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This is the formula for big budget filmmaking, but as 007hally pointed out, this process does stil take place with smaller/indie films.
And, as bigger, more famous writers will tell anyone: the first person to be fired on a film is usually the writer , 😂…
Do I wish to see a change of writers with the next Bond series? Yes, whether it's a team of writers from one to a hundred. Why? Because you don't build a new house from the ground up using the same materials from the one you tore down. Unless, you're a proponent of repurposing, which is what you'd be doing hiring the same writers you've been using for a couple of decades. Bond 26: Only the name is the same.
Having an opinion about whether you like a film or not can’t be wrong. Having an opinion about HOW a film should be made could be an incorrect opinion. Very incorrect…
There's obviously no guaranteed way of making a brilliant film: but it's not possible to point to any part of the process which has delivered many, many great films (and plenty of bad ones too of course) and say 'that doesn't work'. Because clearly 'too many cooks' can work, and often does.
4, and half an hour of another, yes ;)
Yeah, It can work. If they only needed one they would have one.
At the end of the day, beginning with a solid script (and vision) is never, ever, a bad thing, and that’s what they should aim for.
When a studio purchases a script, they purchase it because it is a high scoring screenplay (studios have a team of readers that grade each script submitted to them).
Once the deal is done, the film may take many many many many months after, to start principal, but more often than not, it is a few years from sale to principal.
Things change while a script sits on a shelf, and once development begins in earnest, a producer, or producers, study their investment, and assesses how they can make this project air tight. If it needs more action, they go to the action people. If they wanted more romance, they go to those doctors, and so on.
It's just the way films are assembled.
However, @Univex , a script tends to show it's over all health if a page one rewrite is commissioned. That means the studio and producers love a concept, but the script was executed poorly. So they hire new writers to maintain the original idea, but they want a new script written around it.
A page one rewrite shows a script or story is in trouble.
What we've been discussing is the hiring of script doctors to tighten or enhance elements of the original scripts. These assignments are well paid, but short in duration (a couple to three weeks of work, max. It's not a re-write. It's more of a "punching-up.")
I think if there’s a lack of consistent direction then of course there’ll be problems no matter who the writers are. At the end of the day it’s those head creatives (producers and possibly the director) who provide the notes for writers/tell them even broadly what they need changing and get final say.
For what it’s worth though, I don’t think this is the case with Bond. I personally don’t like some of the creative decisions taken with NTTD, and indeed viewers may find certain plot points contrived or ineffective, but it does have a coherency. All the plot threads lead somewhere, each scene has a clear purpose, and it knows what it’s about/leading up to. Alongside SF I’d say it’s the most ‘effective’ script of the Craig era in this sense (as much as I prefer CR as a film I don’t think its script is as good, often suffering from ropey dialogue and the occasional plot point - ie Mathis being ‘framed’ by Le Chiffre - that’s set up as a twist and never quite adequately explained).
There's an interesting bit in Some Kind of Hero where, I think it's either Michael Wilson or one of P&W, says how writing a big film like these is like a marathon, and sometimes your writers tire after many months on it and you need to send them back to the bench and get some new players on the pitch (yes, I'm mixing the metaphor! :D ) for a burst of energy. It's not about them failing, it's just the process.
I've been looking at a really interesting website which looks at the various drafts of the script for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade recently, which I think has an almost perfect blockbuster movie script, with wonderful dialogue, excellent character development, actual themes which run though it, very efficient exposition, ideas which pay off later in the story, great jokes we all still remember etc. and it's quite amazing to see how each person who took it on refined it more and more, eliminating the dead ends and compressing various things until it became practically perfect. A fresh pair of eyes on something doesn't mean it's bad to start with.
Yeah, strongly agree there- NTTD does work as a piece very well (maybe some slight confusion about who Valdo and Primo think they're working for at points, and maybe Nomi is rather redundant, but it all feels part of the same film and everything drives in the same direction), and SF does too, where CR does feel a touch scrappy in places- the falling building set piece we've been talking about is a good example.
To me someone doing an uncredited polish often sounds similar to the role an editor has on a novel: they can see the novel with fresh eyes, work out what's working and what isn't, and give it a prune and a tidy up here and there. TV shows have script editors who do much the same. To think that this means the script or book is 'sick' in the first place seems a very odd idea to me.
