« A Movie for Cat Ladies | Main | Bad Twist 2: Twist Badder »

Attachments

I’ve mentioned this before, but I hate sycophancy. I especially hate it when I get yelled at for not being sycophantic enough. I’m much more willing to bend to the whims of those paying me money for my opinion, but I’ll never figure out why some people think pointing out writers and attachments will suddenly impress me. Usually, it just makes me lose a little respect for those involved.

Here’s a little background: over Memorial Day weekend, I was sent a script with no title page and no suggestion of the author’s name. This is not uncommon. I read it, hated it, and shit all over it. Almost immediately, I received an e-mail from my boss at Murdstone & Grinby, Jim, who snidely pointed out who wrote the script and asked me to include more details if I was going to crap all over such a genius’s script. I’m keeping the details as vague as possible, but shrewd readers can piece together the truth: the writer won one Oscar and received another nomination for writing several years later. In between, he wrote a whole bunch of shitty movies. So, awards and nominations or not, his bad scripts outweigh his good ones, so the fact that this one, whose title rhymes with Stink, stunk should shock no one.

This also came on a bad day for Amelia, who had called me earlier in the day to complain about what a prick Jim had become as the stress of Cannes wore on him. Receiving the e-mail annoyed but didn’t shock me, and my reaction was to call Amelia to vent and get some advice. Because, see, all they keep telling me is to be less detailed. My coverage goes too in-depth, so they keep asking me to scale it back. I thought I finally reached a nice equilibrium, and then Jim demands more.

“No,” Amelia laughed. “Jim is a retard who can’t express himself. They don’t want you to be more general — it’s just that, once in awhile, all you do is harp on one single point, without giving an overview of the entire script.”

Let me explain my typical mentality: if a script sucks for a lot of reasons, I’ll go into all of them. If I feel like the script would go from bad to good with the simple removal of a subplot or a horrible ending, I will beat that point like a dead horse, because otherwise the script is fine. I like to use the synopsis in conjunction with the notes, so they can refer to it and say, “I can see this story works except for this horrible ending.” What they’ve decided they want — after telling me for months that I send them nothing but solid gold — is to not read the synopsis at all. Three pages is too long — they want it all in the notes, even though I still have to write a synopsis. I don’t have any problem with this — not now, after talking to Amelia. Prior to this, I’d been struggling to adhere to Jim’s sporadic, confusing, inconsistent feedback.

Nonetheless, while I upped the detail, finding out who wrote the screenplay — and finding out from Amelia that two A-list, award-winning/-nominated actors took the two lead roles — did nothing to change my opinion except, as I said, disappoint me. I like the two actors, I have some respect for the writer’s good scripts, but learning of their involvement does not magically make the script good. It doesn’t make me think I’ve misjudged a gem. The thing sucked, and I don’t have a clue what anybody involved was thinking.

Just to show I’m not being a whiny bitch, here’s an example of what’s wrong with this script. The story focuses on a college graduate with an unparalleled ability to read facial tics and shifty eyes. He’s the star of TV’s Lie to Me, only he does nothing interesting with his power. I guess it’s supposed to be all deep and insightful that he can expertly read everyone except his shady father and his love interest. What’s wrong with his love interest? He thinks she’s roughly his age, but she’s 14. When he finds this out, he’s effectively creeped out…but continues to pursue her. While the script lacks “bad touching,” the girl’s age adds nothing to the story except an element of inappropriate sleaze on a guy we’re supposed to like. This script’s Oscar-winning screenwriter never takes a moment to give this relationship any real meaning, so it’s left as a creepy red herring that doesn’t enrich either character — in fact, it does the opposite to the protagonist. It makes him even more of an irritating enigma.

The Oscar-winning screenwriter compounds the problem when the protagonist solves his central dilemma — what to do with himself after college — by deciding to teach…elementary school. Although the script tries to be a comedy, the Oscar-winning screenwriter does not portray this resolution as ironic or amusing. It’s a serious, theoretically uplifting ending. I’m all for movies — especially comedy and pornography — shattering taboos, but I don’t generally like it when pedophilia triumphs and it’s not a demented joke. I know I won’t make any friends by saying this, but I don’t think pedophiles are good people.

The script sucked. Nothing except extensive rewriting will change that, and anybody who thinks I should love this script just because of who wrote it or who’s attached to star can blow me. Just keep in mind, I’m over the age of 10, so you might not be into it. On the plus side, it’ll draw a massive audience of frail, glassy-eyed men with inverted pompadours, whose tiny erections visibly press against their too-tight leather pants as they approach the ticket booth.

Posted by Stan on June 17, 2009 11:19 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | How Not to Write a Screenplay | Digg It