A regular Monday post for those who need to need to know what scripts are the studios buying?

SCRIPT GIRL is a weekly update that tracks what projects are selling in Hollywood. The report comes in from a busty and lusty lass that doles out the required info so there's something here for everyone.

I got a kick from her profile:

"For the last 2 years I've been working as an assistant to an old school Hollywood producer. He's sort of a Jack Warner/Benito Mussolini hybrid, infamous for sleazy-ish behavior and general jackassery. Also, lucky for me, he hates "those f***ing internets!" Not only am I woefully underpaid, but he also demands that I compile daily script sales info and read it to him as if he were a dimwitted child. Now I've decided to grab hold of the affirmative and use my "job skill" to make the world a better place for my fellow screenwriters while simultaneously making online mega-stars of my desk and office wall. Please aggressively disseminate my reports to that end. ;)

Thanks! xoxoScriptGirl"

Hey... I think I know that guy...

Check out the site for more or come back each Monday when I'll post the latest from SG!

It must be Monday...

Bunnies Do Scream by *MisterIngo on deviantART

I've been there...

I was regaling Steven Corvini with stories about pitching film projects in the US - one of his favorites was one recently where I went through the entire pitch to a Studio Exec and his Development Exec. Through the entire pitch they didn't bat an eyelid - not a word, a sweat bead, a cough, fart, nothing! I thought it had gone down pretty badly and decided to put into the basket with other pitches that had gone tits up until the next day I get an email from the guys:

"Best pitch we've heard in years - can't wait to get the script".

So with that in mind read the article below because I can tell you from experience I've been in most of those pitches. Although I have to mention that I wished I'd seen the finger puppet one - that sounds fucking awesome!


The Cannes festival is the biggest film market in the world - but what makes a producer bite? Actor Peter Capaldi on the art of the pitch
Wednesday May 21 2008
The Guardian


Folks with no money and a bit of an idea have always gone to folks with a bit of money and no idea and said, How about it? It's what they call "pitching". Pitching as we know it arrived in the UK somewhere between Hugh Grant stuttering through Four Weddings and Ewan McGregor putting his head down a toilet in Trainspotting. The British film industry discovered financial success was indeed possible - as long as we all went American.

And for some, it worked. Ideas were streamlined. Enthusiasm was harnessed. The director Dylan Kidd recalls giving a vigorous pitch on a conference call; after 15 minutes he was breathless. He was flummoxed by the silence at the other end, until he discovered he'd pulled the phone from the wall and had been pitching to no one.

The American film executive exists in a corporate environment as opaque and deadly as the court of the Medicis. Despite impressive displays of intelligence and savvy, they remain bewildering people. One celebrated British playwright, when pitching an Oscar Wilde biopic, was asked if he could make Bosie a girl. The head of Fox recalls that, when pitching his updated version of Romeo and Juliet, director Baz Luhrmann did not reveal until the very last moment that he intended to retain the original Elizabethan dialogue. It was said to be the worst pitch in the history of the studio. Yet they bought it, and from it sprang one of their best films.

The British can be unpredictable, too. I once pitched three ideas to the head of Britain's top film production company. He was clearly bored by ideas one and two, but on idea three he came to life. "That is a great idea," he said. "A truly great idea." I have not heard from him since.

Sometimes the American execs will decamp to London. In a grand hotel, a lady exec sat Marie Antoinette-like through my pitch without ever moving her fingers from a bowl of paper-thin potato chips. But at least she had a democratic approach to talent: as I left I saw Tom Stoppard waiting outside, along with a bloke who sold gags to the Chuckle Brothers.

Some producers will give you stock reactions, the best of which is: "I'm intrigued." Brilliant. "How did it go?" "He was intrigued!" It satisfies everyone, bestowing upon the idea a uniqueness that is hard to test, and bathing the exec in a glow of benevolent intelligence. He didn't buy it, but it haunts him.

Some truths are self-evident.

You'd better make sure you're pitching to The Guy. I'm talking bananas here.

A second, third or fourth banana might often be the only way in, but nothing happens without the say-so of the top banana. So check your banana. What's his number? Is he in the bunch? Is he actually a banana?

My worst pitch experience was in the mid-90s. The smart British film-makers were working on Jane Austen adaptations, or heart-warming comedies about redundant coalmen who regain their dignity by dressing up as women to infiltrate Women's Institute allotments and grow marijuana to fund their sons' ballet training with hilarious and moving consequences.

I, however, with my usual sure touch, was working on an updated version of the Roger Corman sci-fi shocker, The Man With the X-Ray Eyes.

The studio was the real thing. Spence, Bogey, Astaire - they'd all walked through those gates. We were early, of course. Which became on time, which became waiting.

