Indeed, several high-profile spec sales have been made in the last few weeks for ideas that-gasp-originated in the minds of their writers rather than a survey of recognizable brands. The studios have put out the word to agencies that they’re in the market for new material.

I can see how that call might go. “So, um, yeah. We were totally planning on making next July’s tentpole film the story of Bazooka Joe, America’s favorite RPG-toting chewing gum magnate. But now we’re a little nervous about that, so… do any of your clients still write, you know, new stuff?”

Encouraging signs for scribes, but the touching tale of your Uncle Marty’s quest to find the perfect roast beef sandwich is still not guaranteed a greenlight. Not by a long shot. While the summer’s developments are a refreshing breeze after all that recycled air, the winds of change aren’t sweeping Tinseltown just yet. “Uniquely familiar” is still the order of the day and that mandate does come straight from the movie-going public.

While critics swooned for Splice and the Internet sizzled with talk of Kick Ass, these independently produced, studio-released risk-takers generated little enthusiasm among audiences. In the case of Splice, which was more like a playfully perverse early David Cronenberg film than the suspenseful chiller that teens probably wanted, it got a big fat D on CinemaScore and scared up precious little at the till.

Make no mistake, your spec still has to remind people of big hits but put a daring spin on the proven formula. It needs a succinct and easily grasped setup that instantly promises a good time at the movies. But at least it doesn’t have to be based on a video game, book or brand of bottled water.

Even if the retread concepts make a comeback, time is on our side-there are a finite number of brands that everyone knows and Hollywood is using ‘em up fast. As our culture becomes more niche-oriented and audiences more fragmented, there will be fewer and fewer of those household names to plunder for movie franchises. Soon enough, this town will be making movies based on new stories simply because they have no choice.

Yes, my friends, I am confident that the day will come when the release schedule is empty, panic has set in within the studio gates, and anything easily marketable to mass audiences will be seriously considered.

So write that script…market it to reps…get a manager out there working for you…and hope that the word “recycling” will go back to being about bottles and cans.

Louis Leterrier, director of the Clash of the Titans remake, confessed to The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s premiere that he told the 3-D conversion team, “Don’t make it so much like a View-Master—so…so puffied up.” Apparently, they didn’t listen—or this 3-D conversion technology is about as much like a 747 as those wacky propeller-powered chairs the earliest aviators used to drive off cliffs. Meaning, it’s a little too soon to start taking your customers’ money and sending them for a ride. But readers of this blog should rejoice that the View-Master movie we’ve been anticipating so eagerly could enjoy 3-D tailor-made for it. Hell, you could probably justify another price hike for those tix!

These days, a tweet or simple status update can really spread the word, and I’m hoping the word is out on 3-D conversions. I’m actually pretty optimistic that right now, a sixth-grader in Dubuque, IA is giving his buddy a sage look and saying, “3-D conversions are crap. Unless it’s shot in 3-D, I’m not going.”

I’ve always been a proponent of the third dimension in cinema for its immersive potential and pure fun factor. But putting out a shoddy product is taking the bloom off this rose. Hollywood better work out the bugs in the process or we’ll go from boom to backlash in a hurry as history repeats itself.

So if you give a damn about the Golden Globes, you know that Avatar (or “Abadah,” as Arnold Schwarzenegger inexplicably pronounced it on the telecast) won Best Drama and James Cameron won Best Director.  His ex and director of The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow took the snub gracefully, but she had to be thinking, “C’mon!  Really?!”  Avatar is now on course to take the favorite’s mantle going into the Oscars’ Best Picture race (though the outcome of the DGA Awards will tell us a lot).

You know, Avatar is a nice little movie.  Feels weird saying that about a movie that cost a bajillion and has already made two bajillion, but to me, it’s not that big of a deal.  The movie’s heart is in the right place and there are some breathtaking moments (assuming you’re watching it in IMAX 3-D), but I don’t see it as the huge “game-changer” some are making it out to be.  We’ve been watching the incremental evolution of CGI and even 3-D for years now.  Technologically, this seems less a leap forward than the next logical step.

On a script-level, what I like most about Avatar is the concept of remote piloting a superhuman alien body and the pervasive but not-quite-overdone social commentary.  I don’t think the script merited a WGA (and probable Oscar) nomination with dialogue as wooden as Titanic’s and only a few notches better than one of the later Star Wars movies.  The comparisons to Dances with Wolves (some call this “Dances with Smurfs”) have been made elsewhere, but the storyline definitely takes its cues from what you might call the “stranger in a strange land” formula.  The lone wolf gradually earns the respect of the natives in scenes laced with comic and emotional beats, falls in love with one of them and eventually fights for them against his own people.

Hey, this is a formula for a reason — it makes for an entertaining story when well executed.  And it’s well executed here.  However, if you’ve seen a few of these stories, it’s also as predictable as sunny days in So Cal.  If more effort had been put into subverting expectations as the script hit the formula’s requisite plot and character beats, I might give it an award.  But with these script nominations, it seems like they’re just loading up the bandwagon.

