Ozymandias just filed this "HOT" report with Father Geek that looks into what Dean Devlin, and Anthony Minghella have coming up next, and he throws in a little on the legendary producer Saul Zaentz for good measure...
Hey FG (and Harry in Prague - lucky sod!)
For you today - two reports. The first from one of our up and coming spies in the Irish movie biz. As Lyssa will explain she was at a masterclass here in Dublin with exec producer of LOTR Saul Zaentz (hoping for some juice) - she ended up disappointed but did get a big tidbit on the new Anthony Minghella flick and the second also maks the debut of a friend of mine in the Irish media who only wishes to be referred to as Mark Hunter - he's got some stuff on Dean Devlin's directoral debut!
First off Lyssa:
For you today - two reports. The first from one of our up and coming spies in the Irish movie biz. As Lyssa will explain she was at a masterclass here in Dublin with exec producer of LOTR Saul Zaentz (hoping for some juice) - she ended up disappointed but did get a big tidbit on the new Anthony Minghella flick and the second also maks the debut of a friend of mine in the Irish media who only wishes to be referred to as Mark Hunter - he's got some stuff on Dean Devlin's directoral debut!
First off Lyssa:
I had the pleasure of getting a place on a Screen Training Ireland Masterclass with Saul Zaentz, Oscar-winning independent producer of such great films as 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest', 'Amadeus' and 'The English Patient'. It was a genuinely inspiring experience - he has succeeded as an independent producer of high quality films that he really loves and believes in. He was a really warm, unassuming and endearing man, who looks incredibly like Santa Claus and yet he has told some of the biggest studios in Hollywood where to get off!
As you all know he also produced the 1970's animated version of 'Lord of the Rings' and holds the rights to the books. He is Executive Producer of the current films, so I was desperately hoping to get some titbits of information from him (not to mention a job)! But I'm sorry to say I didn't manage to find out anything new or startling. Unfortunately Saul made it clear that he has nothing to do with the production itself, and although he has seen some new footage recently, which he said was 'extremely impressive', he would not describe it. However, what he did say has made me even more confident that Peter Jackson is the right man for such a mammoth task. He spoke very warmly about Peter Jackson and his wife, who are apparently a brilliant team. He did speak of the original negotiations, firstly with Miramax who as we know wanted to condense the books into one two-hour film, and made a point of how Jackson's tenacity and passion for 'doing it right' was what kept the project going. He is way happier that it's now with New Line (after 'The English Patient', he clearly doesn't have the warmest of feelings towards Harvey and Bob Weinstein!) Saul was really unhappy with the 1978 Ralph Bakshi animated version of LOTR, and said that he hung on to the rights to the books because he knew that someday there would be a chance to do them justice. He has faith in Peter Jackson's ability to pull this off!
I did manage to find out more about the Anthony Minghella/Seven Deadly Sins project however. It is definitely going ahead. Apparently Minghella was staying at Saul's house during the preparation for 'The English Patient', and asked him to take a look at another script he was working on, which was in fact the very first thing he'd ever written. This was the Seven Deadly Sins script mentioned on AICN last year. Saul said that in the script the Seven Sins were great, but the human relationships didn't ring true, and that he told Minghella this. Minghella actually agreed; he thought he had fallen victim to bad advice to make the story 'more accessible' (which Saul translated as 'make it more commercial') but thought there was a really good idea in there. Saul agreed, and they eventually came to the decision to hand it over to another writer. They chose Marshall Brickman, whose work includes the Woody Allen films 'Annie Hall', 'Manhattan' and more recently 'Manhattan Murder Mystery'. He also wrote 'For the Boys' and the US remake of 'Intersection'. The director will be.Stanley Donen! This could be really interesting. How far they are from actually shooting he didn't say. He did mention that he's just back from Prague where he was visiting a digital effects house to see their work but he didn't mention a name.
Saul had some great anecdotes about Hollywood, and some of the people he's worked with, like Jack Nicholson, Milos Forman, Juliette Binoche, and less affectionate mentions of studio and company heads. But I never felt that he was name-dropping or being pretentious in any way. He strongly believes that good films are the result of collaboration, not just one person's vision. He thinks it's getting harder to make good independent movies now. We watched clips from 'One Flew.' 'Amadeus', 'Unbearable Lightness of Being' and 'English Patient'. The audience of independent and emerging producers mainly asked questions about the studios and distributors and the answers were not encouraging! He has always managed to retain final cut on films, even though that often means battling with the studio. Saul summed up the current Hollywood studio attitude by outlining the four questions any studio asks when approached with a project:
1. Who's attached to it?
2. What's the budget?
3. Who's directing it?
4. Do you have a script?
He said that it's not the questions that are the problem; it's the order they ask them in. It should be 4, 3, 1, 2! He's passionate about great scripts, as shown by his work, and he finished by saying that " all you can hope for in this industry is to make the best picture you can and break even". The whole thing was great; funny, warm, intelligent words of wisdom from a true survivor.
Hope you can use some of this!
Lyssa
And Mr. Mark Hunter gives his two cents:
Hey Oz, talked to Patriot producer Dean Devlin at an interview the other day and he gave up something on his upcoming directoral debut. It's called "Cellular", is written by Larry Cohen and is the story of a guy who gets a distress call on his mobile phone from a woman who's been kidnapped and he only has until the battery runs out on his phone to find her or she'll be killed. He sees it as a throwback to the Hitchcockian style of an ordinary man thrown into an extraordinary situation but made with the frenetic pace of a movie like Speed. He does have people in mind but wouldn't talk, saying he'll be making announcements soon. I know what you're thinking - this sounds an awful lot like Phone Booth, the flick Cohen's written for Joel Schumaker, but trust me on this one as it comes straight from the horses mouth...
see you around,
Mark H.
