Favorite screenplays: The Poseidon Adventure part 4

Once The Poseidon Adventure metaphor turns literal, the movie becomes largely about problem-solving and group dynamics.  The Rebel Priest leads, The Cop keeps order, The Lonely Man has ideas and watches out for The Waif, The Girl moons over The Rebel Priest, The Boy knows everything, The Elderly Jewish Couple kvetches, The Whore bitches, The Waiter falls to his death.

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Favorite screenplays: The Poseidon Adventure part 3

It’s New Year’s Eve, approaching midnight, on this ship that is upside-down but nobody realizes it yet.  We check in with all our main characters once again before disaster strikes.  The working-class Rogos fight, then kiss and make up, the waif Nonnie sings, the lonely Mr. Martin (surrounded by young ladies) takes his vitamins, the Rosens kibitz, The Captain relaxes, Acres pours champaign, Rev Scott waxes hippy, Susan lusts for Rev Scott, and little Robin interrogates the Purser, who will soon become a pivotal character.  The Purser, explaining himself to Robin, is the ship’s manager — not the owner (the businessman), not the captain (the leader) but the manager, the middle-man of song and story.  Now that we’ve met everyone and examined their strategies for dealing with the chaos of a world upside-down, the world goes ahead and actually turns upside-down. Read more

3 Films 3 Days

Chris Lauer was one of the producers of my debut feature Blood Relative, and is also a super guy and a wonderful creative personality.  I urge my readers to donate to the Kickstarter fund for his film project.

Favorite screenplays: The Poseidon Adventure part 2

So, let’s remember, the metaphor in play in The Poseidon Adventure is “the world is upside-down.”  The important thing to remember about this metaphor is that it’s already in play before the ship turns upside-down.  That is, the world is already upside-down for the characters on the Poseidon, the tidal wave only serves to make the metaphor literal.

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Hunger Games at Cultural Weekly

If you were interested in what I had to say about The Hunger Games, you can read it again and a lot more cool stuff over at Cultural Weekly.

Ceiling Katniss is watching you

I took my son Sam (10) to see The Hunger Games.  This is the result.

Favorite screenplays: The Poseidon Adventure part 1

The Poseidon Adventure was the first new, “grown up” movie I ever saw.  I think the last movie I had seen previous to it was The Aristocats.  People generally feel The Poseidon Adventure to be ham-fisted, stale and clunky, but in the winter of 1973 it was pretty mind-blowing, especially to an 11-year-old boy, and it changed the way I felt about movies forever.  I would never be happy with Herbie Rides Again or The Apple Dumpling Gang after I had seen mass death and gripping adventure in the passageways of a capsized ocean liner.   Read more

A note on The Hunger Games

A few years ago, I was involved in developing a movie based on a popular series of YA novels, a science-fiction thriller series set in a dystopian future and featuring a female protagonist trying to make her way in an oppressive, brutal society.

Because it was not just one novel but three, it was incumbent upon me to lay out not just one movie but a whole trilogy, describing the arc of the protagonist and her journey from helpless waif to leader of the revolution.

It was a lot of work, but the producer was very pleased with my take and we took it to the studio.

The studio executive we went to see was a very nice, very kind, very intelligent young woman.  I pitched to her not one movie but three, I pitched to her for over an hour, laying out a tapestry, a world of intrigue, action, spectacle and personal development.

The studio exec was fascinated and very impressed, and then, at the end of the pitch, said “That’s really great, Todd, you really nailed it, it’s perfect.  I’m just wondering — is there some way to make the protagonist a boy?”

I was dumbstruck.  No, there was no way to make the protagonist a boy.  The books were very much about a female perspective on this strange futuristic world — the two were inseparable.  You literally could not tell the same story with a male protagonist.

But the studio exec explained, “We can’t make a movie with a female protagonist.  Boys won’t go to see it.”  She also explained that girls won’t go to see science fiction movies, or action movies.  I explained to her that one recent movie franchise — Pirates – very much had a female protagonist and had done very well indeed, that another franchise — The Terminator – also had a female protagonist and had done very well indeed, that another franchise — Alien – was also a futuristic sci-fi series with a female protagonist, and had done very well indeed.

The studio exec’s hands were tied.  Word had come down from above, “No big-budget movies with female protagonists.”  The only movies that could be made with a female protagonist were intimate personal dramas and romances — that is, cheap movies.

My guess is that today, this very day, in offices all over Hollywood, studio executives are still telling writers “We don’t make science-fiction movies with a female protagonist.”  And when the writer says “But what about Hunger Games?” they will make an excuse — “Well, but that’s The Hunger Games, it’s a phenomenon, it’s its own thing, you can’t hope to repeat that.”

Favorite screenplays: The Bourne Identity part 8

Jason Bourne has killed his brother, The Professor, in self-defense.  The Professor was sent to kill Jason at the behest of Conklin, who is both Jason’s and The Professor’s father.  Conklin has pitted brother against brother to save face in the eyes of his own father Abbott.  Abbott wants Jason dead and the whole Treadstone project to just kind of go away so that he can save face when reporting his budget to a Congressional committee.  And so a political aspect of The Bourne Identity presents itself: an older, powerful white man feels discomfort about covering his ass, and that discomfort sends ripples down through the chain of power that results in young men, spiritual brothers, killing each other in a foreign land.  The king’s discomfort results in the serf’s murder.

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Favorite screenplays: The Bourne Identity part 7

Act III begins as Act II did — with an explosion of activity from Conklin back at CIA headquarters.  Here, he barks orders at all his kids about how to pinpoint Bourne, crosscut with him reassuring his father-figure Abbott that Bourne will be caught and killed.  Abbott, we learn, is upset about Bourne solely because of a budget meeting he has coming up with his Congressional overseers and Treadstone looks to be a big fat failure.  So we see that, as is often the case in familial disputes, it all comes down to money.

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