August 2009 Archives
August 24, 2009
Script Review: Taking Woodstock by James Schamus
[In lieu of actual content, for the next several weeks I will present, at least, one review of an upcoming film each week. These are scripts that I’ve been paid money to read, and many of them contain watermarking, identification numbers, password-protection, and other ways of tracking what company it was sent to; because of this and my desire to keep my job, I will not offer downloads for ANY of the scripts I review here. Don’t bother asking.]
Taking Woodstock, the upcoming Ang Lee film, seeks to capture the zeitgeist of the summer of ‘69 by focusing on a marginalized figure in the history of the Woodstock festival: Elliot Tiber, who this script claims was almost solely responsible for the festival’s happening. James Schamus’s screenplay is based on Tiber’s own book, but I don’t have a clue about the validity of his claims. Personally, I don’t care too much about historical accuracy as long as it’s not something totally ridiculous, like wearing a digital watch in a Renaissance love story. If it doesn’t distract me, I’m more interested in the characters and the story than whether or not Confederate Soldier #3 has the correct patches. Nevertheless, I figured I should point out that maybe Tiber’s — and, therfore, Schamus’s — claims might be a tad dubious, and further point out how little I care.
On to the actual script…
Schamus focuses the first act almost exclusively on the Elliot: his parents own a failing, fleabag motel; he’s the president of the small town of Bethe’ls Chamber of Commerce; he’s a failing interior designer who, after getting stiffed on a job, must leave his Manhattan apartment and closeted homosexual lifestyle; he has a large, supportive group of friends in White Lake, as well as friends throughout the city; and although he does a poor job of succeeding on his own terms, when it comes to helping others, he’s incredibly enterprising and charming.
The second act begins to move the focus away from Elliot and onto the local townspeople. The entire White Lake-Bethel area is in economic crisis, and the Chamber of Commerce has no ideas to bring in tourists. When Elliot learns of a music festival being thrown out of a nearby town, he calls the organizer and works his magic. It helps that he and the organizer grew up together in Bensonhurst (although Elliot doesn’t remember him at all). They make arrangements to pay neighboring farmer Max Yasgur a small sum for the use of some land. They also agree to pay off what the Tibers owe on their motel, as well as a hefty price for Elliot’s services. The town quickly realizes the festival will be both a burden and a cash cow, so everyone’s price — including Max’s — goes up.
Hippies flood the town just as the Tate/LaBianca murders hit the news, which throws the mostly conservative townspeople into a panic. Elliot does his best to quell their concerns, while at the same time doing his best to keep the festival organized and keeping his unpleasant Russian-immigrant mother from running off motel customers. Wave after wave of hippies pour into town, none of them planning to pay for tickets to the festival. Elliot’s distress increases, but the rest of the story will remain a mystery. Either track down a copy of the script, Tiber’s memoir, or see the movie, because I’d feel bad ruining the ending if it turns out well.
From my brief synopsis, you probably expect that this is a thoughtful, sporadically amusing dramedy about one young man’s quest to accomplish something with his life. What I left out were scores of secondary and tertiary characters populating subplots that go nowhere. As a result, I reacted to this script with a resounding “meh,” followed by a disappointed “missed opportunity.” Elliot’s story, and his interactions with his family, are the stuff of compelling drama; wacky ex-Marine transvestite security guards and tonally jarring acid-trip montages are not. Schamus overwhelms Elliot’s story with all these ambling, directionless subplots and uninteresting character moments (uninteresting only because they center on characters he never makes us care about). The end result is an unfocused disappointment.
The only thing I can assume from this wannabe-Altman script is that Schamus and Lee desperately wanted to hit on every issue — big and small — plaguing the U.S. at the time: hippies vs. squares, Vietnam, racism, homophobia, drug culture, Manson, the moon landing, Nixon, and on and on. It’s noble but unsuccessful. The appearances by characters entangled in the issues-tackling portions of the screenplay are too brief and contrived. With the exception of Elliot’s story, everything feels tangential and, frequently, devoid of conflict and dramatic momentum. They consist mainly of Elliot walking in on an awkward situation, followed by a nonplussed reaction, followed by us never seeing any of these people again. (Okay, to be fair, they usually pop up for a line or two afterward, but they’re inessential and detract from the narrative focus.) Maybe if these events had more to do with Elliot’s struggle to keep the festival plans running smoothly, they’d be a bit more engaging. Some of them do — particularly Elliot’s interactions with Yasgur — but most don’t. Merely having Elliot in the same room while wacky folks do wacky things is not enough to make these moments vital.
I have a small amount of hope for Taking Woodstock as a finished product. It boasts a large cast of talented ringers who may breathe life into the characters, giving them a sense of purpose that simply doesn’t exist on the page. Ang Lee is a fine (albeit overrated) filmmaker who may elect to insert or excise some of the more irredeemably pointless passages. The only question in my mind is Demetri Martin in the role of Elliot — he’s a funny comedian, but his recent sketch show suggests that he may not be able to carry off a role like this, at least not right out of the gate. It would be ironic if the only part of the script that works on the page…doesn’t work on the screen, while all the pointless moments distracting from the story turn into highly memorable, iconic moments.
