Anyone catch AMC Project: Malkovich's Mail this evening? It was a documentary about the unsolicited scripts and pitches John Malkovich's production company, Mr. Mudd Productions, gets. It profiled five of the scripts and their authors, had the staff of the production company talk about these things that come in the mail, and Malkovich acted out some of the scenes from each of the scripts and sent recordings of the scenes to the authors. It was an odd documentary. But it's resonating strangely with something I read two days ago: Don Coscarelli is still unable to obtain sufficient funding for Phantasm's End.
Apparently there were hopes that Bubba Ho-tep was going to open some doors and help Coscarelli get the $10-15mil he needed to make the film he had a script for (which was co-written by Rogery Avary, who shared the Oscar for the screenplay to Pulp Fiction). But that wasn't the case. Bubba Ho-tep could arguably be called a critical success (some critics liked it and it won some awards at festivals), but it hasn't gotten picked up for distribution. So Coscarelli is going back to the drawing board and penning a new script that will be cheaper to make.
What those two things got me thinking about were how collaborative of an art form film is. It's almost impossible to make a film without assistance, which is not true of virtually any other art form. I can write a novel or record an album or paint a painting or sculpt something without anyone else's help if I so desire; I can make solid the exact vision I have in my head without having to alter for someone else, or without anyone else's consent. But that's not true of film.
I guess what really bugs me is the amount of great films that'll never be made because they never got any support (yes, yes, there'd be a whole lot more crap too if movies were easier to make; witness the explosion of really horrible horror movies since the advent of digital cameras). Or even how close some films that I love came to not being made because no one would give the writer or director or whomever a chance. Or how often I've heard great things which were supposed to be in films but which were never filmed because of budget.
Feh. I'm rambling. I'll just stick to prose. No budget constraints on the written word.
Apparently there were hopes that Bubba Ho-tep was going to open some doors and help Coscarelli get the $10-15mil he needed to make the film he had a script for (which was co-written by Rogery Avary, who shared the Oscar for the screenplay to Pulp Fiction). But that wasn't the case. Bubba Ho-tep could arguably be called a critical success (some critics liked it and it won some awards at festivals), but it hasn't gotten picked up for distribution. So Coscarelli is going back to the drawing board and penning a new script that will be cheaper to make.
What those two things got me thinking about were how collaborative of an art form film is. It's almost impossible to make a film without assistance, which is not true of virtually any other art form. I can write a novel or record an album or paint a painting or sculpt something without anyone else's help if I so desire; I can make solid the exact vision I have in my head without having to alter for someone else, or without anyone else's consent. But that's not true of film.
I guess what really bugs me is the amount of great films that'll never be made because they never got any support (yes, yes, there'd be a whole lot more crap too if movies were easier to make; witness the explosion of really horrible horror movies since the advent of digital cameras). Or even how close some films that I love came to not being made because no one would give the writer or director or whomever a chance. Or how often I've heard great things which were supposed to be in films but which were never filmed because of budget.
Feh. I'm rambling. I'll just stick to prose. No budget constraints on the written word.
VIEW 16 of 16 COMMENTS
lunna:
novy:
I wanted to watch Malkovich's Mail but I missed it. I like John Malkovich a lot, he's a great actor, and Being John Malkovich was genius.