Beat the Eagle (Eszterhas #1 of 5)

Don't Mess with the IRS


Genre: Drama (in places the script threatens to go off on a Dog Day Afternoon tangent, but this never quite happens)

Premise: A bartender is unjustly accused of $14,000 in back taxes by the IRS. Rather than comply, the bartender decides to fight back in a court of law. And that’s the main thrust of the entire story.

About: Beat the Eagle was sold to Paramount by Esztershas as a spec in the mid 1980’s. Originally, Sydney Poitier was attached to direct. But, Poitier weeks after Joe’s legendary class with CAA was afraid to betray the agency’s loyalty and dumped the project. Or, perhaps Poitier was exhausted from directing the staggering work of genius that is Ghost Dad.

Writers: Joe “I’ll Fight All of CAA Barehanded” Eszterhas

The IRS is scary. I mean, really how many of us have any idea what taxes we pay or how amounts are determined? They’re a huge, unstoppable force that does whatever they want. This also means that at any point, the IRS could totally snap and say you own X amount of dollars and turn your life into a Kafkaesque nightmare. That’s basically the whole point of Beat the Eagle. The difference is, though, where some would want to see this story slide off into the bartending protagonist fighting the IRS in an original way, this story makes it nothing more than a legal battle. And how exciting is that really? It’s a cool set up that doesn’t live past the original concept.

And the other thing about Eszterhas, which sort of defines my take on him as a writer as a whole is the guy knows execution. And has perfected down to a T. McKee would have a field analyzing this script because it has the perfect mid-point, set up, character developments, and third act conclusion. And it works really tightly as a film. But in terms of being original, or knocking your socks off with its story, Beat the Eagle chooses rather to use a conventional structure and a story-line that isn’t really high concept, or marketable or playable. As a result, it’s well-written but conventional structure approaches more the feeling one would get from a Movie of the Week than a Feature Film. I’d suspect Eszterhas after his clash with CAA, delayed getting this movie made for a few years. And then, once it became a worn-out property it didn’t lack anything original enough that a direct latched onto it and wanted to turn it into a film.

The nicest part about this whole script, and why despite my mediocre feeling about its plot, I have a good feeling about Beat The Eagle is Eszterhas is really creating his own tone here. This, and a few of his other unproduced specs, read like wizened tales from a man who used to work for a small town Midwestern newspaper. Eszterhas creates a nice tone for the yinzers of the world (residents of Eastern Ohio, Western Pennsylvania) and I can’t really think of another screenwriter who tackles these subjects in such a way. So that’s pretty cool.

Beat the Eagle isn’t an amazing script. Nor is it a horrible one. It’s a nice, small script with some good moments. And that to me is okay any way you cut it.

Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
[X] - Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good

Isla Prospects: Not really. Not at all. Isla is not supposed to be playing girls from Eastern Ohio, not that there are even that many girls in this script. But that’s okay.

What I Learned: Eszterhas has written that perfect, edgy, chock to the brim with tone script. What he hasn’t written is something that’ll knock your socks off, and I doubt you could sell Beat The Eagle as a first spec script. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a fun read, or a nice quiet piece for an established writer.

Eszterhas Week

I love Joe Eszterhas.

And it’s a good thing I read his books The Devil’s Guide to Hollywood and Hollywood Animal, because on the merit of his scripts alone I don’t think you get nearly as much an idea of how cool this guy is. They’re funny, sarcastic books about the history of film. It also becomes clear that Joe is a pretty famous one. He’s written some of the highest selling spec scripts of all time, has penned some fairly big hits, and also been the creative mind behind some tremendously large flops. This week, I’m going to be reviewing the good (the one with the ice pick), the bad (the one with Elizabeth Berkley) and the unproduced of Joe Eszterhas.

Catwoman (Super Hero #4 of 5)

This is hot for approximately 4.5 seconds, then it gets ridiculous

Genre: Female-Driven Action (in the Comic Book Blockbuster affair sort of way)

Premise:. Patience Phillips is a meek woman working at a cosmetics company. After getting romantic with detective Tom Lone, Patience stumbles upon a meeting her boss is having and learns that the beauty products rejuvenate one’s skin, but if not used permanently result in rapid deterioration. The boss and his goons discovers she listening and drown her in a series of pipes. Patience is reincarnated as Catwoman. There’s a sort of expected ending to a superhero film. She’s set up, made an outlaw, Lone tries to hurt her but Patience ends up saving him, and Catwoman emerges victorious.

About: The film was nominated for a worst picture Razzie, barely broke even at the box office, and has inspired all types of insults about how horrible a film it is. But, the thing is Catwoman is better than Plastic Man. It’s also better than a lot of the unproduced spec scripts you read on the market. And it doesn’t necessarily fail a story. Where it is kind of sloppy is in the execution of the character, which I think when translated to Halle Berry in a spandex outfit sort of spiraled out of control.

Writers: And in the beginning, there was Bob Kane (who was one of DC Comic’s key figures, created Batman, The Joker, and Robin) who begat the story creators Theresa Rebeck (a playwright with a few film credits including Harriet The Spy) and a story/script by the team of John Brancato and Michael Ferris (The Net, The Game, and Terminator 3) with some additional writing by John Rogers (who dabbles in all sorts of mediums which has included the modern recreation of The Blue Beetle, the first draft of The Transformers film, and the cartoon Jack Chan Adventures). Catwoman was a huge problem for the Writers Guild, who basically had to award credit from a pool of 28 writers who had all worked on the film in some capacity.

Surprisingly, I’m gonna be able to get through this entire review without a negative comment. I don’t hate this film. I’m not the biggest fan. But it’s defintiely not Razzie material. Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie? That’s worthy. Ghosts Can’t Do It? Worthy. Cuthroat Island? Worthy. This or Show Girls? Not so much. They’re films that the critics ripped too pieces almost unfairly. Now keep in mind, I didn’t see the film but from what I read of the script, although boring in places, was not a God awful journey. It was definitely no Hollow Man.

The script gets kind of convoluted in the last half of the second act, and I tuned out. But I was pretty solid up until then. I wasn’t necessarily thumbing greedily through the pages, but it wasn’t awful. It just was. I got the superhero. I liked how she died and was re-incarnated. Unlike Plastic Man this wasn’t something I’d seen a thousand times. So I was willing to go along on the journey. But eventually this script reaches a place where the reader tunes out because the character and the plot stop being of any importance. Which is funny because I think I always enjoy direction-less stories until I find something like that. I mean there were threads and there were movements, but I tuned out on this one.

Also where is Batman? Where is The Joker? Why you would write a film just to revolve around The Catwoman story? I mean, that’s like purposefully making things harder on yourself. And basically where this story went wrong. The make-up story line is cool, if a bit sixties Sci-Fi-ish, but it’s not worthy of this character and it’s not worthy of a film.

