(Frank Miller: “Did someone say ‘edgy?’” {*disappears into darkness*})

Perhaps no one has summed up what a Kafka-esque, orangutan circle-’bate the system of getting studio notes on your screenplay is as well as Patton Oswalt in ‘Death Bed‘ (“When you sell a screenplay, you then go through a one-year notes process that will make you want to stab yourself in the eyes with your own d*ck that you’ve torn off, shellacked, and turned into a letter opener.”) Well today we have a corroborating story, this time from Cory Edwards.  Cory Edwards had a deal to write and direct a Fraggle Rock movie at the Weinstein company.  According to his blog, he was recently replaced as the writer (he’s still directing, as far as anyone knows).  The reason?  His script wasn’t ‘edgy’ enough.

They have begun the search for a new writer, presumably to rewrite my entire script from scratch. The only overall note coming from the studio is this: “Not edgy enough.”

“EDGY.” That’s the note. That’s what they are trying to do to the Fraggle Rock movie. EDGE it up! [...]WHAT is edgy?? Faster edits? Rock music for the score? Boober wearing some gangsta bling? I have no idea. What I DO know is that the word “edgy” should not be anywhere near this movie.

Oh, Cory, the meaning of ‘edgy’ depends on the context in which you hear it.  For instance, a couple years ago, edgy meant ‘in the style of The 300.’  These days, it means ‘featuring popular songs, like Glee.’

A lot of people don’t know, I was a professional writer before I started FilmDrunk (I stress, before).  I still vividly remember a particular assignment I had in which my only mandate was to deliver “edgy.”  Then, a few days later when I turned in my copy, they called it “virulently anti-Semitic.”  It’s like, jeez guys, make up your minds.  Of course, they still paid me.  I wasn’t about to let them Jew me out of that one.

(“Yes, Jake Sully, jump on my leonopteryx!”)

I’ve been trying to turn “rape the pterodactyl” into the next “keep f*ckin that chicken” for a few weeks now, but I confess it hasn’t really caught on.  But the full Avatar script just showed up online, complete with the deleted TENTACLE SEX SCENE, and two of my predictions have been confirmed: the Na’avi’s sensitive tails (or “queues” as James Cameron calls them) are definitely sexual, and this is the beginning of a new era in fetish porn.  Excerpt via Movieline:

EXT. WILLOW GLADE

He puts his face close to hers. She rubs her cheek against his. He kisses her on the mouth. They explore each other.

Then she pulls back, eyes sparkling.

NEYTIRI
Kissing is very good. But we have something better.

She pulls him down until they are kneeling, facing each other on the faintly glowing moss. Neytiri takes the end of her queue and raises it. Jake does the same, with trembling anticipation. The tendrils at the ends move with a life of their own, straining to be joined.

MACRO SHOT — The tendrils INTERTWINE with gentle undulations.

JAKE rocks with the direct contact between his nervous system and hers. The ultimate intimacy.

They come together into a kiss and sink down on the bed of moss, and ripples of light spread out around them.

THE WILLOWS sway, without wind, and the night is alive with pulsing energy as we DISSOLVE TO —

LATER. She is collapsed across his chest. Spent. He strokes her face tenderly.

JAKE
Neytiri, you know my real body is far away, sleeping.

She raises up, placing her fingertips to his chest —

NEYTIRI
This body is real.
(she touches his forehead)
This spirit is real.

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Entertainment Weekly just released the 2009 Black List, the annual list of the best unproduced screenplays as compiled by Frank Leonard, an actual black guy.  It’s not called the black list because he’s black, it’s just a coincidence, like him being a good dancer and having a really big penis.  In related news, I found a picture of a bear riding a horse.

1. The Muppet Man
By Christopher Weekes
What it’s about: The life and times of the late Jim Henson (pictured), the man behind Sesame Street and The Muppets.
What it’s like: The Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon, but with puppets. This moving story depicts the life of a creative genius, with occasional surreal appearances by the likes of Kermit and Miss Piggy.
Status: Set up at The Jim Henson Co.

