I have noticed some web articles and posts referring to me as "the" screenwriter of Transformers. This is patently wrong, and I wish to correct it as soon as possible.
I am "one of the screenwriters of Transformers." I wrote the first draft, and Alex and Bob came in and did the heavy production lifting with Michael Bay (they worked with him on The Island, before). My job was to be first guy on -- the geek who broke a thirty year franchise mythos into a comprehensible 110 page plot, cook up characters and character relationships (Sam and Bumblebee friendship, etc.), and do the geek stuff like coming up with a chunk of spiffy fights/images. One draft, I then buggered off back to Shibumi.
Alex and Bob are responsible for pretty much all the dialogue, introduced a whackload of original characters involved in the plots I didn't come up with, as well as re-fit my guys into what wound up being their finished story. They're responsible for feel and pacing of the finished movie, and they did a helluva job. They were on-set, and did hand in-hand development with the director all the way through post. They had to turn my unfilmable -- and it was simply unfilmable unless you spent $250 million on production -- draft into one shootable at $150 million. This grueling work is why they have a "screenplay" and "story by" credit, while I have a "story by" credit.
I always get pissed when I'm pegged as "the screenwriter of Catwoman" when I was one of about ten. So it's not fair to correct that one to shift blame and let this mistake, which may inadvertently take credit from two very hard-working guys, stand.
Once the weekend is over, we can have a nice general chat -- without going into contract-breaking details -- about what some of the differences in the story are, and how they were executed, and put this process in context for the spec monkeys. Overall, though, I will say that working for the fine folk at Dreamworks on this project was as pleasant as every other experience I've had there.
75 comments:
Quick question - I saw a review at the end of an ad for the movie that billed Transformers as something like 'The Most Original Movie of 2007'? My immediate reaction was 'bs!' - based solely on the fact that it was at least partially based on the TV show. Nor have I seen the movie. So, since you did the story, and I'm reading your blog anyway, I figured I'd ask you?
Transformers - most original movie of 2007, or advertising hyperbole?
Thanks!
Well, we're not a sequel, so I guess that counts for something.
Cool - I'm not trying to say that the movie isn't original, or that it isn't good - everything I've read and heard points to the opposite, in fact, but just that the 'review' seemed to be going a little far.
Hell, I'd get pissed if I was ever identified as a VIEWER of Catwoman, let alone someone actually involved with the production. Your trepidation is understandable.
That said, you should be proud of any contribution to such an entertaining movie.
Er, the entertaining movie I was talking about was Transformers. Be proud of that. Yes.
(Whew.)
So wait - your script didn't have dialog, then what did you produce? An outline?
Or did you mean that all your dialog was scrapped, and they re-wrote it all? Twould be a shame if you had to lose all that work.
you're a prince...
It would be fascinating to see a line-by-line attribution of the script. I'd love to know who thought that the repeated "speak english!" line was high comedy, and who wrote Anthony Anderson and Bernie Mac's bits.
(Sorry man, I'm glad the project worked out so well for you, and I genuinely enjoyed a lot of the movie, but some parts of that movie rubbed raw.)
Mr. Rogers,
I've been lurking around and enjoying your blog now for probably... six months plus. I saw Transformers on Tuesday with a large group for a friend's birthday. I thought it was a lot of fun, so congrats on the part you played in making it and thanks for having a hand in making it a movie I wasn't embarressed for having gone to see (I'm looking at you TMNT).
Matt Worzala
Oh no, my script had dialogue. Poof. Hell, and that's just one draft of "wasted" work. There are movies I've written eight, ten drafts of, that hace disappeared into the production hole.
That's movie writing, kids.
As to your other question, Doc Memory -- not me. But then again, you never know what you wind up with an actor doing his thing on the set.
Hmm, almost none of your dialog left, eh? Shows you what I know. I thought sure I detected your stamp on some stuff. There's something very Blue Beetlish about Sam's interaction with his family. But maybe that's the concept coming through rewritten dialog, or maybe I just can't tell.
We at the DJ house really liked the notion that both Sam and Mikaela had character arcs. I liked that Mikaela had a reason to like Sam beyond "flat abs and big arms".
The whole thing where she's the one that knows about cars is very cool too.
Kudos to everyone involved then.
John, I enjoyed the movie even though the good reviews say it is "dumb, but fun" and the bad reviews say it is "dumb". I was more interested in seeing a true intelligent sci-fi rather than an "action comedy". Anyway, there are a lot of people who are curious to see your original treatment. Keep up the great work.
Hi, John!
Just saw Transformers. Left with a huge smile on my face. Fantastic fun. Whatever part of that was yours, I'd be proud to be associated with it.
Question, though--take it with the above as seasoning; it's a real question, not a veiled insult.
When writers have a script that has plot holes in it as large as the two major holes in this one--do the writers know the holes are there and say "It's the best we can do given the outcome we want?/Sure they're there, but the movie's fun so who cares?", or is it more common that they're missed?