All the same, that’s not what really stuck in my craw.  What I liked the least about this movie was the character played by Sigourney Weaver.  This is not the great Sigourney’s finest performance.  It’s a little arch, a little one-note… like she never quite got a handle on who she was playing and whether or not there were nuances to explore in subtext.  But I think she did all right with what she had.  The issue here is the character as written.

Let’s take a look at Dr. Grace Augustine.  This chick’s like a dumbass Dian Fossey.  A smudged mimeograph copy of Sigourney’s more heroic character in Gorillas in the Mist. She wants to help the Nav’i, but she doesn’t even manage an inspired speech about how beautiful their culture is or how we have so much to learn from them, so Parker and Quaritch and the rest might think of them as more than smart blue monkeys.  No, she just kind of impotently rails and grouses and practically stomps her foot in a shockingly unpersuasive kind of way.  No wonder these guys want to bulldoze the Na’vi tree-village.  The supposed expert on their culture doesn’t even get the moving speech you’d think a character like this would have, whether it changes anyone’s minds or not (maybe she could have won over Michelle Rodriguez’s character this way, instead of that happening off-screen).

What bugs me the most is who they cast in the role, who directed this movie, and who wrote it.  I’m talking about Sigourney Weaver, James Cameron, and James Cameron.  They worked together on another little movie in 1986, maybe you’ve heard of it — Aliens?  Anyway, in that movie, which also made a lot of money, they created one of the top five feminist icons in film.  Yeah, even if you’re a women’s studies major at the University of Iowa, you probably know and love Ellen Ripley.

The character got off to a good start with Alien in ‘79 when she was written as a male character and they just swapped Sigourney in without changing a word of her dialogue.  That was quite a statement, and it dovetailed nicely with Diane Keaton’s Annie Hall (1977), who with just her funky, mannish wardrobe softened some of the bright white lines between gender roles.

But what makes Ripley an even better character in the second movie — James Cameron’s movie — is that she gracefully embodies the best parts of BOTH male and female archetypes, in her own feminine way.  Ripley is the kind of person who can handle whatever the situation calls for.  Cameron’s superb screenplay also explores a surrogate mother / daughter relationship in remarkable depth for a roller coaster movie, including the challenge of explaining to a child that there may not be a Santa Claus, but there ARE monsters in this world and we must reconcile ourselves with that fact.  Ripley’s muted romance with Michael Biehn’s character, Hicks, springs entirely from mutual respect rather than lust.  And yet, you have the feeling that if these two had a few hours alone without any creatures trying to kill them, things might get pretty hot.  (Don’t get me started on the studio’s asinine decision to kill Hicks and Newt in between this movie and the next one, rendering their inspirational struggle to survive Aliens meaningless.)

Anyway, we all know that Ripley kicked open a door for Lara Croft, Sidney Bristow, The Bride and a host of other badass female characters.  After Ripley, the masses seemed to realize they were bored with the “love interest” stereotype who might be introduced as tough but ended up being led around by the hand while things blew up around them.  And sure, Zoe Saldana’s Neytiri is a respectable warrior in Avatar. But the point is not that Ripley could take a punch.  She was not just tough, she was tough-minded.

The fact that Dr. Grace Augustine is older than Ripley and a scientist should mean nothing.  Knowing that force is not an option, why doesn’t she scheme against her adversaries and undermine them in other ways?  She and her team have total access to the facility and could even use their avatar bodies to sabotage the operation (if they don’t stick their faces in a security camera, like protagonist Jake Sully does at one point).  We see that the military is monitoring Jake’s video diaries, but there’s no indication that they are watching avatar feeds (especially not when Augustine moves their lab into the field).  If she really believes that genocide is brewing and all these company men are unreasonable, why draw attention to yourself by bitching about it?  She should be expertly playing both sides of the fence — like any thinking person would — and secretly doing everything she can to save these people.  Look at Shosanna in Inglourious Basterds for a great example of a double agent in action.

Instead, Cameron seems to be quite intentionally painting the military and the scientists as opposite sides of the same worthless coin.  It’s just that the big brains are feckless and not actively harmful.  In this movie, I guess we need one hero, this soldier with a heart, to solve everything just by being THAT badass.  Because other than being the setup for a later payoff, Augustine has little impact on the plot.

In many ways, Avatar resembles District Nine, another big sci-fi hit from last year.  In that film, the hero starts out clueless and insensitive to an alien race before “going native” (albeit in a different way) and seeing things more literally from their point of view.  Like Avatar, there’s a robotic exoskeleton / battle-suit.  But District Nine posits that while one person can do a little bit of good, he can’t ride in on a white horse and save humanity from itself.

Paradoxically, I don’t think it’s any more cynical than Avatar.  Aliens ended with a human being in a super-suit, Ripley, doing battle with an alien for the lives of the innocent.  Avatar reverses that equation.  This time, the human is the threat to the innocent and Ripley is nowhere to be found.  The movie presents a much more bleak assessment of the human race.

Hey, I can understand the decision to make Sam Worthington’s character the hero here and give Sigourney Weaver more of an emeritus role.  Cameron and Weaver are not obligated to pay homage to Ripley when they work together or separately.  But when I consider Weaver’s character here, I can’t help thinking that the world of Avatar is somehow less evolved, less inspiring, and less real than the world of Aliens. Maybe that’s because our civilization has been heading in the wrong direction, and Cameron knows it.  Or maybe it’s just because he had too many balls in the air with this movie to worry about the legacy of a character from another one.

