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  #31  
Old 12-03-2005, 02:44 AM
istewart istewart is offline
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Default Re: Aeonflux

Dominic I didn't read your post, but doesn't your concept of "action movie" mean Kobe Tai taking 9 cocks in her ass instead of 5? WTF do you know about this? [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]
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  #32  
Old 12-03-2005, 02:49 AM
Godfather80 Godfather80 is offline
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 9
Default Re: Aeonflux

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
is it really THAT hard to write a decent action movie script?

[/ QUOTE ]

yes, it is.

[/ QUOTE ]

I strongly disagree.

Seriously, most of the action movies make horrible mistakes. Resident evil for instance. They go in with a million and one high tech guns that are useless. Then at the end they are killing beasts with revolvers? It's like they are intentionally messing things up.

Stick to what made the comic book or the video game great and don't concentrate on holleywood effects and big bangs.

It's not that hard to make a decent movie with a decent plot especially when somebody already did almost all of the work for you.

Hollywood = stupid.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry, Wacki, but your avatar is indeed descriptive of you in regards to this topic. You really have no clue what you're talking about.

If you think it's easy, go to Hollywood and let them all know your brilliant plan - I'm sure they'll throw money at you and hail you as the second coming of Orson Wells.

It's incredibly difficult to write a very good genre screenplay. There are an inordinate number of pitfalls awaiting one who attempts to do so:

Most of the conventions of the genre are well know to the point of cliche; stick too closely to them and you're being derivative, break the rules and you're no longer writing the genre you're being paid to. It's a very, very fine line.

The audience these days is more sophisticated, aware and involved in the movie-making process than ever before. You can't slip a sub-par plot twist or charactization past them (for the most part).

Every story has been told. Think back when Die Hard came out and the next fifteen years of action movies were, "Die Hard on a bus," or "Die Hard on a boat." There really is nothing new in the genre to be told - only in HOW a story is told. And that takes incredible skills by everyone working on the film, not just the writer.

A good film is ridiculously hard to make. A bad film is ridiculously hard to make. When you do happen to run across a good one, count yourself lucky, because all that means is the stars were aligned for this particular project.

Again, if you think it's not difficult, I challenge you to write a great action script. I have an agent and a manager and I'd love to find a project from an unknown to give to them.

So...put your money where you mouth is, and then maybe you'll be able to not so resemble your avatar.

[img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

While I agree that a good film is hard to make, I am consistantly amazed at the amount of money that is thrown at poor scripts. Good ideas and the ability to write them down cost next to nothing. I fear that what must happen is that most scripts start out reasonably intelligent with something compelling about them, but then get hacked up and boiled down to their lowest common denominator in the film-making process.

So, no I don't think it is that hard to make an action movie that "you" would like if you had total control. But, since you have to worry about what several million people would like (or not like), things get very complicated very quickly.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're right with your last thought...but I find interesting the part I put in bold...you don't make a movie to please yourself, or for your own, private pleasures. The very demands of the medium make it an art for the mass audience - and that's something I have no problem with.

Yes, budgets have gotten so large and bean counters have gotten so prevelant in the actual creation of Hollywood films these days, that a writer or director's original vision is often watered-down and/or corrupted in the pursuit of a huge opening weekend. This emphasis on making "franchises" instead of original films is what helped push me out of Los Angeles to begin with.

But these days, if you want to make a personal film, you can - you just can't spend so much money on it. But in the end, after so much sweat and labor, even the most obscure filmmaker wants his work to be seen by as many people as possible. That's the whole point of the excercise, isn't it?

If you want to write something for yourself, make a great action script that you can put in a drawer somewhere so it won't be corrupted by the inevitable changes and compromises a 7 or 8 figure movie demands, go ahead - but I don't think you'll find it very satisfying.

If you do, they have a word for that kind of writing:

a diary.

[/ QUOTE ]

And this is the difficulty of movie-making in general: really [censored] movies make lots of money on a regular basis.

Didn't PT Barnum say that "nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public"?

It is amusing to me that those who hold the purse strings at the studio greenlighted (greenlit?) this project and will continue to do the same for others like it.
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  #33  
Old 12-03-2005, 02:54 AM
Dominic Dominic is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 611
Default Re: Aeonflux

LOL....yeah, I went to L.A. to be a porn director.

I've sold 3 spec screenplays in my career, many options, and have been hired to a number or rewrites on other projects.

