{"id":165,"date":"2014-07-14T16:25:52","date_gmt":"2014-07-14T23:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hollywood-nobody.com\/blog\/?p=165"},"modified":"2014-07-21T09:59:16","modified_gmt":"2014-07-21T16:59:16","slug":"goodbye-columbus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hollywood-nobody.com\/blog\/?p=165","title":{"rendered":"GOODBYE, COLUMBUS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mid-Nineteenth Century London.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

It is dusk as plump, privileged Bentley Bobster leaves his offices, unaware of the cloaked figure stalking him.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Bobster pauses in front of a restaurant, and the mysterious stranger shoots something at him with a blowgun.\u00a0 Bobster winces\u2014a twinge of pain\u2014and then enters the restaurant where he is served a huge barbecued pheasant.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Outside, the cloaked figure\u2019s eyes begin to glow a burning, fiery red.\u00a0 And inside, the succulent bird comes to life with a loud screech, its eyes vicious, its beak snapping like a dragon, its claws razor sharp.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Bobster jumps back in horror and the bird attacks him, ripping at his face.\u00a0 Then the stranger\u2019s eyes stop glowing, and though Bobster continues to scream hysterically, everything returns to normal\u2014the cooked pheasant resting on its plate, the blood gone from Bobster\u2019s hands and face.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Shaken, he leaves the restaurant and continues home, dogged by the mysterious figure and by horrible hallucinations until at last, he throws himself out of his own third floor window to escape a nightmare conflagration inside.\u00a0 But as he lies dead on the icy cobblestoned street, everything in his home is normal\u2014intact, untouched by the flames he saw in his final hallucination.<\/em><\/p>\n

__________<\/p>\n

\n

You have just witnessed a murder\u2026and a miracle of a first-draft screenplay.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is December of 1983.\u00a0 I am working as an analyst in Paramount\u2019s Story Department, and it is my privilege to be the first to read a d*********** project penned by Chris Columbus, soon to be famous as the author of Gremlins<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The project is Young Sherlock Holmes<\/em>, and its brilliance takes my breath away.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The amazing opening I\u2019ve just summarized is followed by a charming, character-rich narrative that reveals how Sherlock Holmes became<\/em> Sherlock Holmes as the budding detective, only seventeen, works to solve the bizarre string of murders that began with Bentley Bobster\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You want the story behind his friendship with Watson?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

His love of the violin?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

His use of cocaine?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The absence of women in his life?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is a remarkable achievement, richer and more imaginative than anything Arthur Conan Doyle ever gave us with the possible exception of The Hound of the Baskervilles<\/em>.\u00a0 It is, in fact, Dickensian in its colorful characters, its humor, its picturesque settings, its engaging mystery.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I can\u2019t wait to tell Dawn Steel about it at the Story Department Christmas Party that evening.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dawn\u2014tough, ballsy, glamorous, famous both for her mane and for her temper\u2014is the executive in charge of the project.\u00a0 It is she who sent it to me for coverage, largely as a result of my enthusiasm for Columbus\u2019 extraordinary screenplay Reckless<\/em>, which I read and recommended when I first arrived at Paramount some years before.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dawn singles me out at the party and asks with uncharacteristic eagerness, \u201cHow\u2019s Young Sherlock Holmes<\/em>?\u201d\u00a0 Brilliant, I tell her.\u00a0 The best first-draft I\u2019ve ever read.\u00a0 Practically a shooting script.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The following Monday she summons me to her office.\u00a0 Holmes<\/em>, she tells me, is good.\u00a0 But\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2026it needs work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She wants me to find solutions to the \u201cproblems\u201d she\u2019s isolated and to write the studio notes to Columbus.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The only major note I myself have is that it\u2019s too easy to guess the identity of the villains.\u00a0 Columbus needs to introduce a few alternative candidates.\u00a0 In other words, keep \u2018em guessing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But Dawn\u2019s the boss, and Dawn knows best.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So it begins.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The d********** process.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the course of a second draft and a revision, the characters lose some of their color, the scenes become more expository, the plot more complicated.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Worse yet, in the attempt to disguise the identity of the villains, Columbus has made their public personas bland and boring\u2014in effect, eliminating the major conflict from the first act.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All this in response to the notes I myself wrote!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It gets even worse.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Satisfied that the script is now ready, Dawn decides it\u2019s time to shop it to directors.\u00a0 I urge her to go after Steven Spielberg, who\u2019s recently proved his mastery of the child\u2019s world in E.T.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Spielberg takes it on\u2026not as director but as producer, and that\u2019s when things really start to go awry.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Columbus\u2019 original story was built around a death cult that originated in the British colony of India, and the key action sequences took place in a warehouse basement converted into a temple for the cult\u2019s followers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once Spielberg and his Amblin team entered the picture, the plot turned on an Egyptian cult of Osiris, and the underground temple became an underground pyramid!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was easy to believe that an Indian cult had built up in nineteenth-century London, but an Egyptian<\/em> sect?\u00a0 And an underground pyramid<\/em> in the heart of the city?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nonsense!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The script has become bloated and a bit silly.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Even the wonderful character names have been dulled down:\u00a0 Bentley Bobster has become Clifford Appleby; Andrew Fidget has become Duncan Nesbit; Chester Cragwitch is now Chester Poole.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And the first act, which moved like lightning in the first draft, is slow as a slug.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dawn wants me to cut twenty pages from it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I do, and I phone the cuts in to producer Mark Gordon in pre-production in London.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But it makes no difference.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The best first-draft script I\u2019ve ever read has\u2014with help from me, Dawn, and the Amblin\u2019 team\u2014become a highly flawed, eminently forgettable film.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And that, my friends, is just one example of why d********** is the dirtiest word in the English language.<\/p>\n

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