That being said, the script sets up pretty original characters (even if Tom Lone is a little goofy) and I like the idea of a female centered super hero who is fighting something directly aligned against something that distorts womanly beauty. There’s a few decent action sequences. And the rebirth part held my attention for several pages. It’s not my favorite script by any means, and it feels like it got lost along the way in an attempt to make a female superhero film which catered to a male audience almost exclusively (which is exactly what Jolie’s Tomb Raider did) …. Which is kind of counterproductive to me? But this is an inspired failure. So I’ll rate it one step up above pure crap.

Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
[X] - Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good

Isla Prospects: I’m not racist but it’s kind of weird that Cat Woman is black. Sisters are way too sassy and smooth to succeed in the meek openings of Patience. So white chicks are probably a better casting decision, which is why Michelle Pfeiffer was a good casting decision. And, I’m gonna if somebody could get a decent script out of the Catwoman film I’d nominate Isla in a moment.

What I Learned: There are some ideas that just don’t translate to film. I’m not saying this script is great. It certainly has its underdeveloped moments and inadequate pacing, but the spandex suit is probably what brought this thing a worst picture Razzie. Sometimes it’s very hard to judge what’ll play or not, and sometimes you don’t even know it until the thing’s already in development. But the point of the matter is that these concepts titillate the powers that be enough to get them launched, and there’s something worth studying about that. If Catwoman can get made and Dr. Strange or Plasticman can’t, there’s obviously something here that wasn’t in the other scripts.

Plastic Man (Super Hero #3 of 5)

This is cool? I just don't get it.

Genre: Action with Traces (I said Traces, certainly not Dollops) of Comedy

Premise: Ex-con Daniel O'Brien wins childhood love, Dr. Susan Bright. Then he's turned into plastic man and fights industrialist Icarus Argon, also a Plastic Man. It's a very simplistic, goofy plot despite its length (128 pages).

About: Speilberg's production company, Amblin, was attached to helm this film. But Amblin didn't Men in Black instead, the Wakowski brothers did The Matrix, and the film was soon forgotten about. There's been talk recently, nothing confirmed on IMDB so it's still speculative, that the Wachowskis are gonna direct this sometime soon with Keanu Reeves as Plastic Man (the most wooden actor as the most malleable superhero....pretty brilliant casting!)

Writers: Andy and Larry Wachowski are the only credited writers. And, for the sake of things, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say I'm not a fan. I understand the Matrix has a large following, but that's about the only decent film they've done and the sequels sucked. V for Vendetta is mediocre? Speed Racer and Assassins just suck. At some point, people started thinking they were talented because they were the creative geniuses behind a blockbuster series. Just doesn't impress me. Sorry.

I've tried to read Plastic Man comics several times in the past. And I just don't get it. He's malleable and plastic....quite like Gumby, Spiderman, or... Mr. Fantastic. Only the comics never have enough comedy or style in them to differentiate the series away from these other, close in genre superheros. So I checked out very easily with Plastic Man, and I don't really quite why other people care for this series so rampantly. It's just a B-grade comic. And, that being said, the writing was never that terrific. An Alan Moore Plastic Man might work.

So that being said, I don't care about Plastic Man's origins. Even though the idea of having him start off as a criminal is certainly awesome. And this script devotes about 80 percent of its pages to explaining how Plastic Man's life was set up. And you can tell as you're reading this thing that there were going to be crazy special effects and visuals. But as far as this story goes, why spend so much time explaining the origin of a superhero nobody ever really cares about?

The Wachowski brothers do much to save the storyline, however. The script is filled with plenty of funny things (Plastic Man hates people who literer, and even at the end after he's proven himself a hero is still chasing litter bugs. Also plenty of cool shots, and set ups). This thing kind of reminded me of that Pixas film, The Incredibles, in places due to all its sight gags. And the more I'm thinking of it, wasn't Mr. Incredible also bendy and malleable?

I just don't get it. What is cool about somebody who can extend their arms and bend into various shapes? That'll get old real quick. Particularly when the character is already kind of flat. I'm half tempted to say this idea is such poppycock that's the reason it never had enough strength or oomph to get made into a feature film. But, if the Wachowski brothers ever do make this film and it does have Keanu Reeves in it, I'd expect it to fair at the box office. The visuals alone would be awesome. Add a few more jokes into this film, which there aren't too many of in the draft I read (I hear the later ones are funnier), and you've got a strongly mediocre popcorn flick.

Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
[X] - Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good

Isla Prospects: Dr. Susan Bright is almost certainly an intelligent blonde. As evidenced by Scooby Doo, Isla can't do blonde and as evidenced by Confessions of a Shopaholic, she can't really do intelligent either.

What I Learned: Origin stories are interesting (the Wolverine one follows this formula too)... if you present a story that the audience is hooked on you can get away for a long stretch of time without a semblance of a plot or anything that even remotely resembles a taut story line. In the case of Wolverine, I went along for the ride. For Plastic Man, I checked out before the end of the first act.

Asylum (Batman Vs Superman) (Super Hero Week #2)

How does something as awesome as this get dropped

Genre: Action-Adventure (in the Comic Book Blockbuster affair sort of way)

Premise: After the death of Batman’s new wife, Batman teams up with Superman to battle the Joker, who was actually hired by Lex Luthor.

About: After a few aborted attempts, including which Akiva Goldman was inexplicably brought in, Wolfgang Peterson left to direct Troy and Walker’s script was dumped for another Superman story. All engaged parties show interest in the project so I wouldn’t be surprised if anywhere from five to twenty years from now we do see a Superman VS Batman movie.

Writers: I read a draft of the script, which was written by Andrew Kevin Walker (Seven, 8 MM) right after Seven and his initial catapult into screenwriting fame. The version also had current rewrites by the famous screenwriting star/hack Akiva Goldman (I could list his credits, but let’s just say he got a main writing credit on Batman and Robin). This is the equivalent of having Stephen King rewrite Faulkner.

There’s this situation you encounter if you’ve read a fair share of Batman and Superman comics. While Superman is very much the 1940’s mentality of truth, justice and the American way; Batman is much more the equivalent of a Peckinpah hero who rides into town in the middle of night and settles his own scores however he finds necessary. As a result, these two are always sort of bickering about their methods. And that’s fun to watch onscreen because we’re not quite sure who to side with.

My biggest problem with Asylum, is that once Batman realizes the Joker set in motion the entire plan to kills Bruce’s wife, the story becomes much less about this tension between two of the greatest superheroes of all time and starts being another film in which Batman must settle score with the Joker. And that I’ve seen, dozens of times with varied results. I wish the Batman/Superman tension could have been maintained further, and ultimately would have escalated into an all ought to the death battle. I understand that’s not where this script was going, but when I’m made an awesome enough pitch that I’m going to see Superman and Batman together in a film inevitably that’s what I’d like.

And while I’m not going to try and attribute different scenes to different screenwriters, let’s just say that parts of this script are dark and nourish, but other parts are happy and chipper. It comes off like a varied experience. And that can be a tad bit unsettling. But, this difference in tone aside and a storyline which ultimately reverts to being very formulaic and resultantly predictable, Asylum is one of my top ten scripts I’ve read so far on Hunting for Isla Fisher.

Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
[X] - Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good

Isla Prospects: Not that many female roles. With the exception of Batman’s wife, who is killed off before the end of the first. So not much territory to cover here. Although, I did read recently Isla had been in main consideration for the role Maggie Gyllenhal played in Dark Knight. Talk about a missed opportunity.

What I Learned: The greatest thing about this script is that it takes storylines we’re familiar with and plot conventions, then by inverting them on their head just a bit, manages to come up with nothing we’ve never seen before. This script is structured in a very predictable way (Call to Action, Rising Escalations, and Very Big Fight) but by giving the audience The Batman/Superman thing we’re able to enjoy the story as if it were brand new. Screenwriting isn’t really about reinventing the wheel so much as it is giving the audience something they want and haven’t quite seen before.

Dr. Strange (Super Hero Week #1 of 5)

The love child of Elvira and Raul Julia.

On a side note, where's the Dr Doom film?

Genre: Action (In the blockbuster sense of the word. There are also traces of drama, comedy, and leans a bit towards science fiction).

Premise: Dr. Strange is pretty much an origin story (before these were done) about how Dr. Strange got his costume and came to power. This sounds a lot cooler than it actually is. The actual story involves Strange’s affiliation with The Ancient One, which is one of those B-line Marvel stories that never took of because it’s boring.

About: Remember how all screenwriting teachers and books tell you to never use artwork in your scripts? This thing has a big, awesome drawing of Dr. Strange on the cover page. The script was written 1986 right after the success of Back to the Future, and was commissioned by Marvel. The Dr. Strange story went into development hell, and Dimension films almost did a version in 2001. This makes sense because The Dr. Strange story is not a terrible one, but it’s definitely not as irresistible as The Spiderman or X-Men films.

Writers: Bob Gale (who worked exclusively with Zemekis on all his projects for a long time including the Back to the Future series). Gale has become sort of a mega dork since then and has done on to write adaptations and panels for many comic book.

I had no idea how I was going to feel about this film. Gale is a hardcore, comic nerd who has an erratic (1941 to Back to the Future) output. And from the get go, this script reads like a very esoteric adaptation of a comic legend. But, as the script moves along it becomes a pretty solid little script, if lacking the thrills

The story is something like this: the power is unleashed thousands of years ago, Strange is set up as a smug surgeon yuppie, he’s in an accident that prevents the use of his hands, Strange spends a fortune trying to heal himself, Strange goes to Tibet to heal his hands, Strange becomes an apprentice, Strange attacks and kills his mentor’s enemy (Mordo).

My main problem, and I think inevitably the main problem with Dr. Strange is he’s a goofy looking character and he’s hard to relate to because inevitably, whether revealed or not, he’s not a good guy. I know they’re doing a Magneto origin story, but Magneto is somebody who has a sympathetic back story who sides against the x-men on a well grounded belief. But Strange? Well, he looks like a guy with a gas mask on. It’s not that the story fails, it’s actually okay but if I can’t side with the protagonist the story will always become much less enjoyable.

It also, feels like Gale doesn’t quite get how to make the audience sympathize with the film or embrace it. Characters talk in awfully, long convoluted ways that are hard to follow. Big chunks of dialogue. It kind of reminds me of Star Wars. And then, Gale also tries to re-introduce Strange’s love interest at the start of the 3rd Act, which is just way too late to bring anybody into the script we’re supposed to identify with. Many times, as a result, it feels as if Gale is just caught up in all this uber-nerd babble.

I think part of the reason why this project may have never panned out, and why the subsequent attempts to launch this title failed are that it’s very difficult to get behind Dr. Strange as he’s established. The story, like many Marvel B-grade pieces, doesn’t allow for a lot of human elements or development so while the action may be awesome and the story may be interesting, I’m not sure if a clear cut story like this would make a good film.

Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
[X] - Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good

Isla Prospects: No. There’s a quasi-love interest for Dr. Strange, but I don’t really see this as a good Isla role.

What I Learned: The script opens with a 10 page sequence that takes place several thousand years ago and explains the untapped power Strange is about to tap into. It’s weird, easy to follow, and makes a good deal of sense. And just another reminder of how probably the only place in your script you can open up with an unrelated scene is the opening. So why not, when you can take the chance, craft a really creative opening?

It's a Bird, It's a Plane....It's Superhero Week

Oh. My. Yes.

Coming at you this week, dear readers, for no particularly reason is .... Superhero Week.

I've got a couple great unproduced specs I want to review, plus a few early drafts of Superhero films, and a few drafts of produced films I want to weigh in on.

Plus I may want to do a review of Isla's atrocious confessions of a Sopaholic.

It's looking like another great week on Hunting for Isla Fisher, so be sure to weigh in and if there's anything you want to reviewed (or ridiculed) feel free to weigh in.

Rage of the Werewolf (Werewolf #5 of 5)

See this lackluster poster? It's one of the highlights of this story.

Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi (as inevitably anything is that opens up with the shot of a comet zooming across the sky with voice over)


Premise: In Rage of the Werewolf, a comet collides with the moon, knocking it out of its orbit. As a result, people with latent werewolf genes becomes werewolves and start killing large amounts of people. So the characters do what anybody would in this situation, they capture a vampire and start experimenting with mixing vampire and werewolf blood.

About: I don’t know too much about this film besides the fact that the posters awful, and there were a lot of bad special effects. Not sure about box office, or critical reviews. Rage of the Werewolf seemed to fly in under the radar.

Writers: Kevin Lindenmuth (who has a lot of unheard of credits for writing, directing and producing films about aliens, werewolves and vampires) co-wrote the script with Santo Marotta (this is his only credit, and his only acting credit besides Jake in this film was as Victim #1 in another B-movie)

So I couldn’t find the script for 1983’s Wolfen. And for that, I apologize. So I scanned elsewhere on the internet, trying to think of other Werewolf films (there really aren’t a terrible large amount of them). And while Teen Wolf would be a fun review, I decided to dive into the B-movie territory where Werewolf films traditionally go. So I found the fourth draft of The Rage of the Werewolf, which was written in 1998.

I got about two pages in and thought, well this is cheesy but it’ll probably work out to be a pretty decent script. Then, I got about ten pages further and thought, this is really terrible and underacted. You could go through a smorgasbord of bad script elements in this film, but suffice it to say I’d rather focus on the very worst of this script.

The largest failure of this script is it has no main thrust. The plot is crackpot enough for Ed Wood. Werewolves meets Zombies meets Comet Collision. That’s nuts. Like, really, really nuts. In no way can I follow this. And then, this storyline is populated with characters who I can’t possibly get behind. They’re flat, underdeveloped, and don’t talk to one another unless it’s directly for the purpose of furthering the story’s events. Nor would you read this for laughs, spooks, or thrills. And themes? Haha. There’s no reason anybody would read this script for a story. Making it the most problematic existence of all the Werewolf films. American Werewolf in Paris at least had a good budget, and some bottom rung Hollywood dialogue. Rage of the Werewolf has none of this.

