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My Odyssey with Project Greenlight
A rant on the state of film by Jake Westrum
Are we really so jaded, so simpleminded, as viewers that we are willing to reach to Hollywood's least common denominator as our only source for entertainment and art?
That answer appears to be a resounding "yes."
I knew this before, but it really hurts to be proven wrong time and again. It's as if you were stabbed in the back once, and now you have to get an extra hole in your back every time you rear your head. Brilliant films are forgotten in a month while mindless popcorn features live on in fame. Don't get me wrong, I love popcorn films as much as the next bipedal mammal. There's nothing quite like sitting down with a lady friend and watching a good bad movie while laughing the night away. Nothing is a better waste of an evening than heading down to the local cinema with your buddies and just shutting down your thought processes, a total suspension of disbelief where you can see bad toilet humor, softcore porn, and shit that gets blowed up real good.
But are these the movies that we really want to be our voice as a society? Do we want the future to look at us and say something like, "yeah, those are the people who loved fuckn' Godzilla." I won't bitch anymore about the Academy, who injudiciously gave Ridley Scott's Gladiator the best picture. That's not even relevant to this argument; ever since the Academy's inception we knew what it was, and only the most jaded or moronic of us really feel it's an accurate representation of a great movie. They generally give the awards to the popcorn films we were able to sit through more than anything, and when all is said and done I'm fine with that.
The point is that people seem so intent on these popcorn films that they disregard anything that could require that apparent evolutionary dead end of THOUGHT. Allow me to tell you a tale of a place called "Project Greenlight." For those of you who don't know, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck figured out that a really great way to get your hands on free scripts is to make a contest. Just let a bunch of people all over the country send in their scripts and take the best ones. Their way of finding the best ones: let the writers decide! Unfortunately, anyone and his sister think they can write a quality script, and within days the cesspool that is Project Greenlight had thousands.
The very idea of the site seems like a bad idea to me. You put hard work into something that you feel is good work, and then if it really is good work your idea is taken away through contractual obligations. Of course, if your script is chosen as the best you got a shot at directing, but considering the average boob on the street that kind of fame is truly Andy Warhol's 15 minutes. Look at how the best is chosen though; all those other feeble minded "writers" who are worse than you choose! Is that really how you want to win?
I was first told about the site by good friend, benefactor, and all-around good guy Sean Froyd way back in July of 2000. At the time I was busy with working and screwing around and I dismissed it. The first thought that I can remember is something like, "sure, I could take some of my notes and make a script, but if I win I lose the script." So I cast it aside for a few days and concentrated on writing for myself; a script here, short story there, and the beginning of a book on the side. At the time, I'd only completed a few scripts, and at least one of those would require a large amount of money before it could ever see the light of day. However, these things were never written for the express purpose of selling them. Sure, it'd be nice to see them made into something someday, but as of now they're notes for a larger project.
After a few days though, I had a great idea for a script after watching F.W Murnau's Nosferatu. It's a classic film, and truly a favorite of mine. We haven't seen many silent films in a long time, nor have we seen any truly horrifying films in a while. So the idea brewed to create a dark film that has absolutely no tie to reality as we know it. Influenced greatly by Murnau, I decided to make it into a dream; we'd think it was real until the last moment when we'd hear our first sound of an alarm clock going off. Title cards tell the story and provide us an exposition, like reading a book on the bogeyman. I must say that once it was all done it wasn't too bad. It wasn't great, but atmosphere is something that only the camera can capture.
So I figured what the hell. The very notion that these morons could review serious work is so laughable. At the time I figured I wouldn't win, so why not see if I can gauge just how stupid they all are. Sadly I was right. I read scripts there that made no sense, scripts that no one in a million years would want to see made into a movie. Cheesy childish slasher films and stupid science fiction comedies were abounding in this stupefying soup of evil.
