More importantly, several weeks ago, just before Christmas -- I had the good fortune to spend an evening conversing and tippling with the delightful Doug Taylor, Montreal based screenwriter of some renown. Doug told stories of his time working on a picture with Uwe Boll, the infamous Uwe Boll, Director and Critical Pugilist.
Doug's very smart and self-effacing, and of course to a bunch of writers, sitting around talking about the hash made of a script with low ambition to begin with is great sport. Nobody understands why things go bad, but they know there are words, and they love to blame the writer -- even when it's not the writer's fault. The only thing to do is belly up and drink deep from the cup of the suck, when it comes. You learn way more from the suck, anyway. God knows you end up with better stories.
At the time, Doug mused about the upcoming Razzie nominations, and speculated about what they might contain. See, apparently Mr. Boll's other movies have all received "worst screenplay" nominations. And Doug couldn't figure out whether it would be better or worse not to get one. To be passed over -- would that be the greater pain? And if you do get nominated, do you show up to collect the Razzie?
I'm delighted to report that Doug gets to work through those issues for real. Yesterday, he got the nod!
The nominees for Worst Screenplay 2008 are:
Disaster Movie
and
Meet The Spartans
Both Written By Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer
The Happening
Written By M. Night Shyamalan
The Hottie And The Nottie
Written By Heidi Ferrer
In The Name Of The King:
A Dungeon Siege Tale
Screenplay By Doug Taylor
The Love Guru
Written By Mike Myers & Graham Gordy
Wow. That is some esteeemed competition. And come on, Canada! TWO of the FIVE "worst" screenplays are Canadian! Yeah! YEAH! Let's celebrate! No sense handwringing and gnashing teeth about the nation's Oscar shutout! Get behind Doug! I think he can go all the way!
Good luck, Doug. Hold that head high and watch out for Uwe's stray right. A nation turns its lonely eyes to Uwe.
More details on the Razzies here.
8 comments:
That anti-Button site is officially the greatest thing ever, though he's seriously unfair to Turner and Hooch.
I think that every nomination should be supported with love.
Especially the razzies.
Because everyone knows that there's only a few movies even really checked out for the Oscars.
For the Razzies you have some *stiff* competition. Every. Single. Thing. Made.
what's sad to me is that I've seen more of the razzie nominated screenplays then the oscar ones. I'm not saying I liked them, just that I saw them.
In my defense it's because I live on an island made of 13th colony slave robots that has become unstuck in time.
So, we can identify Skinjobs by their taste in movies. Good to know.
Of COURSE you show up for the Razzies. Because what is cooler than showing up for your Razzie.
If Halle Berry and John Rogers can come up to collect for CATWOMAN, Doug can go down and mingle.
Or he could send Sacheen Littlefeather down to accept for him.
the happening sucked me in; I'd seen 300 and I like Airplane type movies; I didn't realize it was that team doing that was doing Meet the Spartans. I was in a different city and must have forgotten about the internet...Also there's this Bob Dylan tune I can't seem to get out my head...
With Boll on the team, he's perfectly placed to enjoy the event without any sense of personal embarrassment.
"And I'd like to thank my director, without whom..."
Don't worry. I don't know what it means as to my model number, but I can't shake loose from "Edmund Fitzgerald". I know it's a sign.
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