Is it an entirely bad ride? It’s quick. And it’s interesting to follow along because there was enough random, strange crap that it held my interest. And the dialogue is the type that attempts to portray life, but is obviously not very similar at all.

All these bad things taken into consideration, the film does not fall into the loveable genre of bad B-movies. Rather, the script reads like a terrible low-budget film, which it became eventually. I thought the lesser known Werewolf films were going to be better than the big Hollywood affairs, but for this script it wasn’t the case. Werewolf films just aren’t very good. Everyone seems to write a direct horror storyline, without a great purpose, without a good plot. And that doesn’t make for a good film. So while I don’t expect Twilight 2 to be a great, high quality film, I do think it’s probably as worthwhile a take on the genre as any other of these lackluster scripts.

[X] - Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good

Isla Prospects: Nope. None. At all. There aren’t even any women in this story. Instead, the story is populated by men without personalities.

What I Learned: There’s such a thing as taking a plot too far out into a high concept. Halfway through the plot, when the vampires are introduced alongside the werewolves, the script goes so far out into a place where the film can only be camp or ridiculousness. If you take too many chances on a reader/viewer’s sense of what’s real you enter out into a place where it becomes very hard to sustain believability. Reminds me of a script I wrote one time about Bigfoot and the cure for cancer.

The Howling (Werewolf Week #4 of 5)

Genre: Horror (It’s billed as comedy, I didn’t laugh. It isn’t dramatic).

Premise: A news-caster, Karen, being hunted by a serial killer retreats to a colony, filled with weird creatures, and is pursued by a werewolf.

About: Sayles was hired to do a full rewrite of the script. He’d previously worked with director Joe Dante on Piranha, and created a script with satirical elements far from the novel’s original tone.

Writers: John Sayles (who I’ve previously called brilliant, and who has the special privilege of being the first writer to have two scripts reviewed on Hunting for Isla Fisher) and Terrences Winkles, who has many produced credits for films I’ve never heard of (Rage and Honor, Nightmare City 2025, and Scorpius Gigantus) adapted the novel from Gary Brander, who wrote The Howling and The Big Brain novels.

I have a lot of respect for John Sayles. The guy published in Atlantic Monthly in his early 20’s. Wrote some of the strongest structural scripts I’ve ever seen, and I hold a really special place in my heart for Seacaucus Seven. But, that being said, I’m going to go out on a limb here: Sayles fills empty for me a lot of the time. I guess he’s funny, but his stuff isn’t that funny. His characters never feel organic, but always just a little bit too wooden. The Howling and Night Skies aren’t bad scripts. Definitely not bad. But I’m not going to say they’re the best things I’ve ever read. And I wouldn’t call Sayles a genius if I knew just about these two films. The guy definitely has a good deal of talent, and he definitely is an expert at how he intertwines character with plot.

The Howling was ridiculously hard for me to follow. I’m not saying I didn’t get it. But Sayles writes in a matter that keeps drawing me out of the script. He jumps to screen descriptions very abruptly, which makes it hard to follow through with what people are saying. Nor does his sarcastic sense of humor play particularly well on the page (I think Sayles may understand people so much he instinctively know these scenes will work acted out), but The Howling was a really slow read. This is actually the closest I came to not wanting to finish a script. I did, though.

This isn’t exactly Sayles’ fault, but it deserves to be said. Plot-wise with the exception of the Werewolf’s introduction half the way into the second act, this thing was dull. A woman caught a serial killer. A woman went to a place filled with weird people. Night Skies had this same sort of problem, the scripts do a switch around where they aren’t really about serial killers or small town romance, but rather werewolves and aliens. And I guess, genre-wise that’s an interesting turn, but as a reader looking for a solid plot it can sometimes grow pretty frustrating. What’s weirder is I’ve seen the film, but remembering tuning out halfway through and not really paying attention.

So is this film a failure? I’d say in terms of Werewolf week it’s actually number 2 behind An American Werewolf in London. Generally, though Werewolf films seem to be a pretty lackluster affair. Never awful, but certainly far from great. The thing is, no script so far has had a unique take on the Werewolf legend. It’s always an after-thought, and a barely unapplied one. Werewolves are scary, and can be killed with silver bullets. Nobody’s looking inside at what make these things scary or unsettling. (Also, there were three big budget Werewolf films in 1983: The Howling, Wolfen, and American Werewolf in London…I’ll be reviewing the third of these tomorrow)

Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
[X] - Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good

Isla Prospects: Karen’s really the headliner here. And definitely not an Isla role. She’s a very flat character, and I’m not that big a fan of her.

What I Learned: You don’t have to make really thick screen descriptions. I’m not saying Sayles is the model to craft your stuff after, but it teaches us to strip stuff down and look at the bare basics. Sayles doesn’t add on a lot of fluff to his scripts, and that can result in scripts that feel very breezy. Or boring, sometimes.

American Werewolf in London (Werewolf #3 of 5)

Genre: Black Comedy (although some people might tell you it’s Horror, the Werewolf connection and all. This is highly arguable seeing as the film isn’t that scary.)

Premise: Two young men, David and Jack, are Euro-tripping (this time they’re late 20’s) encounter a Werewolf. Inevitably, as must happen in these things, after a werewolf mauling, the reanimated corpse of Jack visits hospitalized David to warn him he is about to turn into a werewolf and to kill himself.

About: Landis first wrote this film in the late 1960’s, and then sat on it for a year. As you’ll find in Hollywood whenever this happens with screenplays, we encounter the underdeveloped epidemic. (Wes Anderson’s Life Aquatic being a prime example). It’s best known for Rick Baker’s special effects (neither here nor there, we’re reviewing on the script alone). The film has a snug place in the cult underground.

Writers: John Landis wrote this film in the 1980’s. Back when he was famous. In case it really has been that long, he also did Blues Brothers, Animal House, and The Kentucky Fried Movie (a personal favorite of mine).

I really didn’t like American Werewolf in Paris, and it made me wonder what type of story the original script was. I saw it as a teenager. I actually own it. I remember watching it a few times, but my attention never stuck the whole way through. At certain points the film became a series of weird visuals, and stopped being about a story.

And now I know why. The thing loses its thrust because David’s presented with a goal we don’t really care about. If he doesn’t kill himself, he ravages more people. But, that’s what werewolves do. They kill people. I stopped seeing it as a story, and the script instead became a random series of events. And the ending felt like a weird vision, and not really anything tacked on in an organic way. So structurally, it’s sort of a problem.

The characterizations reminds me a bit of Griffin Dunne’s character in After Hours also. He’s never really developed as a character. Instead, after being revealed as weird a few times, he starts becoming a Kafkaesque character obsessed with an insane goal. You could say it’s underdeveloped, but for the sake of this script he’s more loony and obsessed. And, sometimes, that’s all you need.

So unmotivated second act and quirky characters aside, there’s one thing I really like about this script. How the characters relate to one another, and the dialogue. Landis sets stuff up here really quirky, and sharp. It’s pretty delightful dialogue to read. And that for me, was made this script solid. It’s a sort of Beckett, absurdist twist that whines in and out as the script careens its way through the story.