Eventually, the guy shows up. And he is The Guy. Banana-wise, he's in the big yellow penthouse at the top of the banana-shaped Chrysler building looking down on all the other bananas, far, far below, in the streets of Bananahattan.

At that time, all studio heads were called Larry, Barry, or sometimes Gary. Larry, Barry or Gary looks like Kris Kristofferson, as rendered in wax, in a not-too-shabby country music wax museum. Fresh from Sundance, he is still roughing it in a voluminous oat-coloured cardigan and faded but very expensive denim shirt and jeans.

I launch into my pitch. It's post-Desert Storm I. Sensitive jarhead (River Phoenix or Leonardo DiCaprio or maybe David Schwimmer in a breakthrough serious role) returns home to Walton Mountain, suffering from bizarre sight problems, which eventually mutate into full-blown x-ray vision. High points included the obligatory seeing-through-the-waitress's-uniform scene (the girl from Species, I thought, in Agent Provocateur), to watching an aneurism blow in someone's brain, and eventually seeing through skin, cars, walls, buildings, mountains, the planet and universe into a new and terrifying dimension. What's not to like? Larry, Barry or Gary's eyes reveal nothing. Unlike Kris Kristofferson's, they are dead.

Keep going. As in the original, this is a journey into madness. River/Leonardo/maybe David Schwimmer in a breakthrough serious role discovers that he and his platoon have been experimented on in Iraq by the US military, which is looking to create soldier/robot hybrids. X-ray vision apparatus has been implanted into the soldiers' brains. His only choice is to track down the doctor who did the experiments and see if they can be reversed.

Not a flicker of emotion from The Guy. Now I'm feeling faint, and where his eyes are I'm seeing a cheap Roger Corman effects shot: almond-shaped card pasted over them, on to which angry flames are superimposed. I am hit with a desire of frightening power and vividness: I want to go home. Not to the hotel, not to London and my family. I want to get on a plane and go home to Scotland. To my mother. Just to be loved unconditionally.

I then heard myself say: "And we know he's in trouble because the doctor is played by Chris Walken." The eyes remained impassive, although to me they were now displaying a raging volcanic inferno. And then Larry, Barry or Gary spoke. "Chris Walken?" he said. I nodded. Without a word he got up, turned around, and walked out of the room.

The rest is a blur. I remember only blistering sunshine, lots of alcohol, and finding myself face down on the pavement, where, this being Hollywood, I was still looking up at the stars.

Of course, our film was never made. Not for the reasons you might think: some months after the pitch, the great Tim Burton announced he was doing The Man With the X-Ray Eyes for a rival studio, so all bets were off. The funny thing was, in the interim, we got the gig: a script was commissioned and we were all paid handsomely. Apparently, Larry, Barry or Garry loved it.

The view from the boardroom

Peter Carlton, senior commissioning executive, Film Four One of the most interesting pitches I've seen was for Miranda July's film, Me and You and Everyone We Know. She used finger puppets to act out the story. It was bizarre, the sight of this diminutive woman down behind the table. What's the film I most regret turning down? Andrea Arnold's Red Road, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2006, is a film I wish we had taken on. She's a fantastic talent, but we didn't quite get the script.

Debra Hayward, president of UK production, Working Title Films The worst pitches, generally speaking, are those that go on too long. I've seen pitches go on for more than an hour, which is when the eyes start to glaze over. A pitch has to grab your attention: you need to let people know exactly what sort of world the film exists in - the characters, the main thrust of the plot. One of the best pitches I heard was from [director] Joe Wright, for Pride and Prejudice. It was incredible: you could instantly see in your mind's eye the movie he wanted to make.

Stephen Woolley, producer I was in a bar one night when we were working on Scandal. Two guys came up and said they had been at film school with our director, Michael Caton-Jones. They had this pitch for a film, which they said they could make for £250,000. It eventually cost £1m to make. It turned out these guys weren't even good friends of Michael's. They just took advantage of the situation. Hollywood makes so many bad movies because there are a lot of people out there with no talent but lots of persistence. You have to remember that 90% of people are there to say no. But the industry is also paranoid about missing stuff, so studios will see you.

Interviews by Ben Child

To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk Film site, go to http://film.guardian.co.uk

© Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited

YAHTZEE reviews a game that I've never heard of - best line; "...it would only be more awesome if had tits and was on fire."

BERTIE IS READY TO TAKE YOUR HARD EARNED CASH! WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!!!

CLICK ON THE PIC TO GO AND ORDER YOUR VERY OWN BERTIE TO GO KICK ALL TYPES OF ASS ALL OVER THE PLACE!!!

