Blind Items Revealed #21 - Anniversary Month

February 16, 2017

Need to go back in the day for this one. Not too far back. The last few years of last century. You know at the beginning of Social Network when everyone is sitting around in college dorm rooms coming up with Facebook and the whole thing is kind of murky about who did what. Well, this is kind of like that, but not as murky. He probably didn't need to do it. He refers to a writer/director. He had some talent. Has some talent. The thing is though, he probably won't get a chance to do what he wants to do with that talent. For almost a decade we have been hearing about his new projects and he is working on some things and it is going to blow people away and he is working with some exciting people and everyone just needs to stay tuned.

You know what all that sounds like? Every one hit wonder and every person who has ever finished in the top 10 of American Idol when some intrepid reporter in their home town newspaper treks down to the basement of their parent's house to find out what they are doing now.

Everything started off fine. He did a couple of good things. He met another guy at school and they started talking about a project they should do when they got out of school. It turns out the other guy had a script. A really good script. Amazing actually. The guy let the subject of our blind read it and see if he had any notes for the script he could make over the Christmas holiday. The guy went back to to visit his family out of the country. Four days later he was killed in a car wreck.

Our writer/director could have given it to the family when everything was sent home. He didn't. In fact, he even went so far as to erase every bit of the script from the desktop of the other guy. The family never knew. Still doesn't as far as I know.

Our writer/director shopped the script around. He knew it was good. He made a whole lot of demands, but he got them because the script was so good. He thought he was on top of the world. It took a little while but the world grew to love the movie. The problem for our writer/director is that he was supposed to be this hugely talented writer/director but at least as far as the writing thing goes, he really was just average. On the hard drive of the dead person's desktop there had been another script. Not as polished. It had never really been edited. It was literally a 300 page script. It was all he had though. People were clamoring for something so he turned it into the studio and they said cut it down. He cut and he cut but the thing was still 220 pages, maybe a little more. His problem was he didn't know what to cut because he had no feel for the script. It didn't come from him. Oh, he was taking full credit for it. The studio was to blame to. They threw money at him and got what they deserved. A massive bomb. A huge bust. If left in the hands of the original writer, it probably could have been something special. It has its moments. The problem is our guy didn't know how to write the moments. Hollywood was basically done with him at that point. Fast forward a few years and he gets out of movie jail. I mean, he did do that thing (which he didn't really do) so maybe there is still untapped genius. Nope. His writing still sucked which no one could understand because of you the first thing he did and even the second thing had good writing in the first draft. It was the revisions that sucked.

So, our guy made a blah movie that faded when the writing went from adaptation to original. He does have some directing talent. His problem is that his ego has him convinced he can replicate the first success if only given the chance. So, far he has struck out. Miss after miss. Nothing ever gets beyond an option. His writing is not good. IF he decided to just focus on directing, he could make a few bucks, but he won't. He is still trying to chase that one hit wonder but if the one hit is not yours to begin with, then what are you really chasing?

Richard Kelly/Donnie Darko/Southland Tales