However the movie turns out, the fact remains: Taking Woodstock’s screenplay is a shambling mess.
Posted by Stan at 6:11 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0) | Reviews
August 31, 2009
Script Review: Extract by Mike Judge
[In lieu of actual content, for the next several weeks I will present, at least, one review of an upcoming film each week. These are scripts that I’ve been paid money to read, and many of them contain watermarking, identification numbers, password-protection, and other ways of tracking what company it was sent to; because of this and my desire to keep my job, I will not offer downloads for ANY of the scripts I review here. Don’t bother asking.]
Here’s the deal: I hate fanboys. They don’t really add anything to an argument but shrill hyperbole, and they can’t take even the smallest amount of constructive criticism against whatever it is they love. That is, at least, my definition of “fanboy”/”fangirl.” A fan of something, although they may be labeled (inaccurately or not) as “casual” fans by their fanboy brethren, is perfectly fine. For instance, I’d consider myself a fan of Joss Whedon’s oeuvre: I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly. However, I fully admit that the final two seasons of Buffy and the final season of Angel sucked about as much ass as a once-great TV show can; I just happen to think what came before it sort of makes up for the crappiness. Nevertheless, I like to pretend Buffy ended with “The Gift” and Angel ended with…whatever episode comes just before the fourth-season finale. You can run around blaming the badness of these later seasons on other producers, Whedon focusing his attention elsewhere, etc., etc., but that doesn’t change the suckiness. It also certainly doesn’t change the suckiness of Dollhouse, a sinking ship he’s allegedly piloting with as much enthusiasm as Buffy’s glory years.
Why am I ranting about Joss Whedon in a review of a Mike Judge script? Because, although I love the work, I acknowledge the flaws and don’t go out of my way to blame others so I can preserve Whedon’s greatness in my mind. On the other hand, I come very close to being a Mike Judge fanboy. I’d like to avoid that unfavorable title, but I’ve thought for several years that King of the Hill is the best comedy — and one of the best shows, overall — on television, and it keeps getting better. I love Idiocracy and Office Space, and I was the kind of idiot who used to watch the same three episodes of Beavis & Butt-Head five days a week because it took them months to produce new episodes. I even thought this summer’s The Goode Family, although a slow starter, showed enough promise in its last couple of episodes that it could have joined King of the Hill as an outstanding show.
The only thing, I think, that keeps me from true fanboy status is that it took several years and many viewings for Office Space to grow on me. It’s not that I ever disliked it — I just didn’t think it was as great as everyone who kept recommending it over and over, and I saw it for the first time after spending a few years working in various dumpy offices, so it wasn’t like I got an office job and finally “got” the humor. It grew on me in a similar way as Dave: at first I was sorta meh, but after awhile I realized how much I enjoyed the characters and the humor, so I didn’t mind that the story has its share of problems.
Still, the bottom line: I have an alarming amount of love for Mike Judge. I consider him one of the funniest, most astute satirists to find any kind of mainstream success in Hollywood.
I’m sure you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, for me to salivate with hatred toward Extract, but it’s not going to happen. The script is very, very funny, loaded with the same great, observational comedy and social satire found on his other work. It’s not quite as high-concept as Idiocracy or even Office Space, but I consider that a plus. It’s little more than a sharp comedy about a man, Joel Reynolds, struggling with business and marital problems.
Joel owns and operates an extract-producing factory, but he’s deeply unhappy with the caliber of employees streaming in from Manpower (for those who have never worked a shit job, this is a huge, national temp agency that most losers, including myself, have registered with at one time or another to find a job). It also doesn’t help that a workplace accident may prevent a deal for Joel to sell the company and retire. He’s also deeply unhappy about his wife’s disinterest in sex. Joel has a best friend, Dean, who fills his head with the type of idiocy many guys — Joel included — are dumb enough to want to believe. After plying Joel with both drugs and liquor, Dean helps him hatch a scheme to hire a male prostitute to pretend to clean their pool and try to seduce Joel’s wife. If she takes the bait, then Joel can begin having guilt-free affairs; if she doesn’t, Joel will feel a little better about his decision to simply beat off when she’s distracted with American Idol.
If this sounds like a slightly raunchier version of a sitcom… On a conceptual level, it is. This might be the fanboy kicking in, but Mike Judge is simply better than that. He’s not Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel — he can take a sitcom-ready story and stock characters but make it all feel both real and funny. The only false moments in the script occur late in the game, but everything building up to it is so good, it’s… Well, if not for the fact that one of the false moments is the denouement, I’d totally ignore it. I have some hope that the ending will either have been fixed during shooting or post-production, or maybe Jason Bateman will do a better job of selling it than the screenplay does, but a good movie with a shitty ending has become somewhat of a Hollywood-studio standard, so the fact that it’s not a complete abortion (just sort of a “wow, that came out of nowhere” moment) means it has a leg up on its competition.