Bobby is in Cannes... it'll never be the same!

DATELINE: CANNES

Well it's 7am here in Cannes and an overcast morning. The normally endless sunlight that bakes Cannes from the promotional brochures is not shining. The weather has been a bit dodgy but overall a pleasant 20° and pretty sunny for part of each day and a tiny splattering of rain.

And that would pretty much symbolize the mood here at Cannes. Relatively steady but unimpressive sales for most people but some real bursts of success and promise. After that ham-handed segue that I'll attribute to the 3 bottles of Cristal and 750ml of scotch on the yacht with some other film makers late last night, let's really break this down into the Big Fours, including our own film PREY, and projects we're developing :

a: business
b: celeb sightings
c: new trends in film and media
d: oh, yeah.. the films


It's my first Cannes. (Technically my second...my parents brought me here in 1967 after my Bar Mitzvah for what was ostensibly a surprise poorly disguised as a holiday for them because they had gone through every baby sitter in the State but were nervous about leaving me alone in the house. They weren't worried about me...they were worried about their new house.)

The business end of the scale for most films has been slow. Nobody is paying big bucks for art house films and most genre films aren't finding the gold mine that was Cannes and the other markets but sales are steady as there is so much output potential for DVD and (legal) electronic media. From a personal experience, we've been absolutely blessed. PREY (starring Natalie Bassinghtwaighte, uber-hunk Christian Clark, and Yank phenom Jesse (yes my Dad is Don) Johnson is on the radar and getting a bit of heat because it's not 'low budget' it's not 'horror' (supernatural fantasy) and it's going for PG13 rating or equivalent worldwide for a much wider market. We've guessed correctly that the trends are for sexy and groovy and original and that people are moving away from heavy hitting horror and the numbers are showing we guessed right and were spot-on for what our targets are for this coming financial year. We will open in Australia in October. Our Sales Agents DAMAGE FILMS are new here but will be wunderkinds to watch. I could rant for another month on why we're achieving success and other Aussie films aren't but that's not what this is about. The other big business reality is that the cyclone in Burma last month blew about a billion Indians here to Cannes on it's way. The Indian market is huge, and Westernizing. Not that Bollywood rubbish that makes you think you've sat through two hours on the Telstra support line but big US and UK development deals with Indian money and Indian studios. We'll see how that pans out in about two years when either production prices level off or fall, or just don't happen.

Celebs are everywhere without question. At a lunch yesterday our Sales Agent's table was a matzoh ball's throw away from Harvey Weinstein, Clint Eastwood, Harrison "no I don't use botox" Ford and Calista Flockhart, and Morgan Freeman. I went to Monaco for a dinner with one of our key investors at his pre-Grand Prix launch. Dita von Teese stood next to use at a traffic crossing and smiled. I don't know if she was smiling at us or just using my sunglasses to see how damn good she looked in them but I'd like to think the former. Lets face it, it's about hot shiksas and successful yidden businessmen here and you don't mess with a winning formula. Director Stephan Elliot (PRISCILLA) is staying on the yacht generously lent to our sales agent for the festival spruiking his new film and we couldn't be in a better position (photos send separately). He's also been the ticket to the hottest parties on La Croisette including the unbelievable Bujois blowout Sunday night that finished with this writer staggering out at 6:20am to walk about 30 minutes uphill in the drizzle from the beach as there were zero taxis avail. I don't remember the walk but I remember channeling Moses' frustration about having to stroll for 40 years after his last big party.. Of course JIMMY'z is still the old school killer night club. Drinks are a 2nd mortgage in Toorak or Vaucluse but the scenery is worth it. I don't really care about global warming or 30 second showers to preserve water in Victoria when I can sit at a table full of supermodels and head back to a yacht to make phone calls about my film. Hell, I spent 30 minutes waiting to get into Embassy once in Double Bay and once I was inside it was being in the middle of the Palestinian peace talks. And look where it got Rene Rivkin?

NEW TRENDS The big package is back. Like the 80's. Matching a star or director with a packaging firm that can bring the money to the project and then attract the missing pieces (director, other star) Our big budget dream project DUST & GLORY (set during the REDEX races/trials of the 50's in Australia) has attracted Eric Bana's management to discussions (as legendary Aussie larrikan Gelignite Jack Murray) and we're trying to match a director (pref Aussie) with the money we've raised and get a US star to fit, and we've found two North American firms hot2trot with us so it's been like the opportunity to compress 6 months to a years's work in just six days here. That part is unbelievable! This IS where the films get made, so to speak, in many ways. And of course everything on the planet for viral marketing and digital media is here. Day / Date releasing has begun and will be more prevalent this next year with theatrical and DVD release almost simultaneous.

