Well folks, Father Geek here with a late report from our guys at Euro-AICN in Paris . They found this interesting little interview with script doctor Joss Whedon about his involvement in the X-MEN flick and some others including TITAN AE. He comes across pretty jaded, but then that's the nature of the screenwriting game. Alot of writers pour their heart and soul into projects only to see their efforts chopped up and rewritten over and over. They get paid, but their vision often goes unrealized, and to truely creative types that hurts more than any paycut. I've seen this happen time and time again over the years. Ol' Father Geek has stacks of scripts here at Geek Headquarters in Austin and I have as many as 5 different versions of some of them, so different that many times the 1st and last come across as totally different motion pictures, and not always for the better either. Well, here's Joss' take on the matter...
Hello everyone... Edgard from Euro AICN here... I just found this interview on Empire on-line with writer Joss Whedon. He talks about his involvment in X-MEN, TITAN AE and BUFFY... You can check directly at Empire's site or read here below...
Being a writer in Hollywood is a thankless task as Buffy creator Joss Whedon understands. In a recent interview with Empire Online, Whedon gave us the lowdown on why he was brought on board the X-Men Movie and what happened to his version of the script.
Q. How did you get involved in X-Men?
A. 'They wanted me to punch up the last fight. I said, 'I think you've got a greater problem than that'. I didn't think the script was any good, so I did a major overhaul of the script. And yeah, I was the only real X-Men fan on the project that I know of.
Q. So what happened?
A. 'The director threw it out.they went back to another version. A teeny bit of what I had written got in and I heard that more of it got in after the read-through. I don't know, but basically I was treated incredibly shabbily. Not by the director - in movies that's his prerogative. But I was just staggered by what I thought was a terrible decision - I actually got a copy of the script later and found out that they had thrown out the entire re-write I had done.'
Q. Why do writers get the raw end of the deal?
A.People are morons. I don't have any other explanation. I really don't..well you can have more than one writer, but yo can only have one star and only one director - by virtue of that the writer gets pissed on.'
Q. Apart from The X-Men do you have any other examples?
A. [Talking about a script that Whedon sold - Resurrected - about the brain of a scientist transplanted into the body of a serial killer leading to a schizophrenic fight between the two personalities] 'The day after the studio bought it they called me to tell me they'd attached Jean-Claude Van Damme to the role. I walked away from the project. Nothing against the muscles, but that's a part that Linda Hunt could play more believably.'
Q. You were involved in Titan AE as well.
A. 'I did a great thundering re-write on that, bigger than the one I did on X-Men and a lot more of that actually stayed in the film.'
Q. Will it be another Buffy movie?
A. 'We talk about it and I'm interested, but not while it's on the small screen. I don't want the show to be taking second place to some thing. [With the X-Files] I thought both the show and the movie suffered. I don't want to make episodes as placeholders until something better comes along. When we've done with the show it would be fun to make a movie, assuming everyone is amenable.'
Q. So after all that's happened, have you seen either X-Men or Titan?
A. I've seen Titan, I haven't seen anything of X-Men - no-one is actually contractually or legally allowed to say the words X-Men to me in the workplace anymore.'
Q. But are you going to see it?
A. 'I've gotta see, I'm so curious to know. Every director has his vision, but I would not have given Halle Berry that hair.'
