go widespread at this point and no matter what the cost will have to come down. If Hollywood isn’t there to meet audiences with better movies, the concept of spending an evening at the movies won’t return. But deliver people movies they’d want to see, and suddenly you’re bringing in even those consumers who were avoiding 3-D because of the higher ticket prices.
There’s a lot more too it of course. It wouldn’t hurt to expand audiences and release tent pole movies that aren’t all animated fart jokes for kidz. New media and internet distribution models are something of a question mark and will probably end up factoring in. But at the end of the summer it all boils down to one thing: make better movies.
Douchebag: The Series
Ellen Page is writing and producing a new HBO comedy described as such:
[The show follows] two painfully cool hipster girls as they relocate from Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood to Los Angeles’ Silver Lake enclave in hopes of becoming artists — of any kind.
Write what you know, right?
That pitch manages to combine every self-indulgent universally-hated phenomenon in America right now (includes Ellen Page), and HBO heard it and said “Yes, that is the network we want to be.” After all, it’s not TV.
2009 Expo Bad Screenplay Competition Quarterfinalists
Here’s a list of the quarterfinalists’ screenplay titles in the 2009 Expo Screenplay Competition. Don’t you look at the titles of these movies and immediately think “Sounds awful!” On the bright side these people got Hollywood all figured out.
I noticed that “Ashes to Anthrax” makes an appearance as both a feature and a short, and that must be because there is no god.
2009 Expo Screenplay Competition Quarterfinalists
FEATURES
Assigned
Above the Sunset
A Little Faith
A Splendid Fury
Ages Trapped in Time
American Child
Anonymous Donors
An Occurance of Light
Ashes to Anthrax
Assigned
Aza'zyel
Bang Bang Butterflies
Blood and Honour
Book of the Missing
Borderland
Brooklynese
Brothers Mussolini
Borderland
Carve
Cattle Call
Clementime Taste Like Sugar
Chaing
Conditional Love
Criminal Minds
Crusaders Archers
Devil May Care
Dead Crows
Define Benefit
Devil May Care
Dude's Ranch
Doraybus
El Coyote
Emily
Endangered
Faith
Fathers and Sons
Fin Chaser
First of the Month
Five Dates
Freud
Gift of Laughter
Handicap Spaces
Hockey Wives Baby Shower
Horror Comic
Hotel California
Ice Cold Feet
Karmically Correct
Kitty Love
Last Pyrate Of New Providence
Lost Daughters
Love Letters
Monster Child
Monkey Tuesday
Minus Men
Miracle Man
Miss Liberty
My Girl Daisy
Naked Lady Blues
New Moon
Noah's Cruise
Now You See Me
Nursery Crimes
Outrage
Paradise City (Genesis)
Paradise City (The Bible)
Premonition
Quigley
Razor Man
Redneck of the Year
Road Side Assistance
Running Boys the First Rebellion
Rye & Rice
Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll
Stuffed
Sweet Water
Svengali Effect
Tesoro
The Adventure of Don Juan
The B.E.S.T Man
The Blue Planet
The Boys Winter
The Code of Happiness
The Condemned
The Conjur Man
The Dark Artist of Paris
The Descent of a Man
The Life and Death of Fitz Gerlich
The Moon Beam Fisherman
The One that got away
The Pheonix Effect
The Rap Race
The Relevant
The Templar
The Toughest Girls
The Underground Castle
The United Al Queda Comedy
The Way it Spins
The Wicked Wynde
The Wind Riders
Thicker than Water
Tii and The Kingdom of the Lost Objects
To Catch A Keeper
Urbanity
Warshaw Freedom
Wash Out
Weaponized
Windy City Story
Wither
Wolves in Winter
Wreckage of the heart
1 New York
5-6-7-8 TO Life
100 ways of Steve
94 Maidens
SUZANNE'S PRIZE
5 Dates
A Severed Romance
A Different Shade of Black
Chasing Brenda
Frenching
He's the One
Karmically Correct
Love & Vodka
Love Letters
My Girl Daisy
Now You See Me
Off Screen Romance
Strawberry Mansion
SOPHRONIA L.
The One That Got Away
When Harry Tries to Marry
SHORTS
Ashes to Anthrax
Boing
Chucky Feast
First of the Month
Laundry Day
Low
Stones
In the interest of full disclosure, I recently participated in a similar contest run by this fine institution. The competition was to write a 5 page scene from some theoretical movie based on an assigned premise. I scored highly but in these days of shitty writing an 87/100 doesn’t get you past the first round (BTW, shitty writing means you have a solid shot at a career. I’m working with a handicap here.)
Here’s the judge’s comments on my scene: “Nice sense of stakes. Rely less on dialogue to explain your story and SHOW more.” Sounds like someone’s been reciting Syd Field’s “Screenplay” to himself in the bathroom mirror lately. You asked me to write a scene from a movie that doesn’t exist. Wasn’t long into writing it that I realized someone’s gonna have to fill you in on what the fuck’s going on in the scene, seeing as the customary 60 pages or so of movie leading up to it, establishing characters, story, plot, motifs, devices, themes, and key objectives is inconveniently missing. I figure it’s not the end of the world if a character says “I was lying when I said I owned a bank” rather than holding up an index card with the word “bank” on it, crossed out. In real life people are known to comment on what’s going on in their lives. Except I suppose screenwriting teachers.
Downward Momentum
I am a big fan of Fred Willard’s work in Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, and behind the counter at FedEx Office.
Good job, Kinkos.
James Cameron's New Video Game Trailer
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro33ZVkDcbg]
At some point, discussion of this film will shift from it being James Cameron’s first film since Titanic, to it going down like the Titanic. Hubris can be a bitch.
Try Acting
Damyo!
If you don’t recognize who this is, know that it’s your old pal Christian Bale. You’ve seen him in American Psycho, Batman, and Terminator. You haven’t seen him in The Machinist, and whatever movie he’s shooting now.
I don’t know what it’s about, but my hunch is that he plays a former husk of his old self.
Besides acting, Bale is also famous for being a huge douche. And besides being a huge douche, he is lastly famous for shitting out all his insides for lead roles in indie movies that more people hear about than actually go see. I actually did see The Machinist when it came out and my thoughts were, “Christian Bale nearly killed himself for this?” So in my opinion another thing he should be famous for is making bad decisions.
At any rate, this reminded me of an anecdote where Dustin Hoffman came to the set of Marathon Man intentionally sleep deprived to shoot a scene where his character stayed up all night. The director told Hoffman, “Try acting. It’s easier.”
That’s actors for you. They’re so dumb they’ll even forget their job.
Next up: Christian Bale shows up to the set of the next Batman movie with enormous bat wings sewn into his bloodied back.
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