I can’t help but wonder what would happen if, instead of being found by that deep salvage team, Ripley’s escape pod had crash-landed on Pandora?  It wouldn’t be long before she taught this “Dr. Grace Augustine” how to handle corporate sleazebags and military morons.  Hell, why stop there?  This could be like The Incredible Hulk TV series all over again.  Because she doesn’t have anyone left alive from her old life, Ripley just keeps bouncing around the galaxy, waking up in different civilizations where she has to get up to speed on their version of the future and solve their problems for them.  Because that Ripley was a problem-solver, man.

I miss ya, Rip.

• For Avatar to be James Cameron’s best movie since another one word A-title, Aliens. Hope you brought your A-game, James. We’ll know soon enough…

• For every focus group, exit poll participant and mall-walker they ask to profess total ignorance of the board game, children’s toy or toilet paper the studios want to turn into a movie. If it’s brand recognition they want, let’s just stop giving it to them.

• For Dexter to stay this good until the end of the season. And for Rita to just move in with the guy next door and take the brats with her.

• For NBC to put dramas back on at 10 p.m. and move Jay Leno and Conan back to their original timeslots. Nice try, guys.

• For the rights-holders to turn over the Terminator franchise to Joss Whedon. But more Firefly, less Dollhouse, Joss.

• For Dane Cook to never try to be funny again.

• For The Office to actually be funny again.

• For Robin Wright to become an A-list actress (and stay away from Sean Penn for at least six months).

• For the 2010 spec market to yield more than like, one sale every two hundred days.

• For none of the Academy Awards’ 10-deep list of Best Picture nominees to be Transformers 2 (this wish I might get, though I’ll have to wait until nominations are announced Feb. 2).

• And finally… for all you aspiring writers to get better, sell scripts and love what you do.

Sorry to be crass in my headline, gang, but this space is not intended for children and nor is this an Emily Post column. I’m not especially thrilled with the coarsening of society evidenced by the recent behavior of Kanye West, Serena Williams or Joe Wilson, either. But that’s another topic. Today’s is the huge difference between being a screenwriter who can handle rejection and one who begs for it.

Metaphorically speaking, Hollywood is a walled city and most aspiring writers spend a number of years on the outside looking in. It’s easy to get resentful about that, especially when you’re working hard for free. Especially when you hear that the guys who wrote the summer’s Star Trek reboot are tackling View-Master for an encore. Pretty soon, the only job open for Martin Scorsese will be the adaptation of the Candy Land board game (or better yet, its sequel). Yes, your screenplay has better characters than Battleship, which solid shooter Peter Berg is bringing to the screen—come to think of it, there aren’t any characters in that game, let alone a story.

BUT—and it’s a characteristically American, big BUT—spec writers don’t do themselves any favors by getting pissy about it. Everyone from A-list screenwriters like Josh Olsen (read his screed here) to rank and filers at management companies and agencies are complaining about the sense of entitlement fledgling writers often show when shopping their wares. It’s really the opposite attitude to that of someone who understands sales. A good salesperson knows that the customer can always go elsewhere, in a heartbeat. How many expensive dresses do you think a shop on Rodeo Dr. would sell if the clerk wheedled passive-aggressively in phone calls or emails to their customers and got mad if shoppers didn’t take the time to try on the outfit, let alone buy it? Dress-buyers would just go next door, or down the street, or two blocks away… There are no shortage of dresses and no shortage of scripts. Except there aren’t a lot of $2 million-dollar dresses out there, and a small percentage of specs can be made for less than $2 mil. Talk about a big-ticket purchase.

To the industry, a script represents an opportunity, yes, but a very risky opportunity. The fact is that most movies don’t make money, and most scripts don’t get made into movies—even after reps and producers have invested massive amounts of time, energy and often money. It’s a huge leap of faith for anyone to devote their workdays to your career or your script.

No matter what you think about the business, the movies we make, or the manners of the buyers and representatives you’ve dealt with… Remember that if they are giving you a moment of their time, they are doing you a favor. This really isn’t a crazy concept. If your sink is leaking, do you call a plumber and expect them to fix it for nothing? Or even to take the time to figure out what the problem is and tell you, free of charge? Reading scripts are these folks’ jobs. There are plenty of scripts demanding their attention, many that their employers expect them to read, and always many more than they have time for. If you aren’t represented and you get someone to read your stuff, bravo! You’ve convinced someone busy to use their valuable time determining whether to buy something from you or not. If the answer is no, honestly thank them for doing something they didn’t have to do and will receive nothing for (except your disappointment). When you walk into Best Buy and don’t buy anything, you don’t deserve to be harangued by the staff for it. They’re happy you considered their products and hope you’ll feel comfortable coming back again. Treat Hollywood companies and the people who work for them as your potential customers.

Like any good business-owner does, approach every contact with your potential customers as an opportunity to show how friendly, knowledgeable and honest you are. You want them to think, whether they buy from you or not, “I like that person. Even if this particular product isn’t what I’m looking for right now, I would certainly consider doing business in the future.”

