So, if you haven’t seen this John August approved short video, called “The Pitch”, check it out– it’s hilarious. It’s also wrong-headed. Here’s why I’d jump at the chance to write ‘Slinky: The Movie”. (Hint: It’s not just the money.)
First off, this stuff really does happen. I have a screenwriter/director friend. Very indie and auteur oriented tell me about how he was offered to write a live action version of Clifford the Big Red Dog and he told me the story with the same disdain and exasperation you see in “The Pitch.”
Now, maybe it’s because I’ve only ever optioned one pilot in my life and would like a career, but I’d jump at a chance to write Clifford, or for that matter, Slinky. As the nice development executive pointed out, Pixar made a bundle (as well as their reputation) off of a Toy Story. They also managed to make an incredibly poignant tale on the values we place on ourselves and our things in a consumerist society.
I don’t get this preciousness over not aligning your work with large, lovable consumer properties. Are you telling me that screenwriters, that is people who make the choice to work in a medium that is not only hugely expensive, but also requires an audience to be successful, are worried about being branded as “sell out’s”?
If you make a movie that’s hugely successful, drives people to go see it again and again and buy toys and Happy Meals based on your movie, you are not a sell out. You’re successful. The whole point of film and TV is that it’s mass media– it’s whole goal is to reach as broad an audience as possible.
So, what is selling out? My feeling is that it’s when you’re no longer writing or creating work which engages you. Selling out is working for a paycheck, not for the passion. Now, this might be the way I’m wired, but to me, writing a film about a Slinky sounds like a fun challenge, as challenging as writing about 16th century Parisian politics or dramatizing the scientific challenges of bringing a crippled spacecraft back to Earth.
If you don’t like Slinky’s, fine. But realize the issue is your snobbery, not an affront to your goddam artistic credibility. I was once asked to write a treatment for a film about Teddy Bears. The brief was, “The Teddy Bear needs to have five outfits that we can sell.”
Yes, this is the sort of cynical B.S. that Hollywood runs on, but I put together a story of the ‘original’ Teddy Bear. Inspired by Theodore Roosevelt, this turn of the century bear goes from a posh pampered life to the edge of the frontier, meets kokepelli in Arizona, escapes an industrial mill, etc… It wasn’t genius (and the treatment went nowhere), but it was a fun and rousing challenge.
Isn’t that the whole challenge of filmmaking– to create something that is both popular and good? I mean, think of what Todd Solondz could do with that Slinky.