I can see (particularly in the case of this movie) why everyone involved would say "eh, it's fun, forget about it"--It -was- fun, and I did have a blast--but as an aspiring writer I'd love some insight into the process.
Thanks! And nice work!
-j
What would we have gotten for an extra $100 million if they had filmed your initial draft?
So... how much (if any) of the dialog in The Core was yours? I watched it on TV a little while ago, and enjoyed it a lot.
Quick question: Was the draft you wrote actually a movie about Transformers?
Because the movie I just saw was about some kids and military guys running from explosions and talking about Transformers who were sometimes standing in the background.
Sorry for the snark. I really wanted to like the movie. I really did. But the close-frame, quick-cut, shaky-cam filming used to show the action rendered it disappointingly incomprehensible. Maybe I'll be able to parse it well enough to enjoy it when it comes out on DVD.
The overall, background story behind Sam, Cybertron, and the Transformers -- for which I assume your are mostly responsible -- was fine, and the boy-and-his-car stuff, while a bit too jokey, was acceptable. I expect that, story-wise, this was not changed too drastically from what you wrote.
The "signal" / NSA / Secretary of Defense side-story was both painful and entirely unnecessary. It didn't develop the overall story, and it wasn't needed to move the plot: almost all of the plot points on that side-story were to solve problems that were exclusively relevant to that side story and it ultimately didn't even go anywhere. I suspect this whole distraction was not in your draft. I similarly expect you're not to blame for the insufferable antics of Frenzy, who seems to be a droid-refugee from The Phantom Menace.
The military guys and the Sector 7 stuff could have been OK if they'd actually played it seriously and let the plot explain itself, by exchanging the wall-to-wall useless joke dialog with something that would actually help tell a story.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the extra $100 million dollars in that draft would have been used for actually treating the Transformers as characters and a climax that was a bit more interesting than "drive to the nearest city (where there's more things to blow up and people to step on) and have the kid climb to the top of a building."
In summary: I'm assuming that everything I disliked about the film was not your fault. Thank you, in any case, for laying a foundation that might be able to produce a sequel I could actually enjoy.
In summary: I'm assuming that everything I disliked about the film was not your fault.
And that, my boy is the advantage of a "story by" credit. It's like a Rorschach test.
Heh. Yeah. What I wrote seems oddly sycophantic in retrospect. I know I made some wrong speculations in there.
What I should say, instead, is:
I have rough sense, from reading your blog for several years and seeing a variety of your comic and TV works, of the types of things you are skilled at and self-conscious of as a writer.
And I also know, from an old friend who also majored in physics at McGill (and is now starting a PhD), the amount of work and intelligence and borderline insanity that takes.
And I'm also sympathetic to your "Oh, he's the screenwriter of" misfortunes.
So let's just say I'm more than willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. I eagerly await hearing what you're able to say about that $250M film that might've been.
So it's not fair to correct that one to shift blame and let this mistake, which may inadvertently take credit from two very hard-working guys, stand.
Well then, they should become big time bloggers too.
hey dude.
I'm gonna check out Transformers soon... and i'm gonna tell people, I know the due who wrote the ORIGINAL script.
'know' in the figurative sense.
I've been writing my first feature script and the first draft is the BIGGEST pile of horseshit I've read.
Damn I've got a LOT of work and LOT of learning to do.
I'm not trying to sell this script - I'm gonna SHOOT it as my first feature.
maybe I'll catch you at Cannes in 2008.
Peace and Love
Doom
xoxoxo
ps.
happy july 4th.
Finally caught the film last night. And I kind of liked it. (And considering my passionate dislike of Bay, you can count "Kind of liked" as a solid win.) I'm still curious to see what your first draft was like.
I liked the movie, but only because I was able to ignore the parts that made no sense whatsoever, which were numerous, and enjoy the Transformers from a nostalgic point of view.
###SPOILER ALERT###
But the plot? Yeesh. Trying to get the mcGuffin aboard a military helicopter in the middle of a city (which they had no sensible reason to go to) when two of the bad guys are flying machines capable of escape velocity? Not that people don't actually come up with plans that dumb, but still, that was dumb.
The whole signal hacker subplot went nowhere, I honestly don't get where it was supposed to go : replace it with actual transformer conversations and character building dialogue, and hey, maybe Jazz being ripped in half would've meant more. I mean, there were more transformations than actual transformer lines of dialogue.
Optimus getting beat up by Megatron and saved by the humans? Unacceptable. And I was pysched when I saw Optimus had a sword and Megatron had a mace weapon. That would've been a good fight, if only it was on camera and visible.
Putting the defeated decepticons into the bottom of the ocean rather than just redoing the storage system which had worked for 100 years? OK, I know they don't want to do the same "Megatron unfreezes" scene again, but still. I suppose it was the US gov't making the calls though.
###END SPOILERS###
Through all of that, though, I still liked it. Which is something, I suppose. But really, Optimus Prime narrating a chess match would've kicked ass for my inner 6 year old.
Loved being able to see your name in the credits, turn to my geek friend and say, "That's the Kung Fu Monkey dude!"
It's the little things in life that make me happy...