How do you do that? It’s pretty simple. Even if they are brusque, condescending or dismissive (as so many customers are) you can be cordial, patient and persuasive. Explain why your project is marketable in today’s entertainment climate, and to whom. Suggest that it’s a fresh take on a time-tested concept with characters mainstream audiences can relate to. Whatever the specifics of your script, make your case in a concise, cogent and professional manner. Be friendly and personable but not overbearing. There’s no such thing as “giving ‘em the hard sell” for the spec writer—you’re selling a stack of pages for between tens of thousands of dollars and a million. Your buyer is not going to be bullied into signing a check on the spot. All you can do is send out compelling queries, follow up with a couple of polite emails every few weeks (I don’t recommend a phone call unless you’ve been invited to make one) and hope for the best.

Remember that Hollywood is a small town. If you’re convinced that someone you had a nasty conversation with at one company is just a jerk, don’t think you can just cross that name off your list. They have friends, they talk, and they just might move to another company you contact—possibly into a higher position. Chances are they’ll recognize your name if you guilt-tripped them, got pushy, lost your temper, or anything else that presents an emotional speed bump in their day. Now, to them, you’re the guy selling the expensive stack of pages who’s also a dick. Good luck with that.

Hey, I know there are plenty of jerks in this town, and plenty of good scripts getting passed on (or not even read) every day. The best revenge is to make them wish they’d treated you better when they read about your spec sale in Variety.

As a wise man once said… I want you to be nice until it’s time to not be nice.

—Dalton (Patrick Swayze), Road House.

Yes, friends and neighbors, right now the spec market is as dead as Dillinger.  That means bleeding on a sidewalk, the-bank-vault-is-closed dead.  According to another invaluable resource, Jason Scoggins’ Life on the Bubble.com, 39 specs went out wide in June and guess how many sold?

Hint: It’s a number between negative 1 and 1.

Zero.  Zippo.  Not a single one.  Seven sold that had been kicking around for awhile, two of which had major talent attachments.

Okay, it’s only one month, the industry starts coasting after Memorial Day, yadda yadda.  So let’s throw in May, too.  Bunch of specs hit the marketplace in May.  You’re probably thinking, “I bet a bunch of those sold, right?”

One did.

According to Scoggins, 73 specs went out in 10 weeks, fully repped and professionally marketed to friendly buyers, and exactly one sold.

Can you say “contraction?”  This market’s tighter than a platypus sphincter.

Ready for the good news?  C’mon, off the ledge.  Put the noose and the step-stool back in the closet.

It’s actually a good sign that stuff like Max Steel and View-Master are what they’re down to.  Happily, like fossil fuels, gold and Jimi Hendrix music, existing pop culture is a nonrenewable resource.  Once you run out of old stuff, you have to make something new.  With few exceptions, most everything they’re doing is firmly rooted in the past and the newer franchises are being bled dry quick.  The way Hollywood is strip-mining our memories, the day isn’t far off when there simply won’t be another popular toy, video game or TV show even remotely worth turning into a movie.

They will have to develop new properties.

If you come up with family-friendly, internationally viable concepts executed in 21st Century style — stuff that might make good toys, comics, games, and bed sheets — someone is bound to see dollar signs.

Everything and everyone is a commodity to these people.  If it has universal appeal and is easily marketed, transferable to multiple platforms and brand licenses, it has value.

They have to keep feeding the beast.  Human beings are voracious consumers of entertainment.  I think if we’re patient, before too long there will be an opening for creative people who understand the global marketplace.  Will you be ready?

Check out the sites I’ve mentioned here and in the past, get a feel for what’s viable, and start conceiving your commodities.  In a couple of years, your ideas might be exactly what a desperate Hollywood is looking for.

In the meantime, in hopes of speeding up the process, I’ve compiled a list of ridiculous but well-known “nostalgia” properties the industry should buy up and ram into development now, so we can just get them the hell out of the way as soon as possible:

•    Pet Rock
•    Fruit Roll-Ups
•    T.J. Hooker (oops, they beat me to it)
•    The Psychic Friends Network
•    Cheaters (syndicated TV show)
•    Fundies (two-person underwear)
•    Chia Pet
•    Thighmaster
•    Flowbee
•    Microsoft Excel

Last and very possibly least…

•    Family Circus
(Worst comic strip.  EVER.)

Peters’ excesses have already been well-chronicled in “Hit and Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood” by Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters.  But his proposal reads as the gleeful crowing of a thug recounting his crimes, fully knowing that there is always a large and diverse audience for dirt.  While many of his readers may condemn him, Peters is fully aware of the vicarious thrill “good” people enjoy in sharing the exploits of a bad boy.  “I would never do that,” the reader thinks, secure in moral superiority, while meanwhile cackling at the salacious details he reveals.  The book will sell.  Period.

