Month: April 2014

JOHN OSTRANDER: SEQUELS AND PREQUELS AND REMAKES, OH MY!

sequels

by John Ostrander

Fox Movies has announced the possibility of re-making the musicalWest Side Story because Steven Spielberg has evidently expressed an interest in doing so. A part of me, a large part of me, wonders if that’s a good idea. The original won ten Oscars and is considered a movie classic. So – why? Why do a remake? It might be different but will it be better? How likely is that?

It puts me in mind of Gus Van Sant’s shot by shot re-make of Psycho. Why did he bother other than as an artistic exercise? Why did the studio okay it? One of the justifications I heard is the younger generation won’t go to the original because it’s in black and white. Seriously? They can’t be that shallow.

At one point there was talk of doing a re-make of Casablanca as a film. That was fortuitously abandoned. There was a TV prequel to it in 1983 that lasted about a season. There was also a TV remake of Going My Way which starred Gene Kelly in the Bing Crosby role and Leo G. Carroll in the Barry Fitzgerald part. This one actually had a large impact on me; I was in the 8th grade at that point and it made me want to be a priest. My “vocation” lasted only a little longer than the series. But the TV series was my first experience with the material and so the TV series was always my “real” Going My Way. read article

Hollywood Must Ride the Wave of Change, Not Resist It

Ooh, waves of change! Ride ’em, baby! Cowabunga! A certain legendary agent/studio dude (and owner of the L.A. Dodgers and the Golden State Warriors) has a few things to say about the state of entertainment right now, today:

linkedinwaveby Peter Guber

Once upon a time, Hollywood lived by the golden rule – he who had the gold, made the rule. Studios, networks and other gatekeepers enjoyed the keys to the kingdom for a long time and earned enormous economic success. But a funny thing happened on the way to eternal domination – the digitization and subsequent democratization of content creation and distribution which forever changed and continues to change who is holding those keys to success.

This is the current state of the filmed entertainment industry. read article

Ken Levine: In Defense of “Jokes”

Another brilliant mess o’observations from M*A*S*H’s Ken Levine:

big_bang_theory_season2_screen01by Ken Levine

…There are several definitions for jokes.  Here’s one:  A joke is something spoken, written, or done with humorous intention.  

In some cases it has a punchline, or just something you didn’t expect, which amuses you.

Jokes have become uncool, passé, something to sneer at and scorn. Writers who resort to jokes are hacks or old or worse – old hacks.  A commenter yesterday who’s a writer on a sitcom said his showrunner threw out anything that was too “jokey.”  And I will grant you there are many bad jokes, lame jokes, racist jokes, old jokes, formula jokes, juvenile jokes, and blonde jokes. read article

Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 4/1/14

Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are=&0=& (upcoming FRIENDS WITH BETTER LIVES) has a new overall deal with ABC Studios. (Cuz his previous shows, DON’T TRUST THE B— IN APARTMENT 23 and TRAFFIC LIGHT (?!) were such big hits, your little muncher supposes.) Julie Plec (THE VAMPIRE DIARIES) has a new overall deal with Warner Bros. TV. (Cuz she’s got a bunch of shows on the air, don’tcha know? And that, justifiably, makes Julie hot, hot, hot!) Jennie Snyder Urman (EMILY OWENS, MD) has extended her deal at CBS TV Studios. (Woo! Talk about big hits. EMILY OWNS is right up there with – wait, don’t tell me – DON’T TRUST THE BITCH. How can you not love a business that rewards failure as well as TV does?)