You know, if there is a more 'fan' hated screenwriter than Akiva Goldsman, then I don't know. After two fan fave projects (BATMAN & ROBIN and LOST IN SPACE) blew chunks all over everywhere, I could almost sense a lynch mob heading Akiva's way. Now while I don't think both scripts are brilliant, when I read them... far before the films were in the can, I could imagine some pretty damn cool movies made out of them. The whole tone of BATMAN AND ROBIN was directly the opposite of how I interpreted the script, and LOST IN SPACE wasn't anywhere near as... dreadful. Both projects had me excited and imagining good things. But I had imagined Arnold delivering his lines ala the cold Terminator, and of course the draft prior to Arnold's involvement when Patrick Stewart was being contemplated...well it was even better. With LOST IN SPACE I felt Hopkins didn't understand the script, which was (Glen and I thought) a wonderfully innocent story of neglect, that was never fully rendered on screen. But you never heard Akiva gripe, he took his arrows and lances without a public peep. But somebody finally asked the questions, and here were his responses as Sidney Falco heard them. Here ya go...
This is Sidney Falco with a report about a writers conference that transpired down in LA. Well, I'm really tired right now having survived a 16-hr barrage of lectures from Robert Towne, Akiva Goldsman, Gary Ross, Robin Swicord and Richard LaGrenavase. All of us desparate hacks in the audience had the chance to question these scribe-gods with questions ranging from the vapid (how do you get your ideas?) to the more insidious (why did _____ turn out so bad?)
One guy who I almost thought was a spy for AICN asked Akiva Goldsman the $64,000 question i.e. What is your take on Batman and Robin and the problems it had. The spy did it subtely in a way that didn't scream, "and by the way: Batman Returns/Batman & Robin sucked!" Well, Akiva actually admitted B&R was "a mess" and also confessed how McDonalds had actually played a part in dictating script decisions! Here's actual, living proof why these big-budget movies Warners makes suck so bad! It's not that they inherently are evil, its that 1) marketing IDIOTS at Warners and McDonalds care #1 about moving the merchanise! 2) Now, these motherfuckers dictating the story so they can sell DOLLS!!!!! Attention: the marketing dweebs are writers now!
Intestingly enough, Akiva went on to bash the test screening process where he decryed that "any good scenes in a movie are usually excised" due to "200 people in orange county". The problem, in his theory, is that good/interesting/best scenes in the movie usually split the audience. A portion of the audience will love this abberation while another portion will hate it. Those "interesting" scenes are inevitably mentioned in the comments box and the chickenshit studios think the audience HATES those cool scenes and breaks out the scissors. He claims all the cool stuff about Practical Magic was excised (haven't seen this so I can't comment).
Akiva was actually pretty cool -- a sort of Woody Allen type guy, different than I imagined. Very bitter, very alcoholic. Its clear he's wrestling with the take-the-money-and-run path he's taken versus the true artist trying to get out. "I wasn't the best writer in my class" he admitted, after Christopher Reeve's dad, a writer teacher, told him to quit writing. "But I didn't give up. And that's why I made it. My fellow students who were at the top, simply gave up after a while and I never did."
