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.

Overnight

Shayla asked me to watch a documentary about education, and just by luck I found one of the only ones on instant watch about education and it was only an hour. This one was more like an expose you'd find on the new. I started it and it wasn't anything that I was interested in so I had to stop it and try something else.

So, I changed it up and started watching Paperclips. An education doc about a small town school in Tennessee educating its students about the Holocaust. Then that was super boring too (I guess I'll just wait for Waiting for Superman to come out), so I decided to to watch Overnight, the dissolution of Troy Duffy's career as it happens.

I really dug this one. It wasn't very polished, the editing wasn't great and the camera was definitely not awesome, but it really kept my attention. The ultimate Hollywood unsuccess story. And wow. He's a douche. An absolute abhorrent personality. I don't know who wins the terrible award, Billy Mitchell of The King of Kong, or this asshole here. Probably Duffy, though ("They put up a quarter of a million dollars, but that's chicken feed to them. And they're being so Jewish about it" -Troy Duffy.) At least Billy Mitchell was really just a caricature of an over the top human being.

It's crazy to think he was going to get that much control over a movie with no filmmaking experience and from working in a bar. How did the Weinstiens put this much trust in him? Just like they basically let Ben and Matt do Good Will Hunting the way they wanted when they were just nobodies. And it's funny how, even with Troy being horrible and the movie being, in my opinion super bad and incredibly overrated, I still wasn't sure if I actually wanted the whole thing to tank and blow up in all their faces. Troy deserved it, but the other guys didn't. Maybe because he's an actual real person, not a fictional evil villain. Even if he is a clinical narcissist.

This thing was clearly made by people who didn't care about making him look terrible. From the edits they make, to the way they cut Troy, he's just a tool form start to finish. Maybe that's the whole idea. He looks like a dick and nothing else.

This one had a lot of titles explaining what was going on. There was a lot of organized chaos. I liked that it seemed to kind of be like the sort of thing where they just shot the footage to have the footage, but later had to turn it into an actual movie. That's probably not what happened, but that's how it seemed because the footage was so sort of raw and sloppy and freehand. It's interesting because a lot times in a doc, it's hard to get the person you're following to act naturally, forget the camera and just behave the way they would regardless. What's funny about this is that I feel like this really was Troy Duffy at this time. And that is bad news for him. As we saw.

They caught some really great moments on camera. This is a great doc in that it's not manufactured action. The stuff just falls into place. The camera caught what it caught and that was enough. It's a day to day real life account of a story that's being documented as it happens. The car accident? Lucky stuff. And it's funny how we have the perspective of hindsight being 20/20. We know the future and this was just showing the inside look on how it happened. That's always fun to see. It was fun to finally hear the joke because I already knew the punchline.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

I thought this one was going to be the type of documentary that contains mostly interview footage, archive footage, stuff from movies, and talking heads, but it actually had a plot that had some movement in it. I appreciated that.

One thing that was a bit jarring is that at about 10 minutes in, they start this after effects animation with a voice over explaining with the MPAA rating system is. It was completely unexpected and I know it had to be one of the aspects of the film that the film maker noticed wasn't really in the same tone as the rest of the film. It was a similar feeling to movies that start off with a voiceover, but then don't continue only to bring it back later on in the movie. Totally changed the tone. It was really weird. It was a cute animation, but it was just super out of nowhere.

But after that, it really got moving and was pretty interesting to watch. Pretty informative. There was nothing too mind blowing, just standard expose kind of stuff.

It didn't even occur to me to think about the fact that people have to rate these movies and NO ONE knows who these people are. Wow. And the way they went after the members of the ratings board with a private investigator was really kind of fun. The analogy they drew comparing the members of the MPAA ratings board with the secretive members CIA was interesting when you thought about the fact that this movie was basically them trying to out these members. An act that's completely reprehensible for the other corporation.

But after that, it really got moving and was pretty interesting to watch. It really helped to have the perspective of former raters to give us that inside look at the MPAA rating system. That really strengthened the story, I think. It's interesting when they show clips from the other side (Usually Jack Valenti spouting crap) and they use it in a way that's sort of facetious, where we know that they know what this person is saying is crap. But really....the MPAA is full of conservative Republicans, as if people didn't already know. The world/country is ruled by conservatives and that's kind of a bummer for movies involving same sex relationships, as this movie shows.

This movie gave me the opportunity to see a bunch of sex in a bunch of movies that I'd probably not otherwise ever watch. I have no interest in seeing The Cooler. Ever. But I've seen the sex from it. So that's weird.