My Brush With Hollywood
Since 1998, I have been writing fake Abridged Scripts for popular movies, intended to be a way to both mock and review films. The site has been around nearly 10 years, and in that 10 years I have gotten thousands of e-mails from visitors. A lot of them are from people telling me I should write a real script. These are people who find the abridged scripts funny, and imagine they would translate well to film. I also get some e-mails from people telling me the only reason I mock other movies is because I can’t make it as a real screenwriter. Those e-mails are easy to ignore, since they usually come from people that liked a movie I hated, so that pretty much means they’re idiots.
In any case, this is a story for both types of people. The former because it details a unique experience during which I talked to some Hollywood people and had a taste of being a real screenwriter, the latter because it ends with failure. This story really is true - if I was going to lie, I’d have made it end better. Like with me fighting giant dinosaurs with lasers or something.
After running this site for a long time, pissing on shitty movies from Hollywood, I was actually contacted by a Hollywood agent. He wanted me to write a screenplay.
It all started from a simple e-mail sent through my contact form. For the purpose of this story we will call him Jerry McSlimey. He e-mailed me to tell me he wanted to talk to me about writing for him. He made sure to let me know that he was totally legitimate and serious, and his proof was that his partner had something-or-other to do with discovering the American Pie script and turning the writer into a thousandare. This feat was less impressive to me than Jerry probably thought, but it was impressive enough to pique my interest. We exchanged phone numbers and he called me the next day.
When he called, he basically explained that he found my Lord of the Rings abridged scripts, showed them to a few people, and everyone decided that I’m a funny guy and I should write some funny screenplays for them. He also showed the American Pie 1 and American Pie 2 scripts to the people he knew who were involved in those movies, and they found them humorous as well. The first American Pie Abridged Script was actually a contribution sent in by a visitor to the site, but given that Jerry was able to miss the byline in the first place, I wasn’t too confident that telling him this wouldn’t just confuse and frighten him.
To give you a little background on Jerry, he was a slick, fast-talking, Hollywood cliche. He had a Blackberry, he made lunch dates, and he dropped the names of pretty much every famous person he has ever met every chance he got (he once told me Paris Hilton is smarter than she acts). In short, his personality was a unique combination of nice guy and pompous jerk, so I knew at the very least he really did live in L.A. Here’s an approximation of how our first conversation went.
- Jerry: So I was wondering if you’ve written any full-length screenplays.
- Me: Oh, well…
- Jerry: See, I sent your LOTR script around and people like it.
- Me: Cool, so…
- Jerry: The only problem is that your site has such a weird name. You should get a new name for your site.
- Me: Well, it’s always been called The Editing R–
- Jerry: You should call it funnyscripts.com or something.
- Me: Ugh, I don’t thin–
- Jerry: There, I just registered funnyscripts.com for you, do you wanna use it?
- Me: Er, no thank–
- Jerry: Okay, just let me know.
When he asked if I had ever written a screenplay, the answer was only sort of a yes. I had written little crappy screenplays when I first started studying screenwriting, but they were all abandoned halfway through. The only screenplay I had completed requires a little backstory. One week, my friends and I endured a full Friday the 13th marathon. After this, Jason became a regular topic of conversation, particularly while drunk. One day, I revealed to them an idea I had for a sequel. This wasn’t a serious idea, as you will soon see, but it struck me as something I’d get a kick out of seeing in a theater.
I imagined a trilogy of sequels, all taking place after Jason X. Here are the basic stories (hey New Line, if you want to use these, I want three dollars and a ‘produced by’ credit):
- Jason X2: Jason, in the future and half-robotic as of Jason X, finds people experimenting with time travel. They wind up sending him back to the 1950’s. He finds his way to crystal lake and kills some kids. Oh, and it’s winter, which makes it awesome.
- Jason X3: Camp is in session and RoboJason kills some more folks, but this time he winds up killing a counselor who tries to run out to save a boy drowning in the lake. The boy turns out to be young Jason Vorhees, so Jason causes his own drowning! Did I just blow your mind or what?
