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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.'"
Although, John Travolta is never the right guy to be in a scifi film.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
If you replace Schindler's List with Killer Tomatoes and SciFi with Propaganda Movies, we can talk.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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...
Worst PICTURE of the Decade - Battlefield Earth accepted by J.D. Shapiro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKlEE18R5d8
...
As far as I know, I am the only non-Scientologist to ever be on their cruise ship, the Freewind. I was a bit of an oddity, walking around in a robe, sandals, smoking Cuban cigars and drinking fine scotch (Scientologists are not allowed to drink while taking courses). I also got one of the best massages ever. My friends asked if I got a "happy ending." I said, "Yes, I got off the ship."
Could anyone have done it better? I've not actually read the novel, but apparently it's pretty good. I actually enjoyed the film - it's at that level of so bad it's hilariously funny, not so bad it's unwatchable. I bought the DVD completely at random, knowing nothing about the story, for £2 in a charity shop a few years back and I've watched it a couple of times. It's great with a few friends and a few beers, although I probably wouldn't recommend watching it sober.
The article makes me want to read the original script. I wonder if it's online anywhere. For those who haven't seen the film, I suggest that you read the abridged script.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If we believe his story, then the original screenplay was nothing at all like the finished product. The Scientologists asked him to totally rewrite it, he refused, they fired him and got someone else to rewrite it. So at that point it became a choice between taking his name off the credits or getting paid. I'm honestly not sure what I would have done in that situation.
Now, looking back at the movie with fresh eyes, I can't help but be strangely proud of it. Because out of all the sucky movies, mine is the suckiest.
In the end, did Scientology get me laid? What do you think? No way do you get any action by boldly going up to a woman and proclaiming, "I wrote Battlefield Earth!" If anything, I'm trying to figure out a way to bottle it and use it as birth control. I'll make a mint!
Read the whole interview. It's totally worth it. A mans odyssey while trying to get laid at all costs.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
If we believe his story, then the original screenplay was nothing at all like the finished product. The Scientologists asked him to totally rewrite it, he refused, they fired him and got someone else to rewrite it. So at that point it became a choice between taking his name off the credits or getting paid. I'm honestly not sure what I would have done in that situation.
Are you kidding man? He got to TAKE money AWAY from Scientology!!! How many get that opportunity? Falling on his sword was a no brainer.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This time, TFA really, really, is a good read!!!
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.
Getting blowjobs from Barbarella does sound like my ideal work week.
T,FTFY
Because it was the Razzie for the worst movie of the decade, you kinda have to wait for the decade to be over before you do that.
The novel isn't good. It is however a page turner. Hubbard was a good pulp writer, and Battlefield Earth is pretty much a pulp cliffhanger series, 1000 pages long. Lots of short chapters, in which our intrepid hero is always about to be killed or captured. The story never makes a lot of sense, but its fun watching it go along. It would make a great half hour summer filler series. Each chapter feels about like The Venture Brothers level of dramatization. As a movie, you have to cut out way too much to get the right campy feel.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
He addressed that too. Unless you were married, you weren't going to have sex with a hot scientologist. And yes, he even tried to use the loophole that it didn't say married to each other.
... my VCR spit out the tape about 5 minutes in, thus saving me from ever seeing any substantial part of the movie and wanting to claw my own eyes out. That VCR no longer works at all, but I keep him around, just to stop by and say "Thanks" every once in a while.
Isn't that precisely the process that Shapiro described? He agreed to make certain changes, refused to make changes that he considered detrimental to the story, and eventually got fired. "Artistic Purity" aside, an important part of what you buy from a craftsman is an experienced opinion. An honest clockmaker should tell a paying client that it's a bad idea to make a watch out of papier mache.
not only take there money but make Scientology look like the idiots they are, win, win
Unh-uh. Not good at all. It's barely even good as pulp sci-fi.
There were some great science fiction writers working at the same time as Hubbard, and Battlefield Earth is little more than a weak echo of them. The ideas are mostly retreads and the prose as purple as an orangutan's ass.
The only Hubbard story that's really interesting is the real one about his involvement with Jack Parsons, military intelligence mind control experiments, and Alistair Crowley's Church of Thelema. It's got everything: twisted sex, drugs, madness, Nazis, spies, violence and more real-life science fiction than a shelf full of novels. There's even an indirect Charlie Manson connection, but I'll leave that easter egg for the more curious and determined among you to discover for yourselves.