And yet, his era has passed and the dinosaur is virtually extinct.  Not only does the culture as a whole hold its public figures to a higher standard of interpersonal conduct, the industry has become more corporate at its highest levels.  In the age of TMZ, Peters’ playground is closed and camera-monitored.  Even his bullying brand of business is a relic of another time.  It’s not that human decency is served at every table along with the Evian, but that collective expectations for behavior, gender relations and fiscal sense are enforced by almost instantaneous disclosure.  The Bale blowup or I Heart Huckabees on-set tiffs are just the tip of the iceberg.  Even back-room behavior is only a Tweet away from public examination.  The stakeholders of this business can’t afford a decadent, cash-burning caveman calling the shots.  The same public appetite for Hollywood scandal that will help Peters wring a few more millions out of his decades-long rampage provides a disincentive for it to be repeated.

It isn’t so much his creative sensibilities, or lack thereof, that are untenable today.  Standards for storytelling are so spotty that Peters’ bizarre fetish for giant mechanical spiders (getting one into Wild Wild West hasn’t stopped him from trying to work one into everything from Sandman to Superman) isn’t half as outdated as his use of physical intimidation on his enemies or alleged coercion of conquests among the common class.  Based on their box-office returns, if not DVD sales, it seems that silliness and stupidity are here to stay.  But that’s a topic for another time.

What is the Peters legacy, really?  The fact is that he did seize power like any of history’s charismatic warlords.  Through aggression, relentless drive and yes, a rough-hewn charm, an illiterate and unprincipled man was able to cut a swath through Hollywood’s buttery heart.  But evolution is an unstoppable force.  Enjoy your last hurrah, dinosaur.  Your day is done.

If you’ve been paying attention to the movies released in the last several years, you already know that most are based on TV shows, comic books, video games or other movies.  And oh yeah, normal book-type books.  Given that you’d rather be a professional screenwriter than sell insurance, tend bar or whatever else will pay the bills in this lovely Golden Age of the U.S. economy, you’re probably wondering what kind of regular old spec script sells anymore.  It’s not exactly the million-dollar question because Hollywood quit paying that much for specs in the late ‘90s, but let’s call it the mortgage payments-for-a-year question.  What will keep hope alive while you invest the hundreds and possibly thousands of hours it can take to turn an idea into a polished, Hollywood-ready feature screenplay that gets bought?

Let’s start with what WON’T do it.  Odds are, your moving tale of a minor Renaissance painter who inspired Rembrandt is not going to sell.  Odds are, your moving tale about REMBRANDT is not going to sell.  Basically, if it’s a period piece, don’t expect to sell it unless it’s based on a book that a number of people have already read.  If you’re going to write something that is set anytime before the 1970’s, it had better be extremely modern in its style (or perfectly timeless) with a great concept that justifies the additional expense of replicating a bygone age.  If the entire movie takes place in a house, it doesn’t really matter what the time period is, but keep in mind that extremely self-contained films are tough to pull off.  If you can, though, you might be in business.

The specs that are selling tend to be one of three things.  One is edgy comedy.  If you can be edgy and PG-13, so much the better.  All in all, this isn’t the worst time in the world to be writing comedy.  The growing perception in the industry is that audiences want to escape their rather scary lives with a few laughs.  Raunchy but vaguely romantic comedies are getting traction, particularly if they can be summed up in a punchy line or two.  As always, guys finding clever new lies to get them laid or one notch higher on the class-meter, to win a woman’s heart, are popular.  The feminine flipside is fine too.

Another kind of spec that is doing well is the 300-like action movie.  Period is okay here if the concept is great.  But you have to be ultra-stylish and modern in the execution.  Basically, if the trailer would feature lots of spectacular, slow motion ass-kicking, you’re doing well.  That doesn’t mean you should send in your Lethal Weapon retread.  Lethal Weapon was 22 years ago and boy, does it show.  (It’s odd how Dirty Harry was 16 years before that and doesn’t seem as dated as the Donner film.  It’s because the more stylish you are at the time, the more dated you look later.  The same can be said for fashion, obviously.  Looks like Stogie’s run across an idea for a future blog…)

Back to the business at hand.  Even with a 300 wannabe, the premise has to pop.  A script just sold for big bucks that could be described as The Dirty Dozen in the Middle Ages, where the 12 guys are kind of a U.N. of international badasses—a samurai, a knight, a Gypsy, a Viking, etc.  That’s a somewhat fanciful but easily marketable idea for an action movie.  I’ve met one of the co-writers and he’s a nice guy, so more power to him.

Taken has done extremely well and ignited a little bit of copycat fever in the business.  However, there are already 100,000 kidnapping scripts floating around town, so I wouldn’t recommend following its lead too literally.  Here’s the wiser route—the lesson to be learned from this leggy hit is to write stuff that plays as well in Europe and Asia as the United States.  Primal, universal, visual.  Tap into the basic fears and desires of human beings in a visceral way and it will appeal to a broad audience, no matter what language they speak.  Action films have a big advantage in overseas markets because a guy getting karate-kicked in the face requires no subtitles to understand.

The third solid bet is a sophisticated thriller that looks around the corner a little bit.  It’s a little ahead of its time, so it’s fresh and timely but we still believe that it could happen.  Eagle Eye is a good example of this type.  These are scripts that deliver the goods in terms of action and suspense, but they also strike a nerve in terms of the nation’s hopes, fears, and evolving identity.  They tend to incorporate technology and/or social changes because these are the aspects of our culture that are evolving most rapidly and thus, yield the freshest opportunities for a writer.  For example, if you can do something really clever with Twitter, you’re off to a great start.