- Jason vs. Jason: The Thirteenth Friday: Jason, now an adult, finally emerges, kills some people, and fights RoboJason. Whoever wins this battle, of course, it means that there are no more Jason movies that can possibly be made, and it would finish the series on the thirteenth film, which is awesome to the thirteenth power.
My idiot friends told me I should write the screenplay for the first movie, so I did. This was the only screenplay I had ever completed start to finish.
When I revealed to Jerry that I only had one screenplay actually finished, he wanted to see it. I told him I basically wrote it on a dare, and he told me he wanted to read it on Monday. “Oh fuck,” I thought to myself. This screenplay was fifty pages long. This screenplay was written when I was half drunk. This screenplay sucks! So I rewrote the entire thing, that weekend, in basically one sitting, to have it be at least mildly presentable. I sent it to him on Monday, figuring he would be so appalled at such a convoluted screenplay that was clearly inspired while half drunk and written while half asleep that he would never contact me again.
To my great surprise, he did contact me again, and he told me he had sent my screenplay along with the summaries for the other two movies to some guys at New Line. I wasn’t sure if Jerry had actually read it first, and I imagine the end result was that my name was added to some list of fucking idiots maintained at New Line. They passed on the idea, obviously, but Jerry really liked the idea of Jason vs. Jason. He suggested it would be cooler if the Jasons from all of the movies so far were to fight each other in a giant Jason battle royale. The fact that this made even less sense than my stupid idea didn’t seem to phase Jerry in the slightest, which gave me a great deal of insight into why so many movies these days are so godawful.
Eventually, Jerry revealed what he really wanted from me in another hurried phone call. He liked my Lord of the Rings abridged script, and he wanted me to make a movie of it. He told me, and I quote, to “write a black Lord of the Rings”. I’m not making this up, nor am I making up the next bit: I didn’t understand what he meant. Maybe it was because he talked so quickly I could barely comprehend him, but when he said “black Lord of the Rings,” I interpreted it to mean black as in dark or macabre. I understood it the same way I understand “black comedy” meaning a comedy that centers around dark aspects of life, such as death or misery. I responded, “Well, Lord of the Rings is already pretty dark…” No, no, no, Jerry explained. Black. “For the Wayans Brothers.”
The Wayanses had been putting out Scary Movie sequels, so I finally understood what he meant. He wanted a spoof of Lord of the Rings, the way Scary Movie spoofed Scream. He wanted to take it to the Wayans Brothers. This left me in a pretty conflicted state of mind. On the one hand, this was the closest I had ever come to writing a screenplay professionally. On the other hand, Scary Movie made me want to slam my penis in a car door.
I had no idea how to write something like this. What the hell did it mean to make it “black”? He didn’t say make a “funny Lord of the Rings”, he said make a “black Lord of the Rings”. What kinds of properties does the latter have that the former lacks? As a white guy, I don’t think I’m really qualified to write racial comedy about how differently blacks and whites play miniature golf, nor would I want to. Do I just have the characters talk street? That’s seems ridiculously racist and annoying - but if I *DON’T* do that, what makes it ‘black’? I fretted over this for days, before eventually concluding that Jerry was probably just a racist asshole.
I figured that rather than write a ‘black’ Lord of the Rings, I could just write a spoof of Lord of the Rings, and let others cast the movie however they want. I thought about the Scary Movie franchise - the story of the first movie was mostly lifted from Scream, but it also strung together spoofs of several other horror films, so I figured that’s what I would do since it was for the Wayans brothers. I decided to call the thing “Epic Fantasy Adventure Film” (later shortened to “Epic Movie” and then changed to “Violent Movie” because I thought the Wayans audience wouldn’t know what “Epic” meant) and have it spoof Lord of the Rings, Troy, Kill Bill, Harry Potter, Star Wars, superhero movies, King Arthur, and other similar movies released around that time. I told Jerry my plan, and he told me to write a treatment.