Unfortunately, nobody got my script. I mean NOBODY. That's the problem with letting your so-called "peers" review your work. They never totally get what you're saying, and they have no basis of understanding of what a good or bad script is. Instead, I got shit like "it was stupid" or "it reminded me of Nightmare on Elm Street." I could say I got unlucky in the people who reviewed my writing, but that'd likely be wrong. I also read 11 scripts there and few of them were even worth me wiping my ass with. They were clichéd, stupid, and filled with so many plot holes I could have parked an SUV in any one of them. Characters and storylines were set up only to be dropped in 5 pages or less, and the main characters themselves were usually lame caricatures on plucky and perky characters we've seen a thousand times in your average teen movie. Of the eleven, only three were presentable. One script wasn't even a script, it was just a 60 page short story that I swear I've read somewhere before. Of the three that did work, they worked because they were interesting workings on old concepts. I read one script about a hitman, and it was eerily similar to Reservoir Dogs, but it worked because the characters were interesting and thoughtfully written. One was a sci-fi comedy that worked because it played with the genre of 50's science fiction. I can't see it ever being made as a fully budgeted feature, but maybe we can see something like it as a TV movie somewhere. The third one was about making a feature length snuff film, and it reminded me a lot of John Waters. Fortunately, this script seems to be what Waters has been aspiring to. It was demented, gross, and hilarious. It had a sympathetic character stuck in his nature, and as a result he found himself on the set of the very first feature length snuff film. I give full Kudos to the man who wrote this; the innovation and creativity seen here is some of the greatest I've read in a long time. Hell, a guy like that is a guy I'd love to make a movie with.
It's too bad that I did find good scripts in the pile, because most of them were shit. They were wastes of time; written by people who either couldn't write worth a goddamn or just didn't want to. I submitted my script, against my better judgment. I didn't do it to win, I did it to see what would happen. If I had, by some twist of fate, actually won I would have refused. The idea is sound, but the details are still in progress. But what if I had placed in the top 10? My script would have been wrenched away from my control, and I'd likely be seeing my movie on screen in two years. This is not a good thing. Something tells me they wouldn't put a whole lot of effort in refining what I put down, and in the end it'd come off as a pretentious rambling mess that is all the more painful to watch because it has the potential to be great.
I don't know what happened to us, my friends. Where have we gone in life if we can send a man to the moon, rockets to Mars, and connect the entire world to each other with machines; but we can't even look at something for its beauty and intelligence and be able to recognize it as such. It's as if thousands of years of art and culture are being thrown to the wayside in favor of cellular telephones and bottled water. Meaningless chitchat and the desire to sit back and vegetate. We don't have to worry about trying to better ourselves or even understand the wonder of the world around us. We seem to be losing the very ability to appreciate the only thing that separates from our animal brethren; the fact that we ARE creative, that we ARE appreciative of beauty. We're losing this; instead of hearing great music or seeing a great film, we listen to Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears on the way to the latest screening of Dude, Where's my Car? We forget the great pure feeling of opening up a new book and smelling that great glue still hot on the binding in favor of reading it online in an abridged form. Why go to museums and see Van Gogh's work when we can buy a poster or look at a website?
I can tell you why, and I can tell you what we forget. But fewer and fewer people seem to want to know. At such a young age, I find myself a luddite; a dinosaur who loves the feeling of pen and paper while everyone else types on a computer. Sure, you're reading this on a computer. I have no doubt that machines are necessary and even great. But there's nothing quite like the magic of seeing it for yourself, and saying "I created THIS." Besides, how do you think this got to your website? You think I'm going to sit at the computer for hours and type it? No, I type fast to make up for the time I spend hunched over a notebook writing it out.
I'm addressing things that I see as great problems in the world, but I haven't really spoken about how it affects film. Not directly, anyway. Why can't we see a movie and appreciate its beauty and power on its own terms? Film is the greatest medium of art, dear Readers; the only place in the world where you can find literature, theatre, painting, and any other artistic medium you want all in one spot. And you can find things totally cinematic. Photography doesn't begin to describe the wonder at seeing Stanley Kubrick's 2001 in its final hour. It's a world unto itself, and we are ignoring it in favor of pop culture and shallow celebrities who only want to make a quick buck from us and leave nothing in return but a shallow joke that won't be funny in a year. Film Buffs will tell you that Peter Sellers is still funny 40 years later, but it doesn't seem likely that Jason Biggs or Freddie Prinze Jr. will still even be recognizable names in that time period. It doesn't take much to make history; you just have to believe in it. Fewer and fewer people want to create from their heart and soul anymore. It's all about getting up and getting rich as quick as you can; make a buck at the expense of the world around you.
We've fucked our art, and now we expect it to be a prostitute to our pathetic attention spans.