All that said, here is the bottom line and my real advice to you as an aspiring writer.  Today, concept is king.  If you thought retelling a story that made money is going to work for you, you’re wrong.  A producer friend of mine recently got a query from a writer who had written an adaptation of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. The writer had the chutzpah to suggest that due to the success of Capote and Infamous (which was not a success, actually), the stage was set for another retelling.  No, no, no, no.  NO.  Let’s give this fellow the benefit of the doubt and say he wrote it before those movies came out about three years ago—having gallons of sweat equity in the project, he’s gamely giving it the old college try.  The sad fact is, he probably couldn’t sell that script for birdcage liner.  You have to be original.  Familiar but different.

I’ll go one step farther.  You have to be original, conceptually irresistible AND passionate about what you’re writing.  Here’s my formula to get all three.  As you’re brainstorming about what to write next, apply this litmus test to each concept.

You and a friend are planning a trip to the movies.  Assuming for an instant that you are not up on everything that hits cinemas (as you probably should be), let’s pretend that your friend has the listings and you don’t.  If your friend reads a one-line synopsis (a logline) for a movie and you say, “Yes, buy my ticket now,” without knowing who’s in it, who directed it or how good the reviews are, THAT is the concept you should develop further.  If you feel that way about a premise, chances are that other people will, too.  Not everyone, perhaps, but you already know two things about it—the idea hooked your attention and sparked your imagination.  That’s a helluva start.

This test won’t work for something you’ve already written because you know much more about it than a one-line synopsis.  But as you’re vetting fresh ideas and could choose any one out of five, 10 or 25 of them to pursue, the “buy my ticket now” reaction is a really good sign.  If you’re honest with yourself, you probably don’t want to see a movie that has an overly familiar premise or is too convoluted to impress in brief.  Forget that maybe, in execution, those movies might be good and you might enjoy them.  (This is why I don’t recommend you emulate a concept as simple as Taken, even with the market being favorable to its ilk at the moment.)  Remember instead that unproven spec writers have nothing to open doors for them but a good idea.  To make a splash, you gotta do a cannonball off the high board.

So as you consider various premises for your next spec, if your honest reaction to a particular logline is, “That sounds different, I’m intrigued, and I want to see how it plays out,” guess what—industry types you query with it will probably feel the same way.  You still have to write the hell out of it and hope that buyers are looking for something like it.  But if you embark on the long road from concept to screenplay with the project, you will know that it works for you in its very DNA.  That will make it easier to write, on every level, not the least of which being that you are far less likely to reject the concept halfway through.  Passion and inspiration are almost mandatory for all but the most gifted and experienced of writers, because that energy fuels creativity.

So what happens if you’re the type of person who loves un-commercial stuff?  If the “pre-sold” concept you would see in a heartbeat, knowing nothing else about it, is a costume melodrama set in 18th century Spain?  Writing a spec like that is one tough row to hoe.  But at least you’ll know that the core of the story is compelling to you.

Apply this little exercise to the genres that are selling and you can write with some confidence that your work will not be in vain.  Who knows?  You might come up with a franchise that will be giving writers work in 30 years, when after eight sequels and a TV show, the remake gets a greenlight.

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Let us consider Exhibit A: The Jim Carrey Deal (all landmark events wind up in Capital Letters, right?).  Much has been made of this admittedly flickering star’s agreement to forgo any paycheck upfront for Yes Man and defer his compensation to not even first-dollar participation in the back end, in what the indispensible Nikki Finke has reported “could just turn out to be the worst talent deal ever” and “a wet dream for Warner Bros.”  That may be true, but is this a watershed moment in the deterioration of starpower in Hollywood?

Hogwash!  We need movie stars more than ever.  As Mark Harris wrote in Entertainment Weekly, “A movie star is someone whose past work enriches your experience of, and deepens your pleasure in, his or her present work.”  Watching this person grow up as we have, for example, creates a unique if one-sided relationship with the person.  Perhaps another criteria for being a star is, “someone you think you know, based on watching them onscreen, reading about them, etc.”  Stalkers get fuzzy on the details, but that’s another story.  The point is, as audience-members we clearly have a bond of sorts, in our imagination and our hearts, with particular stars.

One of the first such people I had an actual conversation with was James Woods.  As a kid, I’d inhabited The Onion Field, Salvador and Videodrome like dreams.  It was odd to meet the guy who played so many characters I grew up with.  Though a complete stranger, his face was so familiar that it reminded me how strange it must be for actors to meet people who “know” them from movies or TV shows.  This illusionary intimacy is part and parcel to any public figure’s life, but I don’t know how they ever get comfortable with it.

Do mainstream movie-watchers really care about building this affection for a professional actor?  Will studios focus on high-concept stories, cycling through generation after generation of actors and discarding them as their contract demands get expensive?  Should you write specs that are all concept, with one-size-fits-all character “types” any inexpensive actor could play?

