Word: screenplays
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With Wetherby, David Hare, a reknowned playwright in England, an experienced stage director of his own works, and author of Plenty, has entered the realm of movies with ease: his direction always illuminates his script. Never slow, the screenplay delivers equal amounts of disdain and understanding for the overexposed minds of Hare's compatriots. Hare's jabs, though, are the most fun, as they make for thrilling moments of silly bickering and academic idiocy--one invited dinner guest keeps insisting "Define your terms!" His characters are appealing--when they aren't incensed suicides--no matter how Hare intends otherwise. Some...
...first ten minutes, the movie accurately portrays the strange environs of scientific research, and Peter O'Toole is marvelous as a mildly comic, Einstein-like scientist. David Ogden Stiers of MASH fame sounds good without his aristocratic air as O'Toole's ruthless rival. But then the Jeremy Leven screenplay begins its long plummet in quality of dialogue, and the less dazzling supporting cast intrudes...
Novelist Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall and Sun Dog, has had 13 books published, but none of his 13 screenplays has yet been made into a film. "I've got a couple of million dollars for them, so I don't care too much," he says. Harrison maintains there is no stigma to having a lot of unproduced scripts. "Everyone knows that the screenplay is never the decisive factor," he says. "What counts is the deal structure, where something is shot, what stars are lined...
...Writers Guild of America set new pay scales in March. An author now gets a minimum of $22,801 to do a treatment and screenplay for a low-budget film ($2.5 million or less) and $42,000 for a more expensive film. A rewrite and a "polish" can bring the high-budget price to $61,548, but a writer who has been around commands a good deal more, and fees can rise steadily with each unproduced script. Says a New York author who has sold three scripts: "If you write five a year--I get more offers than that...
John Huston has done some wonderful directing of Richard Condon's script, but try as the famed director may, he cannot overcome an overly tangled plot. Condon's two-hour-and-15-minute screenplay confuses everybody until the end, when Condon simplifies matters only by killing most of the cast...