Do you often read the scripts of movies?
Discussion
No, I never have time for that.
No but I worked at Scott Rudin Productions on the Disney studio lot in LA for a while after I left school. It was a mix between utter chaos and then hours sitting around doing nothing. They had a script library with thousands of submitted scripts, and one of the things we were allowed to do was read anything without a red cover (marked for production) and if we found something good we could suggest it to the producers.
The two best I read were from directors/writers I noticed by name, Nolan and Alfonso Cuaron. Interstellar and Gravity. Neither were in production at the time or being considered, but I read probably a hundred scripts while I was there. Actually a number of enjoyable ones.
Gravity had theatrical changes to the core story of the main character’s struggle, but they were actually improvements, imo. Interstellar completely changed its core theme to something completely different and even ruined one of my favorite conversations in the film. The conversation between Damon and Mcconaughey was originally him talking to an Ai humanoid, which made the meaning of their conversation far more impactful. The Ai was explaining to him that humans were still needed because they still had “better programming.”
Not going to explain it all in a Nostr note, but it was far more like a scientific puzzle and contemplation of the future in the script, while the movie was all “we can quantify love!” 😒
That explains why I found the tesseract scene so jarring despite loving the rest of the movie. The "quantifying love" theme really clashed with the rest of the film; it was palpable that some part got mangled on its way off the cutting room floor
Everything about the end of humanity on Earth seemed stupid, like okay we don’t have armies or guns anymore and everyone is just eating corn in-between dust storms but somehow people still drink beer on the porch at night and drive cars to work. What?
If they have enough energy to go space...I dunno, I never put much thought into that. I'm not a stickler for practicality in fiction idk
Coop does some good pilot shit and embodies the tenacity of one (few movies do, and will immediately break the spell, just like when it's obvious an actor has never used a gun), so it resonated with me. One of my top movies.
I actually liked the element that we were technologically advanced but humbled by the fact that we were all going to die if the soil was ruined. And they also didn’t go deep into why, just basically suggesting it was possible (unless I’m remembering the movie wrong I didn’t remember much explanation). But there were plenty of other things I had issues with. That one wasn’t prominent for me, especially since it was just a reality to set the stage and not part of the puzzle of the film itself.
Apart from that, I found the other plot devices to be very unsubtle and heavy-handed. Everything had an explanation. There just wasn’t much left to the imagination.
That sounds cool. Is pre-production script still available somewhere?
Found it (2008 original script)