THE FILMS. Haven't had time to see even one yet. Too busy. We're going to some premieres/screenings tonight and tomorrow and Friday...now that business is slowing down a bit and the festival will gradually think out...but not much. Crowds at INDIAN JONES were like a mosh pit at Big Day Out... You could NOT move an inch and cars were driving through the crush and it was insane. Clint Eastwood's THE CHANGELING is astonishing according to a friend who saw it. I don't want to see all the art house blickitiwick which will end up at the Nova or Kino Dendy for a week later on, and I won't want to see them then either. And short films...forget it. I personally hate them. Can't be bothered. (NB: other than the one the French supermodel gave me in the banquette after 30 champagnes and made me promise I would watch before having coffee with her in Paris on the weekend. I can't break a promise to another film maker.. :)

OTHER BITS: The people are all wonderful here if you're wonderful. The French are lovely, the scenery is lovely, the food is great, and if you are polite and patient and smile then everyone else is polite and quick and will smile. But that's true everywhere. The only people who complain, complain everywhere they go. The chaotic restaurant service (or lack, thereof), the trains that don't go to the final destination, the post office that closes because of a one day strike, etc, are all classically French and May is a big month here, historically, for Labor disputes. I think if we brought Chris Corrigan here to straighten things out like he did on the wharves back home it would be an interesting scenario.. ;)

Well, time to head out for a cafe au lait and get the day started. Meetings on the yacht at noon, and all day, and friends and investors in from Melbourne and Sydney for dinner in the evening.

It may be a Labor government back where you are, but here we're working!

Shalom and au revoir...


Bobby Galinsky
YOUR MAN IN CANNES

Why didn't I think of this?!?

Lisa Nova comes up with the first truly great YOUTUBE product - BOOBS!
Check out this link to WIRED here that goes into the detail.

Government approves the pavilion budget

A long time in the coming but with the Federal Budget delivered last week it was finally confirmed that Government has committed to the Pavilion that we won the design tender with.

Since the budget (7 days ago) we've been slowly getting back up to full speed for the project. The time that we've spent in hiatus has been very useful as genuine thinking time as to how to approach the most unique canvas that I've ever had to work with for the main show for this pavilion.

Now that we know what we're doing there might even be more posts now that the starters gun is being loaded ready to fire!

Click here to check out the Minister's press release about the Pavilion allocation.

Nice Movie Poster Design

Dave White put me onto this movie coming out soon, I checked it out and while I dug the trailer it was the poster really caught my attention.

We've been getting into poster design lately (I'll posting this week why) and this one stood out to me as an absolute corker.

All about the typography.

Dave, Scotty and I were talking about typography on the way to lunch the other day (I know, we're all creative directors and designers what else are we going to talk about?) and we were lamenting in Australia it's becoming a dead art. Type design is the most powerful design tool any designer can have yet it's the most overlooked in Australian design.

This poster is a terrific example of how great type design can kick ass and stand out in a crowd of visual white noise. This would work just as well as white on black with no image in the background.

You can check out the trailer on Apple iTunes. Looks pretty interesting.

Hollow Point Leaves The RI Stable!

Film making ain't all shits and giggles, it's more than often (in fact, it's ALWAYS) a lot of sitting around waiting for someone to pony up what they've contracted to.

Unfortunately this can cause "issues".

An "issue" that has taken up most of last week has seen RI have to drop the film Hollow Point from our slate. Massive shame, I love the script and was totally committed to backing the writer/director to make a stand out film, but alas. Not to be.

This is often the case in this "business" it's not until you get to the pointy end that you find that part of the puzzle is either missing or not as represented. There's no cautionary tale here, it's how this shit happens all too often. It's not a movie until you see it on the screen - even when the monies start to roll it can go tits up.

You just got to keep hanging in there and plugging away.

And always, ALWAYS, have a slate of projects to move onto the next one!

GTA4 - The YATZEE REVIEW

Most incredible animated short I've EVER seen!

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo

AMAZING!!! MINDBLOWING!!! AWESOME!!!

CHECK OUT THE BLOG HERE - this guy is the real deal and clearly 'not for sale'! And here's a link to his video channel at Youtube.

Thanks to Andy for cluing me into this - it's inspired me (I'm not kidding).

I love this illustration from his blog entitled "Gaza Strip" - brilliant.

Heap of new WWR stuff from Ash's Blog

Lookin' fucking awesome! The art for WWR has me almost as excited as the BERTIE figure...

...almost!

Wasn't that "The Duke's" real name?

I Wish...

Indiana Jones and the False Teeth of Methuselah Update II!

