John August

Archives for 2004

Elephant and Columbine’s actual events

QandA, Story and Plot

I just saw Gus Van Sant’s ELEPHANT and at the end there was a disclaimer saying that any similarity to actual events or persons is completely coincidental.  How can he say this?  I know it’s not a retelling of the Columbine story, but it sure shares a resemblance.
 

–Brad Sorensen
Ottawa, ON

I’m curious how Van Sant would answer, and whether there was any discussion about exactly what the end crawl should say. The phrasing of “any similarity to actual events or persons is completely coincidental,” is pretty much boilerplate these days, designed to protect against libel and defamation in case Hannibal J. Lector of Boise, Idaho gets annoyed that people mistake him for a devious cannibal. Most movies say something like this, sandwiched between the American Humane Association disclaimer and the IATSE logo.

Was it fair to use the phrase in this case? In my opinion, sure.

Although the Columbine shootings were certainly the inspiration for ELEPHANT, the story itself — that is, the characters, the scenes, the dialogue — was fictional. The movie didn’t purport to be about that particular Colorado high school, but rather the culture of high school violence. The Columbine killings were “the elephant in the room,” but were never directly addressed in the sense of Michael Moore’s BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE. While another filmmaker might choose to phrase it differently, one can understand Van Sant’s desire to draw a distinction between his movie and the real events that happened at Columbine.

Big Fish receives seven BAFTA nominations

Big Fish, News, Projects

logo_bafta_film Yesterday, BIG FISH got seven nominations from BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. The BAFTA awards are the closest thing to a British Oscar. Our categories are Film, Direction, Adapted Screenplay, Actor in a Supporting Role (Albert Finney), Production Design, Visual Effects and Make Up & Hair.

I love how each award show calls things by different names. The Brodcast Film Critics always single out the individual (“Best Director”), while the BAFTA’s give out “The David Lean Award for achievement in Direction.”

Tim Burton and Albert Finney already live in London, but the rest of us will be racking up frequent flier miles to go out for the awards in February.

Getting a pitch meeting

Dead Projects, Pitches, QandA

You mentioned that you went in to pitch for How To Eat Fried Worms and that it was the first script you were paid to write. Well, say a screenwriter has written a number of scripts and they want to pitch their ideas to a studio. How does one go about that? You can’t just waltz into Dreamworks and start spouting off lines right? So, what does one do? Set up a meeting? Could it be THAT simple? Calling and setting up a meeting?

–Josh Caldwell
New York

It always starts with a meeting, and generally these are set up by an agent or manager. In the case of FRIED WORMS, it was set up by my friend Jim Whitaker, who was working as a junior executive at Imagine, the company run by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. He had read my very first script, and thought I might be the right person to adapt this little kid’s book the company had just optioned. So it was my friendship with him that got me in the room. But it was my take on the story that got me the job.

I’ve written in other places about the mechanics of a pitch, but generally it works like this. Pretend you just saw a great movie, and you wanted to convince your skeptical best friend why he should see it. What would you say? That’s a pitch.

Now usually, before you even go into a pitch meeting, some of the groundwork has been laid. For instance, before I pitched BIG FISH, the executives at Sony read the book, so they had some idea what the project was about. Even in the case of a completely original idea, it’s good if the recipient has been told what kind of movie you’re pitching — a thriller, a comedy, a futuristic prison romance, whatever. For something like TARZAN, which I’m writing now, we had a few phone calls to discuss the overall tone and approach before we even set the meeting.

And almost always, the people hearing the pitch want to read your writing ahead of time, so they know you really can write. In the case of FRIED WORMS, I was at a real disadvantage in this regard. The only writing samples I could show were my first script (a tragic-comic romance) and the novelization of NATURAL BORN KILLERS. The other writers pitching for the job were true comedy writers, many of them working on THE SIMPSONS. Ultimately, I got the job. Even though the movie still hasn’t been made, I’m tremendously grateful for the opportunity.

Big Fish opens at #1

Big Fish, News, Projects

According to Sony’s figures — which agree with most of the others I’ve seen reported — BIG FISH came in at number one for the weekend, earning about $14.5 million, compared to RETURN OF THE KING’s $14.1 million.

Since it’s only now Sunday, how can studios say how much they earned for the weekend? Well, all the numbers you hear discussed are actually just estimates. Based on how well Big Fish did on Friday and Saturday, Sony makes an educated guess about how it will do today. New Line does the same for Return of the King, and so on down the list. Are these estimates accurate? Not necessarily, and there’s often grumbling that studios deliberately over-estimate in order to “win” the weekend. In the case of Big Fish and Return of the King, the movies are certainly very close, so a more conservative analyst might wait until the real box office figures come in Monday.

For today, I’ll just say we did very well — better than expected. I think the obsession with opening weekend box office figures is ultimately damaging to the film industry. All the same, for such a difficult, hard-to-peg movie, it’s nice to be #1, if only for a week.