It's very simple: the idea of Reed Richards is just completely alien to most of the people who can greenlight something in Hollywood. A renegade science genius so smart and crazy that he'd steal a spaceship and ask his girlfriend and her kid brother to be his co-pilots, but is still a dedicated husband and father who just loves to explore and occasionally saves the world? I mean, the guy named himself "Mr. Fantastic".
He's not motivated by greed or lust or ego, but curiosity and joy of finding new things. They can't handle it. They don't even understand it. It's the same reason why Mark Zuckerberg is allegedly driven by rejection in The Social Network.
So they make him an awkward geek or a nerdy kid because the notion of a good, smart, honest, loving man seems devoid of drama. These movies fail because they don't accept the basic premise of the book. It's an adventure story, like a Scifi Indiana Jones. Marvel studios would get it right. But until Fox or whomever else holds the rights accepts the central conceit, these movies will always bomb.
There’s a minister in Nigeria whose
personal net worth is presumed to approach $150MM.
Money from nothing.
I guess I was wrong about there never being a class of people who could reasonably expect to acquire wealth
without having done any real material work to attain it. After all, mass media wasn’t invented with
radio and TV.
It was Gutenberg with the printing
press, and the first product was The Bible.
The irony is that, like so many
other money making products, as soon as something is successful, people
immediately set out to copy it. After
Hunger Games, the market was flooded with young adult actioneer novels. After Karloff’s Frankenstein, the theaters
were filled to the brim with monster movies.
And, for better or for worse, after
the success of the Christian church, everyone and their mother wanted to sell
you on salvation.
If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll probably recognize some familiar themes, but I think it's safe to say that I've gone a bit deeper and, frankly, even more personal than usual. As always, if you're a fan of my writing, I definitely encourage you to pick it up. And, if you like it, please share it and add your voice via comments and reviews on Amazon.com.
Here's a lit manager's assessment of the spec screenplay sales market over the last six months. Please keep in mind, these are just the numbers for the scripts that got sent out by the various major agencies & management companies in town. It doesn't account for how many actual writing clients each of these companies rep that they AREN'T sending out, let alone the scores of writers represented by smaller companies, and the multitude of unrepresented screenwriters. And that's just here in L.A.
In short, the odds are VERY long for selling a completely original screenplay to a studio.
This is why I've become a big advocate of independent film. Don't wait for Warner Bros. or Sony to give you permission. There's more money out there than studio money. We all just need to retrain ourselves to sniff it out.
You know, I've written about some controversial things over the years here at Macroscope.
Torture. Election fraud. Katrina. Iraq. Rwanda. "There is no Hell".
Why do I get the feeling that this one will generate the most hate mail?
I didn't realize that my first exposure to the film director Michael Bay was one of the coolest commercials I'd ever seen. It made such an impression on me that I didn't even realize just how old it was, and by that, I mean the original "Got Milk?" commercial:
Just beautiful, right? Simple, fun, and award-winning. And directed by Michael Bay.
Who knew, right? A far cry from what we assume about the director and his filmmaking preferences, right?
Now, the first time I could name Bay was after I and a bunch of brothers back at Princeton had formed a new organization, the Black Men Awareness Group, which was basically a safe haven on campus where we could voice our unique frustrations ("I have no mentors because the professors don't understand me or my culture", "I'm experiencing extreme culture shock in this Ivy covered tower from my predominantly black town/school", "the sisters on campus don't want me, but will crucify me if I so much as look at a white girl", "I barely have time to study & work through school while my roommate is so rich he's ineligible for financial aid", etc.).
So, one weekend, our little group therapy club decided to go out, 30 deep, to have a day just to hang out and feel good. Now, there isn't much to do in Princeton, NJ, and it's too much of a pain to organize 30 dudes to head up to NYC for a weekend, so we just did something silly: we went bowling (yeah, I know), and then we went to see this new movie that had just come out in theaters that weekend.
Yes, it was Bad Boys. And, yes, we all rolled out of that theater charged, pumped, excited, happy. It was like we were seeing some of our own up on screen. It was great.
And it was directed by Michael Bay.
While I was working in New York after college, I went with some of my AC co-workers & buddies to see Bay's next film, "The Rock".
Eh. Kind of fun, especially the Nic Cage/Sean Connery banter, but I didn't buy Ed Harris' character. Did I HATE it? Of course not. I didn't love it. It was pretty forgettable. No big deal.
