Harry here... Nearly 10,000 stories ago... Back in 1998, I wrote about a screenplay by a fellow I didn't really know named Ernie Cline... The script was called FANBOYS and it was bar none... The best "fan" script I have ever read. For one, it wasn't a parody film, it wasn't about how cool it was to be a Star Wars fan. In fact, really... though Star Wars plays into it heavily, it isn't about that at all. This was a story about what that group of best friends grown up would do for the friend that had only one wish left... It is about that road trip, the people they met on the way, the changes they go through and ultimately about seeing STAR WARS early, because life... unfortunately is too short to wait for release dates and permission.
I get lots of scripts with tiny cameos for me and unfortunately... by and large they suck. This one didn't. In fact this one was magic. Back in 1998, Ernie Cline was set to direct the film himself, because he had nobody else to do it for him. He was trying his best with a budget that would mainly comprised gas money and a van that ruled all. He began shooting, I read the script, and I flipped. I wrote about it, and that's when the jackals and hyenas and swine swooped in... Aka Money People. They started talking big deals, swimming pools and movie stars. Ernie decided to skip the low-budget self-directed route and to get the movie made for real. The process was molasses fast. So much so that EPISODE 1 came out, and Ernie lost a certain amount of heart for the project.
Now... nearly 5 years later, the project has been picked up by a new production company called First Addiction, and it seems that it is finally going to see cameras by year's end. Ernie (Ernest professionally) is excited again about the project, and has done minor retooling to his script. Which I have not read the latest drafts. I told Ernie back in 1998, I'd film the part of Harry Knowles... A fictional character with a fictional website called Ain't It Cool. My understanding is they will put me in a big fat suit and dye my hair red. Sounds ridiculous I know, but apparently that's Ernie and this director, Matthew Cole Weiss' vision of Harry Knowles. Sounds wacky! Here's the original stories... ages old...
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Here's the press release for Ernie's flick FANBOYS... A film hopefully one day coming to a theater near you...
First Addiction has optioned Ernest Cline’s screenplay FANBOYS with director Matthew Cole Weiss set to take the helm later this year. The road comedy/drama follows four best friends in the fall of 1998 from Ohio to No rthern California in an attempt to see Star Wars Episode I earlier than the rest of the world, before one of their group dies from a life threatening illness. Adds Perniciaro “It’s rare that you find a script that has so much heart, not only amongst the relationship of them as friends, but also that of what it really means to be a fan. Ernie hits those points so well and we’re all really excited to capture that moment in time through this great story”. The only announced cast is that Internet guru Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News will have a cameo in the film. Weiss previously directed the award winning short film MEAN PEOPLE SUCK starring James Franco, Dominique Swain and Eric Christian Olsen.
