• Steven Boone in New York
Those dudes over there in Ho'wood have no idea what makes a movie that the people will fall in love with, only how to front-load some lackluster ideas with massive budgets, multimillion-dollar print and advertising blitzes, and lame distractions like 3-D in lieu of good stories or capable storytelling.
Just as all it would take to get truly progressive social policies on the table are public officials who aren't spineless or sociopathic, all the movies need is a creative executive who makes the sane calls, pushes for real ideas instead of bait-and-switch schemes gleaned from the advertising industry.
Pre-1966 Ho'wood (aka Hollywood) was full of such moguls. For all the racism, sexism, jingoism, and general dizziness that marks Hollywood history, it must be said that the businessmen who ran the show early on were at least in touch with audiences and filmmakers, not just baiting them with barrels of cash and empty promises of "awesomeness." (We live in the Awesome Age, where every scrap of popular entertainment is calculated to knock you down on your ass at every instance. The general effect, though, is similar to watching a hyper kid's melodramatic "death" during a round of cops-and-robbers. "There is nothing so boring in life, let alone in cinema, as the boredom of being excited all the time"--Anthony Lane.)
I, S.C. Boone, am of the old mogul tradition. And, for whichever studio chooses to hire me, I will happily work for the going rate of a McDonald's franchise manager. I will labor as hard as any executive being paid seven figures, but with far more passion and personal conviction.
Since I'm making this pitch on a blog, one might not take it too seriously. But I am perfectly serious. Give me all your top-tier scripts, talent pool and development strategies for review, and I will tell you how to make classics that the people will welcome into their lives like family, for years to come. Your other boys can tell you how to turn a dollar, but I will tell you how to be great again, my lord.
S. C. Boone job application
A few conditions: I must be allowed to work far away from Los Angeles and New York. Send any materials for review by email, snail mail or FedEx.
This is the job I was born to do. And just as Walter Murch once invented a now-indispensable occupation, the sound designer, I envision an Imagination Triage Department installed in every major studio of the future.
That's my pitch, for now. And just to give a sense, below is a freebie/sample note for... hm, let's spin the wheel... pick a studio.... okay, WARNER BROS.:
DO NOT hire a new, young actor to continue the role of Max, in false continuity with the original trilogy. If creator-director George Miller has aged 25 years since the last "Max" right along with his fans, then why can't Max himself age, magnificently, crazily? Max has been wandering the wasteland all these years, and now, white-bearded, leathered, bejeweled, scarred and tatted down, he emerges like a granddaddy Hell's Angel. He now drives a modified Stryker combat vehicle, a barely-tamed hyena riding shotgun. A sexy, slightly androgynous (but not enough to scare off the fanboys) Feral Girl (Omahyra Mota) mans the machine gun turret.
Stick with the original plan of shooting the film in Africa, and give us some kind of African/ghosts-of-colonialism/Third World uprising plot. No, Max doesn't Save the Children this time. Let him get swept up in and overwhelmed by some kind of neo-tribal conflict. Let these Africans have a real, functioning, teeming civilization built upon the post-apocalyptic ashes of the one that once persistently sabotaged their progress. Let Max by turns be foe, wise, crazed counsel, and, finally, awed observer of the intrigues that unfold in this world unlike anything he knew in the Australian wasteland. All-new outrageous eye candy.
Now, anyone who thinks Mel Gibson's psychotic telephone rants earlier this year would harm the film's chances and Warner Bros.'s reputation is being knee-jerk naive. Let Gibson do a few weeks' penance with a press conference and some kind of rehabilitative reality series. Then get on with an action epic that ponders the clash of not only civilization versus barbarism but also of generations, in the brute-poetic manner of Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects, only far more balletic, as Miller's action stylings have always been grace personified. The world needs this. No one needs yet another youth-pandering franchise reboot that destroys all sense of continuity while exalting only rapid, juvenile, solipsistic consumption.
Steven Boone is a film critic, filmmaker and video artist based in New York City. He champions big ideas and small budgets at Big Media Vandalism. He writes about essential films at Keyframe.