Werewolf in London is not brilliant as a script. It’s a very decent story. It’s not doing anything that’s amazing. But as far as Werewolf films go, this is the best I’ve seen this week. Does more with the legend than Bad Moon Rising and actually creates a specific storyline, and American Werewolf in London it’s better than in pretty much every way possible.


Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
[X] - Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good

Isla Prospects: I can’t really see Isla as the nurse in this script, and there aren’t any amazing roles in this. But Jenny Agutter in the heyday of her hotness did play one of the main female characters in this. Nice.

What I Learned: When you give your character the objective they’ll try to achieve throughout the rest of the film, remember to clearly delineate what happens if they succeed and what happens if they fail. If it’s a pretty ambivalent situation, we start withdrawing because there’s no sense of imminent danger. And then, if the character waivers about what they’re supposed to do. We’ll draw out even less. Until the plot becomes a series of interesting dialogue and cool images. Like Werewolf in London.

Werewolf Week (#2 of 5)

I actually think this is pretty cool for a 1997 poster

Genre: Horror-Comedy (It isn’t necessarily scary, and it definitely isn’t funny, but this’d make the most logical sense.)

Premise: A college drop-out Euro-tripping in Paris discovers his artsy uncle has died, and his assistant, Serafine, is not only lovely, she’s also a Werewolf.

About: The sequel to the original An American Werewolf in London was nowhere near as successful as the first film in the series.

Writers: Based on the John Landis original script, the script had three writers on it: Tim Burns, Tom Stern, and Anthony Waller. This excess in credits is normally the first sign of a poor script. None of these writers had very impressive credits though. Burns and Stern had both mostly worked on Freaked and Henson Hour, and Waller had two feature credits including one for Mute Witness. I guess it was an opening shot for them all.

What’s funny about this script (I actually read a pre-shooting draft which is slightly different than the filmed version) is that without placing the dating anywhere, I instantly knew this was written short before Y2K. It had that tragically hip and glossed over, shiny feel films did in the late 90’s. And I was hooked for the first two pages, I swear.

The thing about this thing is it’s a sequel to a film that existed sort of as an oddity to begin with. A sequel was certainly not merited. So suffice it to say, this film has no relevance whatsoever to the original. But, that being said it’s really not that terrible a script: the kid gets called to Paris, his uncle dies, he meets the assistant, falls in love with the assistant, turns out the assistant’s a werewolf. Showdown with werewolf.

It’s a pretty classic twist on a pretty time honored Werewolf structure, and that’s fine. The characters are modern and that’s okay too. The first act is very generic, and boring. But it’s mediocre in it’s badness. Not awful, just not compelling in any particular way.

And once we get to the meat of the film, there’s a few less cheesy jokes and more scenes heavy on action and the werewolves encounter in the story. The sad thing about this whole thing, which Bad Moon Rising is guilty of but to a much lesser degree is that the American Werewolf in Paris doesn’t have any greater reason for the film to be about Werewolves, besides the fact that the monsters look cool. But from what I understand in the reviews, the werewolves were CGI’d and didn’t look that impressive at all.

There’s this tendency in monster movies to ultimately fall into a simplistic good guys vs. monsters set up. This film is the grand daddy of them all. It throws character development and any larger driving force right out the window to focus on the monster. Topping off this crap-fest with a JURY sequence, and then an IT’S JUST A DREAM ending. I’m hoping they took this out of the actual film because it’s completely stupid.

Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
[X] - Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good

Isla Prospects: Nope. No classic roles here. The love interest is foreign, and kind of quirky. Plus she’s a vampire. But definitely no missed opportunities.

What I Learned: Nothing positive. I think what I learned here, which may very well be the theme of this film is things in film shouldn’t exist without a purpose. Most things (the Werewolves, the plot, the characters) seemed to be devised only to appear hip and cool, but in the end the whole thing just seems very pointless.

Werewolf Week

Werewolf Week Commences

Twilight II: A New Moon is coming out next week, and in preparation I thought I’d review a smorgasbord of Werewolf scripts. You’ll find a couple unproduced classics, a new spec script, and a few previously made films. There’ll be some musings on the sub-genre as a whole, and I’ll be making some wisecracks about some film luminaries. So definitely, don’t miss!

Bad Moon Rising (Werewolf #1 of 5)

Motorcycle Werewolves: Been There, Done That

Genre: Horror

Premise: A group of motorcyclists, who are also werewolfs, murder a series of individuals in a small West Virginia town. (The sheriff is one of the first people to die and his son replaces him. A werewolf hunter, who speaks the ghost of his mentor, eventually comes to town and hunts down the gang. There’s the inevitable monster movie show down and unlike Hollow Man, this actually one works).

About: I couldn’t find the exact chronology of Bad Moon Rising, but I’m pretty sure it falls somewhere in the late 90’s. I first heard about it on an infamous top ten unproduced scripts list four or five years back. Consensus seems to be it was written purely as a spec.

Writers: Scott Rosenberg. High Fidelity, Beautiful Girls, Things to Do In Denver…Oh man, do I love Scott Rosenberg. His dialogue is mon juste. His characters sparkle with originality. He has a fixation with Warren Zevon. This guy’s every bit as competent as Shane Black or Tarantino.

I saw an interview with Rosenberg once where he said that plot was for sissies and that real men worked around characters. Bad Moon Rising doesn’t have a horrible plot, but it’s the characters in this thing that make it really shine. Oh man, does this guy know how to write good characters.
First off, he uses great names: Packard for a werewolf hunter, Ginny for a young black girl, Dakota for the hot motorcycle chick, Teddy for the sheriff’s son, Inkslinger and Vulture for guys in the gang. You see how each one of these names automatically gives us a persona and a vibe? Rosenberg is characterizing a lot before he even describes them.

Inevitably, if you’re going to have good characters at some point they have to expose info through dialogue that normally just wouldn’t. Either you rely on the humorously trivial like Tarantino, the banter of Black, or you can do what Rosenberg does which is use personal anecdotes at just the right time. A lot of stories are told in Bad Moon Rising, and the script veers in a bunch of different angles. But this is part of the charm of the story. It feels like watching an Altman horror film sometimes.

The other awesome thing is, Rosenberg celebrates the whole Lon Chaney-classic Werewolf-classic rock vein of Werewolfs. This script is fun. It’s not a straight plotline, and it’s not structured in a conventional linear Hollywood narrative focusing on one character but it’s highly enjoyable.

If you’re going to blame Rosenberg for something, though, it’s that he doesn’t do a hell of a lot of follow through with his characters. He sets up well, presents good problems, and then doesn’t really do much to make us feel like we see these characters through anything. Actually, this script feels awesome but unfocused. Like something Rosenberg might have written on a rush after he’d completed a Hollywood project.

Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)

Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities

X - Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)

Hot Rod (Good)

Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good)

Isla Prospects: There’s Dakota, a pretty hot motorcycle chick with a sex scene but I imagined her being small town in a way I’m not sure Isla could pull of. But that’s okay. I highly doubt this ever gets made.

What I Learned: Rosenberg has a really cool trick he uses in the screen directions where he writes the persons name, then a space, then describes them. This really worked for me, and made the directions seem less tense and focused my attention to what was really important.
For example, rather than:

GWEN CROFT is 25. And ethereal. Airy, light, heavenly

Rosenberg writes

GWEN CROFT
Is 25. And ethereal. Airy, light, heavenly

It’s small, but it’s a cool technique. In general, Rosenberg’s screen directions are worth studying. They make the directions fun the read.

Logan's Run (Bad Sci-Fi #5)

A 10 Year Old's Dream

Genre: Sci-Fi (Pure, true, straight up sci-fi. None of this I’m also an action film, I’m also a drama thing you see in a lot of recent scripts)

Premise: Logan, a “Sandman”, runs away from a society that kills off people over the age of 30.

About: The film won an Academy Award for Visual Effects. It was also nominated for Oscars in Cinematography and Art Direction. Also, it won the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film, and was nominated for a Nebula Award for Best Script. Rocky won Best Picture that year. Ebert called the film "vast, silly extravaganza", but as evidenced by his hatred of Pasolini, John Waters and most of David Lynch, Ebert’s never been good at understanding or reviewing slightly weird or alternative films.

Writers: The script has one credited screenwriter (David Zelag Goodman) and is based on a novel co-written by two other writers (William F Nolan and George Clayton Johnson). Reading these people’s credits is like running over a litany of brilliance. Goodman co-wrote Straw Dogs with Peckinpah. Enough said. Nolan is the type of old regime writer who doesn’t have any Blockbuster credits but has a solid repertoire of smaller works (the Black Mask series, the Sam Space series, won the Edgar Allen Poe award twice, co-wrote Burn Offerings, and wrote the script that eventually became “The Thing”). And George Clayton Johnson (who looks like Alan Moore’s long lost brother) wrote the treatment for Ocean’s Eleven, the first aired episode of Star Trek, and the Twilight Zone episode’s Kick the Can (Speilberg did the film version of it with Scatman Crothers), The Prime Mover, and The Four of Us Are Dying. Wow.

Today’s my last day of bad Sci-Fi Week, and I caved. I reviewed a script that’s actually one of my all time favorite Sci-Fi films. It wasn’t unanimously received as great or classic by people, though, and was easily eclipsed by Star Wars the following years, but I love this film. I read a script a few drafts before the shooting draft, but it was virtually what I had remembered.
Is this film amazing? Not quite, but it’s pretty good and I hold a very special place for Logan’s Run in my heart. The character Jessica is the first time I ever remember being sexually attracted to a woman. And at the time, I didn’t know what sex even was. But if the English chick in the light green dress was there, it was a sure bet it was hot.
The script does a few things really well. It succeeds in the places where all the scripts I reviewed this week failed. Remember how Planet of the Ape ultimately had no larger meaning or point? Logan’s Run makes a really scary and thematic point about a society that promotes youth and buries its elderly. Everywhere you go, and every character you meet bangs this theme all the way home. Remember how Hollow Man was ultimately a monster movie without any larger driving thrust? Logan’s Run is terrifying because it manages to relate its main action to its main thematic point (by running he’s going to become old, if Logan is caught he’s going to be killed and the youthful society wins, and the subplots? Hell, even the minor threads about a cosmetic surgeon who makes people youthful and an old man living on the fringes of society draw us in because they’re original and they make the whole theme resonate even louder). Remember how boring the characters were in Arena? Logan is a pimp. He’s hilarious. I’ve never seen a character like him in another film. He considers having casual sex with every woman he meets, is some sort of solitary lone gunner figure, and has internal pains and questions I’ve never seen in another character (He was raised in a nursery and wonders what it’s like to have a real mother). And World War X’s pointless reliance on Sci-Fi gimmicks? Not here. Every alteration Logan’s Run makes on our accepted world is used for both a thematic and plot-driven point. In other words, this is high quality Sci-Fi.
Is it a perfect script? Not at all. The concept is a bit goofy, but if you accept that most sci-fi films aren’t exactly fare for being taken literally (Planet of the Apes, Night of the Living Dead, Star Wars) then you can move on. And it ends on a sort of overly utopian note which reeks of a Hollywood ending. My biggest complaint would have been I wish there would have been more sub-plots or other things to focus on. But really, I was pretty damn happy with it. Logan’s Run is definitely one of my top Sci-Fi scripts.


Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)

Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)

Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)

Hot Rod (Good)

X - Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good)

Isla Prospects: I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but they’ve been discussing a re-make since 1994 (if anyone has a copy of it, please send!) and Isla could knock the Jessica-6 role right out of the park.

What I Learned: Logan’s Run does a great thing. It commits the protagonist to an insane goal, and everybody responds to his objective with a mixture of skepticism, mockery, or laughter. As a result, the reader commits more to the character and his aim. It’s a great device for making us sympathize.

World War X (Bad Sci-Fi #4)

Genre: Sci-Fi with a strong touch of Drama

Premise: In the late 40’s, after World War II, a reporter with an anger problem learns he’s part of a trans-dimensional conspiracy.

About: Written as a spec, represented by UTA with Benderspink (The Hangover and upcoming Leap Year most recently) attached to produce, there’s some big companies behind this thing.

Writer: Colin Trevorrow has sole writing credit on the script I read. He has several credits on IMDB, including “Gary: Under Crisis” which sounds vaguely familiar. He recently signed on to write Disney’s Pet Robots so apparently he’s doing something right.

Philip K Dick is a great writer. He uses weird, sci-fi plotlines and techniques to reveal unsettling facts about the conflicted personalities of individuals and the inherent chaos in group logic. Colin Trevorrow is no PK Dick. And even though he’s littered World War X with all kinds of time-traveling, people from the future changing the past, and eerie visions of an alternate future, none of these things exist for a larger or more looming reason. He’s utilized plot-lines without thinking about what they all add up to, what they mean. Dick was absolutely bat-crazy insane, but he always had a larger symbolic reason for his work. Trevorrow is flash bang. The events in World War X form a story, but I’m not really sure what he’s saying about the future, our time now, or life in general. And if you’re taking a large enough leap to ask people to imagine an alternate 1945, the very least you can do is provide a good reason.

That being said, I’m not going to try and reveal a thorough plot line of World War X. It’s so convoluted it’s stupid, but basically, a trouble reporter with an anger problem is led into a secret cult that tells him he’s part of a brotherhood that will fight for a soon to arrive prophet. Later he finds out the prophet is actually a time traveler terrorist from the future who inseminated a bunch in the past using his time machine so he’d have an army of crazy-ass warriors to defend him when he rose to power. That’s the main thrust. These twists are sort of crazy because Trevorrow makes the mistake of thinking by manipulating what we assume is correct in the story that he’s entertaining. When in fact, what he’s doing is confusing the audience and slowly withdrawing us from the little story that is present in World War X.

