The Hollywood Reporter recently published a profile on Damon Lindelof and the “Rise of the Power Writer” cover tease immediately spoke to one of my biggest issues with Hollywood. While I don’t fault Lindelof the way others do, I do think the way his talents (and others like him) have been utilized as of late speak to the reason so many of today’s films suffer. Lindelof even alludes to the major issue when discussing his upcoming project Tomorrowland, an original story he co-wrote with Jeff Jensen with Brad Bird directing and George Clooney starring.
The THR article says the project came about as Lindelof was inspired to do something original. Everything he’s done to date has been based on something that wasn’t his, a world someone else created. Lindelof adds, “Honestly, I think Tomorrowland will be the first really original credit that I’ve produced in my career.”
On the heels of his work on Star Trek Into Darkness, the next film he’ll receive credit for will be Brad Pitt‘s World War Z, on which he delivered 60 pages of new material he co-wrote with Drew Goddard (Cabin in the Woods), which resulted in $20 million worth of reshoots. Before that he was brought on to rewrite Jon Spaihts‘ Alien Zero script, which became Prometheus. Add to that, both “Lost” (which he is often ridiculed for ruining) and Cowboys & Aliens weren’t original products. He’s a writer-for-hire, looked at as something of a fix-it man, and in the case of Cowboys he was one of five writers.
This is today’s Hollywood, where original work isn’t being greenlit as much as projects are handed out and people simply shape it as the committee dictates.
I started thinking about this recently when it was announced Michael Green (one of four writers on the dismal Green Lantern) was hired by Alcon Entertainment to rewrite the screenplay for Blade Runner 2, which was penned by original Blade Runner scribe Hampton Fancher. Who is Green to get the gig? On top of that, why is this project being forced to move forward?
Money is the obvious answer, but already it’s looking like a project forced into production rather than one anyone believes in passionately outside of a hope for millions of dollars at the box office.
This isn’t to say adaptations and sequels are all doomed to failure. They can be damned good in fact, but it’s this idea of just handing out projects to people who had no initial passion for what they are working on that raises my eyebrows.
Lindelof is a perfect example of this with Prometheus and World War Z. Lindelof may have love and appreciation for the original Alien franchise, but Alien Zero wasn’t his. So when he went to rework it, many of the ideas he injected into the story may have been fascinating, but even people that love the film have to admit the narrative has major issues as you can see where one vision ends and another begins.
With World War Z we still have to wait and see how it turns out, but just consider making a $170 million film and bringing someone in at the last minute, who has had no involvement in the film to that point, and asking them to fashion a brand new, final hour to the film. And then imagine that person calling in someone else to help him out and then three weeks later you have your new story. How is that any way to conduct the creative process? It’s not to say it won’t work (though early reviews are already mixed), but even if it does, can we really expect anything more than a mildly passable feature we forget about seven days after it hits theaters?
Speaking of which, how many 2013 releases can you name from the first four months of the year that had any real impact on the film landscape? Did you know Dwayne Johnson has had a film in the top ten at the box office for 15 straight weeks? Can you name them all?
Now this seems to be the way Lindelof likes to work, telling THR, “My writing powers do not work in a vacuum, they can only be unlocked — as limited as they may be — by the presence of someone else. I feel like you need to play me a lick before I can start playing. I would just sit at the piano and stare at it if you asked me to play.”
I wonder if he’s being modest or selling himself short. I love what he brought to Prometheus, but his ideas didn’t fit the narrative Spaihts had already created so you could feel how it was wedged in and didn’t ultimately all come together. Then again, maybe he never would have even come up with those ideas without Spaihts’ material in the first place.
Either way, Tomorrowland will prove interesting and hopefully a confidence boost for Lindelof and the industry.
Think of the screenplays we talk about at the end of every year. How many of them have more than two writers attached to them? How many have writers attached to them that didn’t write the original draft? When it comes to the Oscars you’ll definitely find more credited nominees in the Best Adapted category, but that also has a lot to do with the source material such as John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich all getting story credit on Toy Story 3 while Michael Arndt gets the screenwriter credit. Go to the Original category and the cases of more than one or two screenwriters on a project is drastically reduced.
I guess I just look at a guy like Lindelof and have to believe he has more original ideas in his head and even if they simply need to be “unlocked”, it’s worth the effort to try and find the key. Because as it is, these features we’re seeing with writers-for-hire attached to them are coming across as nothing more than “fine” or “just okay”. I don’t know about you, but when I hear $200 million has been spent on a movie I expect more than just “fine” or “just okay”. Just imagine if you let some of these imaginative minds run free what may come to fruition.
