Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (20 page)

If the treatment is approved, the project is
green-lighted
. At this point the film is officially
in development
. But that’s no guarantee that it will get made. Snags in the process due to creative differences, budget or location disagreements, or scheduling conflicts with the director or lead actor can send the project into “development hell,” a condition from which many proposed movies never recover. (See page 71.) But if all goes well, the next steps are to put together a production department and finalize a workable shooting script.

In recent years, the number of people who get writing credits on a single movie has grown significantly. Why? Unless a movie is written and directed by the same person, the screenplay is at the mercy of many people: a producer (often under pressure by the studio) may want to add more action or more romance to make the film more marketable, a big-name actor may demand changes to his or her character, or the director may want to put his or her own stamp on the work. In those cases,
script doctors
are called in. Here are three movies that underwent major changes from conception to release.

CHARLIE’S ANGELS
(2000).
Based on the 1970s TV show, the screenplay reportedly went through 30 revisions and had 18 different writers. The movie didn’t even have an ending when filming began. One major change: star Drew Barrymore (who also served as a producer) decided that only the bad guys would use guns; the Angels would rely solely on their martial arts skills.

Did it work?
Yes and no.
Charlie’s Angels
was critically panned, but the combination of three well-known female leads and a familiar premise helped the film earn over $256 million worldwide, more than recouping its $93 million budget.

I, ROBOT
(2004).
In 1995 screenwriter Jeff Zintar wrote a
spec
script
called
Hardwired
about a robot who murders a man. Studio after studio optioned it and then dropped it. After spending years in development hell, the project almost died completely until 20th Century Fox obtained the rights to Isaac Asimov’s classic
I, Robot
short stories. The studio commissioned Zintar to rewrite his script adopting Asimov’s themes—but they
still
wouldn’t approve it because it was going to cost too much to make. When Will Smith became interested in the project, everything changed. Fox agreed to a bigger budget if
I, Robot
became a “Will Smith movie.” So Smith brought in his favorite screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman, to rewrite the script to match the star’s on-screen persona, changing it from a “talky mystery” into an action thriller.

Did it work?
Yes. Although
I, Robot
received only mediocre reviews, the combination of Will Smith + sci-fi blockbuster + summer release = a critic-proof movie. It made $345 million worldwide, more than twice its budget.

GROUNDHOG DAY
(1993).
Danny Rubin’s original screenplay about Phil Connors (Bill Murray), a bitter weatherman who finds himself living the same day over and over…and over…until he finally figures out what’s really important in life, was altered significantly by director Harold Ramis. Rubin’s version began with Phil already stuck in the time loop. Ramis changed it so that Phil enters the time loop
after
the film begins—and the audience has to figure it out along with him. And in Rubin’s script, one of Phil’s ex-girlfriends wanted to teach him a lesson so she placed a voodoo curse on him. Ramis left the cause unknown and also shortened the time Phil was stuck in the loop from thousands of years to what he estimates is “about ten years.” Ramis also put more emphasis on the love story.

Did it work?
Yes. Rubin was reportedly upset about the changes, but they paid off:
Groundhog Day
made $70 million domestically (it cost less than $15 million to make) and has been included on many “Top Comedies of All-time” lists.

The lesson: No screenplay is safe in the Hollywood system. Still, a working draft must be completed before the rest of the pieces can be added.

What are the rest of the pieces? Turn to Part II on page 232
.

Is being a professional journalist so competitive and fast-paced that writers sometimes make up stories? Here are some real-life journalism scandals
.

B
usted:
Stephen Glass, the
New Republic
Scoop:
In May 1998, the
New Republic
published “Hack Heaven,” Glass’s dramatic story of Ian Restil, a 15-year-old computer hacker. According to the story, Restil landed a job as a consultant with Jukt Micronics, a company whose databases he’d broken into and sabotaged. The article included an interview with Restil and a first-person account of a “hacking convention” in Maryland.
Forbes.com
technology reporter Adam Penenberg read the article and thought the details didn’t add up. Penenberg did some research and discovered that not only had there been no hacking conference, but Ian Restil and Jukt Micronics didn’t even exist. When called out by his superiors at the
New Republic
for making up a news article, Glass fabricated elaborate evidence to cover his tracks. He created phony Jukt voice-mail accounts, business cards, and a Web site. Then he gave his editor, Charles Lane, a Palo Alto, California, phone number for “George Sims,” a Jukt executive. Bad idea. Lane knew that Glass had a brother at Stanford (located in Palo Alto), realized it was a ruse and fired Glass. An internal review later determined that of the 41 stories Glass had written for the
New Republic
, 27 contained falsified material.
Aftermath:
In 2003 Glass decided to write fiction. His first novel:
The Fabulist
, the story of an ambitious reporter who gets caught making up stories. Today Glass works as a paralegal.

Busted:
Janet Cooke, the
Washington Post

Scoop:
In September 1980, the
Post
ran “Jimmy’s World,” Cooke’s harrowing account of violence, poverty, and the heroin trade in an unnamed Washington, D.C., ghetto. At the center of the piece was “Jimmy,” an eight-year-old third-generation heroin addict whose ambition was to be a drug dealer when he grew up. The story sickened and saddened readers and city officials, who wanted Cooke to tell them where the boy lived so he could be helped. Cooke refused, claiming that her sources were drug dealers and if
she revealed them, they’d kill her. The city launched a massive search for Jimmy, but couldn’t find him, fueling rumors about whether Jimmy was even real. The
Post
addressed—and denied—the rumors in print. Cooke won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for “Jimmy’s World,” but the rumors continued, so two days after the Pulitzer win,
Post
editors demanded that Cooke provide evidence of Jimmy’s existence. She couldn’t—she had made the whole thing up. Jimmy, the eight-year-old heroin addict, didn’t exist.

