Inneresting 32
issue 32
December 18, 2020
The movies we almost got to see
For every movie that gets released, countless others never make it to the screen.
Just like how the opening of Anna Karenina suggests “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” every Almost Was Film has its own particular reasons for what we never got to see.
Unrealized Dreams and Kindling for Future Fires
The Tower of Terror ride at Disneyland closed in 2016, but before that John was developing a movie for Disney based on it. He never wrote the screenplay, but you can see the artwork he used for the pitch.
The story of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s attempt to adapt Dune is so infamous, there’s a movie about it. You can get an overview of the pre-production work that happened, how it fell apart, and the other movies that rose from its ashes via the BBC.
IndieWire also has some short write-ups on 25 other films that reached various states of almost happening, from Clair Noto’s The Tourist to David Cronenberg’s Frankenstein.
Roads Not Taken: Rewrites and Re-shoots
Mental Floss has a list of alternate endings to 28 famous movies, including a link to this video clip of Jon Cryer telling Diablo Cody the story of the re-shoot that changed the ending of Pretty in Pink.
For some deeper dives:
Take a look at this thorough analysis of two drafts of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade(including links to the complete screenplays). Kottke.org recently posted a collection of links about Tom Stoppard’s draft that went in front of cameras, and some additional material about his biography.
As an example of a page one rewrite, listen to Stephen Scarlet and Josh Miller’s podcast about Captain Starshine, the script that was transformed into Galaxy Quest.
The site Being Charlie Kaufman maintains a collection of early drafts of several of the writer’s scripts, including the drastically different 1st draft of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Highland How-To: Dialogue That Looks Like Dialogue
The default for a new Highland 2 document is to treat your writing like a Plain Text file while you’re writing, but what happens when you want to see a preview of how your dialogue looks when squeezed into screenplay margins?
You activate Live Margins. Either press the shortcut ⌘ Command + L or go up to the menu bar and select View > Live Margins.
Now you’ll see how your dialogue lines up, line-by-line, at a glance while you’re writing it.
For more information on Highland 2, check out our Knowledge Base.
Other Cool Things
App developer Loren Brichter bought the domain name chromeisbad.com to warn people about how Google’s Chrome browser is likely slowing down their computers (and what to do about it).
Photographer and writer John Carey posted a short exercise in listening to photographs on his blog fiftyfootshadows.
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
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