“Cure for the Transformers Blues”
In addition to comments here, I get a lot of email from GITS readers. Here’s something Jeff Messerman sent to me last week after I posted this review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen:
Hi Scott,
So I finally took the plunge and saw Revenge of the Fallen. I too
found myself bored but, even worse, I exited the theater in a funk. A
lot of mutterings from me like, “so it’s come to this…”
Bad water.
I got up this morning and watched Lolita, then a little of Full Metal
Jacket. I’ll probably watch 2001 and Eyes Wide Shut tonight. Needed
a quick reminder of why I got into this script nonsense in the first
place and all fingers pointed to Stanley Kubrick.
Anyway, I did a little Kubrick YouTube surfing over lunch and found
this awesome clip of Spielberg talking about Stanley. In the middle
of the vid, he goes on about…STORY. How brave a storyteller Kubrick
was, how he’d make choices that cut against the grain and, best of
all, how he felt he needed to RE-INVENT how story played out on film.
“He wanted to change the FORM,” as big Steve says.
I nearly wept. Post Transformers Stress Disorder? Probably.
Anyway, if you haven’t shared this with your GITS readers, I think one
or two of ’em may find some value in it. It reminded me that I didn’t
get into this racket to do what everyone else is doing but to write
the movies I WANT TO SEE, to pull that film out of our hearts and
minds and hope to God someone out there finds value in it. If that
means 1 million rejections, so be it.
GITS should be an outpost for revolt against the loot-lusting
putrescence that is Transformers 2. You have a blog followed by
almost 150 readers interested in STORY. There a lot of value in that,
whether Hollywood likes it or not.
Here’s the vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU99BoD7Vks
Thanks again Scott.
Jeff
For the record, I thought Transformers was noisy and boring, which is a notch or two above putrid.
Re Spielberg talking about Kubrick: Awesome. Thanks, Jeff, for finding that.
BTW, if anybody knows of any video or written interviews I’ve yet to link to, please forward to me. Obviously one of the points of this site is to aggregate as many resources as possible re screenwriting and movies, especially interviews which are a great way to get inside the creative process.
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