Writing this treatment was extremely challenging. A treatment is generally prose, not written in screenplay format. It describes the story of the film. The problem was that the story of the film was basically the story of Lord of the Rings, but with jokes. All of the jokes are in the dialogue, and you’re not supposed to have much dialogue in a treatment. How was a treatment supposed to look? “Gandalf goes to visit the Hobbit village, but it’s funny.” “Frodo drops the ring into the lava, but it’s funny.” So rather than a short few pages of descriptive text, I wound up writing 17 pages of dialogue. Oops.
To make matters worse, I didn’t know how to write a comedy in the style of Scary Movie. I first imagined the movie in the style of “Airplane!” but that movie made me laugh, so I knew it wasn’t what the Wayans brothers would want. As far as I could tell, the Scary Movie films were just sex gags and fart jokes that take place inside lookalike sets from popular movies. “Spoofing” a movie generally consisted of recreating a scene from it but having someone smoking weed or getting a blowjob in it.
So that’s what I wrote. A dialogue-heavy, 17 page treatment full of sex gags, fart jokes, and uninspired references to other films. There were occasionally some jokes that I actually found funny, but they were few and far between. When it was all done, I gave it to my girlfriend to read. She read through it, cracking a smile occasionally. “How is it?” I asked her. “It’s… good,” she replied, obviously lying. “Is it funny?” I asked. “Yeah, if you’re fourteen,” she responded. “Perfect,” I said.
Finally glad to be done writing this thing (but dreading the idea that Jerry might actually like it and require I write a full-length screenplay), I sent it off via e-mail. Jerry read through it and told me via e-mail that it was “good” but that he had some suggestions. I told him to call with the suggestions, but he never did. A month later, I e-mailed him to ask what the suggestions were again, but he never responded. I could have probably pursued it more, but then I’d have been stuck writing the screenplay, so I kind of gave up.
So what happened with the treatment? Probably nothing, but a few years later the same guys who took over the Scary Movie franchise made “Epic Movie”. Epic Movie, like my movie, was a spoof of a whole bunch of different epic movies, though the movies referenced were more recent since the film came out two years later.
I avoided watching Epic Movie for a while, largely because it looked terrible, but also because it looked so similar to what I wrote that I worried watching it would leave me overcome with that “fuck, I could have done that!” feeling.
Eventually, I watched Epic Movie. Here’s an example of one of the jokes in the movie. In a spoof of X-Men, a bunch of superpowered kids are walking around a high school. A group of bullies, led by a Wolverine lookalike, starts harassing some kid. The kid gets angry and he rips his shirt off. One of the bullies, scared, yells “He’s going to use his powers! He’s about to spread Angel wings!” Ah, so the blond kid is a parody of the Angel character from X-Men 3. His wings poke out, but rather than large, majestic wings, they turn out to be short, stubby, ugly chicken wings. There’s even a “ba-gock!” chicken sound before the bullies start laughing. This is mildly amusing, but then the Mystique lookalike stops laughing for a moment to exclaim, I shit you not, “More like chicken wings!”.
When you see this, you just sit there, gaping-mouthed, wondering what complete imbecile wrote that line, and what utter retard filmed it. It’s stunning. I had to pause the movie and rewind it to see if that really happened. Did you really just explain your own stupid joke? Are your audience members so stupid that they won’t laugh when the chicken wings come out, won’t laugh with the chicken noise, but will finally get the joke when Mystique explains that they aren’t angel wings at all, but chicken wings? I would like everyone in the world to go rent Epic Movie and watch this scene. If Mystique’s line makes you laugh, I want you to go drown yourself in your bathtub immediately. Trust me, it’s for the best.
This scene occurs within the first ten minutes of the film, and the movie actually gets WORSE from there. This garbage makes Scary Movie look like fucking Blade Runner. This kind of atrocious horse shit is almost what I had my name attached to. If I have to live the rest of my life without ever getting any closer to Hollywood than in this story, it’s worth it to have had nothing to do with something like Epic Movie.
