I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell

All I picture now is that propaganda from the movie Canadian Bacon where the maple syrup is oozing down from Canada onto the United States on a map of North America.

Also, to stay on topic, I never saw the movie and don't really intend to. It's not because I have something against Tucker or anything he's ever done. I just didn't think the movie looked like it was worth the $10 to see. I'll get it on Netflix later on. In the meantime, that $10 helped buy a bottle of scotch that was shared between my friends and I. A much better investment, if you ask me.

 

I can think of a few examples.

 

Thanks Chater. That sentiment makes me feel better. I respect any mod that doesn't act like the guy at the velvet rope dance club, just wanting to throw his weight around for no other reason than to feel important. I think setting the tone early is helpful. I think that negativity (and not just snarkiness) was the pervasive tone on RMMB. Hope it's less insulting and more open here. Tucker never learned the difference between being funny and being funny by cutting others down. The RMMB had a general feeling of hyper insecurity.

Back to the movie...

Didn't like it though I had low expectations. I've met Tucker exactly four times and I told him personally about some things I wish he would have done differently. Nils and Tucker learned screenwriting from Syd Field and Robert Mckee books (he admitted as much to me). I thought it showed. But had they actually read those books thoroughly utilized a point by point construct, he still would have created a better script.

I work professionally as a television writer. Tucker respects my opinion (ignores, but respects) and I've just found that there are people who can write for film and TV -- and millions of others who think it's easy. It isn't. The film would have been infinitely better with a pro writer and Tucker directing. Yes, directing. I'm dead serious.

 

I thought the film was funny. Not a classic, or a reinvention of the genre, but an amusing comedy with some very solid moments. Some of the one-liners had excellent delivery, and had me laughing quite hard. Not sure how much I liked Matt in the lead role, though; Bradford and Stults were both appropriately cast, but to me, Czuchry seemed like too much of an over-smiling, baby-faced dork saying lines that were completely foreign to him.

Also, there are so, so many truly GREAT films, in this year alone, that failed or did average at the box office (Moon, The Hurt Locker, and ironically, a brilliant comedy, Crank 2), I'm curious why Tucker was so convinced it could overcome all its natural disadvantages.

 

Ok I'll bite - care to expand on that a bit? From my understanding of directing A LOT of it is understanding the technical aspects of film making. This is Tucker's weakest area. So why do you think it would be have been better with him as director?

 

In the world of TV, of which I'm most familiar, we let actors direct all the time. It happens at least twice a season. There are lots and lots of TV and film directors that come from acting backgrounds. These people almost NEVER have even the slightest idea of how a dolly works or the number of shots required to get coverage of a scene. It's not a coincidence that some of the world's best directors are not former DP's and other techies. However, no amount of good directing will turn a piece of crap script into gold. Sure, a bad director can make a good script mediocre, but it's rare if you surround yourself with people who know what they are doing.

Bottom line, we handle these types of directors with kid gloves. As long as there's a solid line producer and ADs making sure that the script is followed, there is very little left to the director to mess up. Especially if you have solid actors.

 

You're from Louisiana. You're basically French Canadian already.

 

Since we'll probably have to wait awhile to get the inside scoop on what really went on with the movie pre- and post-production, it might be more productive to not discuss why IHTSBIH failed.

But instead why Paranormal Activity blew the fuck up.

Any insights or informed speculation about how that marketing approach came to be would be incredibly interesting. When Biscuits first showed up and the whole Black Swan debate got kicked off back in July or so I was convinced that one was already waiting out there:

As with the market crashes Black Swans are most often used to describe, it's not that they're odd mutations - they're inevitable. Predicting exactly when they'll happen involves chance, but their occurrence is written into the system. If someone had just made the effort to look in the right place they'd have seen that Black Swans were there all along, waiting to be found. Simple honking black swans aren't a function of chance or probability, but of someone having the nuts to get on a motherfucking boat and go look where other people haven't.

Hollywood's bought into a model that has worked, yielded returns, and has come to seem like the truth because it's been reliable. But it's a model that's cracking, movies are falling off their opening weekend grosses faster than before, the old formulas aren't holding up. That's not a function of chance, it's a reflection of the fact that the way people communicate has fundamentally changed and Hollywood's model hasn't at all.

If you buy into the literal story of Black Swans, not that they're "unlikely" really but are simply paddling happily along somewhere the established system doesn't think is worth exploring, this movie's success won't be all that surprising. It's inevitable - the black swans were always there, someone just had to man up and look for them.

... just turns out it was Paranormal Activity and not IHTSBIH that had the Black Swan in its scope. Why IHTSBIH failed is inevitably going to involve a lot of subjective impressions and individual motivations that really aren't don't present grounds for argument - but getting at why Paranormal Activity has done so well and how their approach was thought up could be a lot more interesting and productive.

(If you're unfamiliar with the movie, here's the NY Times review... doesn't seem too hard to imagine plugging in a few different adjectives about the movie and the viewing experience and using it to describe what could've been. And here's some more information about the movie's history and promotion.)

 

Since you said you're a professional writer, I'm curious what you didn't like about the story.

I mean you can argue that there were a lot of things wrong with the movie, but I don't think the story is one of its weaknesses. As I saw it, compared to most other movies, ESPECIALLY comedies, it had a (relatively) strong causal chain (why the bouncy castle was so important to Dan could have been shown more, considering it was a key to the resolution), plenty of conflict, and the characters consistently acted from their own motivations.

I'm not trying to call you out or anything, I'm genuinely curious what I might have missed that would be more obvious from your perspective.

 

Obviously I have no way to prove this, but I would guess a major difference between IHTSBIH and Paranormal was the negative stigma attached to IHTSBIH that wasn't there with Paranormal.

