So how can that be?
I’ll summarize the article.
Back in the ‘90s Lemke lived in New Jersey. He got a script to a guy who knew a guy who knew another guy who was a movie producer who liked it. Lemke was flown out to Hollywood, quickly got an agent and lawyer, and in a whirlwind sold two pitches. It's the stuff of dreams.
One of the pitches was essentially GEMINI MAN – an assassin is hunted by his clone. He sold it. The dream continues.
The project was on the fast-track. It looked like a sure thing. This was 1997. This Hollywood game is EASY!
But then Hollywood reality struck. There was concern over how to pull off the CGI. The script went through numerous directors, stars, and other writers. At one time Mel Gibson was going to play the lead; another time Clint Eastwood.
Lemke moved on, found success writing animated features, and GEMINI MAN went through more directors, studios, and writers. I may have been the only writer in Hollywood NOT to have done a draft.
So finally, 22 years later, the movie came out. The basic premise was still his idea and story elements of his draft remain and so in arbitration he was award shared story and screenplay credit.
I offer this today because this is almost the normal life of a feature project. For every story you read about a writer turning in a screenplay and the movie gets made six months later with no other writers attached – there are a hundred of THESE stories. One of the reasons I always preferred television and stayed in television even when I had a movie career was that things move slowly in the feature world. Endless drafts are written, thousands of screenplays are bouncing around in some stage of development.
And what writers learn is this: Don’t get too excited when you hear good news and don’t get too despondent when you hear bad. It’s a rollercoaster.
To be a successful screenwriter in Hollywood you need talent, perseverance, and motion sickness pills.
10 comments :
Hoping 'STAR SPANGLED ADVENTURE' will be made one day.
"The Bodyguard" was originally to star Steve McQueen and Tina Turner. 17 years later it gets made with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston. Five years ago I wrote a romantic thriller "Altar Rock" with the person putting up the money for the film. I survived every draft and director bullying to the point where my name remains as the writer for its release finally this year. That would have never happened in the studio system.
Isn't this the same movie as The One with Jet Li?
I watched it recently and enjoyed it for what it was. Minimal brain activity action movie. Perhaps it was original and different at the time it was being pitched but by the time it was made, I felt like I'd seen it all done before (and better).
Way off topic, but this reminded me of the FRASIER episode where Daphne accidentally crosses into Canada and is afraid she has broken one of the US's complicated immigration laws and will be deported. More amusing than what happened to these unfortunate Brits:
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/465826-british-family-detained-more-than-a-week-after-accidentally
Two English-speaking people and a baby. I feel safer now.
It was ever thus in Hollywood. There's a great collection of interviews with golden age writers here. That particular one in with Walter Reisch, but the others are all highly recommended as well. Here are a couple of quotes from Curt Siodmak:
Irving Thalberg once said: "The most important man in the motion picture business is the writer. Don't ever give him any power!" Even today the writers are oppressed. Even today a writer gets little appreciation. That's why good writers become writer-directors, or writer-producers, to get more standing, and of course to make more money. I haven't met a writer yet who owns a yacht like producers or directors. But don't let them kid you. Where would they be without writers?
I always put a funny scene in my scripts because I know that the director didn't really study my script before shooting. There was a scene in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man where the Monster walks along with the Wolf Man and the Wolf Man says, "I change into a wolf at night. . . ." And the Monster says, "Are you kiddin'? . . ." When they broke the screenplay down on the shooting schedule, they finally read it and threw that scene out.
My favourite story that also had a happy ending was what happened on Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles. Paul Hogan basically tried to screw over the writers Matthew Berry and Eric Abrams by taking sole writing credit. What he did was disgusting. He could have had shared writing credit as had been originally agreed, but he took their draft, made changes which Matthew Berry said was akin to a college kid rewording a Wikipedia page, and then removed their names and claimed it was all his work!
When it came to WGA arbitration, Berry and Abrams won. Hogan appealed and they won again!
https://uproxx.com/tv/today-i-learned-that-paul-hogan-of-crocodile-dundee-fame-is-a-terrible-human-being/
William Goldman's books have a lot of stories like that.
wg
Ironically, I've heard a couple of reviews (not counting the one above) that said the writing was the weakest part of the movie. Mr. Lemme won credit for a movie that he didn't have anything to do with and might not want his name on otherwise.
M.B.
It's my understanding that the casts of two Robert Altman movies -- M*A*S*H and BREWSTER MCCLOUD -- largely improvised their dialogue, yet both movies were still credited to the writers who wrote the original (but presumably unused) screenplays.
Ring Lardner, Jr. won an Oscar for a "script" that bore very little relation to the words he actually wrote, if the stories I've heard are true.
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