All Kinds of Collaboration.
A Bitter Pill, Part 2.
“Did he offer you the franchise?” asked megabucks writer Charlie A-List. As you read last week in (A Bitter Pill, Part 1) I’d just landed in Charlie’s office after a meeting with a Paramount executive who’d offered me the plum gig of writing the next installment of its blockbuster franchise based on a series of [...]
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A Bitter Pill, Part 1.
Here we go again. The names have been changed for the most obvious of reasons. I met Charlie A-List just inside the threshold of his Paramount office. He was riding high on his mega-hit, which he’d adapted from one of a series of bestselling books penned by Mr. Superstar Novelist. For that and other work, [...]
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Truth, Terrorists, and Turnaround.
This isn’t a sequel as much as it is a companion piece to last week’s A Funny Thing About Homage, where I recalled the late great John Frankenheimer’s brief attachment to a screenplay I’d developed with producer, Gary Foster. The script was initially titled Jackals. But maybe I should add a little context first. Gary [...]
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Funny Thing About Homage.
What’s wrong with this picture? I was an unproduced screenwriter standing at the threshold to my antique, valley domicile. It was my tiny, first-timer bungalow measuring barely eleven hundred square feet. Across from me, standing on my front stoop, was none other than movie director, John Frankenheimer. You don’t know his name? Maybe you’ve heard [...]
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Hard Promises.
I’ve written screenplays for all kinds of reasons. For love. For money. I’ve written them as favors. I’ve written them in order to get attention from the right people. Because I thought a particular script might get me to the next level. Because I had something to prove. I’ve written some screenplays because nobody else [...]
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Turning Japanese, Part 5.
Hideo Nakata wasn’t returning my call. This was a first. After more than a year of working together, developing and prepping the filmed version of my novel, True Believers, I’d come to depend on Hideo and he on me. There had to be a reason Hideo didn’t want to speak with me. My instinct was [...]
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Turning Japanese, Part 3.
We’d battled and beat MGM’s lousy, last-minute notes. And after four months in a bunch of unnecessary language lessons at UCLA, Japanese scare-master Hideo Nakata had graduated magna cum laude in Shove-Your-English-Classes-Up-That-Lion’s-Ass. Then we got word that MGM was looking to Lakeshore Entertainment, a mini-studio with hits like Million Dollar Baby under their belt, for [...]
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Turning Japanese, Part 2.
“Just calm the fuck down,” said Arnold Rifkin in his usual, bulldog tone. Rifkin was the producer for the picture we’d planned to make based on my novel, True Believers. To describe Arnold as sometimes abrasive is akin to describing road tar as black and sticky. He did, though, have knack for treating his projects [...]
Read More »Turning Japanese, Part 1
“We’ve been traded,” said David Wally, producer, friend, and at that point in the mess, a co-survivor. “What do you mean “traded?” I asked. “A trade,” said David flatly. “Like in baseball. MGM traded us to Dimension.” Just when I thought I’d seen most of it. Done some of it. But heard all it all. [...]
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The Might to Remain Silent, Part 1.
Picture this. I’m on the fourteenth floor of a Century City high-rise, anxiously rocking in place before a bank of elevators, hoping to hell the lift arrives before I lose my temper. Behind me, I hear two familiar voices. One is a producer I’ll call Big Daddy. The other belongs to a former A-List movie [...]
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