Paranormal had great reviews across the board. IHTSBIH had both fantastic and terrible reviews.

While most people will think for themselves and judge the art on its own merits if the cost of seeing the art is low, if you have to pay money and take time to see it, and your only knowledge of the movie is from the cursory search you did on RT or one of the negative/mediocre reviews read in a major paper, well... I can see why one would wait to pirate it or just wait until it came out on DVD.

I'd guess that's one of the reasons Tucker said he would have liked to have done a day and date release -- if you could go somewhere on the internet to see the movie, in part or in full, for free, it would be easier to say "watch it and judge for yourself", which he just couldn't do here. So people waited. Why not?

 

Not knowing what the actual numbers are I can't be certain, but it seems to me like a "Blair Witch" scenario. Sure, the movie cost almost nothing to make, but once a big distributor got on board, that P & A budget went through the roof (I think $25 mil for Blair Witch) and allowed it to be heavily advertised. Marketing for IHTSBIH was what, 5 mil or so? makes a big difference.

 

I finally saw the movie this afternoon. I thought it was probably my last chance to see it in the theatre so I took a long lunch and caught a $5 matinee. I thought the movie was worth about what I paid for it.

I am way over the demographic that the movie was aimed at so that might be why most of the jokes fell flat for me. The jokes that did work for me were some of the interplay of the three main characters. For example Dan making the calls from jail, failing to connect with his friends and the remarks he makes to the cellmates.

I think it would have been interesting if the script could have had a third person punch up the script. Lastly I thought the editing of the movie was not done very well.

 

Well, when I wrote my short critique of the movie, I wasn't necessarily referring to the "story," as you put it. I was talking about everything. Quick screenwriting definitions: story is everything that happens to the characters -- things you see and things you don't see, beginning before the film and ending after the film. Plot is what you actually see in the film.

When this script was constructed it was built on plot points and big sequences ending with the speech at the wedding. Everything else was constructed to build tension, create conflict and get from point A to point C. When you see a super formulaic movie, the first scenes will introduce tone and main characters (and their habits) You will notice the first major plot point comes almost always around the 12 minute mark or before. Almost never does this point come after 15 minutes. Next big plot point comes right before and drives the second act. So about 1/3 through the film. This conflict drives the second act. The biggest indication of a badly written, formulaic movie is when the 1st third is interesting/funny and then the rest is sucky. The third act is home plate. How to you sustain conflict and bring it home to its resolution.

I'm painting broad strokes here because I didn't like the characters, a lot of the dialogue, or the story/plot. Obviously a lot of the story/plot couldn't be helped since this film was based on "real life." Well, real life is mostly inconsequential to good screenwriting. And since the vast majority of this stuff is invented, he would have been better off inventing the rest.

This script feels contrived on almost every level and the final movie reflects that. One of the biggest mistakes that amateur writers make is they have a basic plotline and they try so hard to fill every single space with some funny joke. Tucker will say that this way it's layered and you can watch it many times to see what you missed. This is just bad writing. People rewatch great movies because of interesting scenes and interesting characters, not to hear a jokey line they won't laugh at even the second time they watch it. Did any of you who saw the trailer also laugh at the Magic Johnson line? Of course not.

Consider Office Space (since Tucker likes to use this movie as an example of great, rewatchable comedy -- and I agree). Think about why you can watch this movie over and over. Swingers is similar. It has little to do with "jokes".

Sorry if this answer is disjointed. Anyway, i'm happy to talk more about this if anyone's interested in screenwriting 101. Otherwise I'll just leave it be.

 

The reason Paranormal Activity blew up (and IHTSBIH didn't) is not because of P & A. Tucker will inevitably use this excuse. Paranormal is exactly the type of film that people who run out to the theaters run out to the theaters to see. Low budget, interesting, sci-fi/ghost/vampire/zombie-related. Film nerds eat this shit like candy. Conversely, the Beer in Hell crowd is not the main market for movies. Yes, the age range is there but diehard Tucker fanboys are not the kinds of people that flock to movies wholeheartedly -- especially during college football season or prime beer guzzling nights (friday and saturday). Not to mention the fact that Tucker's actual fanbase is relatively small.

Here's the thing that I wish some of you people would understand -- William Goldman (famous screenwriter/author) has said it and it's been quoted thousands of times: [in Hollywood] "nobody knows anything."

So when Tucker was blabbering about black swans and being able to make certain predictions based on certain known (and unknown) quantities, he was talking out his ass.

It's a 100 year old industry. Actually 113 years old. Nobody knows anything. Certainly not Tucker, not Steven Spielberg (who helped release Paranormal) or anyone else with dozens of years of experience. Paranormal could have tanked as well. But it had a couple great things going for it -- first, it was good, it appealed to a huge, movie going audience, and people talked about it in droves.

Say it with me boys and girls "NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING."

 

And I've heard it thousands of times and read it a few dozen more during the course of reading his books.

Well, I did preface my last post with "Not knowing..." That's got to count for something, right?

Someone asked for a theory and I gave one. That's about it. I haven't even seen the damn movie, and probably won't until it comes out on dvd because the wife and I rarely go to the theater. Plus I have a morbid curiosity about the marketing costs of Paranormal Activity and thought someone might know about it and chime in.

 

And by the way, just an interesting tidbit about Paranormal Activity if you didn't already know -- it was filmed like 2 or 3 years ago, sat on a shelf waiting for either small distribution, straight to video, or a complete remake. They compromised and had the director shoot a new ending and released it as it was.

So again, even though Spielberg and a big studio was behind it, nobody knew if it would be successful. This could have easily gone straight to netflix.

[In Hollywood], "nobody knows anything"