What movie(s) do you wish you'd written?

[Optimus]

As in, which original screenplay(s) (not based on any existing story) that got made into a movie(s) do you wish you'd written? You can cite multiple genres.

I'll go first:

Good Will Hunting

[Write4Fun]

City of God

The Sixth Sense

Pulp Fiction

Trading Places

If I wrote all those, I could lay down and die with a smile on my face.

[paprikapink]

Raising Arizona.

Fargo.

[Rainy Night]

I'll go first:

Good Will Hunting
Really? I know Matt Damon and Ben Afflek got the Oscar for writing it, but didn't William Golman ghost write it for them?

Here's mine:

Donnie Darko
also,
Huckabee's

[Optimus]

According to Goldman, he didn't. He claims he only told them to take out the stupid CIA subplot and make it a character story. He probably gave them notes, but I doubt he ghost wrote it for them.

It's still a great script.

[Rainy Night]

Well, it did win the Oscar. I'll put that on my list of scipts to read.

[dpaterso]

L.A. Confidential
Pitch Black
Chinatown
Pretty Woman
Top Gun
Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid

I'd cite my favorite films, but they came from adaptations.

-Derek
My wittle web page - hack stories, failed novels, dud screenplays, terminal writer's block. (http://hometown.aol.co.uk/DPaterson57)
The fool, the meddling idiot. As though his ape's brain could contain the secrets of the Krell.

[sandoz]

Raising Arizona.


You said it. Greatest script, ever. Didn't like Fargo quite as much, but Lebowski came a close second. I still can't decide who's the better character, Leonard Smalls, Glen, or Nathan Arizona.

"Christian Dior my butt. People pay money for this?"

[Aldenard]

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City of God

The Sixth Sense

Pulp Fiction

Trading Places

If I wrote all those, I could lay down and die with a smile on my face.

You know City of God wasn't an original story, right? It was actually a very true to life story, and based on a book the main character of the story wrote.

As for mine:
Collateral
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Magnolia
Memento
Mulholland Dr.
Oldboy
Pulp Fiction
Se7en

[Tienci]

Magnolia
Pi
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Waking Life
American Beauty
Edited to add:

Punch Drunk Love
The Sixth Sense

[Aldenard]

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Magnolia
Pi
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Waking Life
American Beauty
American Beauty was based on a novel as well.

[eldragon]

Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There .................made into a movie with Peter Sellers.

[FolkloreFanatic]

City Of Angels
American Beauty
Donnie Darko
Sleepy Hollow
Being John Malkovich
The Patriot
Forrest Gump
Ghostbusters
Ever After
Clue
Closet Land (author wrote the screenplay & play, so it counts)
Copycat
Pirates Of The Caribbean
L.A. Confidential (adaptation)
LotR Trilogy (duh, money)

Just the first ones off the top of my head.

Fargo
...no comment. ;.)

If it would have made me rich w/out having to direct it, I would have written Titanic. Hey, I'm not ashamed of money.

[KTC]

This one's easy. Hands down...BENNY & JOON. I even tried to go back in time and make it happen, but my time machine malfunctioned.

[WritingFool]

perhaps an even better question would be to have each summarize how their story would have distringuished itself.

Me, I would have liked to get my hands on Stealth, Spawn and the Punisher. All 3 tremendous disappointments, that would have been 100 times better if they would have let me get hold of them.

I wouldnt have casted any of the stealth cast. I would have went with relative nobody's, just like Congo did, and it pulled through with a great story.

The punisher, get rid of Travolta, so sorry, and much better action.

And spawn, would have written it more like the cartoon. I would have made a 2 hour full length cartoon, or a 3 hour full length feature with human actors and better effects. But with the story completely different.
What was mcFarland thinking.
He had everyone in the palm of his hands, and he let us all down.
We could have been at Spawn 3 right now

Had the potential of a star wars type following, on a smaller scale. But would have gained it, had he not rushed that movie. Knucklehead!!!

[Boo_Radley]

As Good As It Gets
Boogie Nights
Dawn of the Dead (original)
Fargo
Jackie Brown
L.A. Confidential
Chinatown, most definitely
The Fly (1986)
American Beauty

Only ones coming to me right now.

