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No twists in this tale
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Where have all the intelligent, well-written films gone? While SUNIL D'MONTE examines the seeming lack of creativity in Hollywood, KANCHANA BANERJEE looks at the phenomenon of remakes in Bollywood.
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IN 1999, a writer named Charlie Kaufman delivered one of the most ingenious movie scripts of the decade, "Being John Malkovich". The film showed that you didn't need big movie stars or special effects to be a commercial success - made on a budget of $13 million; it grossed more than twice that amount in the United States alone. Sadly, those of us who hoped the film would trigger a revival of well written, intelligent-yet-mainstream films were to be disappointed. Four years later, we're still sinking in the morass of brain-dead garbage that gets spewed out of Hollywood each year — nonsensical action movies, gag-inducing romantic comedies and so on. Even most of the more serious dramas suffer from the legacy of "Dead Poets' Society" and the like, with sentimentality cranked up to such ludicrous levels that you wonder whether the cast and crew ended each day with a group hug.
The recent plagiarism suit filed by Barbara Taylor Bradford against the makers of the Hindi serial "Karishma" has brought to light the lack of original scripts in our film industry. It is an acknowledged fact that there is a dearth of quality scripts in Hollywood as well. Every year, a handful of high-profile Oscar oriented films such as "American Beauty" set the bar for quality. In addition, there is the occasional crowd-pleaser, like "About a Boy", that manages to strike the fine balance between sharp scripting and mass appeal. Then there are behemoths like "The Matrix" and "Lord of the Rings", whose marketing expenditure alone is probably higher than the entire budget of an average film. It is a fact that mega-budget effects-laden blockbusters make money, regardless of how good they are — bad reviews only add curiosity value. These films also tend to have long lives in the cable and video markets.
Smaller films on the other hand, with largely unsung casts and directors, might achieve critical success but reach only a limited audience — only some theatres screen them, and they seldom arrive overseas.
What's going on then? Is no one writing better films, or are studios not willing to take a chance? The situation in the script writing industry is unfortunate, thanks essentially to its astonishing size. Here's how it works. Anyone can write a screenplay — anyone who's interested and knows the basic format. Once written, the script must be registered with the Writer's Guild of America, the body that represents writers in the industry and protects their interests. Then comes the tough part — finding a literary agent to represent you. This is easier said than done. The Writers Guild registers more than 40,000 pieces of literary material every year, and has close to 10,000 active writers as members. The number of non-members who submit their material is probably higher. Getting noticed in this game is a survival process. As writer Syd Field puts it in his bestselling book Screenplay, it's like entering the raging current of the Hollywood river — and, like salmon swimming upstream, only a few make it.
Literary agencies employ script readers, each of whom might go through dozens of scripts a day. If a script doesn't strike a chord within the first ten pages (which typically amounts to the first ten minutes of a film), it is returned to the slush pile. If it has potential, it is passed up the food chain. Given the vast numbers involved, it's likely that some of the good scripts slip through, never to be discovered. But it's also true that some good scripts do get found, but no one wants to buy them — like "Malkovich" itself, which was first written in 1994 and gathered dust for five long years before someone gave it life (and not just anyone — director Spike Jonze is the son-in-law of the legendary Francis Ford Coppola).
So why aren't more studios willing to take a risk with quality material? The answer probably lies in that most depressing catch phrase of our times — it's all about money. This was demonstrated quite brilliantly in Robert Altman's "The Player" (1992), a scathing satire of Hollywood mores. An idealistic young writer has written a film called "Habeas Corpus", about an innocent woman who gets sentenced to death. He wants it to be a realistic, gritty film — no famous movie stars, no happy endings. But by the time the script has been processed by the Hollywood machine, the end product is sadly familiar — Bruce Willis breaks into jail at the last minute to save Julia Roberts from the chair. Julia: "What took you so long?" Bruce: "Traffic was a bitch."
Consider the studios' point of view. Despite all the market research out there, audience reaction to a film is impossible to predict — nobody knows which film is going to do well, and which film isn't. Filmmaking is also frightfully expensive these days. In 2002, there were 220 films released by member companies of the Motion Picture Association of America — companies like Paramount and Universal — at an average cost of about $89 million per film, which includes a whopping $30 million in marketing costs. In comparison, the average box office was only $32 million per film. No wonder studios look to the big guns to see them through — the top 20 films of 2002 made up 40 per cent of the total domestic box office gross for the whole year.
No one wants to make lousy films. Studios do produce smaller, riskier films — some now have subsidiaries that specialise in "art house" cinema, such as Disney's Miramax. Miramax recently bought the distribution rights for films like Gurinder Chadha's "Bride and Prejudice" and the French language film "The Barbarian Invasions", which won two awards at Cannes this year. It is also one of the co-sponsors of the screenplay contest "Project Greenlight" — the winning screenplay gets a guaranteed $1 million dollars in funding.
Such ventures remain minor undertakings however. Studios have to spread their bets, and make enough by-the-numbers "rom-coms" and special effects movies — in other words, movies that have a chance of making money. Perhaps audience tastes are to blame as well then — after all, thousands and thousands of people are watching these movies (and complaining about them).
Maybe if we deliberately stayed away from the sludge, we'd eventually increase the number of better films being made. In other words, see a film only if you really want to see it — not because you've got nothing better to do.
Meanwhile, as accountants pore over numbers and dollars, writers all over the world toil away in their homes, hoping that their script will make it big. In 1999, Charlie Kaufman was trying to write a screenplay based on a difficult novel called The Orchid Thief. He had received an advance payment, but found he was getting nowhere. And so he decided to write a screenplay about himself trying to write the same screenplay! Kaufman gave himself a fictional twin brother, infused the script with all his experience and inside knowledge of Hollywood, and the result was the superb "Adaptation" (2002), also directed by Jonze.
The film is a delight to watch, and received rave reviews. Kaufman was nominated for an Oscar (and unlucky not to win, though actor Chris Cooper won the Best Supporting Actor award) and the film made about $25 million at the box office. So maybe all hope is not lost — intelligence lives!
Sadly, it's unlikely that "Adaptation" — or any of the clever films like it — will ever come to Indian screens. Audiences in the West can always find a theatre to see such movies; every city has at least one "art-house" theatre, and many universities do too. No such luck for Indian viewers, unfortunately. For us there are essentially three items on the menu — the blockbuster, the big-name vehicle, and the Oscar-winner. Those of us interested in other films have to dig through depressing heaps of pirated VCDs, or rent the DVD if it's available — and if we're lucky enough to own a player.
I have a dream. One of the owners of the several multiplexes popping up in our cities realises that smaller character-driven films deserve to be seen too, and reserves one screen for showing these films, both old classics as well as new films from all around the world. Dedicated movie buffs flock to this theatre, not just to watch films, but also to meet like-minded people and have impassioned discussions over countless cups of coffee...
Maybe one day that dream will come true. Until then, we'll have to settle for Bruce Willis and some machine guns.
The writer is a software professional, currently on hiatus and trying to write his first screenplay.
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