Too fucking funny.

I've been pretty honest with my dismay that this film was being made - the film franchise ran out of steam at Last Crusade, so for once I'm going to put my money where my mouth is... in my back pocket. That's right, I'm boycotting this film as I don't need yet another fond memory of my childhood taken out the back and raped by a bunch of rich white guys while I PAY TO WATCH!!!

I do look forward to hearing you all think though come next week!

Enjoy!

I feel the need... the need for: SPEED! (RACER that is)

I was pretty "on the fence" about Speed Racer - which was a BIG step up from my total lack of interest when they announced the project and when the first teaser appeared.

I have to come clean, after watching the clip below I'm actually keen to check this puppy out. It just seems to have it's heart in the right place and honestly? I think most of us can sssoooooo relate to the young speed in the classroom!

Check it out for your good selves!

Feast your peepers on the first seven minutes of SPEED RACER!

IRON MAN? I Laugh at your B.O!

Well if this isn't a sign of the paradigm shift I don't know what is!

How Iron Man was trounced by a scruffy car thief
By DERRIK J. LANG – 1 hour ago
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Niko Bellic is richer than Tony Stark.

While vying for similar audiences at the same time, "Grand Theft Auto IV" bested "Iron Man" by about $300 million in their respective first weeks on the small and big screens. The highly anticipated video game about immigrant gangster Bellic drove away with over $500 million, while the movie about Marvel billionaire superhero Stark blasted off with over $200 million worldwide.

Each figure is a history-maker in its own right: The supercharged "GTA IV" launch topped last year's blockbuster "Halo 3" release, making it the most lucrative debut video games — and, by all accounts, entertainment in general. Meanwhile, "Iron Man" can claim the second-best non-sequel movie opening ever as a consolation prize.

Software publisher Take-Two Interactive bandied the behemoth sales figures on Wednesday, days after "Iron Man" vaunted an unexpectedly huge opening weekend box office. The eye-popping digits left many wondering how such a blockbuster could be so soundly trounced by a controverisal video game.

The simple answer: "GTA IV" costs more to buy.

"'GTA IV"s first-week performance represents the largest launch in the history of interactive entertainment, and we believe these retail sales levels surpass any movie or music launch to date," Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick said in an official statement on Wednesday.

Such comparisons aren't entirely fair. Bellic and Stark, for example, play by different rules. Video games are sold online and in stores, a distribution model more like CDs and DVDs than newly released films. However, such similarities end there, because DVDs don't usually involve completely original fare. And CDs typically only contain, well, music.

The reach is vastly different, too: "Iron Man" was released on over 7,000 movie screens while "GTA IV" was available for about 24 million Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles at launch, according to Wedbush Morgan video game analyst Michael Pachter. But to achieve its $100 million weekend milestone, "Iron Man" had to sell more than twice the number of tickets as "GTA IV" units were moved — about six million — in the first week.

Janco Parters video game analyst Mike Hickey originally suspected "GTA IV" could dampen the success of "Iron Man" since both properties were setting their targets on young adults and were being released at about the same time. That doesn't seem to have been the case.
What "GTA IV" did impact was the sale of consoles. Microsoft said Xbox 360 sales jumped 54 percent in the week following the game's launch, compared with the prior week. Sony didn't reveal similar specifics but said there has been a significant spike in PS3 sales.

The contradictions extend beyond distribution. The running time of "Iron Man" is two hours and six minutes. "GTA IV" isn't nearly that linear; the game's criminal missions — which players can stop and start anytime — can take 60 hours to complete, not counting hours of multiplayer matches or exploration of Liberty City, the highly detailed virtual urban locale where "GTA IV" takes place.

But undoubtedly, the most influential contrast is cost. The standard edition of "GTA IV" is $59.99, while a special edition goes for $89.99 and comes with a soundtrack, art book, duffel bag and safety deposit box. Either way, every time a copy of the game is rung up, what's added to the week's tally is significantly more than the $7 average ticket price to see a movie in the U.S.

Quantifying the game's lucrative launch is trickier against other mediums. The book "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" sold more than 10 million copies at launch. That's acutally four million more than Bellic, but the Hogwarts student's final adventure cost about half as much as Bellic's mature-rated exploits.

There's one group that Bellic, Stark and Potter all individually reign supreme over: 'Nsync.
The pop quintet's "No Strings Attached" holds the record for biggest first-week CD sales with 2.4 million copies when it was released in 2000, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That's far meeker than the first-week success of "Iron Man," "Deathly Hallows" and "GTA IV."

Maybe the Eastern European gangster, boozy billionaire and boy wizard should form a boy band.