Hollywood Scripting

[Searcher08]

I have been fortunate to see films go all the way from discussing ideas in a greasy spoon cafe through to distribution, this was in the UK, not Hollywood. It was a mainstream film, not an edgy independent. My take from being on the inside is that a surprising amount of the writers intention stay in contact till filming starts, then the meaning is created by
Actors and directors: 30%
Cinematographer: 30%
Editor: 30%
Everyone else: 10%

Also many films are started with the funding still not completed. The frenzy of duplicity, backstabbing and the like that can happen then makes 'Dallas' look like a picnic. as most small and medium budget film funding seems based on a Match, Double, Find another principle

S08 has $1 to make a movie...
S08: Hey Nordic, I hear you have $1 to invest - let's make a movie
Nordic: M'Kay! But if you pull your $1 out, the deals off...
So8: Hey HMW, if you have $2 to invest, I find the other $2! (..from Nordic and himself....)
HMW: M'Kay! But if you pull your$2 out, the deals off...
So8: Hey Cuda, if you have $4 to invest, I find the other $4! (.. from HMW ,Nordic, himself...)
HMW: M'Kay! But if you pull your $4 out, the deals off...

x 10
so the funding can build rapidly, but is subject to a cascade effect - if we are on the first day of filming and Nordic says 'I want a bigger % or I remove my $1 now', even though $10 million might have been raised by this time, it can torpedo the movie. Like pulling out an orange at the bottom of an orange pyramid...

I noticed that just because you have a film made, doesn't mean shit. It is the distribution channels that determine whether they get s e e n. The distribution channels are filters, and have they are having a terrible time because of how rapidly the dynamics of the film market are changing... to exaggerate - it is moving to a point where EVERYONE goes and sees HOW I WHACKED KENNEDY on a specific weekend. 'Blockbuster as a one off event'. No gradual diffusion by word of mouth, but a delta, then nothing.

The other aspect is around the idea of 'film as contract'. Because when you get a video / DVD distribution from a big major - bye bye control - they may cut market-based trailers that completely re-shape a potential audiences expectations for the film.
When I saw one cover box (from one of the movies I knew from the back of a napkin in a cafe) - I burst out laughing - the scene was not even in the film!!! ( I mean NOT IN, not 'was in and edited out'!!)
I was told when one signs for distribution, that is what happens - there isn't even space to object to it - doing so would make the distribution company to do an eye-roll filled "Who the fuck IS this guy? Get real!".

[JackRiddler]

Good post, Searcher. Now consider that even with "Avengers," only a minority of those exposed to the marketing will ever watch the movie in any form. On this board, we're often considering the propaganda impacts of items over which the producers themselves may not have full control, such as posters, trailers, release dates, demographic targeting, tag lines, even titles. These are significant, and largely under the independent control of distributors, who in turn are searching for the marketing algorithm of the week.

So that represents another leverage point for influencers to achieve high propaganda impact at relatively low effort. Among blockbusters out right now, the other extreme from "Avengers" is probably "Battleship." For every person who watches even 20 minutes of that thing, somewhere between 10 and 100 people will have been exposed to the marketing. But they are getting a clear, instantly comprehended, visceral message: The Good Military, spanning the globe, defends all nations of the Home Planet against Bad Aliens with Cool Gear -- oooh look: Explosions are Fun! Nuclear explosions are orgasmic!

As another recent example, who even remembers at this point that a movie called "This Means War" was out earlier this year? Despite its utter forgetability, and regardless of whatever the movie itself may have been about, as a result of its marketing most people in the US were exposed to a message delivered instantaneously in simple, obvious elements:

Casus Belli + Presidents Day + Brutal men trained as murderers for the state fighting each other + The sex of a hot woman as the territory in dispute = Romantic Comedy!

[peartreed]

Apparently, as the self-appointed Oracle of All Things Hollywood, I have anonymously but accidentally undermined the exclusive domain of our resident righteous whistleblower that predetermined everything is a CIA plot.

So I will try to tread more softly so as not to further dislodge the disturbed into issuing more directives about how all other participants here must defer to his declarations.

Nevertheless, some intriguing thread contributions deserve acknowledgement.

lupercal:

You’re right in that I was attempting to illustrate at what stages of production most scripts become vulnerable to influence and revision. I thought this would be helpful in discerning where and how inevitable corruption actually occurred.

And yes, propaganda broadly defined is promotion. Promoting any form of art is also an expression of culture – you know, the other CIA-controlled social outgrowth.

So film production can be viewed as propaganda produced for profit and can thus be further tainted as a capitalist pursuit already corrupted by definition.

It also can be considered a cooperative creation of wonderful art and talented craftsmanship designed to communicate unique stories to entertain and inform our kind.

S08 & JackRiddler:

Your interesting and astute observations on the marketing of films illustrate the often-debilitating distortions by distributors that spin real reels en route to the screen. Your perspectives convey reassuring proof that diverse interests contribute to the content, corruption and criticism of motion pictures. Such are the ever-changing crosscurrents converting the muddied flow of a script to its final release.

It’s all enough to drive a student of hundreds of suspiciously studied scripts to dissemble into a deranged diatribe of devil-directed doom.

[Nordic]

Having written or co-written 4 scripts that have been turned into finished, distributed movies, i will attest to the accuracy of Peartreed's tale.
In my experience, the main culprits guilty of forcing rewrites are the producers, during the earliest stages, followed by the distributors, during the financing and early stages of preproduction (the films are almost always financed with some sort of distribution guarantee), followed by the director once he or she is hired (and this is considered a-ok because "it's a director's medium"), followed by the actors once they are hired (and they can really fuck up a script!!!), followed by the director and producers during production ("we don't have time to shoot that scene!"), the actors during production ("i really feel that my character wouldn't say that!"), then everybody always forgets that the final draft of the script is formed when the film is edited. It is also now very common, especially with bigger budget films, to do extensive reshooting. The distributors can also have a great deal of say as to the editing of the movie.

