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Battlefield Earth Screenwriter Accepts Razzie
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Post has a story about J.D. Shapiro, and his gracious acceptance of a Razzie award for writing Battlefield Earth. He first offers an apology to anyone who has seen it, then he offers a funny, outsider's perspective of dealing with Scientologists, and the subsequent mangling of his script for what was once allegedly referred to by John Travolta as 'The Schindler's List of Sci-Fi.'"
Clearly you haven't read the piece. He would have had to forfeit his fee to get his name off the movie. That's not something a writer can usually afford...
Part of the problem is that the production company ripped off the film's backers to the tune of $75 million.
Viewing the film (torture) will reveal numerous places where horrid shortcuts were taken with sets, special effects, unknown bad actors, etc.
The rest of the problem is that the movie covers the worse half of the book. The second half would have actually made a good space shoot em up, the first half is nothing but cave man wandering about. There is no noticeable Scientology proselyzation in either the book or the movie.
You didn't read the article either? It says he has a pen name for stuff he doesn't want attached to him but he couldn't use it because there was too much money involved. Not a situation I've heard of, but it might have just been the studio's way of saying no.
Hollywood is unionized, and the Writers are part of the Writer;s Guild. There Are Rules about credits given and how. For years producers and directors would credit themselves or their friends in a film when someone else did the work. The guild forced a change in that, but the flip side is that generally a writer MUST take credit for his work if it was a union project, which all the major studios would be. That actual rules for pseudonyms have changed over the years, but typically you can't just change it at will. Plus, Ellison mostly worked a while ago. Things could be different more recently.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
I think you misunderstand the point of Scientology, friend. The ONLY step is called "profit".
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive