Word: scripting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...cynicism that says, 'We don't like this, but the idiots out there will.' " Says Michael Ovitz, head of the Creative Artists Agency: "In this business there are good analytical, practical and creative minds, but very few who combine all three. Barry can read a balance sheet, read a script, and forward-think...
Much the same thing happens with D-FENS, whose portrayal by Douglas is more finely tuned than Ebbe Roe Smith's script. When we meet him he is a sort of Everygeek -- flattop haircut, half horn-rims, a pocket protector fully armed with ball-points. You expect his anger to be ineffectual, especially since he starts out armed only with paranoid righteousness. But, as we all know, weaponry is easily acquired in the jungle of our cities, and by the time D- FENS nears home, he has acquired a bazooka. More important, he is no longer the nightmare's victim...
Left to this framework, Bookends would succeed as a darkly comic romp. However, the script's multiple flashbacks aim for a wholly different style of comedy. Rather than the absurdism of the central scenes, the flashbacks try to be witty and biting. They unfortunately fall far short of the rest of the play. More serious than the rest, they interrupt the over-the-top momentum of the hostage scenes...
...young Seattle woman who goes away for a beer and never comes home, is a remake of a 1988 Dutch thriller. The original movies had their admirers, but neither property could be sold as is to the U.S. mass audience. Some expert renovation was in order. Cunning Hollywood script doctors had to approach the European originals not as finished portraits but as sketches in need of coherence, heart, pizazz. It's what rewriters do: refashion a boutique item so it will jump off the shelves at the mall...
...insulting level of metaphor is sustained not only in the script but also in some of the direction. Men in large white spacesuits wander in and out during set changes, accompanied by billows of mechanical fog. These creatures are the exterminators sent by the government to ward off the plague of red spiders that is reported to be approaching the city. Later, a large red spider is lit and throbbing above carnival dancers in a comical dance scene that probably was meant to be erotic. These and other elaborate ploys, while potentially meaningful, are more likely to make you giggle...