[TheRuleofThirds]

The Empire Strikes Back (at least Kasdan's contrib)
This is Spinal Tap (since a script wasn't used, maybe I could still get one in...)
Wayne's World
Blues Brothers
The Year of Living Dangerously
Master and Commander
Fearless (yeah...Peter Weir fan)
Sneakers (sorta...)
Roman Holiday
The Apartment
The Godfather Part II
First Blood (actually, I wish I could rewrite it more than I'd want my John Hancock on the first one)
Batman Begins
Superman

[zagoraz]

American Beauty was based on a novel as well.

Actually it wasn't. Alan Ball wrote it on spec.

[Aldenard]

Actuallly, Jackie Brown was based on a book as well (the novel 'Rum Punch')

And yes, I realize that about American Beauty. For some reason I had a brain fart and was thinking about American Psycho. I ment to go back and delete that post...but im lazy.

[nganok]

Resevouir Dogs

[TheRuleofThirds]

Let me add Back to the Future Parts I & II, as well. The first one was an ingenious comedy. At the time, it was considered a teen movie, right? Part II is ingenious just for the way it handles all the plot devices and gags from the first one, while setting up a whole new set that are used throughout the rest of Part II, but also for Part III. (I actually don't care for III too much, simply because it feels more like a generic Western than a good Back to the Future movie).

[zeprosnepsid]

I guess this might be an answer to a different question -- as I'm not sure what script I wish I'd written -- but one that I feel like I did write is Sliding Doors. I was watching the movie and felt like they took it out of my brain. It was very weird.

I suppose I would have liked to have written Shakespeare In Love.

My answers are girly.

[MitchJ]

Here's my list:

Pulp Fiction
The Sixth Sense
American Beauty
Eternal Sunshine
The Haunting (from the 60's)
Batman Begins
Alien

[DenimSoul]

All of the Home Alone movies. I enjoy family movies with cute kids and I love the Christmas season (not the commercial aspect of it). Good clean fun movies with a fast pace that the whole family can enjoy.

[icerose]

The Matrix Trilogy,

So I could fix what I hated in the second and third one.

[PeeDee]

Maybe while you're writing the Matrix trilogy, I can borrow the Wachowski brothers for just a bit? If you don't mind? I'd like to pee on them. Possibly beat them senseless. Some days I go one way, some days I go the other.

I would be happy to write "One Hour Photo" with Robin Williams, "Secret Window" with Johnny Depp (indeed, I shall write anything if it stars Johnny Depp)

...and it hasn't been done yet, but I would happily write the script to any of Neil Gaiman's work. Sandman would be safer in my hands than the buffoons who mangle it currently.

[williemeikle]

Among the oldies....

Nosferatu
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
Frankenstein
Bride of Frankenstein
A Night at the Opera
A Day at the Races
The Maltese Falcon
Now Voyager
Bringing up Baby
His Girl Friday
The Philadelphia Story
Harvey
North by Northwest
Strangers on a Train
Psycho
The Haunting
Dead of Night
The Red Shoes

More recently....

Marathon Man
Ghostbusters
LA Confidential
Fallen
Donnie Darko
The Mothman Prophecies
Gladiator
Momento

Willie
http://www.willie.meikle.btinternet.co.uk

[Mac H.]

I'm going to cheerfully ignore the ' not based on any existing story' requirement and give my list :

* Jewel of the Nile (Beautifully constructed story)

* Back to the Future(s) (For how everything meshed together so well - and for introducing the concept of product placement to me)

* Shawshank Redemption (Except for the first few minutes. And yes, I know this was based on an existing story, but I just can't not mention it..)

* Men in Black (I can't justify this one rationally, but I just like the humour)

* Shrek (No comment needed)

* Elephant Man - with the following changes:
1. Done it completely differently
2. Sans makeup for half of the movie (Kinda done half in the real world, half in Mr Merrick's POV/Imagination)
3. Changed the title to 'Mr Merrick' - or something more dignified
4. Get his name right. JOSEPH Merrick. It's a bit hard to pretend it's biographical when the writer doesn't even know the NAME of the person being biographed !!
5. Changed it so Fredrick Treves (the Doctor) was more of a selfish self-advancement type person, who ignored what Joseph Merrick really wanted. (Kinda like reality). The fact that the caring doctor didn't even know his star patient's name says it all ...

Hmm - maybe there's room for my version too...

Mac

[Ragnarok]

Dr Strangelove
The Outlaw Josey Wales
The Seven Samurai
Buffet Froid
The Thing

[AceTachyon]

Terminator 2
Aliens
Batman Begins
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Serenity
The Mummy

[aspiringwriter]

Mac...I was getting ready to list the Elephant Man myself but you beat me to it. I too would change it--BUT keep the makeup though and not conceal the main character nearly as long--start it out differently as well.

