Comments on: Jerry Zucker Steals My Joke

By: Jo

Jo — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:12:32 +0000

@Allyson: Of course there are brilliant people in film. And it was a joke, which is why he’s allowed to paint with a wide brush. But the amount of work that goes into producing something doesn’t make it worth watching. Spending millions on a film, with big names and fancy special effects, and then slapping it all on top of a rehashed idea or paper thin plot is nothing to brag about. It’s a product, much as anything else, and when poorly produced, it’s my right as a consumer to label it crap.

I think we can all agree that great cinema does indeed exist. We can also agree that making great cinema is not the primary objective of most big production companies.

By: Phillip Helbig

Phillip Helbig — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:05:11 +0000

The James Bond parody in the Kentucky Fried Movie is excellent. I like James Bond, and I
like parody, but most James Bond parodies (the 1960s Casino Royale, Austin Powers) are
lame. One reason, of course, is that James Bond is quite close to self-parody already.

By: andyo

andyo — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:33:05 +0000

Really, I don’t see what people saw in Slumdog Millionaire. I always liked Danny Boyle (since Shallow Grave), and even liked Sunshine, but Slumdog was just well directed Hollywood tripe, even more so when it wasn’t supposed to be that.

By: Allyson Beatrice

Allyson Beatrice — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:41:45 +0000

Just a word about that “creative community” of writers…

First, download a shooting script of an episode of television or a film. It’s pretty hefty. One page of dialogue is one minute on screen. In television, a writer sometimes has 48 hours to knock out sixty pages, incorporate notes from the network, studio, and/or showrunner. The script has to have some level of continuity within the series, service all of the actors, and get into the hands of the director before DGA fines start piling up. Few people can do it, and even fewer can do it exceptionally well. There are excellent television shows with consistently high quality like Dexter, Mad Men, Battlestar Gallactica, and such. Some amazingly written shows don’t make it far, like Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me, and Firefly.

Even films that are adapted (think L.A. Confidential, Brokeback Mountain, or Shawshank Redemption) from books take an especially talented hand to translate into a new medium.

I just get so irritated when I see someone use eyeroll quotes to describe thousands of people, some of whom, a lot of whom, are actually quite brilliant.

By: Joshua Zelinsky

Joshua Zelinsky — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:28:04 +0000

Michael, much of the Asimov and Clarke did was so good precisely because they had such good backgrounds in actual science. They aren’t the only examples. Greg Egan today is one of the recent more successful scifi writers. Part of why he does so well is that he really knows his stuff quite well.

By: Jacob Russell

Jacob Russell — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:26:16 +0000

When they start (making) writing them like they used to, Hollywood will have replaced writers…who, in contrast with Hollywood, don’t try to make them “like they used used to.”

By: Michael T.

Michael T. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:03:00 +0000

Some of the best sci-fi that made it to television or the big screen came neither from scientists or the Hollywood “creative community” but rather adaptations from great science fiction novels or short stories. Think of Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick and Alfred Bester to name a few. Asimov and Clarke certainly stand out but what distinguished them was not so much their work as “scientists” but as writers of great fiction. They just don’t make em the way they used to!