The secret of making good movies

[AndyC]

Just thinking that if anyone planning a career in the movies were required to study the complete contents of this message board, it might solve a lot of the problems in Hollywood.

Since I've been frequenting this board, there have been some pretty good discussions of tired clichees, miscasting, bad marketing, lazy writing, poor prioritizing and just about every other mistake a filmmaker could make. There has been some fine analysis of what went wrong when movies flopped, and great suggestions for what would have made them better.

I have to wonder why the folks in Hollywood don't have the good sense that many of the regulars on this board have demonstrated.

[Gerry]

AndyC wrote:
>
> I have to wonder why the folks in Hollywood don't have the
> good sense that many of the regulars on this board have
> demonstrated.

Because they have to wear suits.  It is a well known fact that the tight collar, neck ties and additional layers of material cause constriction of the blood flow to the brain and overheating of the cranium, both of which lead to reduced intelligence.  This also has the effect of making anything starring Kevin Spacey or Tom Hanks seem brilliant no matter how bad it is in reality.

[Fearless Freep]

Because Holly wood, for the most part, is not in the business of making good movies but making money.  Decisions around what movies are made, who stars in them, etc.., etc...revolving around marekting and sales projections.  Sometimes good movies are made under tight budgets because they can't convince the people that need to be convinced to bankroll the project.  Sometimes really stupid movies make a lot of money.

The music industry is the same way.

I think that Hollywood is taking the easy way out though, in becoming so repetitive and formulaic in how it cranks out movies that will make a certain amount of money.  I think if they actually made good movies, people would want to see them, but that requires risk, which doesn't seem to be something most people are willing to do

[Andrew]

You know, many times I must say that what screws up otherwise good movies (acting, effects, etc) for me is the script.  Writers either have no brains or the script gets changed to make someone (producer, director) happy.

Since it keeps coming up, the new version of "The Time Machine" fits this pretty good.  The direction was good, the acting was good, and the effects were good (none of them really great, but all definitely acceptable).  What sucked was some of the writing and it sucked big time.  Throwing in the super-Morlock, but then not developing the character beyond five minutes is plain lazy.  The Morlocks would have been fine and dandy without the brain.  Although, the intricate thing with the stinky resin was contrived.  Why wouldn't it be a poison (even one that induced a coma) in the first place?

Don't even get me started about the sections in the futuristic city (before and right after the moon event).

[Chadzilla]

Andrew wrote:
>
> You know, many times I must say that what screws up otherwise
> good movies (acting, effects, etc) for me is the script.
> Writers either have no brains or the script gets changed to
> make someone (producer, director) happy.
>

George Romero made a very telling comment about the mind set of Hollywood..."When Sharon Stone turns down a script, everybody starts thinking there's something wrong with the script instead of just going out and getting another actress."

William Goldman has said the best way to loose your artistic soul is writing screenplays for Hollywood, where you wind up writing screenplays about beautiful people doing beautiful things.

Most scripts are written and rewritten as the movie is cast, recast, switches hands, etc (i.e. Robert Redford dislikes playing villianous roles, so his characters are made noble irregardless of the character's standing in the story).  Seldom do you met an actor or director that does not demand the script to be rewritten (Clint Eastwood is one that comes to mind, the screenwriter of Bird was mortified that Eastwood was filming the script just the way it was written and did not want it changed at all, even when the screenwriter REQUESTED that he rewrite it to fix a thing out two).

[AndyC]

The writing, for me, was definitely what ruined Event Horizon. For the first part of the movie, they really try to weave an eery tale and create atmosphere. Then, it's as if somebody just said "ah, the hell with it" and turned it into a ripoff of Hellraiser. The atmosphere was gone and the story plowed ahead much too fast. Sam Neill went nuts in no time, when a gradual "Jack Torrance" slide into insanity would have been better. The whole thing with his wife made no sense at all, except that he felt guilty. Her death and her appearances could have been made more relevant to the plot if somebody had just taken the time to think about it. She could have been a member of the lost crew. How obvious is that? There was just so much laziness, it p**sed me off.

[J.R.]

For one thing, don't let Paul Anderson or Michael Bay near the movie.

I agree with that writing is a main factor. Sci-fi and horror writers, especially, seem very inept. They focus on insignificant things, don't fully explore ideas and generally write sloppy screenplays. I've read many bad scripts, and they all have these problems. It's hard to explain, really. Bad scripts just have a feel to them that feels like the writer didn't care.

[Nathan Shumate]

"You know, many times I must say that what screws up otherwise good movies (acting, effects, etc) for me is the script. Writers either have no brains or the script gets changed to make someone (producer, director) happy."

Much more the latter.  It's an odd brain dysfunction:  Producers don't write and don't know how to write, and will readily admit that, and hire someone to write -- but then they'll feel free to overrule the writer, even though they documentably have no idea what they're doing.

Then, if the movie's good, they credit the director -- but if it's bad, they blame the writer.  Go figure.

I recommend two sites if you want to see things from the pro writer's perspective:

On the high end, there'sTerry Rossio's site (co-writer of Shrek, Aladdin, Mask of Zorro, etc.):
http://www.wordplayer.com

And on the more budget-lite side, there's the immortal Bill Martell, writer of the original script for Cyberzone, Night Hunter, Victim of Desire, Invisible Mom, etc:
http://www.scriptsecrets.net


Nathan

[Chadzilla]

Yeah, I was one of those "Why not have the wife be in the missing crew?" plotline supporters as well, although the whole flashback to the suicide in the bathtub made my skin crawl (a lot of the movie did, come to think of it - it's a guilty pleasure).  Some of the blame can be leveled at Paul Anderson, who wanted a faster pace and cut some twenty or so minutes of character development in favor of an "express elevator to hell" feeling.  Sadly it undermines our feeling for the characters, yeah they're all getting chewed up by the evil, but since we really don't know their full stories it's hard to care.  Still the movie has enough in it for me to give it four slimes.

The best studio logo to credit sequence segue I have ever seen...
The aforementioned bathrub scene
Fishburne's reaction to the restored final transmission ("We're leaving.")
The decompressing scene (one of the few times in my adult viewing that I squirmed in my seat from terror/discomfort and covered my eyes)
and nice little touches here and there.

Still, the movie it COULD have been would have been far scarier and stuck to the ribs more than what Paramount has to show for its 65 million dollar investment now.

[Gerry]

It seems like the best movies often get made when a talented individual both writes and directs his own vision of the movie, and has producers who are willing to leave well enough alone.

David Twohy's script for WATERWORLD was slaughtered by Kevin Costner, so he decided to direct his own stuff from then on.  The result - THE ARRIVAL was a very solid SF picture and PITCH BLACK just plain rocked.  Can't wait to see what he does with his haunted submarine movie BELOW that's supposed to come out later this year.

Guillermo del Toro is another good example.  His CRONOS is one of my very favorite vampire stories of all time.  THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE was amazingly good if you don't mind a slow paced ghost story with a lot of atmosphere.  Though I haven't seen it yet for some reason, MIMIC has a ton of fans.  BLADE 2: BLOODHUNT was a lot of fun too.