Can’t Even Think of a Headline
I’ve put it off all morning because I can’t stand script reviews. Some guy talking about what he’s read in a script is so far removed from the movie experience that I’ve got no use for it. And that’s assuming the guy isn’t an idiot. Alas, I’ve carried the Inglorious Bastards joke this far, so I might as well follow up.
I see now what hell I’ve opened up for myself by paying attention to this stuff.
If you really have to have that QT button pushed and you really care what New York Magazine’s Vulture thinks about the screenplay, by all means go forth in peace. Me? It’s too much information. I don’t want to know. Odds are, if you do want to know, you already do, but for the sake of thoroughness…enjoy.
Filed under: Miscellaneous
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I’m with you, Craig. Just knowing it’s out there is enough to satisfy me for now. Really paying close attention to the deals and what the budget will be and who gets cast and what kind of trims the studios demand will just make me frustrated and annoyed.
I read the bare bones post for this over at Screengrab, which really told me what I already could have surmised from simple deduction knowing what I do about Tarantino and the movies he has already made.
Script reviews are ridiculous anyway. You might as well review the storyboards.
I love a good script the same way I love a good novel, but I try to keep in mind that there’s about the same relation between script and movie as there is between novel and adaptation. (i.e., tenuous.)
Script and movie are different things, but it’s interesting (to me) to see the various stages of the life cycle from larvae-chrysalis-butterfly (or — as I suspect we’ll see with Stone’s “W” — suck-taint-excrete.)
But I don’t like most script reviews because I have trouble getting past the “I got a copy and you didn’t” attitude. (Though I realize a lot of that attitude might be generated from my envious end of the equation.)
You can get out whenever you want to, Craig. Not being able to “think of a headline” might be the clue! Speaking of which, your headlines are always great.
Clearly I’m not going near that script beforehand. Aren’t QT lines always best experienced on screen for the first time? Plus, Joel says why it’s not really going to shed light on anything new.
I know you’re in the pro-screenplay camp Ryan, and I’m prepared to allow for that, but screenplay reviews? Hell no. I don’t like reading reviews of the finished product before I see it, why would I want to read a review of one element of the film?
Daniel, some info is good, I just haven’t found that line yet, and when you start, where do you stop? Like Jeff, my whole interest in tidbits on this movie related to the possibility that, yes, this would be the movie and that it would be happening relatively soonish. Beyond that, my interest wanes rapidly.
I don’t mind reading screenplays, and I would go as far as to discuss them with anyone who wanted to, i.e. Ryan…but I am with you on “I got a copy and you didn’t” attitude, that just pisses me off. That being said, I couldn’t care less about IB, until the film comes out and I will be first in line to see it. I am a huge QB fan, but I am not really a fan of early buzz that is manufactured by people I don’t even know. I am not that bored with my life. Neither are you Craig, so kudos. lol.
Most of the time I read the screenplay of a movie that I won’t be able to see for a while, unless it is an adaptation, and then I read the book first. For instance, I once {a long time ago when my blog was read by me and no one else} said that I thought the screenplay for “Margot at the Wedding” was genuinely funny. I still have not seen the movie. And I only read that screenplay in like January, long after most people had seen the film.
Not trying to make excuses for my eagerness to read screenplays etc, not that I need to, but sometimes its the closest I can get to a certain movie, and I take the chance.
People can review screenplays all they like {like those annoying folks at the oddly titled Latino Review}, most people don’t really care.
Finally someone else who’s puzzled by “Latino Review”. I’m still waiting for “Cesar Chavez: Thumbs up!”
I only like a script review if it’s in relation to some property I’m already firmly aware of and the reviewer feels the script has completely flubbed the source material.
Case in point, Moriarty at AICN reviewed a JJ Abrahms Superman script years ago. He pretty much spoiled the whole damn thing but the script was so ridiculous that the review itself was better than the movie ever could have.
Also a review I read years ago of Sam Hamm’s Watchmen script, which was the mother of all adaption trainwrecks.