NO.  Pop culture has never been more star-driven.  Entire fashion lines are operated out of the personas of characters played by movie stars.  That isn’t new.  The Thomas Crown Affair (1968 version) spawned styles for men and women with its charismatic stars’ image (Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway were, together, quite a presence).  Look at the merchandising that goes along with tween hits like Hannah Montana. Even J-Lo has sold a ton of apparel and accessories.  None of that is tied to a high-concept—it springs from a personal style.

In fact, in an increasingly multicultural, niche-riddled and diffuse popular consciousness, the people everyone seems to know are only gaining importance.  In the 21st century, famous people ARE brands.  Look at the effect of Steve Jobs’ health on Apple’s stock or Oprah’s importance to her multimedia empire.  Mere mortals have the livelihoods of many thousands dependent on their heartbeats, an unsettling state of affairs for all parties involved.  The sad truth is that famous people are already properties, constantly being diversified, mythologized and traded upon.

The currency of a movie star’s face and name is accepted in homes around the world.  Will Smith’s films are discussed at Iowa dinner tables, welcomed in Hmong households and depended upon for date nights in Dubai.  Who are we kidding?  A movie star, like any trusted figure, is a valuable commodity and everyone knows it.

Recognize grumbling about stars being overpaid for what it is—propaganda, and a negotiating technique for contract talks.  The conglomerates have a vested interest in seeing the price of talent—and thus, stars’ access to corporate coffers—DECLINE.  The AMPTP, for example, has proven in union negotiations recent and long ago that they want to diminish the control of creatives over their balance sheets.  Peter Jackson’s contested share of Lord of the Rings profits and the other hefty participation deals of recent years took a big chunk out of top hits’ revenue for their producers and parent companies.

So how did The Jim Carrey Deal turn out?  At press time Yes Man is still in release, but its prospects of crossing the $100 million mark are uncertain.  Considering that the budget was at least two thirds that much, even with another $70M or so from overseas theaters the picture is unlikely to be very profitable, when P&A costs are factored in.  Then again, how much would the movie have made with an unknown in the starring role?  This deal shoved the risk onto the talent’s side of the ledger and it looks like Carrey’s gonna get burned.  Risk-averse financiers, rejoice!  You’ve found a new way to cover your asses.

Should writers make high concept a priority when conceiving their next spec?  Absolutely.  But they should also write compelling characters with plenty of great dialogue that offers an actor a wide emotional range to play.  In the age of the underlying property, the spec is as unfashionable as neon leg warmers.  Yours is much, much more likely to attract financing if there is a shiny little movie star attached.  It may seem heretical to screenwriting purists, but I suggest a couple of juicy monologues.  This is what the star is going to have “their” writer add when you get replaced, anyway.  Cut out the middleman, write actor-friendly parts and boost your chances significantly.  Studios buy so few specs these days that being four-quadrant, high concept fare isn’t enough.  Going in with a star attached is a lot more likely to get your spec sold than writing something “that doesn’t need stars.”  Maybe the studios don’t need stars, but unproven writers sure do.

Stars aren’t going anywhere.  The industry knows they need ‘em.  Because the person behind the brand is what people relate to.  “Nobody says, I love Universal movies, but Fox sucks.”  (Well, okay, I know some people like that, but they are a distinct minority.)  We’re all stretching our dollars more than ever before, so we’re only going to spend on stuff we trust.  A car that lasts.  An album with more than two good songs.  And an entertainer who seems like an old friend, a reminder of better times.

Like James Woods.  Love that guy.

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]]> http://pageawards.com/2009/01/26/what%e2%80%99s-the-story/feed/ http://pageawards.com/2008/10/21/whats-the-story/ http://pageawards.com/2008/10/21/whats-the-story/#comments Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:15:23 +0000 admin http://pageawards.com/?p=1 Twilight has fallen on the land, and is busily sprinkling Hollywood with dollar signs. But of the many stories of this latter-day Titanic (and by some measures, the films are quite similar), let’s shine a light on this one:

Paramount had the movie rights to Stephenie Meyer’s book before it even hit shelves in 2005. They had a screenwriter do a couple of drafts and then put the project in turnaround. Depending on who you believe, Paramount production chief Brad Weston either killed the project or at least “questioned its commercial prospects.” Either way, in a Nov. 17 installment of his column “The Big Picture” entitled “How the Big Studios Missed the Boat on Twilight,” the Los Angeles Times’ Patrick Goldstein writes that the film reminded Weston of Cursed (2005), which Dimension Films produced during his tenure there.

Paramount let their option lapse, Fox Atomic passed on the project and it ended up with Summit Entertainment. The rest is history, and there are a lot of executives in this town second-guessing themselves right now. As well they should…

Whatever the specifics of the decision-making that went on, Goldstein’s excellent piece has me thinking about a mistake made by many execs and producers in this town, time and time again:

They blame bad movies’ genre when they tank, not the fact that they are bad movies.

