16 Responses to “Charlie Kaufman On Film”

1. Christian H. on Saturday: 26 September 2009|1645

   I guess you’re fortunate in that you don’t seem like th “Adaptation” type of writer. I think what today’s climate most resembles is the age of the “retained” writer.
   But at least screenwriters can know how to spin their “non-superhero” films to appeal to a modern audience.
   Maybe that’s a good blog post – adapting to he changing landscape.

2. Unk on Saturday: 26 September 2009|1654

   I guess if somebody dangled an adaptation in front of me, I’d give it a shot but no… I would rather write original stuff.

   It gets old fixing stuff too… LOL. You’d be surprised how often you end up reading similar stuff in a land where I thought people at least attempted to be original.

   But yeah… Whew. The climate has changed and KEEPS changing and unless THINGS go back to the way they were i.e., the economy… All we’re going to keep seeing (mostly) is the schlock.

   Unk

3. Phoenix on Sunday: 27 September 2009|1051

   My friends are begging me to read the work of Charlie Kaufman and also to read his interviews. Now Unk. Thank you. I might give it a shot.

   But I got a question.

   100 years in the future will there
   be more writers like Charlie Kaufman?

   When you look at the history of screenwriting: it evolves every year.

   100 years from now what kind of screenwriters will walk this earth …Charlie Kaufman-like or others (I don’t know who I should listen too?)

4. Christian H. on Sunday: 27 September 2009|1107

   It’s funny though. The mini-major article shows that what I thought was happening seems to be: all of the majors are now under corporate umbrellas. If the parent cuts back, the studios suffer and have to go with more proven formulas – or rather more “well-known” fare, but even the branding isn’t guaranteed as plenty of movies have shown (T4, Wolverine) and the biggest success this year was a bachelor party movie.

   I hope the remake craze dies a quick and horrible death, not because I write but because I like to go to the movies.

5. Christian H. on Sunday: 27 September 2009|1506

   I think this week’s box office says a lot about the state of viewing in America now.

   #1 is Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs…again. Not many movies have done multiple weeks. I saw the “Making of..” and it seemed like the most well-rounded movie.
   Did Surrogates even have a trailer?
   Fame just cements my point about branding and re-imaginings. Still not a guarantee.
   I think the key is to not let your movie take itself too seriously. It’s still just a movie.

   It meeds archetypal characters, biting dialog and of course a revealing visual language.

6. RML on Tuesday: 29 September 2009|0408

   Movie making needs to follow the scenario that recently (last 5 years or so)changed music distribution. Why should we (the artists in this) go along with the meme of the accountants and investors — determining the “success” of a movie by how much it makes in the theaters.

   Musicians took control of their “product” and ditched their pimps. Instead of going-along to get-along vis a vis the likes of unions and guilds, screen writers (the originators of the product)need to take to heart the line from CSNY’s Wooden Ships: “…You don’t need us, we are leaving…”

   This is (almost) 2010, and we, as screenwriters, can’t come up with a better delivery system for our stories and ideas than the status quo?

   Why are we afraid to even put our heads together about this?!

7. Unk on Tuesday: 29 September 2009|1215

   Phoenix,

   You asked:

   “100 years in the future will there be more writers like Charlie Kaufman?”

   Uh… Nope.

   Next question…

   Who you should listen to? LOL. Listen to YOU. Take ALL the information IN and let it roll around and coat your insides and just keep doing what you’re doing. Nobody ever said to LISTEN to someone in particular. In a hundred years, we’ll all probably be dead anyway.

   Christian,

   These people are so confused as to what to make right now… Every guess seems to be wrong. It’s SPAGHETTI THROWING TIME with fingers crossed that the next noodle STICKS.

   One of the problems I personally SEE a lot of right now is screenplays without the WORK. They’re getting whipped out and some of it’s okay but a lot of it is shit which usually means somebody whipped it out in a short amount of time… SHORT obviously being subjective because what is short to me might not be short to someone else. But the WORK just really isn’t there… Still derivative. Still cliche. Yada yada.

   RML,

   You said:

   “Why should we (the artists in this) go along with the meme of the accountants and investors — determining the “success” of a movie by how much it makes in the theaters.”

   Probably because we’re trying to make MOVIES. And NOW, it’s harder than ever for a low to no budget Indie to make a film and expect ANYTHING to happen from it because distributors want to see at least 1 name. Don’t get me wrong… There will be those exceptions to the rule… THERE ALWAYS IS but for the most part, I see it more as the major players in the film industry just trying to stay in the game and keep their jobs and the fallout ends up being REAL Indie filmmakers who try to make good movies. They hardly had a fucking chance in hell before… Now it’s worse.

   You said:

   “This is (almost) 2010, and we, as screenwriters, can’t come up with a better delivery system for our stories and ideas than the status quo?

   Why are we afraid to even put our heads together about this?!”

   I don’t think WE are afraid to put our heads together… But we are screenwriters. We write screenplays. Screenplays are stories for movies. Who makes movies? Not screenwriters by and large… Studios and prodcos be they large or small.

