Work

Last week was the first two days of my internship. They went fine.

My boss is a woman named Julia. She's stick-thin, blonde, Australian. Mouth like a sailor. In other words, she seems pretty awesome.

Work so far has consisted of reading scripts. On the first day, I read two scripts that the company is producing. The first, called The Extra Man, is done filming and is currently in post-production. It was written and directed by the pair behind American Splendor, and stars Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly, and some other people. On paper, at least, it's pretty damn funny, although I'm not sure how well it's going to transfer.

The second script has Jason Bateman attached to direct and star. They're trying to get other actors attached - apparently Amanda Seyfried has expressed interest, and I guess Bateman is talking to Charlize Theron. The script, called Too (which if it makes it to release with that title, someone should get fucking fired in my opinion), is a sub-Charlie Kaufman thing about a high-school teacher in a stagnant marriage switching lives with his lookalike doppelganger, a brilliant, Phillip Roth-esque writer. It's not terrible, just really mediocre - there's no moment that it doesn't do precisely what you would expect any movie with that premise to do, and every (obvious) theme is spelled out over and over again in line after line of dialogue. And it makes a mistake that I've seen before in produced scripts that bugs the hell out of me: if one of your characters is supposed to be a brilliant literary genius, but you aren't a literary genius, for God's sake don't write excerpts from the brilliant literary genius's work to quote in your screenplay. That isn't going to work. Thanks.

The other scripts I've read have been for the purpose of what's called "coverage," where I read it and tell my bosses whether I think the script and/or writer should be considered by the company. So far, the ones I've read for this have been scripts by writers applying for the job to adapt certain material that the company has the rights to (one is a graphic novel, the other an autobiography by a war photographer). The one by the guy applying to adapt the graphic novel was dreadful. I mean, just awful. Awful. The two I've read for the autobiography were much better, but still pretty unremarkable.

So I don't think I'm gonna be reading any future Oscar-winning scripts here. Still, who knows, I guess. If fucking Crash can win a screenplay Oscar, why can't a half-assed rehash of Ender's Game in which two lazy video-game nerds have to save the world from an alien invasion?