How to Revisit Fried Worms
Ten years ago, I got my first paid screenwriting job, adapting Thomas Rockwell’s How to Eat Fried Worms into a script for Ron Howard and Universal. I went through four paid drafts over more than a year, and loved it.
Thomas Schlamme signed on to direct it. At the time, he was a mid-level TV director. Now, he’s a super-powered TV director. We went through a few drafts, but never really clicked.
Ultimately, Bob Dolman was brought in to rewrite my script. I was devastated, but fortunately had found other projects to keep my rent paid. I kept my eye on Worms over the years, as…
- Schlamme fell off
- Universal put it into turnaround
- Nickelodeon picked it up
- Nickelodeon let it go
I assumed it was finally, really gone when one day I was reading Mike Curtis’s blog, in which he noted that a movie called HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS was shooting behind his house in Austin.
It turned out that Bob Dolman was directing from the script he (re-)wrote. Walden Media was financing it, which seemed smart, because they’d had great success adapting kid’s lit into movies. When filming was finished, I had the opportunity per WGA rules to seek screenwriting credit, but I passed. A quick look at the script showed that it didn’t much resemble what I had written. Which is no veiled slam at Dolman — he just did his own thing.
The movie came out last month, and fared poorly. I didn’t see it, but what little I read about it didn’t have me rushing to the theatre.
Now that it’s out and has done its thing, I feel better adding my original script to the Downloads section. This is the fourth of the four drafts I held onto. At 120 pages, it seems long to me, but that was probably a factor of its lengthy development. I originally wrote it in Microsoft Word; this version has been converted to Final Draft and then exported as a .pdf.
So, if you’re interested, you can find it here.
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September 25th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
Wow, I didn’t even know it had come out. I guess marketing would be one reason it failed.
September 25th, 2006 at 8:11 pm
Interesting that the new version fared poorly… all the reviews I saw said it captured childhood beautifully.
That’s actually why I skipped it; I hated childhood.
September 26th, 2006 at 12:18 am
Ah, just when I thought I’d run out of stuff of yours to read. Cheers!
September 26th, 2006 at 12:55 am
If it’s an adaptation of the kid’s book I’m thinking of, I really liked that book.
September 26th, 2006 at 7:07 am
Yeah, it was funny to be writing all this stuff about making movies (usually oriented towards low budget indies with HD cameras), then walking out on my porch and seeing a film crew in the park not 150 feet away from my front door.
-mike
September 26th, 2006 at 8:55 am
I will have to read this later. I loved that book as a kid, I’m sure I read it almost a half-dozen times.
September 26th, 2006 at 10:21 am
I had a bit of a shock. “The movie came out last month, and fared poorly.” I thought you meant The Movie. For a brief moment I admired how easy you were about this.
September 26th, 2006 at 11:30 am
I don’t know much ’bout How to Eat Fried Worms (’cept that I downloaded it just now and will read it some time this week) but concerning your unproduced zombie western script, I’d suggest sending it to Peter Jackson. Since you’ve got quite a bit of a name these days, and Jackson stated he’d like to return to low(er)-budget horror flicks… something just might turn up.
September 26th, 2006 at 11:36 am
I was just wondering how you can legally post this script. Doesn’t a studio actually hold the rights to it or does the writer?
September 26th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
Peter –
Craig Mazin over at artfulwriter.com is the man to ask about the legalities of publishing a script. It’s part of the WGA deal that screenwriters hold on to such rights, but since I’m not the credited screenwriter, where does that put me and this script?
Honestly, I’m not inclined to worry about it.
Unless Walden Media decided they wanted to remake Fried Worms with my script rather than Dolman’s — a probability that approaches zero — no one involved is going to make a cent off of figuring out the exact chain of title on something I wrote 10 years ago for another company altogether.
The script can’t be shot, it can only be read. So I might as well let people read it.
September 26th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
Go to hell bald man !!
September 26th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
I remember seeing the trailer for this in the theatre, it looks like an entertaining kid flick strictly reserved for Saturday afternoon matinee showings, but nothing more. It probably would have been more successful as a TV movie on Nickelodeon or something.
I’m guessing the film really struggled structurally. And just seeing the trailer you can kind of see that it’s a weak story without any good hook to attract any real audience.
September 26th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
Hmmmm……I have just finished reading the first ten pages of your worm script. I realised as I read on that these were the first non blog pages I have read by you. In my head I saw a movie…..that´s a compliment, it usually never happens when I read a screenplay. Til hamingju, þú ert ágætur.
September 26th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
Peter:
The studio legally owns John’s script. But it’s not necessarily illegal for him to post it here. People who come to this site don’t pay a fee in order to read it. If John was getting money for it, then you’d better believe Walden Media would shut this site down quicker than Julian McMahon says the word, “Cock”, on Nip/Tuck.
September 27th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
There’s always gotta be one jailhouse lawyer out there just waiting to proffer his unsolicited advice. John’s doing us a favor by putting it up here. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Walden Media can go pound sand.
September 28th, 2006 at 6:01 am
TOM
Where are you from?
BILLY
(cocks it)
Los Angeles
5 pages in and I cracked wide, John… great stuff
September 28th, 2006 at 10:56 am
BILLY
So anyway, I have a joke.
That, and about 17 other things in this script made me laugh out loud. Great stuff, Mr. August.
September 28th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Never been to the downloads before. Good stuff for Big Fish, too. Thanks for the education.
January 28th, 2007 at 4:16 am
How to Eat Fried Worms was such a good movie. I really enjoyed it.
June 4th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Just finished reading your script for How to Eat Fried Worms. Wow! It’s a crime this wasn’t what ended up on the screen. Great, live-action kids movies are so rare these days. I can’t believe Walden Media had the chance to make this one and blew it.
This was one of my favourite books as a kid (along with Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing), and you did a brilliant job of making a movie out of it. You know that list of “greatest unproduced scripts in Hollywood”? Screw technicalities, this belongs at the top.