So for everyone who e-mails me to say that I should write a real script, keep in mind that I almost wrote Epic Movie. Yikes!
I was thinking of being a screenwriter…not anymore. I think that honestly they stole your script and used it to make Epic Movie. Though…I find that incredibly hard to believe because Epic Movie was one of the few times that actually made me want to hang myself, whereas reading your stuff here is quite the opposite. Oh well, live and learn I guess.
July 29th, 2007 at 12:50 pmJosh,
Nah, I don’t mean to imply that they took the idea for Epic Movie. But it’s pretty clear that, had my treatment been used, it would have ended up just like Epic Movie. That’s fucking terrifying.
July 29th, 2007 at 12:52 pmBeing a screenwriter seems like a good idea - that is until you realise that a whole bunch of morons who can’t even spell ‘wit’ are going to take your work and mutilate it beyond recognition, cut out all the best bits, hire a gruesome crew of stage school idiots to mispronounce the dialogue and then, as a final touch, insult your mother and/or your choice of footwear. You had a lucky escape, I think.
And Epic Movie was utter shite, incidentally. I’m surprised the actors involved haven’t had some sort of severe breakdown by now. Or at the very least changed their names. Someone really should get some form of court order to prevent the Wayans brothers making another film…
July 29th, 2007 at 1:26 pmRod, thanks a lot for the reply! It’s really an honor, haha. I apologize for insinuating what I did there, I don’t want to say that they actually just stole the script, but would you be surprised? I mean, when people are uncreative they go after the creative ideas, like yours. This kind of mentality just runs in my family though — my dad was in the music business for a long time and he was screwed over so many times. Hollywood is just a despicable place. I’m trying my hand at writing, but I’m gonna be extra careful…
July 29th, 2007 at 1:59 pmI visit this site often. I find it very entertaining. If you had gone the distance with this black LOTR, and actually gotten your name on a finished film of Epic Movie quality… Well, I obviously would stop visiting. But I would also email you my piss. Don’t know how I would do it, but I know I’d find a way.
But hey, at least it all happened this way and we got an odd little story out of you. Thanks for sharing.
July 29th, 2007 at 6:49 pmHow about you write a movie where you send a robot back to murder the guys who did write Epic Movie, not out of jealousy, but out of a love for all mankind?
July 29th, 2007 at 9:11 pmI suspect the minds that brought you Epic Movie were the ones who thought the LOTR jokes in Date Movie were funny. Instead of seeing the reality that those jokes brought Date Movie to a screeching uncomfortable stop every time.
if you did get attached to epic movie, i’ll most likely point at your name in the credits and start spluttering with choking soundeffects. i’d most likely return here, but then you’ll see me spamming your site with “OMG YOU WROTE EPIC MOVIE?!”s. this will sound terribly preachy, but abridged scripts are what you do best, so stick to it. i do get what you mean by writing a screenplay instead of a treatment - writing in fixed format is one of the most annoying things on the list of annoying things. besides, i wouldn’t want a neglected site after you’ve sold out to hollywood and fame.
i’m glad you didn’t take the offer.
July 29th, 2007 at 9:42 pmI’d love to see a parody you wrote the script for, because you actually know how to write parodies. It pisses me off when I see a supposed “parody” that is, as you said, a bunch of fart jokes, but on a look-alike set. Parody needs to actually satire the source material, and that means knowing something about the source material. You are very good at that.
An example: Your Harry Potter 4 script vs. Epic Movie. Epic Movie’s idea of a “parody” of Harry Potter is to have a guy dressed as a wizard making fart jokes on a campus. Whereas you actually raised some very interesting points about the movie.