2. The Social Network
By Aaron Sorkin
What it’s about: Chronicles Mark Zuckerberg’s complicated journey towards creating Facebook. Sorkin depicts both the founder’s motivations for starting the largest social network in the world and the human casualties that came with his profound success.
What it’s like: The fascinating biographical elements of Shattered Glass meets the courtroom drama of Kramer vs. Kramer, without the tears. Sorkin cuts between Zuckerberg’s heated depositions with his former Harvard colleagues who claimed he stole Facebook from them and the chronological retelling of the company’s trip to becoming a billion-dollar enterprise.
Status: In production for Sony Pictures. Jesse Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg while Justin Timberlake portrays Sean Parker, one of the founders of Napster and Zuckerberg’s idol. David Fincher is directing.

3. The Voices
By Michael R. Perry
What it’s about: Jerry, a schizophrenic worker at a bathtub factory, accidentally kills an attractive woman from accounting. While trying to cover his bloody tracks, Jerry starts taking advice from his talking (and foul-mouthed) cat and dog.
What it’s like: Watching the lovable pig from Babe join forces with American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman. Some may be turned off by the script’s twisted sense of humor — Jerry has friendly conversations with his victim’s severed head — while others will get a kick out of its sheer audacity.
Status: Vertigo Entertainment is trying to package the film with a lead actor. Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) is developing.

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Justin Theroux (pictured at left) has been hired to write the script for Iron Man 2.  The first Iron Man cost $135 million to make and an estimated $50 to $75 million to market.  The sequel will probably cost at least that much, and with so much money invested it makes sense that they’d go with an old pro like Justin Theroux, who has previously written a total of one movie (Tropic Thunder) which isn’t even out yet.  I mean, it looks really funny!  Did you see all those silly websites they created for it?  This guy’s on fucking fire!

I’m sure this will turn out great, I really can’t imagine anything going wrong with this plan.

[Variety]

In this post from a writer’s forum (dug up by Variety blogger Anne Thompson), an anonymous writer describing himself as an uncredited screenwriter on Kung Fu Panda has a lot of fun things to say about what it’s like working at Dreamworks.  It’s very reminiscent of some of our friend Allan Weisbecker’s experiences as a screenwriter, full of non-writers giving writers really helpful advice and such. From here on out, I’ll just let him or her speak for him/herself, because he/she’s pretty good at it.  It’s a lot of words, but worth it.

My hats off to anyone that can write a Dreamworks Animation film. They have a unique process.
First they storyboard the entire film. That is the first step. Not kidding. No writers, no script, just a story, and an entire film drawn on pieces of paper.
Then Katzenberg watches an animatic of the boards and says, surprisingly, "this needs a lot of work. You have a month."
Then they hire their first writer. 

And spend that month changing as much of the storyboards as they can, which is about 20 to 30 percent.

If the 30 percent change isn’t the right kind of change, people get fired. Maybe the director, maybe the writer, maybe both.

    Sometimes, only the writer gets fired and an additional director is hired to help out. It all depends on who is better – at pointing a finger with one hand while covering their own ass with the other.

    I came in about four writers into the process. It’s kind of hard to write a "better" scene than the last writer when the rules are that you can only change 30 percent of each scene or completely change 30 percent of the scenes, per Katzenberg screening. So, for instance, in this scene, the panda comes up a flight of stairs carrying a bucket of water, slips on a banana peel, says something to two geese and does an air guitar. The good news? There can be anything in the bucket. Your mission: make the movie better.

    It’s harder than it sounds. Especially when the larger "bucket" that the movie is contained in cannot change: the fact that the story has to be about a panda who is informed he is the chosen one, destined to …beat up… a guy who has escaped from prison and who is spending the entire movie walking to town, in order to…try to beat him up, because that’s the prophecy. And I won’t spoil the movie, but the bad guy doesn’t win. Because he’s not destined to. But just to make sure he doesn’t win, and because there’s 70 minutes of time to kill before he gets there on foot, the panda is trained in the martial arts. it’s kind of like Karate Kid, but if Mister Miyogi had long ago banished the Kobras and was running the karate tournament.

