N.Y. Times guy David Carr (a.k.a. “the Bagger”) listens to director-screenwriter Billy Ray (Shattered Glass) expound during an American Film Market panel. in Santa Monica. “It’s difficult out there, but it always has been,” Ray comments. “If your goal is to write or direct for a living and make a contribution to the culture, you are choosing something tough. If I could be happy doing something else, I would.”
I presume Ray isn’t delighted with the status of 102 Minutes, a script adaptation of Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn‘s 9/11 book that Ray wrote for Mike DeLuca ‘s Sony-based production company. I was told today that it’s an “active project” (i.e., a studio term that doesn’t mean anything) under the aegis of Alissa Phillips, but the truth is that it’s taken forever to get rolling. I read it last year. It’s a tough thing to weave together several stories and several characters who, in this case, happened to be working inside the WTC towers that day, so I can’t really call it a home run. But it’s reasonably well done…
At one point in the AFM panel discussion, Carr writes, Ray recounted how he had been asked by a producer to do a script based on Doom: “I said, `What’s the story?,’ and he said, ‘What’s the difference?'” That‘s the AFM in the nutshell.