Brilliant concept. I figure success will ride with the casting. Helen Mirren should jump at the chance to play Max's 'tough as nails' biker squeeze. Tilda is Warrior Woman. Harry Dean Stanton would soar as the Gyro Captain. Tina returns as Aunty Entity. And how 'bout the ultimate casting coupe-- Robert Blake's comeback as the grown up Feral Kid.
Reading this inspired me to imagine an alternative universe where George Lucas let creative professionals make the Star Wars prequels and am now filled with hopeless sorrow. So thanks for that.
I already know that I got more enjoyment out of reading your pitch than what will actually get made so if nobody gives you the job, could you just tell us how these stories should be told and I'll just use my rusty old imagination.
When Mario Puzo started writing a fiction novel, he used the title "Mafia" because no one had used that particular word in public before. Robert Evans bought the screen rights without seeing a finished manuscript. A few months later, Puzo called Evans and asked, "Would there be a problem if I changed the title to The Godfather?" Burt Lancaster wanted to buy it from the studio for a million dollars, so Evans rushed it into production.
So you want to be a movie mogul? Here are some events we need in the screenplay:
The shooting at Ford Hood by Major Nidal Hasan
cutting off a thief's hand in modern day Saudi Arabia
Jets crashing into the World Trade Center
A Christmas pageant at the Ground Zero mosque when it is finished.
A Muslim in the US Air Force who manipulates events so Muslims can use American missiles to attack Tel Aviv
A woman who tries to leave Islam and receives death threats
A Muslim woman who commits adultery and is stoned by a Muslim court
Can you turn this into as popular a concept as Puzo did with Frank Sinatra's "alleged" friends in the Mafia? This could be your chance to impress the studios with your vision.
Bill, that's quite a laundry list, but the most important question up front is, why do you "need" these events in your screenplay? For example, I can understand why Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan, sitting round daydreaming up Raiders of the Lost Ark, "needed" a truck chase and some snakes, but the intent was quite clear: They were making a movie serial homage, and summer fun.
If you are making something on the order of The Godfather, then I suggest dropping all but one of those events, as any one of them is meal enough for one movie. And not a movie done by one of Ho'wood's reliable journeyman directors (no Ridley Scott or Paul Greengrass or Peter Berg) but an artist-storyteller on the level of Coppola adapting The Godfather.
Otherwise, what you've got is another Intolerance-aping Alejandro González Iñárritu/Paul Haggis flick (Crash, Babel, etc.) Nothing wrong with that per se, but nobody is really thirsting for another one of those. We're all plum tuckered out from cross-cutting multiple tragedies and Russell Crowe falling to his knees crying out to God. For real. We are exhausted enough from the struggle of recession life. You remember Mia Farrow retreating to the movie theater in The Purple Rose of Cairo? That's us.
Imagine how the rest of the moviegoing world feels.
Not to beat around the bush, but the list you presented was exactly what I meant by "front-loading." Each subject is immense and to be considered with great sensitivity (not P.C. sensitivity-- SENSITIVITY-sensitivity), rather than piled on like sundae toppings.
Okay, so I take from your list and Puzo anecdote that you aim to rip the lid off Muslim conspiracies in the West the way The Godfather exposed the hidden ties between organized crime, showbiz and government. If that's the zeitgeist button you wish to push here, I think it's good for goosing an already distraught and paranoid populace, but that's about it. People will find the experience riveting in the manner of an emergency room fistfight, the way they did Berg's terror-hunting procedural The Kingdom-- an effective "thriller" but nothing you'd sit through twice or own on Bluray, unless you're a gun collector or something.
And unless your script originated as a directive from the Pentagon or tea party maniacs or some neocons, I'd say forget all the topical, violent stuff and hone in on the women. One woman. A Muslim woman who has endured cruelty and intolerance in the East and the West. Stuck in the middle. Check out Jafar Panahi's The Circle. That's the kind of film about oppressive regimes and the people they torment that would turn some wheels around here. (Just make sure to cast a hauntingly beautiful Muslim woman who can act her ass off. Maybe hire Mother and Child director Rodrigo Garcia.)
