Battlefield Earth Screenwriter Accepts Razzie 295
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.'"
Dunno (Score:4, Informative)
You know, I made it through about fifteen minutes of the movie, turned to my wife and said "There's got to be something good on TV tonight." It wasn't even bad in a fascinating way, like Plan 9 From Outer Space. It was just awful crap. I hope the $cientologists lost a boatload on this one.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
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...
YouTube Link... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKlEE18R5d8 [youtube.com]
You're Doing It Wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Although, John Travolta is never the right guy to be in a scifi film.
Here, let me help you with that [youtube.com].
(And if you want more [rifftrax.com])
I know they make fun of good movies just as successfully but this movie is flawed on too many levels for me to get into. I'm not even talking plot or story at this point, just delivery, directing and acting. And that Rifftrax clip points out a few of them.
Hopefully I'm just missing your humor. If so, well played.
Re:The reason why Battlefield Earth Won the Razzie (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:ALERT-- Important Notice (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, it is. If for nothing else, to see that there are folks in Hollywood for whom the pull of Scientology is ... nonexistent. ;)
Re:Dunno (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dunno (Score:3, Informative)
If so, the movie must have been even worse than I'd heard, because the book was absolute, utter crud. Hubbard couldn't be arsed to to make the story line plausible (The bit about one A-bomb after another blowing up inside a force field without destroying each other was probably the worst bit, unless you consider his ideas about how they mangled their math.) and his hero makes two-dimensional cut-out heroes look well fleshed out by comparison. Remember, when the book came out, the Hubbardites tried to buy a hugo award for it and couldn't even manage that!
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
Parts of that story also turn up in "Bare Faced Messiah", the unauthorised biography of L. Ron Hubbard. Scientology tried to ban it, failed miserably, and now you can download it [cmu.edu].
Fascinating stuff. Cult leaders are very interesting people.
Re:No way it was the worst (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:The reason why Battlefield Earth Won the Razzie (Score:3, Informative)
So I ask you... was that nonsense from the book or added because of low budgets?
It was from the book, sort of. In other words, the human survivors found a couple of vast Russian and American underground bases (presumably Cold War-era) and scavenged them for guns, books, and whatever else they could find.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Dunno (Score:4, Informative)
The backers of the film were primarily: Intermedia, a German film funding entity -- basically a hedge fund that uses the (then) favorable German tax laws on film production to make money for its investors; and Travolta himself, though he only put in $5 million. Warner put up something like $20 million in marketing.
There was a huge lawsuit after the film failed to turn a profit, because Elie Samaha -- persident of Franchise, the company the put together the funding/distribution package -- had lied to Intermedia and grossly understated the budget of the film. Intermedia had agreed to put up $35 million of the budget for the film, with the understanding they were going to get the foreign distribution rights on a $75 million Hollywood sci-fi action movie. However Samaha had lied to Intermedia about the budget and simply put in none of his own money, thus the film was quite anemically-budgeted, which definitely hurt it.
So aside from the $5 million JT put into it (and he probably made that back in his acting fee), the CoS itself lost no money. The production was really careful about avoiding any links to the Church itself... though they probably made a tidy amount on the sale of the book and character rights to the film and toy companies.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
I think you misunderstand the point of Scientology, friend. The ONLY step is called "profit".
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Only if you're part of Sea Org. If you haven't signed the billion year contract yet, then you're not bound to this requirement.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
I can't vouch for the validity of this, but this is a fun read if your appetite was piqued by PopeRazto's post:
http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/religion/aleister-crowley/ [rotten.com]
You should find the Charlie Manson easter egg there, and a lot of the other twisted stuff mentioned in PopeRazto's post.
I'd recommend taking it all with a grain of salt, and reading this stuff at home, not at work :)
-Stor
Re:why has he decided to accept it now? (Score:4, Informative)
It was made in the same decade as Starship Troopers, The Phantom Menace, the Look Who's Talking sequels, Highlander II, and let's include Supernova since it was actually reproduced in the '90s, although not released until 2000. Let's not forget Lucas' destroying the original Star Wars trilogy, changing A New Hope so that Greedo shot first.
There were far worse movies made in the 90s.
Then it's a good thing Battlefield: Earth was released May 10, 2000, and not in the 1990s.
The official nominees were [razzies.com] Battlefield Earth, Freddy Got Fingered, Gigli, I know Who Killed Me, and Swept Away.
I guess Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 was too awful to acknowledge.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Informative)
Problem is just that this is kinda an achivement that locks up some others forever. I dunno a single person that won a Razzie AND an Oscar. And I guess we agree that the Oscar is the achivement most want, unlike the Razzie.
Sandra Bullock: Oscar [imdb.com] and Razzie [youtube.com]