A lot of it is laid out in the most excellent trilogy by the historian Peter Levenda, entitled Sinister Forces, a Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft. You read it and think, "OMG, this is some crazy bat-shit from a whacked-out conspiracy nut" until you learn that Levenda is an extremely well-respected, erudite and diligent historian who carefully sources every single item.
It's a pretty hard book to find, but it's worth the effort for the wild ride.
Oh, and not to make it sound too much like something from a Neal Stephenson novel, but it's rumored that Peter Levenda, who first became known for his books about the history of Chinese-American trade (which are still taught in business schools), is also one of the "translators" of The Necronomicon.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Then he wasn't prepared, as Harlan Ellison was, with a registered pseudonym that he could insist they use instead of his own name;
From TFA:
Once it was decided that I would share a writing credit, I wanted to use my pseudonym, Sir Nick Knack. I was told I couldn't do that, because if a writer gets paid over a certain amount of money, they can't. I could have taken my name completely off the movie, but my agent and attorney talked me out of it. There was a lot of money at stake.
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.
What's glib got to do with it?
It solves all sorts of portability problems.
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I don't think he presented it as cut and dried as you infer. According to his own account, he refused the second set of notes, not the first, and there was clearly some discussion about it.
If the client's new demands threaten to damage the project irreparably, I can understand any craftsman's desire to distance himself from it. Sometimes "Yes, but..." isn't enough. Sometimes you need to say, "This is so unfeasible that I'd rather not take any responsibility for it." Hence my ridiculous example of a papier mache watch. Even though you're giving the client exactly what he wants, the end result makes you look incompetent. You're the clockmaker, not him. You should have known better.
Granted, there's more objectivity involved in writing an entertaining screenplay than making a functioning clock, but either way, the client is totally free to do what the producers of Battlefield Earth did: ignore the craftsman's advice and let their own vision lead them to colossal failure.
"Ellison would use his 'Cordwainer Bird' pseudonym to both distance himself from work that he felt had been mangled beyond repair"
Well, so nice to see that it worked so well.
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
I hate to say it, but I actually enjoyed the original book (I was aboit 15 at the time).
No, I am most definitely not into Scientology, (or any other religion for that matter) but I do think the original book is worth a second look.
Sure, it was before I had ever heard of Scientology, and had no idea that the author was a complete kook who started his own religion and apparently completely lied about everything in the "about the athor" section. It wasn't until years later, while wandering around the city that some guy stopped me and asked me if I'd mind doing a survey. They asked me if I'd ever heard of L. Ron Hubbard & said sure, I'd read one of his books. You should have seen the guy's eyes light up - though that dimmed a bit once I told him which book I had read. The survey was in a nearby office, which was practically wallpapered with copies of the "Dianetics" book - and the survey was a whole bunch of "moral dilemma" questions - a bit like the gypsie's questions in the beginning of Ultima IV (if any of you can remember that far back) After the first page of 30 or so questions, I realised there was still another 4 or 5 pages of questions to answer so decided to bail while I still could - all in all it was a slightly creepy experience.
The original book was basically just pulp Sci fi - a hero that was a hero's hero - morally and physically perfect, fearless, etc. and taking on the big bad aliens at their own game after learning their own technology as a slave.
The book also had a bunch of ( fairly stereotyped) Scots who made the guys in Braveheart look like whimps - those guys ere amongst my favourite characters in the book and completely missing from the movie. The book also had two main parts - beating the aliens (by eventually shipping a whole bunch of nukes vis their teleporter rig back to the home planet) , then dealing with the resulting power vacuum and problems after the galactic bank shows up and declares the Earth bankrupt, and therefore due for repo and resale to the next several bunch of aliens that show up.
All in all, if you can forget that the author actually has anything to do with Scientology and just read the book, it's actually not a bad read. You might want to cover it in brown paper or something though if you intend to read it on the train - just to avoid the embarrasing stares of incredulity that anyone's actually reading the book after such a bad movie. Sure, it's a bit over the top and the characters are a little too comic book like in their goodness and badness, but the technology ideas are interesting, and the story of the much besieged humans eventually overcoming the aliens by leveraging their greed and technology against them, plus overcoming a whole bunch of internal and external problems, both technologically and politically after the main battle is won was quite entertaining.
If you want to make sure you arent funding the Church of Scientology, borrow it from the library or pick it up from a second hand book shop.
not only take there money but make Scientology look like the idiots they are, win, win
Given that he claims to have turned in a GOOD script that was hacked up, I think it's less about making them look like idiots and more about sitting back and letting their natural idiocy shine through.
More like the Auschwitz of Sci-Fi.
There, I said it.