A few years later, that same crew of mine did a triple-feature weekend. In one day, we saw "Lethal Weapon 4" (which kicked ass. Literally. Pleased to meet you, Jet Li.), "Toy Soldiers" (which, exactly as I predicted, absolutely sucked. Not my choice. My buddy had kids with him), and "Armageddon".
FUN FACT: for those of you who hate "Armageddon" but love, say, "Lost", "Alias", "Fringe", or the new "Star Trek", it was written by J.J. Abrams.
Now, a few weeks earlier, I'd seen "Deep Impact". This was during the time when the studios had a ton of dueling movies. "Deep Impact" had Morgan Freeman as the President of the United States, was directed by one of the regular directors for "ER" and was written by guys who'd done "Jacob's Ladder", "Ghost" and "The Player".
In short, from a dramatic and emotional perspective, it's a vastly superior piece of mature filmmaking in comparison to "Armageddon". "Armageddon" was a shameless summer crowd pleaser.
And, you know what? That's actually OK. My biggest problem with "Armageddon" was that, frankly, it gave me a headache.
Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that it was the 3rd action movie in a row I'd seen that day. Maybe.
The point is, when I look at "Armageddon" on TV now, it's perfectly fine. It's overdirected, but fine.
And that's probably my biggest problem with Bay: he clearly trusts the camera more than his actors to elicit an emotional response from the audience. Hence, the turning, spinning, sweeping, steadicam crane shots of people standing against a blue sky, instead of just holding the frame on the actor giving a performance.
Anyway, Armageddon's OK. Not great, but not horrible either.
Which brings us to "Pearl Harbor". And I'm pretty sure this is where I got on the "FUCK Michael Bay!" bandwagon. I was a film student when "Pearl Harbor" came out, and that was the first time I became acutely aware of the power of film marketing. Because I actually didn't want to see "Pearl Harbor". I knew I wouldn't like it. And, yet, there I was at the El Capitan theater on Hollywood Blvd. on opening day.
And it was exactly what I thought it would be.
Well, let's qualify that a bit:
The combat scenes, and especially the dog fight scenes are dynamite. But the story around it, of the love triangle, was just a complete joke. Not only was it a joke, but they spend all of this time building up the 2nd guy as a sympathetic love interest only to toss him aside in the end. Now, clearly, Randall Wallace (screenwriter) deserves some of the blame, but it's a partnership between the writer and the director.
It's clear that Bay loves the military, so he was a kid in a candy store in making this film (In fact, he's the PERFECT guy to do a real film adaptation of "G.I. Joe" instead of this "Iron Man" knock-off crap that's lumbering it's way to a theater near you this summer, but I digress.). But it's WAY too long, and it fills it's time with a lot of nonsensical fluff.
Pearl Harbor's a bad movie. A super expensive bad movie about a real life tragedy. They were trying to make a World War II version of "Titanic", but even "Titanic" is too long, and Ben Affleck is not Leonardo DeCaprio (who, in 1997, may as well have been the 6th Backstreet Boy in terms of his teen idol status) , and Kate Beckinsale (who I think is a great, fun actress) is definitely not Kate Winslet. It was poorly conceived from the start.
But I knew all of this. I knew it the minute I heard about it in detail, despite the pretty pictures. In the end, I only really have myself to blame.
"The Island", on the other hand, is another matter entirely. In my humble opinion, this is the best, most complete, most fun film Bay has ever made. Smart. Fun. Satisfying. Great cast (Ewan Macgregor, Scarlett Johanssen, Djimon Honsou, Sean Bean, Steve Buscemi). It's biggest problem, sadly, was it's title. It's the anti-Pearl Harbor: a great film with rotten marketing.
More importantly, when I heard that Speilberg specifically reached out to Bay to get him to direct this film, it told me that he sees more in this guy than most. Personally, I think Bay has the ability to do more complete films like "The Island", with the right script and the right producer.
So much so that a kid on the intramural soccer team used to make fun of me by calling me "Optimus Prime". And, you know what? For the most part, I enjoyed it. I think it could benefit from more locked off camera shots. And there are some huge logic gaps. But I'll probably go see the sequel. No stress.
So, why this trip down Michael Bay memory lane? Because I simply don't understand the absolute hatred that people have for this guy. I mean, if he's a jerk on the set and you work in the business, I sort of understand. But, whatever - don't work with him.
I think to some people, he's the poster child for a certain kind of filmmaking - the summer blockbuster, critics-be-damned, budget busters. But, at the end of the day, I basically had a good time in most of his films. I rarely walked out feeling cheated or tricked (I'm looking at YOU, M. Night Shymalan!). The money that goes into his films could make 20 indie features, so I definitely can understand that sense of waste. Although, from a studio perspective, would those same 20 little movies have gotten the same rate of return on their investment as, say, Bad Boys II?