But those are the only two I can think of and my only interest in the review was that it was obvious neither movie was being made anyway.
Otherwise, the script can’t give you any indication of the acting, editing, cinemtography, direction, set design, costuming, music, sound effects, or producer-meddling that will ultimately inform the final movie.
“Cesar Chavez: Thumbs Up!” ahahhahahahaaha
Kubrick’s Napoleon screenplay was online about six years ago in July. (Probably still is.) Read it in one very long afternoon because it’ll evidently never be made into a film. My review–thumbs up!
I read screenplays for films that I’ve already seen, but only occasionally. I remember reading The Sixth Sense some years back; Minority Report a couple of years ago; and several month ago I took a look at Batman Begins. I’m sure there are plenty of others but those seemed to be the highlights.
I always wondered why they’re named Latino Review and A) the site isn’t in spanish and B) they only review comic book movies?
I’m straining my noggin to recall the last comic book movie with a major character that was hispanic. The closest I can get is Bat Manuel from the short-lived but brilliant Tick TV show.
Maybe “latino” is esperanto for “fanboy.”
I love reading them after the fact, but going to a movie is as close as I have to religion. Therefore, I like to go in clean and unclouded by extraneous stimulus and expectation.
Your monastic vows of chastity are admirable, Craig.
You guys, so virginal… you’re the type who want to save it all for the honeymoon night. Me, I like some extended juicy foreplay with at least a sample blowjob.
joel, there’s my creation, Woofman, (choong by night, Mario Lopez by day). But I can’t get anybody to publish my drawings.
I’m a fan of the Whitman Blowjob Sampler, it’s just hard to ship.
Does that come with kneepads, protective eye wear, and a coin changer, Jeff?
Few people realize the first such sampler was hand-delivered by Walt Whitman himself.
don’t forget the wetnaps
lol !!
I sing the body erectric. ~ Walt Whitman
Wait a second…Walt Whitman gave a handjob or a blowjob? I’m confused.
‘Or’? ‘And’.
Ryan, my hat’s off to you.
How about F. W. Murnau? What was HE getting on that California highway?
Momentarily left speechless by your biting mash-up of historical scandal and film scholarship, Sam. (as German as it was germane.)
Now who wants some fresh longganisa!?
Back to scripts. Lots of times I’ll only read the first half of a screenplay before seeing the movie, because I want to know a little, but not too much. It’s enough to see if the technique looks promising without needing to know how it ends. (scriptus interruptus, it’s a Tantric thing.)
I tried to inject some humor there, Ryan, by including the frame of reference with a major film artist, but I admit it didn’t come off well.
But to be honest, that terrible accident deprived the world of one of its greatest artists, a titan who (had he lived beyond 40) would have given the world even more greatness.
I still mourn him.
I watch Sunrise again every few months, Sam.
Was actually unaware of the questions about Murnau’s death you raise, so that’s some fascinating background that, for me, only adds to his mystique. (I had to Google for details. Decadent details like that don’t strike me as sordid at all; just
mindblowingastonishing.)No kidding, your comment really did leave me speechless. But in a good way.
Ryan, I am with you with SUNRISE, and I revisit it frequently too. That story of Murnau is factual as you may have just read. He was getting (you know what) from his young Phillipine servant in a racing car, and there was a horrific crash, which killed one of film’s greatest artists. (surely NOSFERATU and THE LAST LAUGH, along with SUNRISE rank high on any definitive film lists.) …………thanks for that reassuring comment. I was afraid I really blew it here.
Ryan is my script pusher. I try to give the habit up but he regularly comes around peddling his wares, promising unprecedented highs. Just back from 5 days holidaying in Arizona, feeling like I can get by without reading scripts, but there in my inbox waiting for me is Inglorious Bastards. I feel the sickness again, too ill to sleep. Too tired to stay awake. Sweat, chills, nausea. Pain and craving. A need like nothing else I’ve ever known will soon take hold of me. It’s on its way. And I don’t even like Tarantino that much anymore.
LOL sartre!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!