“So, following this through to it’s logical origin, the people in charge of the tournament kidnapped these people against their will and tied them to rocks at the bottom of the lake for a contest with which they are not involved, putting their lives in jeopardy for merely being friends or relatives of those participating in the tournament, one of whom doesn’t even want to be part of it?” If I saw that in a movie, I would crack up, because it’s a sharp and accurate parody. However, you can never sell that to Hollywood, because it’s a sharp and accurate parody.
The last good parody to get a mainstream release was Blazing Saddles. Parody in Hollywood is dead.
That’s what the internet is for. Keep doing what you’re doing, you’re great at it.
July 29th, 2007 at 10:53 pmClearly, you should write a meta-movie about a critic who points out flaws in films but is promptly ignored by raving fans/XTREEEM teens/money-grubbing execs. The critic manages to change a few minds, but for the most part realizes people like what they like.
I’d pay for that.
July 30th, 2007 at 9:11 am“The last good parody to get a mainstream release was Blazing Saddles…”
Ahem. Don’t forget Airplane or The Naked Gun.
July 30th, 2007 at 10:39 amThat was a damned good read.
July 30th, 2007 at 4:15 pmWell, the next time something like that maybe manages to come along… just write what you really think! To hell with the Hollywood nonsense and pandering to their dumb requests while they really just try to fuck you over… they will, eventually, you know it. And since your scripts are usually full of such hilarious venom and sarcasm, write any future dumb script suggestions with those. Sure, you probably won’t get that job, but if it’s another possible Epic Movie in the works, at least you dodged a bullet. But if it’s a script with a possible good future, then it’s worth doing your best.
They can’t all be jerks in Hollywood. Just most!
Actually, I’d be interested to see the script you did write for them, just to see how you handled it. After all, if you wrote it, it must have had at least a few great moments. But I can’t blame you if you’ve already destroyed all evidence that it ever existed except this post. Either way, very interesting read.
July 30th, 2007 at 5:49 pmhey, hot shots was a parody and it kicked ass! but i liked part deux better.
July 31st, 2007 at 1:20 amI understand what you mean about over-explaining the joke. “Epic Movie” did it again with the Superman scene. I wasn’t stupid enough to see the movie, but they played this scene all the time in the previews/commercials. Superman is standing there, and a bullet is fired in slo-mo towards his face, but instead of bouncing off his eye like it did in “Superman Returns,” it hits him hard, and he grabs it in pain and doubles over backwards. Now, that was a pretty lame, lazy gag to begin with, but just in case the audience was a complete group of brain-dead morons who didn’t get the joke, Superman actually says, “Ow! That really hurt!!” Like the old saying goes, “If you have to explain the joke, it isn’t funny.” These low-brow parody movies of today make “The Naked Gun” look like “Casablanca.”
July 31st, 2007 at 6:29 amSee, that is why I don’t want to write films. Aside from the fact that I can’t wrap my head around the structure, I prefer editors to Hollywood agents. They might tear my novel to shreds, but they’re out to attract a specific target audience- and the kind of people who read/watch what you just described aren’t going to like my stuff. I don’t like putting down specific genres- writing fantasy, I come across literary snobs a lot- but there is no real thought involved. If, as you said, they have to explain the joke to the audience, the audience is just too damn dumb to understand actual jokes. Besides “Hee hee, he farted!” I mean. And the last good spoof I saw was, I think, Life of Brian. Yeah. Not good. Of course, there’s always written stuff, like The Editing Room and Movies in Fifteen Minutes.
July 31st, 2007 at 7:24 pmImagine this: they green-light your parody, and then you write an abridged script for it for this site.
My head is almost literally exploding. It’s like RoboJason came back in time to kill the young version of himself, and then came over to fuck my eye socket.
August 1st, 2007 at 12:12 pmHi Rod,
Long time reader, first time poster. Any chance you’ll post your treatment on the site just for kicks?
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:33 amSid:
Hell no
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:46 amEver think about doing podcasts, having the scripts being read in dramatic form? I imagine someone is already doing it, huh?