The dirty little secret in Hollywood is that popcorn pays for award season gold. Miramax couldn't afford to make "Shakespeare in Love" if it's sister company, Dimension, hadn't made a ton of money on "Scream". And a movie like "Transformers" probably paid for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". So the Michael Bay's make the Slumdog Millionaire's possible.
What I really really don't get is the fanboy hatred.
Well, I suppose, if I think about it, it makes sense. It's not like Bay is Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson. He's clearly not one of us. He's a little too cool and too tanned and too tall and too permed, and how DARE a non-geek give Optimus Prime a mouth!
But, then again, Hater-Aid never makes sense.
And it's his obvious disdain for the original material that burns people when it comes to Transformers. But, you know what? The stuff DOESN'T age well. Most Saturday cartoons aimed at kids don't (with the rare exception of "Robotech"). I mean, have you tried watching "Challenge of the Superfriends" recently on Boom or Cartoon Network? It's painful!
I'm not saying that people shouldn't hate Bay. It's a free country. But I would say, take a step back and think about it. After all, the guy did help make Transformers cool again. That's got to count for something.
The sad thing is, when you look at his films, Bay is clearly a fan boy at heart. He should do himself a favor and come to Comic-Con. He'll probably get geek religion.
Well, more specifically, vampire movies. I've just seen so many and I feel like it's all been done and it's so cliched and the metaphors of vampires for sex or vampires for AIDS or whatever.
I'm just tired. Sick and tired.
Where are the new monsters, people?
When I got to Comic-Con this past summer and saw the signs for HBO's new series "True Blood" plastered all over the place, I think I rolled my eyes for five days straight. And the only reason I even bothered Tivo-ing the pilot episode of the show is because my roommate is an obsessive fan of Christine Feehan's Dark Series and I figured she would like it.
OK, so, maybe I'm not THAT tired of vampires.
I totally overlooked the social metaphors inherent in the Sookie Stackhouse stories, and I have to admit that True Blood has been one of the more consistently compelling hours of TV drama I've seen in the while.
It's good stuff.
So, when I got the invite to check out the Swedish vampire flick "Let The Right One In" as part of Mahalo.com's inaugural Movie Night here in Los Angeles, I was already primed for something good.
It didn't hurt that the film had gotten a nice mention on American Movie Classic's horror movie blog, MonsterFest, as a part of their emerging thesis that all of the good horror is coming from places other than North America (a thesis, with a few notable exceptions, that I tend to agree with).
I must say, even though I found parts of the pacing to be excruciatingly slow, "Let The Right One In" is an incredibly haunting film. It kind of takes the notion of Claudia from "Interview with The Vampire" and explores it to it's full potential. What would it be like to 12 years old... forever? And what's the inherent heartbreak of knowing you can only truly find love with a child, who'll always grow old, always disappoint, always become less than what they were, while you stand still in time?
In many ways, it's heartbreaking, even though it appears to have a happy ending, because we already know what the REAL ending is.
Which, of course, is not to say that it doesn't have it's crazy, only-in-a-vampire-movie moments. The vampire/house cat battle royal has to be seen to be believed.
And I cannot say enough about the two young leads, especially Lina Leandersson. You can totally understand how, even knowing exactly what she is, a lonely young boy could just completely lose himself in her pleading eyes, eternal hellfire be damned.
If you have the patience, it's definitely worth it.
My first year in film school, one of my classmates interned at a production company and was able to get her hands on a copy of the screenplay for "Unbreakable" about 7 months before the movie actually hit the theaters.
As a 1st year screenwriting fellow at AFI, freshly minted in Los Angeles, during an 18 month period that saw the release of "The Sixth Sense", "The Matrix", "American Beauty", "The Insider", "The Talented Mr. Ripley", "The Thomas Crown Affair", "Fight Club", "The Beach" (yes, I REALLY like "The Beach"), "American Psycho", "The Blair Witch Project", "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", "Dancer In The Dark", "Gladiator", "In The Mood For Love", "High Fidelity", "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", "Being John Malkovich", "Magnolia", and "Three Kings"....
You get the idea.
It was a great time for movies, and the chance to actually read a script for what was one of the most anticipated films of the year BEFORE it was even produced was VERY satisfying.
I read it, and, for the most part, loved it. Until the very end.
As a comic book fan AND a filmmaker-in-training, I was so geeked about the prospect of this film, but I knew that something just didn't - quite - work.
So, I started drafting a letter to M. Night Shaymalan.
