[X] My Assistant

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

That's a question posed by Kevin Drum on his blog at The Washington Monthly.

[dvandorn]

Yes, Alex, I'll agree with you -- SFX seems to drive the stories, not serve them, in Hollywood these days. There are thousands upon thousands of decent, filmable sf stories out there that languish because they're not big, glittery SFX vehicles. And when someone does try to bring a good sf story to the screen, it ends up being chopped into mush by studios that want to add elements like wisecracking detectives and neat-o morphing robots to a classic tale such as "I, Robot."

No one ever had the guts to film Harlan Ellison's "I, Robot" script -- which was vastly superior to the Will Smith abortion that came out recently. It told the story with beauty and elegance, getting elements of many of Asimov's short stories into it and wrapping up a story of vast scope in a decent 2-hour feature film format. I'm not the world's biggest Harlan fan, but this was a fine script. It, not what eventually got produced, is what deserved to be made.

-the other Doug

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Yes, Alex, I'll agree with you -- SFX seems to drive the stories, not serve them, in Hollywood these days. There are thousands upon thousands of decent, filmable sf stories out there that languish because they're not big, glittery SFX vehicles. And when someone does try to bring a good sf story to the screen, it ends up being chopped into mush by studios that want to add elements like wisecracking detectives and neat-o morphing robots to a classic tale such as "I, Robot."

The fundamental problem is that SF is, for all practical purposes, a niche market. Hollywood produces movies for mass marketing purposes, so it's really no surprise that good SF stories are mangled or even ignored. Indeed, it makes economic sense for Hollywood to produce its own story lines by eliminating the SF author from the equation. I'm reminded of the quote (paraphrasing) from the Tim Robbins character in Robert Altman's satire The Player: "If only we could eliminate all these directors and actors too, then we'd have something."

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

The fundamental problem is that SF is, for all practical purposes, a niche market. Hollywood produces movies for mass marketing purposes, so it's really no surprise that good SF stories are mangled or even ignored. Indeed, it makes economic sense for Hollywood to produce its own story lines by eliminating the SF author from the equation. I'm reminded of the quote (paraphrasing) from the Tim Robbins character in Robert Altman's satire The Player: "If only we could eliminate all these directors and actors too, then we'd have something."

Err... It may be that you made the point, here. And SF is not the only victim of this "phenomenon".

But, I think, good movies, whatever they are SF, magic, society, etc... will attract all the public, not a niche market. Compare for instance "third kind encounters", a scientist's movie, with "ET", which was done for just the pleasure on the same theme, but with a much more moving story: ET did at least as well than the first. I think it attracted many people who were not already interested into SF or ET life. Also look at the success of "The Lord of the Rings" on also a very complicated and specialized theme.

I think it must be the same with scifi movies. A scifi movie, even with good science (not to speak of fancy science), but with only the rituellic Holywood stuff and characters (the honest heroe, the cynical with a great heart, the crying woman, the paranoïd army man, the Black to show we are not racist, etc) will attract only scifi lovers. But a great movie, with a realistic or moving story, everyday life characters and good music will attract everybody.

This is what happened with "starwars" (although there is no real science in) which attracted many people and still do it decades after, where movies like "armagedon" were just shooting stars.

So the good recipe for a scifi movie would be a compelling story like "Starwars" or "The Lord of the rings" but with real science in. (Or rather realistic extrapolations of real science).

The recipe to do a bad scifi movie and commercial flop is as follow: -take a new compelling or odd science theme, for instance black holes. -Carefully select persons completely ignorant in science to speak of it and make images -add to this a standard ready made Holywood story (the crying woman, the paranoid robot, etc) -Put money in it. That gives "black holes", which was a real commercial/artistic waste (likely you don't even remember) on a theme which however had the potential of really shaking viewers out of their seats.

Removing SF authors from the equation? It is like removing the locomotive of a train, because it is the only part which don't make profits. Because the authors are the people with the ideas, with the skill of writing compelling stories. In more, for a scifi writer, they must have a real science background.

It is costless to write, so that many people can do it, including gifted authors. But making a movie is very expensive, so that only money people can do it. And in general money and ideas don't go together in the same person. So money people, able to make movies, can work only with ideas people, able to write good stories. And money people must develop some humility, heed idea people's requirements, not impose their "adaptations to the market", because this market is interested by the ideas, not by the "adaptations". Only good movies made from good ideas can really interest the public and earn money. One good movie is much less expensive that ten bad ones, but it can earn much more money than these ten together.

If there is a movie maker reading this...