Christopher Nolan, James Cameron, and YOUR original screenplay

It’s the most wonderful time of the year in LA….awards season!  Soon, Hollywood will rain trophies and praise on itself.  Nominations are rolling in, and the WGA announced their nominees last week.

As I was looking over the nominees in the narrative screenplay categories, I was surprised to see a lot of scripts with multiple writers, and sometimes multiple writers on top of multiple “story by” credits.  There were a few lone wolves, but of the 10 nominees (5 in each category) 7 had more than one writer.  This struck me as funny.  The joke is usually that the quality of a script goes down with each additional writer.  This stems from the reality that lots of writers often equals lots of drafts/development/people pulling in a bunch of directions so that what you finally see on screen is some terrible patchwork of fifty disparate visions.

So yeah, that was interesting, but what was even MORE interesting to me was WHICH films only had one writer.  I think there is another perception in Hollywood that the movies written by committee are the big blockbusters while the solo efforts are original low budget indie projects (like Nicole Holofcenar’s Please Give, one of the nominees).  Lots of baby writers have this fantasy of sitting alone in their ivory tower, writing movies like Please Give, and one day reaping the rewards (sounds good to me).  But then you see a nominee like Christopher Nolan's Inception, one of the biggest blockbusters of the year...an original script AND a solo writing job (oh, and like Holofcenar, Nolan directed, too).  Last year, it was the same, there was James Cameron's Avatar.  Oh, and both Inception and Avatar made a TON of money.  

So, what does that all mean?  Well, it means original screenplays ARE being made AND doing well…BIG name “visionary” directors are getting studios behind them to produce their original stuff.  But what does that REALLY mean for the rest of us?  Well, Hollywood always wants to make money.  With the financial success of movies based on popular books like Alice in Wonderland, Twilight, Harry Potter, and cartoon/comic book characters like Transformers and Iron Man, studios can be expected to continue to greenlight movie after movie based on existing properties.  And who can blame them?  Hey, I liked the first Pirates of the Caribbean and that was based on a theme park ride, should I really be appalled that there is going to be a Ouija board movie?

But then, some of these movies flop, like The A Team and Jonah Hex.  So, did I have a point?  Well, as a baby writer, it’s a tough road.  It’s hard to get ANYTHING sold/made let alone something original you wrote all by your lonesome.  Maybe the only way you’ll ever see your solo masterpiece is to ALSO become a visionary director?  Or, more realistically, maybe these original projects doing well for big directors (both critically AND financially) will spill over for the rest of us?  Maybe the success of these films will justify studios getting behind more original scripts (like the next Furry Vengeance…)?  I recently read an interesting interview with Scott Rudin where he talked about his current awards season movies getting wide releases from their studios rather than small releases under their studios' indie divisions (like they might have a few years ago).  And what do you know, these movies have done well critically AND financially.

One final note…have you all seen the trailer for Sucker Punch the latest from director Zach Snyder (300, Watchmen)?  Usually movies categorized as "epic action fantasy" are based on a book or graphic novel, but nope, this one is totally original (although it has more than one writer).   Interesting...


EDIT: So I wrote this whole post, and then I saw this interview with Christopher Nolan where he addresses studios and originality...ha.