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InsIder’s PoInt of VIew: dIrectIng
How to
Ruin a ScRipt
“He ruined my script,” the strident
question, realised he had a problem.
Instead of the horror-action-comedy he
young woman announced over her
had promised his money men (several of
cocktail, completely unaware that
W
hen this story was related to
me, the accused, shortly thereafter,
I was sorely tempted to call the
writer, the one whose deathless prose whom it was rumoured had made their
the man she was talking to at the I had apparently managed to murder after fortunes the old-fashioned way—fraud,
horror writers’ convention was,
all, and give her the old what-for. The original embezzlement and murder—and were not
script in question, the first draft of which likely to take kindly to the old bait and
in fact, the best friend of the
had been a meandering knock-off of about switch), what he had was one hundred and
director she was lambasting.
fifteen other equally dismal sexy female vampire twenty pages of a plot-free feminist screed
“He just completely ruined it.” movies, came to me from a low-budget punctuated by half a dozen fight scenes
producer who, by some twist of fate, had featuring the kind of lavish special effects
By Ron Oliver
ended up owning a box—literally, a cardboard and elaborate wire work which would have
box—chock full of the kind of bottom-of- given mega-mogul Joel Silver pause.
the-video-shelf-tripe that one only watches And our producer had just under a million
while suffering from a hangover. bucks to do it.
The producer had managed to sell this So, with his blessing and a healthy ration
project as part of a package to a consortium of Belvedere Vodka, I sat down at my
of unwitting overseas investors based entirely computer with a production schedule,
on some artwork and his verbal pitches— a budget and a list of locations and spent
in this case, “Charlie’s Angels meets the next three days knocking out a script
The Lost Boys”—and when he had sat based on the original, using all the same
down to actually read the screenplay in characters, the same premise, even many of
22 By fIlmmakers. for fIlmmakers.
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