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:11 pmDear Rod Hilton,
August 3rd, 2007 at 3:04 pmI sincerely applaud your decision in that episode of your life. You had a chance for somewhat fame and recognition but instead you purposely emulated the awfullness of the lesser greedy minds of Hollywood in order to reflect back to them that aspect of themselves that they do not want to confront. And, obviously, with the continuing survival of films like Epic Movie (which you almost wrote) these people still avoid it. I want you to know that your abridged scripts, I find, are hilarious and also illuminate this consistent trait (and talent) that you have in humorously pointing out the faults of big blockbuster films. I like the movies you parody but I like your quickie skits too.
I’ve been reading your site for something like two years now, and I still think that you should write a script of your own. You have a hell of a lot of talent, and a comedy written by you would definitely be actually funny, unlike most of the shit being produced these days. Considering that you can’t make it up too high without at least a LITTLE intelligence, it seems likely that hollywood will sooner or later start making good movies again. Once they do, who knows, you might get a break. Would you actually write an original comedy, or would it be more of a parody? I would love to see something that isn’t straight out of one of the fucking molds. I swear to god, if I see one more fucking “LOL HE IS WHITE AND I AM BLACK, THEREFORE WE ARE DIFFERENT. AREN’T OUR DIFFERENCES HUMOROUS?” (I’m looking at YOU rushour) I’m going to gnaw off my own damn hands. I think that even if you don’t submit it to hollywood, you should write your own original comedy, just because A) it would definitely be a good exercise and B) we would all love to read it. You have something that is extremely rare in today’s media; intelligence. Use your gift, and please for the love of god give us something that isn’t complete shit. I’m looking forward to your future writings. (ps, the spiderman and transformers scripts were hilarious)
August 5th, 2007 at 10:41 pmYou know what? When a guy who used to be my best friend talked me into watching Epic Movie with him, we were both waiting for a Lord of the Rings parody of some kind, if nothing else a random introduction of someone looking like Frodo for a five-second unfunny joke.
But none came…….could that possibly be because you focused more on LOTR in your script, and they wanted to take the idea, without outright plagarizing your material, so they ignored LOTR in an effort to keep you from suing them to pieces?
August 6th, 2007 at 8:27 amOn screenwriting, do you think that there some fans of yours who throw away their own half completed screenplays because they just cannot make them work without using a plot device or coincidence to tie it together. They might say to themselves:
“No. I cant have that in here. Rod Hilton would slaughter it in his Abridged Version of the movie” ” I cant have the good guy kill the bad guy or even worse the good guy get the girl in the end. Thats all cliche! Back to the drawing board.”
I’m going to go search for your take on Charlie Kaufman films. He hates cliches too supposedly.
August 6th, 2007 at 12:51 pmAlso has an actual screenwriter posted a rebuttal comment in his defence yet?
Rod, that is hilarious. You almost wrote Epic Movie. I have seen some godawful previews in my time (since Hollywood likes to butt-rape you with about 30 minutes’ worth every time you buy a ticket), but out of all of them I’d say the trailer for Epic Movie is the dumbest, most worthless idea I have ever seen. When the ads first appeared last year around the holidays, I took the wife to see something, and I wanted to gouge my own eyes out (or slam my penis in a car door, if one had been accessible). Not so much as a chuckle. And those are the highlights of the film. I don’t know what it would take to get me to sit through the actual movie. My wife’s 10-year-old sister saw an ad for it on TV, and said, “that’s stupid”. And that comes from a girl who LOVED the Dana Carvey crapfest Master of Disguise. You are SO lucky you don’t have to take credit for something like this. You have actual talent, and even if you never write a real script, when the world has turned into “Idiocracy”, becoming so dumb from movies like the Wayans Brothers make that Ashton Kutcher is considered highbrow, we’ll at least be able to rebel and congregate underground and enjoy something sophisticated like The Editing Room. Thank you. Never stop.
August 7th, 2007 at 1:40 pmI think any film that promotes itself with a gag involving someone getting shot in the eye deserves to have its producer, director and everyone involved right down to the key grip culled!