I also have an agent, a manager and an entertainment lawyer. I'm currently in pre-production on a small film I will direct here in Las Vegas. Naturally, everything is hinging on whether my producers can raise the money.

No, none of my specs have ever been produced. I'm sure most of you would be surprised to learn that the vast majority of scripts that are bought by the studios never get made.

And no, I'm not going to give you my last name so you can IMDB me - my credits range from staff writer on a few sitcoms to some bad MOW's for which I was a hired gun. Nothing I'm too proud of, but we all have to pay the rent.

Porn is a very small part of my resume - it's just more interesting than the other stuff, that's all.
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  #34  
Old 12-04-2005, 12:29 AM
Blarg Blarg is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 1,519
Default Re: Aeonflux

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
is it really THAT hard to write a decent action movie script?

[/ QUOTE ]

yes, it is.

[/ QUOTE ]

I strongly disagree.

Seriously, most of the action movies make horrible mistakes. Resident evil for instance. They go in with a million and one high tech guns that are useless. Then at the end they are killing beasts with revolvers? It's like they are intentionally messing things up.

Stick to what made the comic book or the video game great and don't concentrate on holleywood effects and big bangs.

It's not that hard to make a decent movie with a decent plot especially when somebody already did almost all of the work for you.

Hollywood = stupid.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry, Wacki, but your avatar is indeed descriptive of you in regards to this topic. You really have no clue what you're talking about.

If you think it's easy, go to Hollywood and let them all know your brilliant plan - I'm sure they'll throw money at you and hail you as the second coming of Orson Wells.

It's incredibly difficult to write a very good genre screenplay. There are an inordinate number of pitfalls awaiting one who attempts to do so:

Most of the conventions of the genre are well know to the point of cliche; stick too closely to them and you're being derivative, break the rules and you're no longer writing the genre you're being paid to. It's a very, very fine line.

The audience these days is more sophisticated, aware and involved in the movie-making process than ever before. You can't slip a sub-par plot twist or charactization past them (for the most part).

Every story has been told. Think back when Die Hard came out and the next fifteen years of action movies were, "Die Hard on a bus," or "Die Hard on a boat." There really is nothing new in the genre to be told - only in HOW a story is told. And that takes incredible skills by everyone working on the film, not just the writer.

A good film is ridiculously hard to make. A bad film is ridiculously hard to make. When you do happen to run across a good one, count yourself lucky, because all that means is the stars were aligned for this particular project.

Again, if you think it's not difficult, I challenge you to write a great action script. I have an agent and a manager and I'd love to find a project from an unknown to give to them.

So...put your money where you mouth is, and then maybe you'll be able to not so resemble your avatar.

[img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

To be fair, Dominic, no matter when you were born, every story has been told for a thousand years. You put an enormous amount of emphasis on novelty, but not only is novelty not necessarily that important, it often is more something destructive than an asset.

All the comic book guys who flood fan websites for years before a superhero movie even comes out get into a character for certain reasons, and get disappointed when those reasons by and large aren't made manifest in a movie. Different characters are emphasized(like Wolverine's role being played up and that of Cyclops being minimized in X-Men), the story is often changed, abilities are changed, you know where I'm going on all that. Things are changed and not always for the better. And what fans often want is NOT novelty, but fidelity.

They want to see the characters and situations they love done justice. It's Hollywood's desire to "jazz up" or "make modern" what is already a successful and maybe beloved franchise(or they wouldn't have even heard of it in the first place) that is the problem, not the solution. When people complain of these things they are not missing the point. They are saying the "Hollywoodization" is missing the point, and they're usually right.

The difficulty of being a writer or churning out even somewhat passable Hollywood product is not really the issue; just something you can relate to. I understand that. Creating is hard.

But just because doing something is hard doesn't mean that the product is any good. It can be hard to capture lightning in a bottle, but considering that people doing superhero movies have the characters already developed in great detail and refined over years, it's not exactly pulling miracles out of thin air.

Stuff like this really doesn't have to be novel to be good. Comics are inherently extremely cinematic, and have already proven themselves novel enough if they've become successful products.

More examples: Look at how The Incredible Hulk failed -- he acted like a big petulant baby instead of the angry, confused Hulk that readers got to know for a few decades.

Look at how Spiderman succeeded -- simply telling his story with some similarity to feel of the original story was fine. Even David Koepp's writing couldn't screw that one up.