Others have said, more kindly that Trevorrow took on a subject that was too grandiose for his two hours. Carson Reeves called it Feature-itis. Now here’s what’s wrong with that. If this were an adaptation, or if what Trevorrow was trying to do had a heart behind his storyline, then I could see this point. But considering this is a spec from an original idea, Trevorrow flash-banged without a solid story core.

That being said, this is the most entertaining of the bad sci-fi films I reviewed this week. It’s not bad. There’s a story here. It works as a story. I wasn’t bored, but when I finished I was immensely dissatisfied.

Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)

Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)

[X] - Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)

Hot Rod (Good)

Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good)

Isla Prospects: There’s a main female role that’s kind of a love interest for the protagonist. This isn’t an Isla role. I think she’d do wise to steer clear of Sci-Fi or overly dramatic films.

What I Learned: Sometimes titles can be ridiculously misleading. While World War X sounds like a souped up version of Independence Day, in reality it was more of a weak Philip K Dick influenced film dealing with faked identities, alternate realities, and group delusion. As a result, when I watched this film I kept expecting a full out battle. I never found one. Resultantly, I was bummed when I was got to the 110th page and realized the story I expected was cooler than the story I had read.

Arena (Bad Sci Fi #3)

Haggar V: Ninjas VS Cyborgs

Genre: A Sci-Fi Concept executed as an Action Film

Premise: A modern day group of soldiers stumbles into an under sea arena where Vikings, Nazis, Indians and Cyborg Armies fighting it out to the death. Don't go looking for subplots or minor stories or character development or anything else, you won't find it.

About: This script was picked up last year for an undisclosed sum by Summit (who did a bunch of crap for a long time until they produced Twilight and most recently did Astro Boy.) It currently looks like Jeff Wadlow (who directed some film called Cry Wolf, but more importantly is the nephew of Katie Couric) will be directing. This has Michael Bay-ish written all over it.

Writers: They're both first-time writers. English-bred, 39 year old Darren Howell (a tube driver) only has Arena as a credit on IMDB, and Toby Wagstaff (who by the name alone I'm going to assume is also English) has a couple miscellaneous credits, including one for writing. Essentially, these guys are two long-time dabblers who finally made a go of it. I'm not a huge fan of this script and I'm not necessarily sure how good they are at writing, but it's nice whenever first timers can crack into the system.

Alright, boys and girls. I'm gonna take a little break from listening to Teardrops by Womack and Womack to write this review. Arena....where do I begin? It's like a beautiful woman who can't make conversation. Scratch the surface and all you find here is nothingness.

Arena does something brilliant towards the end. Instead of veering towards the "this is televised, isn't it scary when it's the future and every possible nightmare you can think of will be available for audiences to watch?" it offers another idea why something would be set up like "the arena". That's smart. If you ask me, the messed up event as a tv show reached its zeinth with the Glaser-directed and de Souza-scripted Running Man. That film had the right idea, it got the concept out of the way early and then focused itself around the action. Arena, however, keeps wanting to step back every 10 pages or show and marvel at its concept, which just let me unimpressed with the ending at the end. I mean it's cool. And this trailer would be awesome. But the writers did not reinvent the wheel. You can't coast on a generic action premise that spisn off from a high concept idea.

So why'd it sell? It's an awesome concept. And that alone makes it a worthwhile. But the story is also executed in a worthwhile way. This isn't high art. But, there aren't any fun or cheesy characters like you'd find in Predator or any of the great high-concept action/sci-fi films from the 1980's. For the most part, the characters are pretty devoid of personality. Nobody really wins us over. There aren't lines that make you laugh out alot. This could easily be fixed with a rewrite, though, because the framework is certainly there.


Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
X-Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good)


Isla Prospects: There's a cyborg character in this film named Becca, and she's my favorite most original character in the entire thing. But, Isla would not work as a straight up action chick. So no, there are absolutely no Isla roles in this.

What I Learned: High concept can come in two ways: high concept plot and high concept premise. High concept plot is something like Splash or Big where the thrust of the movie is dictated by the premise: a man falls in love with a mermaid, a little kid is transformed into an adult. A high concept premise is something like Cast Away or Arena: a man stuck on a deserted island, an arena where various armies from throughout time fight. A high concept plot is more of a sure fire hit if it's decently written. A high concept can be decently written and still very much forgettable. That being said, I think Arena will end up doing decent box office because it's going to make for a great trailer.

Planet of the Apes - 2001 (Bad Sci Fi #2)

Planet of the Apes 2001: Tutus? Oh Boy, Are They Angry Now

Premise: Sci-Fi Slapstick (as is anything with talking monkeys)







Writers: Oh man, the credits on this thing read like a family tree of hack screenwriters. Let’s see if I can get this right….







Adam Rifkin



(who write and directed Detroit Rock City….enough said)



Begat / was replaced by



Peter Jackson



(until he got smart and went back to Heavenly Creatures)



Begat/was replaced by



Oliver Stone



(who was on drugs and wanted to do something about the Bible Code w/ monkeys….)



Begat/brought on



Terry Hayes



(who wrote Vertical Limit and From Hell, which there are special spots in hell for)



Begat/was replaced by



Chris Columbus



(who wrote a script with monkeys skiing and playing baseball)



Begat/brought onMy friend/your buddy, the legendary schlockmeister Sam Hamm



Begat Was replaced by



James Cameron



(after Chris Columbus left to direct JINGLE ALL THE WAY, what does it say about a project when you leave it to work on JINGLE ALL THE WAY?…Cameron got smart and went back to Titantic)



Begat/Was replaced by William Broyles, Jr.



(who is a great writer…did Cast Away, Apollo 13 and Jarhead, says he only took the project on because it offered a lot of creative control, and I believe him!)



Begat/Needed Help From



Lawrence Konner and Market Rosenthal



(These guys have worked on more bad films than anybody I can name off the top of my head. If there’s a multiplex in hell, odds are these guys are raking it up….the even worse monkey movie, The Mighty Joe Young, Mona Lisa Smile, Mercury rising, The Beverly Hillbillies, Star Trek IV, Super Man IV, and The Jewel of the Nile)




If these were people mating, by this point we’ve have a hair-covered mongolid with buck teeth, five eyes. Rather, we have a film that was still being written while in the midst of shooting.
Speaking of …. wo would be interested in a Planet of the Apes script review marathon?




Premise: An astronaut enters a time warp and crash lands on a planet a thousand years in the future, which happens to be taken over by monkeys. This astronaut leads an uprising with the help of one liberal ass monkey, Ari, who if she was a college girl would be the kind who is vegan and dabbles in bisexuality.




About: The film made money, but when Tim Burton was asked if he wanted to do a sequel said he’d rather jump out a window. Keep in mind, I’m not reviewing the film (I’ve never seen it and after reading this never will) but rather, I’m reviewing the screenplay. The film did well at the Razzies, being nominated for Worst Remake and Worst Supporting Actors. I feel closer to Tim Roth, who after watching the movie twice commented “I still don’t understand it”. Seriously, does this even count as a film?