Let’s say Paramount passed on this property because Cursed made just $19.2 million in its domestic run (and to be fair, Box Office Mojo lists it as one of its “Similar Movies to Twilight”). I’ll assume the thought process was that the two films would be materially similar and thus, an apt comparison could be made. Okay, how are these two films alike? Well, Twilight and Cursed are both teen-oriented and about two of the classic supernatural archetypes, vampires and werewolves. Beyond that, are there any major parallels? Frankly, I don’t even think these two movies are even in the same genre. Cursed is not a supernatural love story, it’s a horror film. Twilight somehow got a PG-13, but I bet you could broadcast it on any TV network at 8 p.m. without cutting a damn thing. This is not horror, people, unless you find pretty, moony-eyed teens gazing into each other’s eyes horrifying.

“Nah, let’s not make Twilight. Look at how Cursed underperformed.”

So why exactly did Cursed tank? I’m not going to launch an investigation, but I’ll throw out a few possibilities. Sometimes there is a backlash among horror fans to a PG-13 rating. Maybe the marketing campaign is partially to blame. Maybe America had something more compelling to watch that month. All that being said… it’s a bad movie. According to IMDb, a pretty egalitarian measure, it rates 4.8 out of 10. (For perspective, Humanoids from the Deep, which I’m pretty sure netted no Oscars, gets a 5.2.) Let’s not even BOTHER with the Rotten Tomatoes meter.

Cursed’s director, Wes Craven, is a rightful denizen of horror’s Olympus, but his movie cost way too much and delivered way too little. Sure, it lost money. But was it because the movie was teen-oriented and about one of the classic supernatural archetypes?! Really? At the end of the day, no pun intended, what’s this got to do with whether or not to make Twilight?

Amazingly, in this case the fallacy of blaming genre for a bad movie superseded Hollywood’s desperate, appropriately vampiric and potentially eternal love affair with underlying properties.

The primary value of an underlying property — a successful book, comic, video game or brand of puppy chow — is a built-in audience, a fan-base, and a larger awareness of the property even among non-fans. I’ve never watched an episode of “Streets of San Francisco” in my life, but if you’re developing a reboot you don’t have to market it to me cold because I already know it’s a cop show. That’s brand awareness. Stephenie Meyer may have only sold 5% as many books as J.K. Rowling, but Twilight came with one helluva stronger underlying property than Cursed. (An original screenplay by Kevin Williamson, of Scream fame.)

So it looks like a couple of studios (at least) made a bad call here. Trouble is, I’ve seen bad movies that failed invoked in explanations for passes repeatedly over the years. And not just when someone is trying to give a script a soft pass, groping for a reason that doesn’t make them state the weaknesses of the script. It’s a broad-brush approach to material and it’s a mistake, as the proceeds of Twilight should make perfectly clear.

By now you may be asking, “How can we, as writers, counteract this kind of thinking?” Well, good luck. It seems pretty ingrained. But here are a few ideas.

If you’re unrepresented, come out aggressively in your cover letter with one of those “it’s X meets Y” lines, using movies that made a lot of money. “It’s Twilight meets Tropic Thunder!” (Kidding.) Create a comparison in the reader’s mind with specific, successful movies so they have to dispel your association before they can create a new, less favorable one.

If you’re in a pitch meeting, bring some numbers about your script’s genre and casually throw them out. Certain genres are almost inherently profitable. The list of theatrically released but terrible horror movies that have made adequate to substantial profits is extraordinarily long. Generally speaking, you have to try really, really hard not to make money with a horror film. (Especially a legitimately teen-oriented horror film.)

Depending on your confidence in your material and your rapport with the exec(s) you’re dealing with, consider invoking the specter that may haunt you. Do some research and identify any under-performing films that execs might compare your project to. (Unfortunately, as Twilight indicates, they can cast a mighty wide net with their comparisons.) Explain why your project is different and how the prior failure does not represent a trend. A trend is six or ten demonstrably similar films. One bad teen-oriented werewolf movie shouldn’t speak for all teen-oriented werewolf movies, let alone a genre. (Never bash a movie, not even Cursed, because you may be in a room with someone who worked hard on it. Bad movies are just as hard to make as good ones. Often, harder.)

Present yourself as savvy about what the money folks are trying to do with their investment of resources. Knowing who you’re going to market to, and how, is what matters in reaching an audience. If you can communicate both why your script is original and how it follows in a tradition of success, you can overcome their instinct to make unflattering comparisons just to get the script off their desk.

I conclude with a word to the execs themselves. If your marketing department tells you they couldn’t sell this movie if you threw in a trip to Aruba with every ticket, fine — pass on the dog and let someone else clean up the mess. But every movie is unique, and should be judged on its own merits or flaws. If a certain brand of hammer isn’t selling at a certain hardware store, it doesn’t mean people don’t need hammers. It means people are going somewhere else to get better hammers, pay less, or both. Maybe it means the store needs to advertise its wares better. But what it definitely does not mean is that the world has decided, “To hell with those fancy-schmancy hammers. Let’s just go back to using big, sharp rocks.”

How well the Twilight adaption turned out is another conversation (at press time, the masses are giving it a lukewarm 5.9 on IMDb — Humanoids is giving it a run for its money), but this is clearly a case where apples still ain’t oranges. One bad movie can’t predict the box office of another, let alone forecast the prospects of a genre.

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