The script’s only major flaw isn’t so much false notes as no notes. The script contains two major female characters: Suzie, Joel’s cheating wife, and Cindy, an ex-con petty thief who reads about the accident at Reynolds’ factory and tries to capitalize on it by cozying up to the victim and convincing him to sue Reynolds into bankruptcy. Atypically, Judge does a horrible job with these characters. Suzie’s loss of interest in her marriage led me to suspect she was cheating even before it became a plot point, but apparently she wasn’t (she only cheats with the male prostitute hired by Joel and Dean), and the script provides a tidy reunion at the end without ever digging deep into the actual problem with the marriage. We get to know Joel, Dean, and several other male characters very well, but Suzie always remains an enigma wrapped in a story-beat-generator.
Cindy’s a similar case. She’s like a trampy, blue-collar version of a manic pixie dream girl: her free-spirited thief does, ultimately, point Joel in the direction of relaxing and putting his groove into a mellower bag, but she mostly accomplishes this through behind-the-scenes machinations with the accident victim and one ill-timed phone call that results in an ass beating that marks one of the script’s funniest set-pieces. However, although we get bits and pieces, Judge literally raises but never answers the central question of her character: how did she end up this way, and why — when she excels at the factory job she takes as a ruse and she occasionally seems to want to change her ways — does she continue to pursue criminal activities?
In similar ways, both Suzie and Cindy exhibit a surprisingly misogynistic view of women. Although Joel is not portrayed as a great person, we’re given the opportunity to get to know him, understand how he feels, and rally behind his poor decisions. Judge never gives Suzie or Cindy the same courtesy, so they both spend the entire script slowly ruining Joel’s life and livelihood, but we never get a thorough understanding of why. This is a real disappointment in an otherwise funny, well-written script.
Based on the script and Judge’s track record, I’ll wager this will end up a pretty good movie. Just don’t be surprised if the flaws in the script were not fixed in production — they usually aren’t.
Posted by Stan at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0) | Reviews
August 27, 2009
Query Letters I’m Confused By…
So confused, in fact, that I can’t figure out if it’s a query letter, a description of a nonexistent movie trailer, or a bizarre rant from a frustrated amateur golfer. Enjoy.
Dear Sir,I have a full length tragedy movie script title: RANKLE Jones The Golfer. It is a new idea, full of suspense and thrill. I need a production company and financial investment into this movie production as it will make a block buster.
Jones enjoys golf playing, hoping to be a professional golfer like Tiger Woods. Professional golfers play in golf field, ours play at home. No fucking son of a bitch will accept correction. The pride of what is yet to be is a destroyer. Jones: Everyone in life have a dream and aspiration to fulfill, so I am too. My life, my all will go to a sport I love and cherish most. Golf is my dream game, a sport I love. Let’s go golfing.
Rudolf drug life flashes of wealth caught Jones napping as he was convinced to take part in one of the most bloody drug cartel deal.
Shelly is a desire of every men but her stinking lifestyle of prostitution can’t let her settle for a man.
Jones fought Elvis in the night club all because of a fames sex machine Shelly with Rudolf, Alex and others watch with no one allow to separate until someone quit for the other.
There are a lot of happenings at the night club.
Gangsters and Police combat force.
Why is Jeff called the master by Rudolf, Elvis, Jimmy and others?
It is traumatic to live with nutty breed of human, all in the name of family-hood. Traumatic experiences of Ray of hatred, alienation by all his family members, his emotional disgust and good moral negligence on the part of his parent on the family.
His erratic brother Jones gave him a blood bath, living his life-less body after which he was in oblivious state. Ray is cast away and also an object of mimic.
Hilda gave Ray a taste of love life which has been missing for years. I love you mum because you hate me. Cassandra my sister is no different from my mum Vera. Ray’s love life with Hilda left nothing to be admiring as it is an ocean of perfect love for both of them.
Jones finally golfed out daddy’s ”Kenny” breath, as he was left to his pool of blood. Jones life turns sour of no savvy as he committed suicide. Those that bury mines indiscriminately will one day fall victim to mine explosion.
Guns blazing as the government troop fight the drug cartel men.
There are golf scenes, fist fighting, snake scenes, club scenes, sex scenes, drug scenes, Police shoot out, gangster, hovercraft, Apache helicopters and Belgian attack dogs.
The script is over 120 pages.
This production has good advert spaces that will be integrated into the movie without it interfering, as the production is purely commercial. This is a viable promotional vehicle to boost your products and services across the globe considering the much success this movie will achieve.
Thanks for finding time to read through. Only get back to me if you are ready for us to proceed with this viable movie production.
Best Regards.
PRODUCER
[Name redacted]
The funniest thing to me is that they’re e-mailing this query to me, as if I have any power or authority over…anything.
Posted by Stan at 8:24 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1) | How Not to Write a Screenplay