I used to like Tim Burton when he was good (up until Ed Wood) and how he’s completely made a joke out of himself “re-imagining” (aka re-shooting or…fumbling over his feet) film classics. I can say without any reasonable doubt that his Alice and Wonderland film will be abysmal. He doesn’t get the point of many of his films, and Planet of the Apes is absolutely the point in case.Now, before I talk about the thematic failure of this script, I’d like to say I don’t really dig the original Planet of the Apes. Don’t get me wrong, I see why it’s monumental and the idea was probably pretty awesome if you were a kid and didn’t give too much about structure, character development or thematic points. There are monkey that are humans and the humans are monkeys. This fails for the same reason Hollow Man does, there really isn’t that much else to go off of.




Air Force Captain, Leo Davidson, crash lands his ship, Oberon, on a distant planet. He encounters a bunch of human nomads led by Karubi and his daughter Daena and is capture along with the apes. Later he’s traded by Limbo, and purchased by Ari, the hippie chick who liberates him. Eventually this group of half monkey-half human-all outlaws goes up against the soldiers, Thade and Attar. That’s it. It’s the point of the original film all over again. Minus the interesting dialogue. Minus the shock value of the first time. Minus the anti-war message during the height of the Vietnam War. (Summer of 2001 wasn’t that turbulent).
This film is like that one friend who isn’t particularly bright, but is always trying to say something clever. Several times, there’s lines that made me go… OH now they’re going to introduce a thematic point to this or relate this to something or a character is going to change or something is going to happen that puts this film all into perspective. But no, Planet of the Apes never achieved meaning. If you’ve seen Spartacus, the original Planet of the Apes, or Gladiator this film is completely predictable in every angle.




That is it, except for the ending, which is nonsensical and makes you scratch your head and wonder what the hell’s happening. To give it away, Leo goes into another time warp and back to regular time, 2029, to discover monkeys have taken over the planet and rewritten history. I’m not really sure how this worked, and is totally a cop-out to any real ending but it’s crappy enough that it will probably be the only thing I ever remember a month or two from now.
So in conclusion, while films can sometimes be saved by lack of thematic point if the characters are interesting or the dialogue sparkles, this film is absolutely flat. It’s not terrible. I mean, it works. It’s just immensely unsatisfying and dull. It provides absolutely no thrills, though. And has no reason for existing.




Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)



Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)



[ X ] - Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)



Hot Rod (Good)



Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good)

Helena Bonham: the poor man's Isla

Isla Prospects: I’ve often reflect that Helena Bonham Carter is a lot like Isla. Only paler, weirder, more creative, and more prone to dressing up as old women. Isla could have done this. It wouldn’t have made her a star, and I think she would have played the character for more laughs. But it would’ve given her one more mediocre film along the line of Wedding Crashers and Confessions.




What I Learned: High Concept without Theme is like a BMW without an engine. It looks pretty. Seems like it’d go really fast. But ultimately, ends up in the ditch by your driveway collecting dust.

Hollow Man (Bad Sci-Fi #1)

T. Stearnes is back...

and he's mad somebody's been ripping off his poems for bad horror movies

Genre: Is Crap a Genre? If not, monster movie.

Writer: Former Nichols Fellow Andrew W. Marloe (who don't let that achievement fool you, is the hack responsible for End of Days and Air Force One) and Gary Scott Thompson (who brought you such films as K-911, TimeCop 2, and Knight Rider). Suffice it to say, high art was probably not first on the table when these guys sat down to work on Hollow Man.

About: The film tanked. The only positive review on record is by the fictional David Manning, who Sony basically created to give the film good publicity. It did, somehow magically, span a sequel, which I can assure you I will never watch. This sequel is probably due to the fact taht the film's worldwide gross was $191,200,000 and production budget was $90,000,000 so it appears to have made money.

Premise: A crazy ass scientist makes himself invisible. And then he goes ape wild!

I thought one time about making a film about Jesus Christ living past the execution and meandering through all sorts of historical events. But then I dropped it because while the idea was cool, it wouldn't really make for a great execution. Hollow Man takes this cool idea, hard to execute theme and blows it up a thousand times. I can just picture the pitch session:

PRODUCER: So do you have any ideas?
GST: "Uh...A guy who's invisible"
PRODUCER: "I love it! Here's a million dollars".

Seriously, this film has one idea. By the time you reach the 30 page mark, it's about as spent as my grandpa after forty five seconds of dry humping. A guy becomes invisible. Now there's a few ways you could go with that: a really cheesy porno where the guy watches women undress, a spy movie where the guy becomes a top government agent, or they could've even made Sebastian spy increasingly more and more on his girlfriend and his best friend. Instead, what this script does is spend 50 pages rambling on about how wonderful this guy is....and then has him go crazy and turns it into a monster movie ending where it doesn't appear that the survivors will live. You could squeeze all these ideas into about 14 minutes, but then you wouldn't have a movie.

The other thing that isn't squeeze into the movie is character development. Basically the guy who becomes hollow's girlfriend is secretly screwing his best friend. This was introduced in a way where I completely hated the girl, and when it came time to side with her in the monster movie ending I despised her and kind of wished the Hollow Man did go see her. She and this guy's best friend have sex about 90 percent of the time they're mentioned. Furthermore, not only do none of these characters have emotional archs (unless going stiry crazy is a character development), they're supposed to be scientists but talk and act in a yuppie hipster sort of way I don't think any real scientist (particularly ones who are working on government projects to make people hollow) talk.

But, credit is earned where credit is due. The dialogue isn't terrible, and the pacing is worth studying. But really folks, that's it. This film sucks. You can tell competent writers wrote it, which prevents it from completely sucking, but it's abysmal. I'm glad I only saw about five minutes of this film and then walked out of the room.

Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
[ X ] - Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good)

Isla Prospects: I am thankful Isla will never have to appear in this film. It is unfortunate that Elizabeth Shue was in it. Poor Elizabeth Shue.

What I Learned: High Concept is awesome for about the first 10 pages, but if you don't have character archs or an interesting take on the idea it's all downhill from there. This script was over by the time you'd reach the opening titles.

And Now...For Something Completely Different

Let Bad Sci-Fi Week Commence!

After some soul searching, I decided I was really catering to a niche market by just including unproduced specs. So in a market to please more people, and cover more of my favorite (and important films) from here on in at Hunting for Isla, a few things are gonna change!

From now, I'm reviewing Unproduced and Produced Scripts. Yes, I know this is alot on the plate and it could potentially get really overwhelming. So also from now on, we're going to have theme weeks. This is going to have plenty of goodies down the road for you folks (I'm planning a Razzie, an Oscar, a Nicholls, an Indiana Jones, a Star Wars and many other marathons) so without further adieu...let the games begin.

In honor of the 2012 release, I bring you bad Science Fiction week. We'll have a couple oldies, a couple recents, and a couple specs. There will be laughs. There will be tears. And the party has already started because we have the Tron guy.