Yes, as a first year film student, I was going to give script notes to a guy who'd just been nominated for three Oscars (Picture, Directing, & Original Screenplay) for what is now the 30th top grossing movie of all time.
But then I figured, hey, he's so good, of course he'll see what's wrong and re-write the script before shooting. I mean, after all, who am I to tell him? He clearly knows what he's doing.
To this day, I wish I'd written that letter.
And, as both "Unbreakable" and "A.I. : Artificial Intelligence" clearly demonstrate, not even the very best filmmakers are above notes.
I like "The Sixth Sense", and, for all it's flaws, I still love "Unbreakable". But I LOATHE the endings of "Signs" and "The Village", to the point that they really ruin the movies for me. And "The Lady In The Water" is just a train wreck.
Maybe I'm a sucker.
I mean, I suppose 2 for 5 is still a .400 batting average, but his most recent efforts haven't really been inspiring.
I think M. Night Shyamalan is an amazing director. He has a masterful sense of color, framing, camera movement, and pacing. Taken strictly on an aesthetic level, his films are marvelous.
But, first and foremost, I am a writer.
And the storyteller in me finds M. Night Shyamalan to be a wildly inconsistent screenwriter.
SO, like I said, maybe I'm just a sucker.
But, damn, this looks good!
So, Variety is reporting that he shopped the original draft of this script around town, and everybody passed. So, he went back and re-wrote it, and THEN got a green light from 20th Century Fox.
So, for February Sweeps, the WGA is asking it's members to start producing webisode series en mass, that will all be broadcast online at MySpace TV under the moniker of "Strike TV" - the content will be free and the ad revenue generated will go to support many of the other members of the industry (directors, actors, below-the-line) who've been put out of work because of the strike. But the creators own all of the content and, I believe, are free to put it up on other venues where they can pull their own ad revenue.
Details at www.myspace.com/striketv.
So, if you or someone you know is a member of the WGA, they'd better hop to it.
Hell, if I was a member of the guild, I'd be rolling out my web series (i.e the one I want to start shooting next month) as quickly as possible in the hopes of being one of the first new hits on this brand new "network". Opportunities like this don't come often.
For those of you who don't live in Los Angeles, the skyscraper that has its top three floors vaporized at the end of the movie "Die Hard" is, in fact, the corporate headquarters for 20th Century Fox. Can I say it was more than a little surreal to take part in some direct action on the doorstep of Nakatomi Plaza. It's an interesting neighborhood, Century City: the bohemeth talent agency, CAA, and MGM are all on the same street as Fox Plaza, within about two blockf of each other. HBO and Comedy Central are in the skyscrapers around the corner, and I believe Endeavor (another big talent agency) is around the other corner. At the end of the block is the Fox Studio lot.
So, I parked at a nearby mall and hoofed it the rest of the way - Showrunner sighting 1: Carlton Cuse, co-executive producer for "Lost", had the right idea and brought his bicycle, zipping past the rest of the pedestrian scribes.
They say that 3,000 guild members have been walking the lines in front of every studio around town, but, today, they asked them all to come to Fox as a show of force.
Who knew a strike could be so entertaining? Tom Morello & Zach De La Rocha from Rage Against The Machine showed up, pledged their support, and did a little impromtu show, including an acoustic version of "Bulls on Parade". That rocked!
I think that was Jonathan Gries just over my shoulder. Saw Larry David & Dennis Haysbert in the crowd. SAG is also making their presence felt today, although I overheard one writer say that, because former SAG president Melissa Gilbert negotiated an interim agreement with the studios during the last contract renewal, she pushed the SAG negotiation period ahead by 9 months - effectively cutting our negotiating power in half. Thanks, Melissa. No wonder she didn't get re-elected.
More treats - I'm about 20 feet from the main stage, and the next speaker is Jesse Jackson! Now, y'all can say what you want about Jesse - the man is still a hero and a legend, if, for nothing else, his work during the civil rights and black power movements. And, just like the Rage guys, he made the point that this is just another chapter in a larger story about workers rights in the face of increasing corporate consolidation.
I clearly need to put a new camera on my Christmas List :-)
Showrunner sighting 2: Seth MacFarlane takes the stage and risks litigation by giving us the Stewie voice to proclaim victory is nearly at hand.
Lots of helicopters overhead. The last time I remember being with this many people out in the open for some overtly political rally, I think, was the Million Man March back in 1995. Although, I had much less fear that SkyCopter 5 was really an Apache assault chopper in disguise today than I did back in front of the Capitol Building with Farrakhan. Less, but not none. But, as Cornel West said, being Black in America requires a baseline level of constant paranoia.
