Tales From The Script

To stay with the Hollywood theme, I decided to watch Tales from the Script. The first interviews were worrisome. The writer of Ghost, the writer of Angel Eyes, the writer of Mona Lisa Smile. Yikes. I don't care about these people's thoughts. Their scripts were not great. But I love behind the scenes of Hollywood kind of stories. Eventually they got people like William Goldman and Frank Darabont and the writer of Akeelah and the Bee, so it was all good.

They separated this one into different segments and used different scenes of movies to introduce each segment. It was mostly full of short b-roll with mostly talking heads cut together in such a way they the whole thing became a fluid thought. That sort of thing. It was funny that they segued from "I'd rather sell a bad script, cause that shows what a good agent I am" to the guy who wrote The Grudge. Aw. Embarrassing. It also contained those pauses that Dear Zachary had when ending a thought. I still find that to be a bit weird and awkward.

Very fitting that this doc about writers had some really great lines. "I decided to keep the smoke in my ass and not let it get to my head." But it's funny writing this with all these writers probably thinking they're pretty good at their jobs when really, lots of them aren't very good.

The guy who wrote Ghost, wrote Deep Impact and had a lunch, unknowingly, with the guy who made Armageddon. This dude basically took notes on how the Deep Impact dude's story was going to unfold and brought that to Armageddon. That seems like something you should be able to sue over. Especially in Hollywood.

I think that's a great doc to what ch for aspiring screenwriters. I'm not one, but I can really see the appeal and I like to be able to appreciate all the roles it takes to produce a film.

Fun facts: The writer of X-men is the writer of Watchmen is the writer of, wait for it, The Scorpion King. What the hell?! Stop that. The writer of Go is the writer of Big Fish is the writer of Corpse Bride. I mostly like those movies though, so that's okay. The writer of Bloodrayne is the writer of Go Fish is the writer of American Psycho is a lesbian and does a great (terrible) impression of Uwe Boll. And Last Action Hero was written by Zak Penn, rewritten by Shane Black and doctored again my William Goldman. All interviewed here.