And as far as names of charcters and businesses and that sort of thing, the good folks at the "E&O" insurance companies (stands for "errors and omissions") get the final say as to whether a certain name can be used because they can't actually infringe on existing names and trademark holders etc.

Who has the most clout? Almost always the star actors. Once the film is a go, anyway. They are ultimately the basis for the film getting a greenlight. I always ask people who think they're about to go into production "do you have your lead actors yet?" because only after the lead actors are actually under contract will the money actually be released to make the film.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Unless actual titled films are put on the dissecting table, claims of 'art' over psyops are null and void.

[Simulist]

Unless actual titled films are put on the dissecting table, claims of 'art' over psyops are null and void.

He writeth; therefore it must be trueth.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

... only a minority of those exposed to the marketing will ever watch the movie in any form.
.....

I've posted that here more times than I can recall. Glad you've agreed with this assertion and chosen to repeat it.

Now, can you find the military-recruiting-of-females themes in that 'Spy vs Spy' pictogram?
Exactly where on her body is the word "war?"

As I've asserted many times, SINGLE people are vastly more recruitable than those married-with-kidz.
So psyops efforts are made to remind girls to guard their genitals and
psyops efforts are made to warn males against the eeeevil influence of 'those immoral uncapable disloyal females'-



Gee, why has CIA-Disney put that 'ugly naked mole rat' pink looking thing in every image of the soldier-girl?

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Unless actual titled films are put on the dissecting table, claims of 'art' over psyops are null and void.

He writeth; therefore it must be trueth.

Put up or

[Searcher08]

Unless actual titled films are put on the dissecting table, claims of 'art' over psyops are null and void.

He writeth; therefore it must be trueth.

US Trailer

UK Trailer


Box cover (in UK and USA)
http://www.amazon.com/Johnny-Was-Eriq-La-Salle/dp/B000G1ALDO/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1336599730&sr=8-5



IMDB Full cast and crew
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0426501/fullcredits#cast
The video / DVD made it as far as the Amazon Top 20 for one week in the US.

Johnny Was
Johnny Doyle escapes a violent past in Ireland to lie low in London, until his former mentor Flynn breaks out of Brixton Prison, hell bent on derailing the Irish peace process with a few well-placed bombs. Unable to escape Brixton, they are trapped together in Johnny's anything-but-safe safe house, sandwiched between a Rastafarian reggae pirate radio station upstairs and a West Indian 'Yardie' crack-dealing gangster, Julius, downstairs. As the charismatic Flynn finds common ground with the Yardies, Johnny fights to realize a peace process of his own, but makes the mistake of falling for Julius's girlfriend Rita, causing all-out war. A thriller in the vein of Lock Stock and The Long Good Friday, in which questions of race, morality, identity and loyalty play out against a great sound-track of reggae, rock, new wave and soul.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Johnny? 1938 anti-war iconic book-

Johnny fights to realize a peace process of his own, but makes the mistake of falling for Julius's girlfriend Rita, causing all-out war.

Many hundreds of post-WWII psyops scripts have this gender theme, female = root of all evil.
Resonates with Bible-ists who think "Eve."
Intended for militarists since women create life and don't fall for that war scam the same way males do.
Constant reminders to avoid 'peaceniks' and 'honeypots.'

[barracuda]

Unless actual titled films are put on the dissecting table, claims of 'art' over psyops are null and void.

I beg of you all, don't play this game. Hugh could find a psyop in a clear, blue sky.

[Simulist]

Exactly where on her body is the word "war?"

You said, "exactly," so I'll take you at your word.

Even though I think you'd probably prefer the answer to be her "vagina," it looks to me like the last half of the word, "war," is actually just above her pectineus muscle on the anterior part of the upper and medial aspect of her left thigh.

The word, "war," certainly isn't centered over her vagina though... — unless of course she's sustained an injury of some kind.

(Maybe during war. )

[Simulist]

Unless actual titled films are put on the dissecting table, claims of 'art' over psyops are null and void.

I beg of you all, don't play this game. Hugh could find a psyop in a clear, blue sky.

Probably good advice. Out of sincere respect for you, I'll stop.

[Searcher08]

Johnny? 1938 anti-war iconic book-

Johnny fights to realize a peace process of his own, but makes the mistake of falling for Julius's girlfriend Rita, causing all-out war.

Many hundreds of post-WWII psyops scripts have this gender theme, female = root of all evil.
Resonates with Bible-ists who think "Eve."
Intended for militarists since women create life and don't fall for that war scam the same way males do.

Constant reminders to avoid 'peaceniks' and 'honeypots.'

I'm reading from what you are saying that for you:
[list=]It's main audience is to draw peoples attention away from an important anti-war book
Act as a wedge between the sexes by encouraging misogyny
Serve military recruitment by appealing to militarism [/list]

is that accurate?

Please feel free to do this as detailed as you wish. If you have questions, please post them.

[peartreed]

Nordic’s experience with the hierarchy of relative influence (outlined above) coincides with mine. This further demonstrates that film making is a perilous process with production dependent largely upon he opinions, perspectives, preferences and personalities of the main players involved. That’s also why professional quality and experience at all levels determine the successful outcome. And the performers are literally at the core of the character in the end result.