Look at Catwoman -- Halle Berry is sexy, we get it. But that's not a movie. Catwoman was a somewhat interesting character in the comics; but by all accounts the movie just grabbed the title and made crap up on the fly.

Look where the first Batman was weakest -- in its dumb romance with Vickie Vale. Completely unnecessary and unbelievable and ... 100% Hollywood. Required Hollywood. You know, the Hollywood that says that Oliver Stone's Vietnam movies really needed more romance.

Comics need to be realized on the screen, not Hollywoodized on it. They're already strong enough products on their own. Until recently, the only thing Hollywood seemed to have a chance in hell at doing is destroying a comic franchise by making a terrible movie about it that had no respect for the source material. It's still a pretty close call every time, even though they've finally had enough decades worth of failing to "improve" comics by giving them the Hollywood genius treatment.
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  #35  
Old 12-04-2005, 12:33 AM
Blarg Blarg is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 1,519
Default Re: Aeonflux

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
is it really THAT hard to write a decent action movie script?

[/ QUOTE ]

yes, it is.

[/ QUOTE ]

I strongly disagree.

Seriously, most of the action movies make horrible mistakes. Resident evil for instance. They go in with a million and one high tech guns that are useless. Then at the end they are killing beasts with revolvers? It's like they are intentionally messing things up.

Stick to what made the comic book or the video game great and don't concentrate on holleywood effects and big bangs.

It's not that hard to make a decent movie with a decent plot especially when somebody already did almost all of the work for you.

Hollywood = stupid.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry, Wacki, but your avatar is indeed descriptive of you in regards to this topic. You really have no clue what you're talking about.

If you think it's easy, go to Hollywood and let them all know your brilliant plan - I'm sure they'll throw money at you and hail you as the second coming of Orson Wells.

It's incredibly difficult to write a very good genre screenplay. There are an inordinate number of pitfalls awaiting one who attempts to do so:

Most of the conventions of the genre are well know to the point of cliche; stick too closely to them and you're being derivative, break the rules and you're no longer writing the genre you're being paid to. It's a very, very fine line.

The audience these days is more sophisticated, aware and involved in the movie-making process than ever before. You can't slip a sub-par plot twist or charactization past them (for the most part).

Every story has been told. Think back when Die Hard came out and the next fifteen years of action movies were, "Die Hard on a bus," or "Die Hard on a boat." There really is nothing new in the genre to be told - only in HOW a story is told. And that takes incredible skills by everyone working on the film, not just the writer.

A good film is ridiculously hard to make. A bad film is ridiculously hard to make. When you do happen to run across a good one, count yourself lucky, because all that means is the stars were aligned for this particular project.

Again, if you think it's not difficult, I challenge you to write a great action script. I have an agent and a manager and I'd love to find a project from an unknown to give to them.

So...put your money where you mouth is, and then maybe you'll be able to not so resemble your avatar.

[img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

While I agree that a good film is hard to make, I am consistantly amazed at the amount of money that is thrown at poor scripts. Good ideas and the ability to write them down cost next to nothing. I fear that what must happen is that most scripts start out reasonably intelligent with something compelling about them, but then get hacked up and boiled down to their lowest common denominator in the film-making process.

So, no I don't think it is that hard to make an action movie that "you" would like if you had total control. But, since you have to worry about what several million people would like (or not like), things get very complicated very quickly.

[/ QUOTE ]

Kevin Smith's college tour video(the guy who made Clerks, Chasing Amy, Dogma, etc.) was very funny when he was talking about things like this. He was hired to write a Superman film, and the producer kept wanting to inject really asinine things into the movie for no particular reason. And then when that didn't work, he just moved his asinine ideas over to the next superhero movie he was working on. The metallic spider that made its bizarre and regretable appearance in The Wild, Wild West originally started out as something the producer insisted should be in a Superman movie he wanted to make.

Smith is a huge comic book fan, but there's little to be done when the people making the films don't have any particular knowledge of, feel for, or concern about their product.
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  #36  
Old 12-04-2005, 12:36 AM
Macdaddy Warsaw Macdaddy Warsaw is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 111
Default Re: Aeonflux

Random note. Kevin Smith wrote Green Arrow for a bit. It was better than avg., but not phenomenal writing. I like Kevin Smith though, too bad about Jersey Girl.
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  #37  
Old 12-04-2005, 12:37 AM
Blarg Blarg is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 1,519
Default Re: Aeonflux

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
is it really THAT hard to write a decent action movie script?

[/ QUOTE ]

yes, it is.