Which leads me to another point - I think this is the first time I've ever participated in some direct action where the majority of the people were white. As a recovering Howard Dean activist, it was just a bit..... odd. But in a good way.
Ran into my man Alex Endeshaw (P'96 for you tigers out there) (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1584923/) for the first time in, maybe 13 years in the middle of the strike. Turns out we basically lived around the corner from each other up in Hollywood for 3 years and had no idea. Go figure. Check him out on "My Name Is Earl". Also caught up with Big Shawn (http://www.myspace.com/shawntemccall) in full WGA regalia. As a result, it sounds like CBS Radford is my next strike target.
Showrunner sighting 3 - noon approaches, the permits expire, and there's Battlestar Galactica's head honcho, Ronald D. Moore, chilling on the curb. I resist the urge to genuflect. :-)
Apparently, if the studios just rolled over and gave not just the WGA, but SAG and the DGA everything they're asking for, with no concessions, the additional amount of money they would have to pay to every single writer, actor, and director in all three guilds combined is still less than the salary of just ONE of their CEOs. A lot less. Like I said, it's greed.
So, the studios are clearly in the wrong, but, as is often the case, swallowing their pride to even admit that my coming back to the table is a bitter pill. If we're all about getting back to work, someone on the WGA's side should be looking for an olive branch that let's the studios save a bit of face to entice them to come back to the table. Because greed is often coupled with pride.
I was 15 years old and starting my 5th year in a private all boy's school when my father went on strike with the Amalgamated Transit Workers against Greyhound Bus Lines, his employers for the previous 20+ years. To this day, I don't know exactly what the issues were that led the bus drivers to walk off the job, but I vividly remember Dad's working conditions. For some time, he'd been on the so-called "extra board", which basically meant he was a driver on call to fill in whenever another driver was unable to complete his route at the given time. He would leave at all sorts of irregular hours, drive potentially hundreds of miles, and then be forced to sleep in a lounge with no bed for a few hours before driving all the way back and hoping he could get a full night's rest before the next call came in.
He'd been exhausted for, seemingly, years. He has back problems and repeat stress injuries in his forearm to this day, some 18 years after he last drove a big blue bus.
I can still see the orange placard with this black letters that he would wear around his chest as he and his fellow drivers walked the picket line. It was the first time I'd ever heard the term "scab". I was a gifted kid in a working class family going to one of the most expensive schools in the country on scholarships and loans floated directly on Mom and Dad. Losing one of the two incomes in the house was not a nice thing. But, Dad knew, if they didn't make a stand there, then the ownership would know they could just roll over the drivers and have even worse conditions.
Sadly, after nearly 18 months of walking the line, the union caved. Scab drivers were easy to find. They received no support from their fellow drivers at Trailways and the other unions, to my knowledge. And, if I remember correctly, Amalgamated Transit's headquarters was actually IN Greyhound's corporate offices. Dad never drove a bus again and found a new career in the local DMV, where he earned a reputation seemingly around the entire city as a model of fairness & decency within an otherwise heartless department.
Point being, collective action cannot survive in a vacuum.
I am not, as of yet, a member of the Writers Guild of America. I hope to be, one day. But I'm also a producer, and one of the reasons why some of my projects haven't shot yet is because it's important to me to make sure I can actually PAY my cast and crew. Filmmaking is a collaborative process, and, yes, producers take a measure of financial risk on projects and should be rewarded accordingly. But producers, as the ultimate owners of a title, have the capacity to resell the original creative work of artists in a million different ways. A finished film can literally keep making money for a producer for ever, as long as there is someone, somewhere, who'll broadcast or screen it for a paying audience. And if I'm reselling your story and your words and your ideas (as a writer), and your vision and presentation (as a director) or, even, in the case of an actor, images of YOUR FACE, it's only fair that you reap some of that benefit.
So tomorrow afternoon, I intend to put on my track shoes, head over to Paramount Pictures, pick up a sign, and walk the line for a few hours.
Because the reason that the studios don't want to give the writers an extra FOUR STINKING CENTS on the sale of a $10 DVD, and don't want to give them ANYTHING for the sale of a movie over the internet, which literally costs NOTHING, is the same reason Greyhound didn't want to buy a cot for Dad and all of the other drivers. It's less about who's rich and who isn't (and don't sleep - the studios are banks awash in cash - for every star that gets $20 million to star in a film, there's a producer somewhere who's cutting that 20 million dollar check), and more about what's just simply right.