   And the problem isn’t that these places won’t make movies from our screenplays… The REAL PROBLEM is getting your script READ. You could have a blockbuster sitting on your hard drive but you can’t get anyone to read it.

   That’s ONE problem.

   The other problem is that at least 98% (probably more) of the scripts that get written and plug up the system are SHIT. That’s a lot of SHIT to wade through. Which is another reason why this business does run a little smoother when a referral is involved.

   Having said all that… Sure… If we could get a million screenwriters to pool their resources and plunk down say, $100 apiece and then everyone submits a screenplay that carefully selected judges filter and choose to be the absolute best i.e., based on being COMMERCIAL but not cliche or derivative, then this ENTITY could very likely hum right along and make some cheap films with good stories that MAKE MONEY and round and round we go.

   Only how do we round up all these screenwriters? LOL.

   We might be able to scrape together a couple of thousand but then what? More money per screenwriter and MANY of these screenwriters would have to DEAL with the fact that their screenplays just don’t get it done. How long would they stick with a system like that?

   Egos are egos after all but yeah, I would LOVE to do something like that. Movies made by screenwriters…

   Lead me to it.

   Unk

8. Christian H. on Tuesday: 29 September 2009|2013

   Yeah admittedly there’s a plethora of confusion. I think a lot of it is based in the new paradigm of GE’s bottom line, so to speak.

   But a lot is the “lack of work.” I think I can say it takes me 1-2 months to really know my “mise en scene.” And then write the damn thing. You may have to study physics or economics. Watch out for those psychological thrillers that need a “slight” understanding of psychology.
   Hell, even a vampire movie requires a plausible reason for the ability to turn to smoke.

   OK, no rants tonight. Gotta write web sites for the day job.

9. Phoenix on Wednesday: 30 September 2009|0928

   Hey Unk,

   Thanks for some great feedback and advice.

   Just curious, you ever met Charlie Kaufman?

   Who is the most brilliant screenwriter you ever met?

10. Unk on Wednesday: 30 September 2009|1455

    Phoenix… Never met him.

    The greatest I’ve ever met? It’s a tie between:

    Ernest Lehman and William Goldman.

    Unk

11. Christian H. on Wednesday: 30 September 2009|1629

    Hey,
    I found this article over at Nikki Finke’s.

    Here’s an excerpt:

    Nine years ago, I was a healthy and occasionally happy studio executive. I had taken Fox over a 7 year period from a doormat to the #1 studio and before that had spent 9 years at Disney building a then-dormant minor player into a muscular and, for the first time in its history, a real force in the studio world. I left Fox with 5 of the Top 10 films in history and departed Disney with 19 of the Top 20 Videos ever and as the #1 International distributor.

    I had fought with Rupert Murdoch over my desire to create a business for Fox in the world of animation. He felt no one could compete with Disney. Nevertheless I started up Fox Animation. ANASTASIA was a start, it made money. TITAN AE a misstep, and lost. Even though that is the nature of the business, that not everything works, he didn’t want to wait for ICE AGE to finish production. I didn’t have a foot out of the door before Fox tried to sell off the film. Luckily for them, they couldn’t get a deal done.

    Here’s the link.

    http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/bill-mechanic-on-moguls-bad-decision-making/

    It’s definitely insightful.

12. Unk on Thursday: 1 October 2009|1043

    Christian,

    Read it yesterday and quite a few readers sent me the link via email.

    GOOD STUFF. I’d work with Mechanic ANY DAY.

    Unk

13. Christian H. on Thursday: 1 October 2009|1527

    I also posted it over at WordPlayer and everyone got upset with him. I think he’s right that the under 25 is OK but without the people who are making the best salaries, there’s a large gap.
    I’m currently designing web sites and I didn’t bother seeing TF2. It’s a little too….childish.

    And when people make “over 30 movies” they take all of the fun out of them. I like to laugh, cry cheer and even think, but I want to think AFTER I enjoy the other stuff.

14. Unk on Friday: 2 October 2009|1152

    Christian,

    Upset with him WHY? That makes no sense to me. UPSET? LOL.

    Interesting.

    Unk

15. Christian H. on Sunday: 4 October 2009|0910

    Yeah, that was definitely weird. What he said could probably ruffle some feathers but there’s a lot of truth to it.

16. Chris on Tuesday: 6 October 2009|0607

    “Movies made by screenwriters…Lead me to it.”

    I know it’s not a real movie in the traditional sense but I’ve always thought it would be cool to do something within a program like Moviestorm.

    http://www.moviestorm.co.uk

    What I wanted to do was to basically create an animated story board to go along with a script.

    I remember watching a “making of” video on the movie Shrek and they created incredibly basic animated story boards. They looked like crap, but they were able to show pacing and camera angles…etc.

    Machinima kind of spawned Moviestorm and these types of programs are snowballing. Getting more and more features.

    The Red Vs Blue guys got quite popular with their Machinima movies made with Halo, but I’d rather wait for a full blown movie making program than try to hack video or code.

    Hell, I’m having a hard enough time just trying to learn how to write a proper script. :) Still, it’s a tool that someone could use if they had the time.

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