comment #1

jesse says ...

I don't know, it seems to me that this sort of column would be a lot more useful and productive -- and less "me first!! look what I have!!" -- if it was used to call attention to great unproduced scripts. I'm not talking about stuff that's probably going to roll in a few months but isn't finalized yet -- I mean actual unproduced/unattached scripts that could actually use the attention.

One could also talk about published versions of recent releases (do publishers still do those for the higher-up writer/writer-director types?)... but of course that isn't as sexy as saying "I read the latest Charlie Kaufman script even though he didn't want me to!"

comment #2

tholl-yung says ...

This is going to be an ultimate showdown with lots of fur flying and meetings at the WGA.

comment #3

Josh Massey says ...

When you justify your actions by inferring it's OK because AICN does it,... well, you automatically lose the debate.

comment #4

le corbeau says ...

Jesse-- Years ago American Film did an article on ten great unproduced scripts. Some were really out there but sounded fascinating-- George C. Scott had tried to produce a film of Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, and Michael Wadleigh (Woodstock) had a scrupulously documented script about the American Revolution which told all the things no one knew about that time period (the only example I remember was showing John Hancock as a screaming queen with a crush on Washington).

Over time, some of the scripts were produced, in fact-- two that I recall were Eight Men Out and Jacob's Ladder. Good movies... but far from great movies in my book. So you really never know how things that read well will play-- or how good things that seem ordinary on the page may turn out to be.

comment #5

Ron Cossey says ...

I like the "Scriptland" column. Good pub for scribes is always a plus. Was glad to get the update on "Enemies," and Vanderbilt's work on it. If the column continues to focus on projects of integrity, it's thumbs up.

comment #6

christian says ...

Finke is such a Player Hater, it doesn't matter what anybody here does, she'll find a way to seek and destroy.

Maybe more focus on screenplays could help the studios understand that marketing is what should come AFTER the script.

That said, I don't need to read anything about the evolution of TRANSFORMERS drafts.

For the record, the best script I've read in years is NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. This should be the Coen brothers return to form.

comment #7

Mike Schaefer says ...

"Michael Wadleigh (Woodstock) had a scrupulously documented script about the American Revolution which told all the things no one knew about that time period"

Funny you should mention Wadleigh... I nearly posted about him in that recent whatever-became-of-their-careers? thread. nearly a dozen years after he made "Woodstock", he directed his only feature, the terrific urban horror flick "Wolfen". Still waiting for the follow-up more than 25 years later!

comment #8

Burbanked says ...

I think the *idea* of the column is great - and yes, it borrows heavily from its online counterparts.

But this first installment is written with WAY too much self-serving glee and hyperbolic praise of Charlie Kaufman. Sure, he's a terrific writer, but did he *really* write a script for which we should doubt that "cinema is even capable of handling the thematic, tonal and narrative weight of a story this ambitious"? Really? What does that even mean?

I'll visit Scriptland a few more times, but it'd be nice to see it move away from the Exclusive! Script! Review! stuff that we see everywhere else (and Elsewhere) and dig a little more deeply into the unseen work and professional lives of screenwriters.

comment #9

Terry McCarty says ...

My memory is a little fatigued at this hour
but I do recall the AMERICAN FILM article
and I thought there was a script written by
Anthony Burgess (A CLOCKWORK ORANGE)which was
intended as a remake of WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (PUMA?).

comment #10

le corbeau says ...

I don't remember Puma being in the article but it's certainly possible. You can basically read Burgess's treatment in his book The End of the World News, which recycles it (the acronym for the two planets coming to smash us is Lynx instead of Puma). It's minor but interesting Burgess, wrestles with some of the philosophical issues which, amazingly enough, were completely neglected in Deep Impact and Armageddon....

comment #11

le corbeau says ...

Oh, one other note about unmade versions of When World Collide-- Cecil B. DeMille optioned the book when it first came out but nothing ever came of it. That would have been pretty cool, a silent or early talkie When World Collide with Flash Gordon-era special effects.