My other one would be the Jennings/Lang disaster pick ROLLERCOASTER--a yarn about an extortionist who wants to be noticed. I would have made it a bit shorter and concentrated on one aspect/Park rather than several.

[PerditaDrury]

4. Get his name right. JOSEPH Merrick. It's a bit hard to pretend it's biographical when the writer doesn't even know the NAME of the person being biographed !!

Hmmmmm, Mac, it's one thing to talk about how you might have done something with your greater-than-Lynch cinematic sensibilities, but who is it that you think doesn't know Merrick's real name? The screenwriters? Or the writers who wrote the book? EVERYBODY involved in the film knew Joseph Carey Merrick's real name... it was Dr. Treves himself who called Merrick "John" in his journal as a (habitual) way of protecting his patient's privacy. Since the story was Treves' story it was decided to honor that choice. Do you really think that the research staff involved in that film were so "get his name right" ignorant? Get YOUR facts right before you make snide remarks about other writers.

[Mac H.]

..it was Dr. Treves himself who called Merrick "John" in his journal as a (habitual) way of protecting his patient's privacy.
PerditaDrury:

Hmm - I'm not sure I can agree with you there. It doesn't seem to make much sense for Dr Treves to have changed Merrick's name in his autobiography for 'privacy' since he was talking about a patient who was already famous.

It'd be like Jackson's plastic surgeon writing an autobiography titled 'Wacko Jacko and Other Reminiscences', but changing Michael Jackson's name to 'Matthew Jackson' to protect his privacy.

It's a subject I'm interested in, so I'd be curious as to know the origins of that theory. Another theory is that Treves was losing his memory in his old age when he wrote his memoirs. I haven't read Ashley Montagu's book (on which the screenplay is partly based) so I'm curious as to whether Ashley got the name wrong too.


Since the story was Treves' story it was decided to honor that choiceI hope that wasn't the filmmakers' logic. Surely it is Joseph's story. In his own autobiography, Mr Merrick called himself Joseph. His birth certificate calls him Joseph. His mother called him Joseph. And the filmmakers are choosing to honour Mr Merrick's DOCTOR's choice over Josephs? On the grounds that the movie 'The Elephant Man' isn't really 'The Elephant Man's story - it is Treves !?

EVERYBODY involved in the film knew Joseph Carey Merrick's real name...Again, I'm quite interested in this topic, so I'd quite like some background to this. Do you have a reference? 1980 was before the Internet Era really took off, so very few interviews from when the movie actually came out are Google-able.

Why would it be suprising if those working on the movie didn't know Joseph's real name? I have the feeling that this detail only became popularly known (in this generation) after Michael Howell's book "The True History of the Elephant Man" was released. (I could be wrong there - I'm on the computer at work so I don't have my files here)

Since the film was released in 1980 as well it is perfectly understandable that the filmmakers wouldn't be aware of this fact.

I wasn't being insulting to the writer's and researches - getting the facts wrong was probably just a result of lack of good information available. It wasn't unreasonable of them to assume that guy's DOCTOR knew his name!

Remember too, inaccuracies in movies happen all the time. I'm not insulting the writers & researchers of 'Jurassic Park' when I point out that the T-Rex, Velociraptor etc didn't live in the Jurassic era. It's just a fact.

And even pedants like myself can appreciate that giving it a more accurate name "Cretaceous Park" just doesn't sound as good!!!

Mac.
(PS: And the fact that I want to do something differently to Lynch doesn't mean that I think I'm better than Lynch. I can understand that I'm not a better artist than Picasso and still choose to draw differently)

[PeeDee]

Remember too, inaccuracies in movies happen all the time. I'm not insulting the writers & researchers of 'Jurassic Park' when I point out that the T-Rex, Velociraptor etc didn't live in the Jurassic era. It's just a fact.

...because the writers and researchers of Jurassic Park have more than enough insult at this point without you piling on top. I mean...what're we up to, Jurassic Park IV!? Seriously. There is nothing you can say that would bring these people lower.

(This message brought to you by Pete, who enjoyed Jurassic Park-the-First and has gotten progressively grumpier as the series tumbles further onward.)

[matthewrobertblack]

Shawshank Redemption... truly one of the greatest character-driven scripts to date. A must-read for all!

[PeeDee]

Do you know, I've honestly never seen the Shawshank Redemption? It's been a "probably should watch" movie for many years now, but I've never seen a bit of it.