That often is the process but not always. Just think of the screenplays of Tarantino, Cameron or Nolan. For example Cameron does have co-writers on the Avatar sequels, but it was his decision to employ co-writers, and his creative vision is still very much the driving force behind the sequels.
I get that producers often meddle in the creative process, but in an ideal world producers don't make any creative decision. Instead, they simply help the director execute his or her creative vision.
Sure; there's no rule that says every single film gets made the same way. But many of them go through a similar process, and loads of films we've all loved got made in that or a similar method too.
I find the process of re-writing rather fascinating, especially when it comes to big blockbusters funnily enough. Because they're almost more like machines than anything: they need designing and machining and rebuilding and oiling and refining. A James Bond movie is not a personal expression of one writer's soul.
They are outliers. Not many are given this leeway. They are the 1% .
99% of the films you watch have been done precisely as described above…
EDIT: @mtm: you’re right on the short time. That’s exactly the case. P an W did their outline/draft but then there was the Boyle/Hodge interruption.
Once Boyle/Hodge left.
Carey was hired and he turned everything around in a few short months. It was a very fast turn around in a business that sometimes feels like it’s moving as fast as molasses…
Anyway, there are plenty of examples of auteurs who either constantly work/have worked with other writers, or don't tend to write their own scripts at all.
Yes I know movie scripts suffer endless rewrites with different writers, this even happened in the early Bond films.
I'm not sure on the 80's Bond films though, as it appears as though John Glen worked closely with Maibaum and Wilson, and there wasn't that many other writers involved in the process (I could be wrong).
Kubrick's a director who tended to work with other writers as well (and by his own admission never wrote original screenplays, and specifically sough out novels to adapt). He generally tended to work with other writers as well. As I said before he hired two different screenwriters for Dr. Strangelove based on the direction he wanted to take the screenplay in, and at least two academics met with him to hone the ins and outs of nuclear warfare. He famously also crafted the script of Full Metal Jacket by getting Michael Herr and Gustav Hasford to submit different drafts and then edited them together/played around with stuff during shooting. Even A Clockwork Orange, a script credited only to him, featured heavy contributions by Malcolm McDowell and on-set/editing revisions. He's a fascinating director, but I often think his 'perfectionism' is somewhat overstated and his ability to collaborate/understand the different areas of filmmaking is understated.
True about the New Hollywood types (Robert Towne was also a script doctor/uncredited contributor on The Godfather as well).
I suppose The Flash example may well come back to the issue of coherent direction from producers/directors that I was talking about (thing about the credited writers on that as well is that only one seems to have gotten a screenplay by credit - the other 3 have story by credits). Like I said, with Bond there does seem to be more consistency on a basic level, regardless of what one thinks of the actual creative decisions.
There is, and I’m thankful for that. Regardless of how some feel about the films of the last 25 or so years, none of them feel as if they buckle under their own weight. Even Die Another Day surprisingly doesn’t feel as convoluted when it comes to its plotting, and that film has CGI waves, race swapping villains, and invisible Aston Martins.
They go back to Fleming.
An updated version of Fleming's Bond for today's audiences could be the way to go.
Add characters like May and Sir James Molony perhaps. I realise that housekeepers are few and far between in today's society. But a woman that comes and looks after Bonds apartment while he's not in London via an online service wouldn't be out of the question.
I was thinking maybe Bond could berate May for not cooking his eggs for three and a third minutes, or something along those lines. See a little more of Bond's private life when he's not on a mission.
Tom Holland
is
Ian Fleming's James Bond
in
Sex for Dinner, Bed and Breakfast
Starring
Damian Lewis as Drex
Zendaya as Gala Brand
with Robert Downey Jr. as M
and Imelda Staunton as May
I would only want this if it happens to intersect with the plot of the film. I don’t want to stop the adventure film to see how Bond spends his evenings off duty or how he gets his flat cleaned.
I think it could be the sort of thing they add straight after the titles and before Bond goes to MI6 to see M for his mission. It only needs a minute or so of screen time but would add a lot.