Miscellaneous

Scripts

By jeremyblachman

I read a fair number of scripts.  Not as many as perhaps I should-- I tend to read them in bursts-- but I've probably read a hundred movie scripts this year and about the same number of TV scripts.  Most of what I read is not that inspiring.  Some of them I can appreciate even if I don't love-- most of them I can see why they're getting made or not getting made-- but very rarely do I read something that has me laughing out loud at my computer, or forgetting that I'm sitting in front of my computer reading, forgetting that I could stop and do something else instead.

I just read the script for Albert Brooks's movie, "Mother."  I've seen Mother three times, I think.  It's absolutely a terrific movie, I've forced more than one person to watch it, it's very very funny.

Sometimes I really like a script and then it turns into a less terrific movie (The Invention of Lying comes to mind).  I don't usually experience it in the other direction-- I don't usually read scripts when I've already seen the movie-- so maybe it happens this way all the time, but, gosh, I was blown away reading the Mother script.  There are some scenes, or at least some lines, that felt new-- I assume they were cut from the movie, or the draft of the script I stumbled on wasn't the final version.  But even the ones that weren't new still had me laughing, out loud, alone, at my desk.

I forget sometimes that a script can be really good.  That a great script can read great-- that no matter how tempting, I shouldn't be rationalizing to myself that something can be funny in execution that isn't on the page.  Yes, that happens-- but it doesn't always happen, and the standard can still be funny on the page.  Good script, good movie, I wish Albert Brooks made movies more often than he does.

Full post as published by Jeremy Blachman's Brand New Weblog on November 17, 2009 (boomark / email).