August 9th, 2007 at 6:37 am“If Mystique’s line makes you laugh, I want you to go drown yourself in your bathtub immediately.”
I didn’t make it this far into Epic Movie, I watched what felt like an hour (but must have actually been ten minutes) thought “are there jokes in this?” decided there probably wouldn’t be and went to play Rainbow Six instead.
On another topic, Jason X3 would be cool, and it’d have all the internal logic of Terminator and look how successful that was. The only problem I foresee is that being half-drunk at its conception wasn’t nearly intoxicated enough.
August 10th, 2007 at 9:15 pmHey man, awesome story. I have to say though I hate when people are like ‘oh you sold out. NOT COOL!’ Don’t listen to them. If you get the chance to write a screenplay that YOU think is good, and get paid for it, do it. So what if it’s for Hollywood, money is what makes the world go round, and so long as you like what you’re doing, there’s no shame in it. Everyone here who says ‘oh good for you for not selling out’ would kick a sack full of puppies over an over pass into oncoming traffic to make a million bucks. So, when you feel up to it, write your script and if it sells, laugh all the way to the bank.
August 12th, 2007 at 10:29 amI sat through maybe fifteen minutes of Epic Movie, in theaters, no less, before I loudly complained to management that it monumentally sucked and got my money back. Methinks you dodged a bullet here.
August 12th, 2007 at 3:33 pmIf my memory serves me correctly, you ducked a large bullet. I believe that when talks of this movie were brewing just before they were starting to market this… well it would pain me to call it a movie, but lacking any other word; that the original title they were planing to use was “Violent Movie”.
I could easily be wrong. Maybe you want to double check that, but then maybe you really don’t want to either. But it is what I remember happening long before reading this entry.
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:09 pmDude, you should totally turn this story into a screenplay. Change it so you’re actually taken on to be involved with the film, title it Dumbing Down for Tinsel Town and you’ve got an independent hit on your hands!
September 2nd, 2007 at 11:46 pmInteresting story! I actually did read the whole thing (ok, I skimmed a few paragraphs in the middle). I can’t believe that asshole with his “black Lord of the Rings”…and yet, somehow I can. Hey, thanks for complimenting Blade Runner at the end! That movie rocks!
September 16th, 2007 at 4:54 pmRod -
This is one of the funniest stories I’ve ever read. Thank you.
September 17th, 2007 at 1:33 amMe too. That’s why you have to get your works copyrighted, so if someone does steal and mutilate your best ideas, you can sue ‘em.
I’m getting into writing too, and even though I do have a screenplay written, I’m going to expand into other types of writing, not just script-writing for Hollywood.
Anyway, Rod, good cautionary tale and I think the idea of taking what happened to you (if it really did happen) and turning it into an independent movie is cool. If you need any help with the script at all, talk to me. Even though I went to school for screenwriting, I actually care about turning out a quality script, unlike those Hollywood hacks.
September 17th, 2007 at 4:34 amOnce you set pen to paper you techanlly are automatically given a copywrite by US Law. But it is a lot easier to win a case if you can prove it by copy writting it with the government.
September 19th, 2007 at 5:52 pmBrush with Hollywood. Could I tell you a story that is bizarre, but what would the point be no one here would believe me. Then again…I did dictations some years ago that were made into treatments. I called myself a “Ghost storyboarder.” That was in the time when Gene Roddenberry was head of the WGA and through him despite me not having guild membership the treatments were made into scripts through Paramount Pictures Studios and farmed out through other studios as well. He’s dead obviously, but if he were alive he could either confirm or deny this allegation. Then again, Majel his second wife knows the idiot story behind this “brush with Hollywood”, but would she say anything? God only knows.
November 2nd, 2007 at 4:27 pmI saw Epic Movie and the next day saw Meet The Spartans and I have, since, been having strange suicidal tendencies. Think there is any connection?
April 26th, 2008 at 12:05 pm