...kind of like Transformers :)
Would be cool to eventually see that comparison between your script and the one that made it... and again for Catwoman
One draft, I then buggered off back to Shibumi.
Wait, back up...they're actually bringing SHIBUMI to the screen?
Just saw this - While some of the plot points made me wince, overall, I liked it a lot. My wife did too, so immediate points for that.
I have to agree with most of the posters above--great job on your part of the script, however big or small it may have been, I think it was a major success.
Also, I know you may not be at the liberty to release such data yet, possibly because of contracts or what-not, but when the time is right I would love to be able to read your original script. I hope you can post some information on your original story in the near future.
Strange about the script not having a dialogue...what would be on it then?
No, no, there was dialogue. But as the storylines shifted and extra characters were added, naturally most of it changed, as dialogue's how you express a characters reactons or needs relative to his circumstances.
That said, treatments can be farly complex plot breakdowns, often with some slugs of sample dialogue. Lucas' original treatment for STAR WARS was suposedly 125 pages. I tend to hit 5-10 pages on my treatments.
Not to be a kiss ass, but for all its imperfections, I think the movie was done very well. As a loyal fan of the cartoon I was very entertained and pleased. BUT I MUST KNOW, who made the decision to name one of the characters Mikaela? What was the "inspiration" for that and who decided on the spelling? You see, that is my name, and I've never come across anyone who spells it like I do, so to say I am curious would be an understatement. Much thanks!
But whose idea was it to put in Thomas Banacek? And he arrives to say, "We've had the MacGuffin here under our noses all along," just like Peppard always did! This was the most inspired moment of the whole movie.
Whoever wrote Jazz's character should be sent to rehab with Michael Richards. That was the most wince-inducing piece of stereotyping I've ever seen. He was BREAKDANCING! for god's sake! I kept waiting for him to take a bite of electronic watermelon.
Also, that opening voiceover was aggresively lazy: yeah, there's this cube, it makes life, don't know where it came from, yadda yadda yadda.
And jon, tell me you didn't have a hand in writing the incredibly long, painfully unfunny rose garden "hide the robots" scene.
mikaela: The irregularity of your name has practically ensured that everyone just calls that character "the girl" instead. I can't help but wonder if that was intentional.
John, I looked at the creadit/announcement for 'Shibumi' over here, and I saw this:
Writer______________ Credit
Robert Resnikoff____ Screenplay
Bud Trevanian_______ Source Material
Nicholas Meyer______ Screenplay
Cyrus Nowrasteh____ Screenplay
John Rogers ________ Screenplay
Nowrasteh is, of course the same guy that you harpooned many months ago, over ABC's right-wing revisionist 'Path to 9/11'. Just tell me that the two of you are never in the same room at the same time _ and if so, how do you manage?
There's somebody on after me, too, missing from that list. No, no, I think Cyrus was on before me, not sure. I never saw any other source material -- I know Dean Georgaris took a swing at a treatment before Akiva brought me on, although I never read it.
Unless I'm doing a production rewrite - that is, the script has to fit certain locations and actors already set -- I avoid the previous materials on a project as much as possible.
If Cyrus worked on it at one point, good luck to him. Sonuvabitch is a brutal adaptation. I got a script we liked, then things went off the rail with a director, then I got a call months later from the next guy on looking for my draft because they were going back to it for the next round. But I have no idea where it is in the production cycle now.
Welcome to Hollywood.
ohhhh, shibumi...very cool.
and i'm glad a physics guy is doing that one because that means there's a much better chance that the go-playing in the book will be appreciated and kept in a movie. non-geeks couldn't possibly appreciate that.
So no insight to share with me on the name choices John? I hate to bring up past projects when your current ones are probably much more exciting, but all the same it would be appreciated. :)
Oh and Wes, I hope you are right, it makes me feel better about my unique name not becoming the next "jennifer" (no offense meant to "jennifer"s or "jennifer" lovers)
Posted my other comment before I saw this thread, so thanks to the other writers, too. It was a very fun time at the show.
But thanks, John, too, of course.
No kings,
Robert
Forget Catwoman.
You should yer stuff with Global Frequency.
Too bad the bastards won't DVD it!
This is mah mroning fer typos.
How'd SHOW become SHOULD in my post?
Damn ginfers!
I haven't seen it yet, and don't intend to, because altho' I was a - fan is too strong a word, I was a *fan* of Battle of the Planets and Starblazers and Voltron, but I watched and liked the series when it was running tho' I thought it rather simplistic and corny by comparison to the other shows I mention - I have heard so much that sounds depressing and Othering about it as a liberal woman, that I don't really need to spend any of my scanty budget on seeing CGI and explosions.
What was the point of the gratuitous sexism and racism that has been coming up in all the reviews of it, I'm wondering? We've been speculating as to whether it was just Privilegeboy cluelessness, or whether it's deliberate "fuck you, Others, WE'RE manly macho men, not PC wusses!" to us from Hollywood, since neither is particularly uncommon these days. But inside info would be better than conjecture...
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