[/ QUOTE ]

I strongly disagree.

Seriously, most of the action movies make horrible mistakes. Resident evil for instance. They go in with a million and one high tech guns that are useless. Then at the end they are killing beasts with revolvers? It's like they are intentionally messing things up.

Stick to what made the comic book or the video game great and don't concentrate on holleywood effects and big bangs.

It's not that hard to make a decent movie with a decent plot especially when somebody already did almost all of the work for you.

Hollywood = stupid.

[/ QUOTE ]

This puts me in mind of the latest zombie flick from George Romero, who I would have thought would know better.

You can supposedly only kill them by disabling the brain, but the soldiers trying to kill them spend the whole movie pouring absolutely massive amounts of bullets into their torsos.

Now, the center-of-mass shooting concept is one anyone can understand, but ... if these were real soldiers facing, um, real zombies, they'd know not to waste their time doing something that had no or next to no effect.

This is the kind of flat out stupid stuff you see all the time in movies. Stuff that just doesn't make sense, and we're supposed to buy it anyway. A work of fiction is supposed to be a continuous dream, but having people do stuff they would never do, and things that just flat out don't make sense -- happens all the time in crappy movies.

It's not because making a good movie is hard. It's because the moviemakers screwed up. Or just simply suck.
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  #38  
Old 12-04-2005, 12:41 AM
Blarg Blarg is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 1,519
Default Re: Aeonflux

[ QUOTE ]
Random note. Kevin Smith wrote Green Arrow for a bit. It was better than avg., but not phenomenal writing. I like Kevin Smith though, too bad about Jersey Girl.

[/ QUOTE ]

That always struck me as a tough and marginal character that it would be difficult to get really popular. I'm not surprised it could be tough to get going. Kevin Smith's strength doesn't seem to like in serious comic book writing, anyway.
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  #39  
Old 12-04-2005, 02:56 AM
oreogod oreogod is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Irregular, Regular
Posts: 405
Default Re: Aeonflux

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
is it really THAT hard to write a decent action movie script?

[/ QUOTE ]

yes, it is.

[/ QUOTE ]

I strongly disagree.

Seriously, most of the action movies make horrible mistakes. Resident evil for instance. They go in with a million and one high tech guns that are useless. Then at the end they are killing beasts with revolvers? It's like they are intentionally messing things up.

Stick to what made the comic book or the video game great and don't concentrate on holleywood effects and big bangs.

It's not that hard to make a decent movie with a decent plot especially when somebody already did almost all of the work for you.

Hollywood = stupid.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry, Wacki, but your avatar is indeed descriptive of you in regards to this topic. You really have no clue what you're talking about.

If you think it's easy, go to Hollywood and let them all know your brilliant plan - I'm sure they'll throw money at you and hail you as the second coming of Orson Wells.

It's incredibly difficult to write a very good genre screenplay. There are an inordinate number of pitfalls awaiting one who attempts to do so:

Most of the conventions of the genre are well know to the point of cliche; stick too closely to them and you're being derivative, break the rules and you're no longer writing the genre you're being paid to. It's a very, very fine line.

The audience these days is more sophisticated, aware and involved in the movie-making process than ever before. You can't slip a sub-par plot twist or charactization past them (for the most part).

Every story has been told. Think back when Die Hard came out and the next fifteen years of action movies were, "Die Hard on a bus," or "Die Hard on a boat." There really is nothing new in the genre to be told - only in HOW a story is told. And that takes incredible skills by everyone working on the film, not just the writer.

A good film is ridiculously hard to make. A bad film is ridiculously hard to make. When you do happen to run across a good one, count yourself lucky, because all that means is the stars were aligned for this particular project.

Again, if you think it's not difficult, I challenge you to write a great action script. I have an agent and a manager and I'd love to find a project from an unknown to give to them.

So...put your money where you mouth is, and then maybe you'll be able to not so resemble your avatar.

[img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]


I should totally take u up on this...my big goal has always been to write/direct movies. I have a semi decent idea for an action movie, but I do agree, its very hard to write something with a "fresh" spin.

I also just saw South park movie again, and rent...and you just gave me a crazy idea. An 80s action movie musical. Ive already thought up half the movie and it would be insane. It will probably never get past whats inside my head, but it would be a kick to see osmething like that.
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  #40  
Old 12-04-2005, 03:59 AM
Blarg Blarg is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 1,519
Default Re: Aeonflux

Shades of "Cop Rock."
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