    That resonates, right? We’ve all been in that situation. Oh, yeah, but we weren’t the "panda." We were the "bad" guys, walking from Nazareth to Jerusalem, hoping to help people, only to get nailed to a fucking cross by the "good" guys. For instance, I had this job once at Dreamworks Animation…

    I tried to divide my time there between the tasks of writing 30 percent of scenes, being hazed by storyboard artists because I didn’t know how to do 30 percent of my job, yet, and explaining to the producers that Messianic myths (like The Matrix, which seemed to have a slight impact on their story) usually resonate because in the beginning of the story, things are bad, not good, and the good guy is usually the one overcoming insurmoutable odds and attempting to reclaim something from systems that have the magical ability to beat the living shit out of them no mater what they do.

    I said, could we please dedicate this month’s 30 percent change to making the bad guy be the ruler of the town, and the prophecy is that this panda is supposed to dethrone him.

    Well, the prison scene is already drawn. And Jeffrey really likes it.

    All right, can we make it like Demolition Man or Austin Powers or Cat Ballou, have the bad guy break out and everyone’s panicking and they go and get the guy that according to legend is the biggest bad ass, but he’s out of shape, out of his element and kind of a dick.

    Hmmm, okay, but in that case, why is he coming up a flight of stairs, and what’s in the bucket?

    I don’t know. There’s food in the bucket, because he loves food so much, and …he keeps his food in the basement, and he’s coming up to answer the door because the stork is knocking at it and beseeching him to be a hero.

    Well, the stork never knocks on a door, though. And Jeffrey likes the stork not knocking on doors.

    So we quit. Actually, I believe we were fired.

    They do this cycle like 30 times and the end result is a movie created over three years by 7 terrified directors and 20 pissed off writers, none of whom get any back end because it’s an "animated" film, therefore no matter how bad it is, it turns like an 8,000 percent profit, and they make another one and another one and another one until Katzenberg is finally dead at the age of 117 because he uses all the money he saves to rejuvinate his body with the blood of poor people who die at the age of 50 because their hearts got clogged while eating Lion King Meals.

    Which, honestly, sounds like the beginning of a great story. If someone would come along and blow up the whole god damn building and then piss on the rubble.

    Unfortunately, it’s real life, and the rich guy is writing the story, so the stories are about rich people beating the shit out of everyone who wants the building blown up.

    Which, Katzenberg assured me, is a story that’s been told from the beginning of time. And he told me I should get this book by Ted Kopell and Joseph Campbell called Hero of a Thousand Journeys or Something. Actually, he offered, because he liked me so much in our first meeting, to have his people send me a copy. To help me write his movie.

    And I said "oh, that sounds great," because I had been coached for that meeting by the directors and producers, and one of the rules was that if Jeffrey said anything about story structure or Joseph Campbell, I was supposed to pretend I’d never heard of him.

    Not kidding. Not exaggerating. Except for the Ted Kopell part.

    Anwyays, 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, sounds like another hit. I hope there’s a shot where the panda leaps in the air and it freezes and orbits him. The storyboard guys love that stuff. And it’s their movie. I was under foot.

    Oh, and I don’t know about Rob, but the reason I’m not credited on imdb is because I emailed imdb and pretended I had never heard of Kung Fu Panda. I figured I owed that to Campbell.

I know I’m a little biased and perhaps I generalize, but business execs are idiots and should never be in charge of anything.  All they know how to do is see a good idea make money and go "Hey, we should do that!"  Then they copy it, even if the first idea was creating an inexhaustible energy source.  It worked the first time, right?  Why wouldn’t it work again!  Anyway, I know stuff like this because I had a job once. 

[via RopeofSilicon]