scripts are a beast.

a script is like a mighty beast.

each genre is its own animal.
you can't look at a action film and a high school musical rip off the same way.

each is totally legit in its own world. But what is its world?

I bet reading High School Musical you would scoff it. Tear it to pieces and generally see it as fluff.

"Filmmakers from Southern have an advantage because our work is DEEP! and all of Hollywood is shallow!" blerdy-do

NOT TRUE.
people in Hollywood that are working high up aren't nessicarily dumb. They just have to make entertainment.. you know why? because you will buy it.

They are super smart.. super deep about these things, but intentionally dumbed down. It a part of selling the image. Its what the majority wants. Its just another way of manipulating the market. Of course the brilliant bit... the bit you are not seeing... is that they just suckered you into making that pithy movie into a blockbuster hit!! The joke is more on us than them. Trust me.. its intentional. Not necessarily what you always want to do, but hey! some of the most brilliant and fun/compelling/entertaining films out there .. strait classics and all around amazing films are made of some of these very scripts and concepts.

Sometimes is becomes more form than content.

So when you read a script... it is valuable to say in your coverage of it that it is good.. yes. But more than that.. does it fit in with the world of films out there? It is commercially relevant. Is it enough of a blue print for a good film of that genre?

We are considering developing a action-y.. thriller-y film and as a part of the process, I was to read the script and give coverage. Lets just say I had a variety of problems with it. It was written well.. but there were some things I just couldn't buy. Some loop holes in my own mind of what it should be. Did I have context for these comments? Had a read a lot of action-y thriller scripts? Had I even seen a database of the classics in that genre? No. My comments were generally worth something, but not much. I decide to watch some of this genre's films.. ones I had seen before.. Top Gun, Alien, Wanted, Jaws... etc. and I started to break down what I was seeing with how I imagine the script to read. Corny words stared to appear on its pages.. contrived situations.. giant leaps in plot.. okay okay okay.. obviously.. I started to realize that these films would have read on page just as corny and just as contrived as this script I had read, but yet on screen they worked. they were magical.

the script is an animal! I'm telling you!

Its not what it seems.

A good director/producer needs to be able to decipher the animal. know if the beast is tamable by taking that content and knowing what form it demands. they need to know the genre.. know the screenplays and films in that genre well. pull it from their back pocket.. give people's work context and scrutiny on the correct playing field..

or someone else will for them.

///movies Sahale is watching this weekend..

1. Boys Don't Cry - Kimberly Pierce

2. Amores Perros - Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

3. Breaking the Waves - Lars van Trier

4. The Ice Storm - Ang Lee