Comments on Newspaper Rock: It's all about power

Writerfella here -- writerfella spoke about hi...

2007-02-05T11:30:00.000-08:00

Writerfella here --
writerfella spoke about his entire inventory prior to today, where items that were produced were on TV. Four screenplays have been purchased or continuously optioned to be purchased but none have been produced to this time. NONE also have been returned and while the money for 'option limbo' is good, the satisfaction for same is not. Now comes news that a small company wants to option CENOZOIC DAWN, which is writerfella's screenplay that does JURASSIC PARK without doing JURASSIC PARK: humanoid aliens exploring Earth System 65 million years ago get caught in the meteor storm that precedes the Chixalub Strike and their ship crash-lands on Earth. Not only must they stay alive among hordes of dinosaurs, they must get their ship repaired and escape before the asteroid hits...
Meanwhile, writerfella cashes the quarterly checks and sighs.
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'

I could find no trace of them in IMDB either.

2007-02-04T10:43:00.000-08:00

I could find no trace of them in IMDB either.

Two of the three movies you've had "filmed and/or ...

2007-02-04T08:40:00.000-08:00

Two of the three movies you've had "filmed and/or performed" sound interesting, but I don't see any of them listed on IMDB.com. What's the story?

Sequels and remakes are supposed to do well, which...

2007-02-04T08:39:00.000-08:00

Sequels and remakes are supposed to do well, which is why the studios make them so often. When they don't do well, you have to wonder.

If studios are going to make movies with limited box-office appeal, why not take a chance on more diverse fare? They got killed with movies such as The Fountain, Freedomland, A Good Year, and Lady in the Water, so why not try something different?

Writerfella here -- Two points for Rob! But t...

2007-02-04T02:47:00.000-08:00

Writerfella here --
Two points for Rob! But take away one...
That's precisely why writerfella's work has been filmed and/or performed, and why his projects have ranged all over the map. RUN BEFORE THE BUFFALO, which takes the 1973 Wounded Knee incident, places it at Sand Creek, Colorado, among the Cheyennes, and then puts a man-who-cannot-be-touched-by-bullets in their midst! Or DREADNAUT, which features a Native astronaut as part of a team of N.E.S.T. experts frantically trying to stop a nuclear weapon inside a huge marching machine heading toward the heart of Los Angeles. Or T-DAY, where four Dartmouth 'technogeeks', two White, one Navajo, and one 'Tiger Woods' mixed-race type, accidentally interrupt a long-hidden time-projector and change their timeline to one where WWII never ended. Yes, indeed, that's why ANASAZI was patterned after STAR WARS but also tells its own story with the same fun and flair.
No one said 'blockbuster' about serious, artistic movies. But the interrogatives to your own question about why those get made are these: WHO are such films about? And who is the audience for such films?
The movies that tanked can easily be evaluated: ALL THE KING'S MEN was a remake and the personal pet project of Sean Penn; BASIC INSTINCT 2 was a sequel with an older Sharon Stone and without Michael Douglas; FLYBOYS was a war movie made in a time when the US public is sick of war; and THE WICKER MAN was a remake and the personal pet project of Nicholas Cage, who will do better in GHOST RIDER.
The problem with 'doing something different' is that film industry people who control moviemaking are businessmen and businesswomen who in and of themselves are far from creative. Therefore, their entire drive is to compare how a possible project will compare with other, similar projects. One only has to see Robert Altman's scathing examination of today's Hollywood in THE PLAYER, wherein we cringe as we watch Buck Henry (playing himself) having to pitch THE GRADUATE 2 in order to get a producer's attention. When James Cameron's THE ABYSS was predicted to be a summer blockbuster (it wasn't!), no fewer than twelve similar films flew into production, leaving a lot of filmmakers with flop sweat on their faces.
Where Native filmmakers will be getting their best chances from here forward is in those very 'arthouse divisions', which are fairly new when one thinks about them. BUT -- what the Native filmmakers offer and what they have to say CANNOT be 'Smoke Signals' warmed over and again. Someone on this site said that writerfella was critical of films about 'rez' life because he didn't grow up on one. writerfella replied that the Dawes Act dissolved the Kiowa 'rez' in 1901, so he didn't leave the 'rez', the 'rez' left him. In any case, what that poster really was saying is that the 'rez' is all he knows, which is not true of writerfella. One wonders if that is why Native filmmakers clamor to vent their stories but the stories almost are all the same?
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'

I agree that Native filmmakers can't hope to succe...

2007-02-03T03:17:00.000-08:00

I agree that Native filmmakers can't hope to succeed with insular, inward-looking movies. That's why Ernest Whiteman wants to emulate Robert Rodriguez and do "fun" movies such as his Arapaho Hit Man project. That's presumably why you've written your "Anasazi" screenplay as a Native Star Wars. And that's why I've made PEACE PARTY an accessible superhero comic with lots of action and adventure.

Where's the market for movies such as Capote, Tran...

2007-02-03T03:13:00.000-08:00

Where's the market for movies such as Capote, Transamerica, Good Night, and Good Luck, or The Queen? I could list hundreds of serious, artistic movies that had no blockbuster potential but still got made.

Several studios have art-house divisions and there are plenty of independent producers too. So I ask again: Why aren't these people making more movies starring Indians and other minorities?

If studios are going to make movies with limited box-office appeal, why not take a chance on more diverse fare? They got killed with movies such as All the King's Men, Basic Instinct 2, Flyboys, and The Wicker Man, so why not try something different?

Writerfella here -- Being principally a televi...

2007-02-02T18:28:00.000-08:00

Writerfella here --
Being principally a television writer, writerfella much is familiar with the questions being asked here. And the most cogent one is this: why, after SMOKE SIGNALS, did the industry not call for other movies in the same or similar veins. Well, in TV, among the 500 and more channels available in many places, there is room for what is called 'narrowcasting', a channel that mainly appeals to certain groups and tastes. However, in motion pictures, there is no such room for 'narrowcasting', as the number of motion pictures produced worldwide continues to diminish in number as their costs continue to skyrocket. It is not that the industry did not care to carry such films forward, it is that they saw the market for any more than one to be completely unpredictable. And since the industry is driven totally by boxoffice returns on investments, they weren't willing to take the risks. In any case, as writerfella has said before, most Native films being produced today are self-involved, self-serving, and insular, not quite the type of film that qualifies either as art or as a profitable enterprise. There is a middle ground between what the Native filmmakers want and what the mainstream industry needs, and writerfella has been there several times. Therefore, what writerfella sees as happening anent the industry and Native filmmakers is what is called the classic 'dualogue', where both are speaking and neither is listening to what the other is saying. Alas...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'