Thanks Jami. That's my point.
Again Deux, we're actually in agreement. In all these cases, writers slowly worked their way up the ladder to the point that any idea they present has some credibility. Alan Ball had no feature credits and felt that American Beauty was not at all commercial but his agent told him to write it because he seemed passionate about it. The agent then marketed if very shewdly, giving Jenks and Cohen a very short window to buy it before it went out wide. (Not sure which of them was allegedly having a mid-life crisis)
re: the Matrix, it was still a hard sell. The W. bros has done a very small movie (Bound) which is hardly the kind of thing that leads studio to fork over major cash. They did a 300 page storyboard to try to explain the concept and many execs just didn't get it.
re: Malkovich, Kaufman did take the risk and it paid off. Had he done a "concept film" would it have had an easier time getting made? Who knows.
The point I (and I think Tao) are trying to make is that the very concept of a great concept is somewhat of a myth. Good writing gets you noticed. People seem to be able to agree on what's good writing. It's much harder to get agreement on what is a commercial concept.
Again Deux, we're actually in agreement. In all these cases, writers slowly worked their way up the ladder to the point that any idea they present has some credibility. Alan Ball had no feature credits and felt that American Beauty was not at all commercial but his agent told him to write it because he seemed passionate about it. The agent then marketed if very shewdly, giving Jenks and Cohen a very short window to buy it before it went out wide. (Not sure which of them was allegedly having a mid-life crisis)
re: the Matrix, it was still a hard sell. The W. bros has done a very small movie (Bound) which is hardly the kind of thing that leads studio to fork over major cash. They did a 300 page storyboard to try to explain the concept and many execs just didn't get it.
re: Malkovich, Kaufman did take the risk and it paid off. Had he done a "concept film" would it have had an easier time getting made? Who knows.
The point I (and I think Tao) are trying to make is that the very concept of a great concept is somewhat of a myth. Good writing gets you noticed. People seem to be able to agree on what's good writing. It's much harder to get agreement on what is a commercial concept.
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