But if you're really stuck on folding those events you listed into a crackerjack movie, your template would be The Manchurian Candidate (the '62 adaptation of the novel): The enemy in our midst. This has been attempted, partially, by Traitor (2008), to weak results ($22 mil budget/$27 mil worldwide gross, sez thenumbers.com). That's due to all the front-loading. They went for a rip-roaring international techno-thriller full of incident instead of an insinuating, claustrophobic drama full of suspense.
If you really want to scare the people with a Muslim bugaboo, keep it simple and subjective. Create a Nidal Hasan character who goes about his nefarious business undetected by ordinary, God-fearin' Americans. Let him use our openness and ignorance against us. Like the necktie murderer in Hitchcock's Frenzy. Or the killer dog in White Dog. That is, if your object is to unsettle and provoke provincial Americans to the tune of $100 million, which I suspect it is. In which case, to paraphrase Rush Limbaugh, I hope you fail.
Ebert: Hardly even a paraphrase.
Right on, Boone. It feels like Ho'wood stopped being about anything but money a long time ago, and now we've got movies that are clearly witless, disposable pieces of crap making more on their opening weekends than great movies made in their entire runs. We're seeing tired B-movie concepts wrapped in gigantic productions with major actors, producing work of absolutely no lasting value.
I like your Mad Max idea. Come up with a plausible way to get Max to Africa, and you've got a movie. (And who knows; maybe after the hollowed-out U.S. collapses and WWIII breaks out between China and a European Union/Russia alliance, civilization will start over in Africa, the birthplace of our species.)
I love it! Beautiful pitch. With movies being harvest like crop these days, it's truly inspiring to hear creative people yearning for great stories, told with a wealth of new (or should I say, Classic?) imagination. The movies on the large scale have to seem to lost that sense of dreaming that makes them "The Movies." And that quote by Anthony Lane is just perfect. And how unfortunately true. I personally see it as a calling.
Roger, you rock. I'm glad I read this. And I'm glad you posted this guy's idea. Thanks for brightening the day. We need more minds like you and Steven Boone.
Reply to: If you really want to scare the people with a Muslim bugaboo, keep it simple and subjective. Create a Nidal Hasan character who goes about his nefarious business
I don't have to create one. Nidal Hasan is REAL. The question is, will his actions inspire a wave of imitators?
Reply to: you aim to rip the lid off Muslim conspiracies in the West the way The Godfather exposed the hidden ties between organized crime, showbiz and government.
Not exactly.
Puzo started with a concept called "Mafia." Organized crime in America, controlled by families. He started from a blank sheet of paper.
and what Francis Ford Coppola created was an American FAMILY that we desperately CARED ABOUT. He wasn't as concerned about exposing the ties between government and organized crime... as he wanted to create a family that had to suffer under the rules of Don Corleone's chosen profession.
Reply to: And unless your script originated as a directive from the Pentagon or tea party maniacs or some neocons, I'd say forget all the topical, violent stuff and hone in on the women. One woman. A Muslim woman who has endured cruelty and intolerance in the East and the West. Stuck in the middle.
My first thought is, no studio would greenlight a film about a Muslim woman who endures intolerance in America.
The reason The Godfather worked was, we all can trace our ancestors back to immigration. Some of us more recently than others. We felt a kinship and identity with the Corleone family.
The Godfather took place in 1945, after Michael returned from World War II as a war hero. In order to protect his father, he reluctantly used violence, but not until after his Sicilian bride was blown up by a car bomb meant for him.
The Godfather is one story. I think the plight of Muslims in America has a similar kind of conflict. It's relevant. But I don't want to limit the picture to a female victim. I want to show WHY the events on that list took place. I want a script that says something significant and meaningful.
You said you wanted studios to call you. There's a way to do it. An easy way, actually. you submit a monumental script to the Nichall Fellowship. You can submit it electronically on their site for $30. But you have to PROVE to the Nicholl judges that you know how to write the entire script, and every word is fascinating.
So, it's not just a hypothetical. It's a game plan. If you really want the kind of career you wrote about, this is where you start. find a REAL conflict and create a fascinating story about it.
I'd like to see a movie about happy and thoroughly modern muslim women who see their faith as something that creates stronger bonds rather than tear at them.