Aftermath:
Cooke returned her Pulitzer and became a store clerk in Michigan. Her explanation: The
Post
was a high-stress environment and she was under a lot of pressure from her editors to produce a major story. During an interview with drug dealers and homeless people, she’d heard about a child heroin addict. She couldn’t locate him, so she made him up. In 1996 Cooke sold the movie rights to her story for $1.5 million. (The movie was never made.)

Busted:
Jack Kelley,
USA Today

Scoop:
Kelley had been a foreign correspondent for
USA Today
since 1991, filing reports from war zones around the world. In 2003 executive editor Brian Gallagher received an anonymous tip that Kelley had “embellished” a story filed from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1999. Gallagher assigned staffer Mark Memmott to investigate. Kelley’s main source for the article was “army documents.” He told Memmott that he saw the documents in a room with a single translator present, but then changed the story, saying he’d gotten them in an interview with a human rights activist in which two translators were present. The activist had no recollection of Kelley; the first translator denied the participation of a second translator. And then, suddenly, Kelley found the second translator. Memmott became suspicious when her account matched Kelley’s word for word, and she called from Texas, not from eastern Europe. It turned out that the “translator” was actually an old friend of Kelley’s. In 2003
USA Today
editors told Kelley they knew about the hoax. Kelley confessed and, a few months later, resigned.

Aftermath:
Another internal investigation revealed that Kelley had made up at least part of more than 20 stories. He’d never really found the diaries of dead Iraqi soldiers, witnessed an attack on Palestinians in Israel, trekked through the mountains with a Kosovar rebellion group, or interviewed Elian Gonzales’s father in Cuba.

Once again, the BRI asks—and answers—the question: Where does all this stuff come from
?

W
ATERBEDS
The waterbed has actually been developed—unsuccessfully—numerous times. The first was more than 3,000 years ago, when Persians filled goat skins with water, sealed them with tar, and left them out in the sun to warm the water. The next time was in 1832, when Scottish doctor Neil Arnott filled a rubber-coated, mattress-sized piece of canvas with water, hoping to prevent bedsores. It wasn’t a big seller (even in hospitals), nor was it when English doctor James Paget copied the design in 1873. The main reasons: The beds leaked, and they were cold. But in 1926, scientists at B.F. Goodrich came up with a synthetic material that could make waterbeds both leakproof and warm: vinyl. Sold via mail order, they were, once again, a commercial disappointment. Then in 1968, a San Francisco State University student named Charles Hall was trying to create an ultra-soft piece of furniture. After rejecting a gigantic vinyl bag filled with Jell-O, he tried filling it with water (he’d never heard of Arnott, Paget, or Persian goatskin-and-tar beds). Hall called his creation the Pleasure Pit and patented it. Waterbeds finally caught on, at least with Bay Area hippies. They became a national fad in the early 1980s.

In January 1888, thirty-three men (including world-renowned explorers, military officers, academics, bankers, and mapmakers) met at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C., to organize a group whose mission was to “increase geographical knowledge.” Bylaws were written up, and two weeks later the National Geographic Society was officially established. As a first step toward fulfilling their mission, the Society decided to publish a monthly journal, beginning with the first issue of
National Geographic Magazine
in October 1888. It was a dry, academic journal in its early days, but still attracted readers thanks to photographs from exotic places as well as maps and archaeology reports. It didn’t become the magazine it is
today until Alexander Graham Bell was named president of the Society in 1897. Among Bell’s innovations: He had the magazine printed on thick paper so it felt more like a book, devised the yellow-trimmed photographic cover, and solicited rollicking firsthand accounts from explorers like Robert Peary and Ernest Shackleton. He also realized that the magazine’s strength was showcasing photos from around the world. By 1908 photos took up half of the magazine, and even more than that after 1910 when
National Geographic
ran color images for the first time. By 1950 it was one of the top 10 most-read magazines in the world. It’s now published in 32 languages, and reaches more than 50 million readers every month.

Before there was tartar sauce, there was
steak tartare
, a French dish that consists of chopped and seasoned raw beef topped with onions and capers. Whoever invented it (that person is lost to history) named it after the Tatars, a nomadic Turkic group who lived in Russia in the medieval era and, according to legend, were known for eating raw meat.
Sauce de tartare
was created in France the 18th century to accompany the entree. It consisted of mayonnaise, pickles, capers, onions, and tarragon. The thick, goopy sauce made its way to England in the late 19th century, where
tartare
was anglicized to
tartar
and was served alongside a distinctively English dish: fried fish.

In the early 1980s, NASA developed original coatings to protect their cameras and telescopes from the sun’s heat and radiation while in space. Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories (at California Institute of Technology) thought the concept might have commercial applications, so they leased the technology from NASA. They adapted the basic scientific principles of the coatings to create a product: a welding mask that blocked more of the harmful, blinding UV light given off in welding than conventional masks did. When NASA heard about it, they made their own improvements, making the coatings lighter and more flexible. In turn, JPL took that technology and created sunglasses that block UV rays. Most famous radiation-blocking sunglasses: Blue Blockers, sold via TV infomercials.