...imagine...
Reply to: One woman. A Muslim woman who has endured cruelty and intolerance... (Just make sure to cast a hauntingly beautiful Muslim woman
There was a story... about a thief who had his hand cut off, and he wore his hand on a chain around his neck.
In a primitive society, a prison system could be prohibitively expensive. Especially if your leader moves around a lot and lives in a tent.
Modern day. A young woman from a Muslim country is a powerful swimmer. She competes in the summer Olympics in London. She escapes the men watching her, and visits Harrods. Visits nightclubs.
When she wins a medal, her photo is on the cover of Sports Illustrated. In a bathing suit. She's offered an audition for a role in Aqualad.
When she returns hom, the President and other men file false charges against her, of theft from "Islam." After a mock trial, her hand is cut off, and hse is photographed wearing the hand on a chain around her neck. As a punishment for "immodesty" by a court of men who think she has disgraced Islam. make sure the audience knows she was framed. See the men in the courtroom spit on her.
There was a recent cover of TIME magazine... a young Muslim girl had her nose and ears cut off, as punishment for disobeying the man she was given to, in payment of a debt. Her father had killed members of his tribe, so they give her away as a "blood debt" payment. Which made her property.
The thing about the Nicholl Fellowship is, no one has to make the movie. The entries are judged on "quality of writing." Not box office.
Reply to: Let him use our openness and ignorance against us. if your object is to unsettle and provoke provincial Americans, which I suspect it is. I hope you fail
Gee, is Rush Limbaugh your idol? Rush is not the best role model for a Hollywood screenwriter.
To unsettle and provoke Americans... seems like a worthy goal.
Reply to: I'd like to see a movie about happy and thoroughly modern muslim women who see their faith as something that creates stronger bonds rather than tear at them. - Cecil
Great point. Might be the missing piece from "Mad Max in Africa." After a nuclear war, Islam has disappeared. People who otherwise would be Muslims have a new opportunity to create a society that isn't held back by medieval nonsense. What do they come up with?
A large slice of the audience pie... wants to see FAMILY rather than CONFLICT, and a faith that creates stronger bonds. Won't happen under Islam.
Start from "I feel insignificant." On a planet with six BILLION people, must be a common complaint.
If you try to make yourself LESS INSIGNIFICANT by creating a friendship with God, Allah, a deity... you will FAIL. Comparing yourself to a Deity always makes you feel MORE insignificant, not LESS.
Second, if you're just in it for the social network, you need to find a religion that isn't run by men. Seriously. Mohammed said, "In order to equal a man's testimony in court, you must produce two women who will testify to the same thing." How can you ever feel "stronger bonds" when the men in charge of the religion consider you half as intelligent as they are?
Find.. or start... a religion that isn't plagued by a medieval, male-dominated set of rules. I think it's impossible for a Muslim woman to understand what's wrong with her life. Islam conditions them to accept the words of Mohammed as messages from Allah, or God. It's difficult to understand what that means. If you REALLY accept Mohammed as delivering messages from a Deity, then your outlook is impossibly bleak. All you have is a "relationship with Allah" instead of the superior and more meaningful life you could have without Islam.
So, Mad Max goes to a post-apocalypse Africa, and he finds a new religion that never mentions Mohammed, rejects the teachings of Islam, and is finally "civilized" in its treatment of women. That finally allows women to have a relationship with their God without needing a man to tell them what kind of rules that God requires them to follow. That might sell. If "Beyond Thunderdome" was one kind of nightmare for Max, this would be a different, more personal nightmare.
My story... would be the journey of a Muslim woman who realizes that Islam has lied to her. But what you want is, Michael Corleone's journey. Fall madly, desperately in love, and experience the pain of watching your True Love die in an attack on a cafe by a suicide bomber. Might work if a Muslim women fell in love with a Christian woman. Find a stronger need or desire that replaces her need to have a relationship with a Deity.
We want to open a new daycare in Los Angeles. Anyone has any clues about taxes and stuff in California? Thank you so much
I just wanted to say I found it funny that you want to work as far away as possible from LA and NY! I hope you find the job you seek, we could use more people like you out there.!