The Good, The Bad, and The Douchey

That's a bad title to my blog post, isn't it? I agree. I bet that's something the legendary Hollywood screenwriter Blake Snyder would say not to name the movie you're writing. The man is a total genius (sarcasm). I mean, if the guy who produced the Shaggy Dog remake with Tim Allen (David Hoberman) says he's great, he must be.

Lately I've been reading different screenwriting books and movie scripts to get a better feel on how to write a competent movie (mainly because the scriptwriting class I'm taking at DVC is almost worthless when it comes to actually writing the movie and understanding the basic concepts of it). Anyway, Blake Snyder, the man who wrote such legendary films as Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot starring Sylvester Stallone and Blank Check starring no one remotely important, wrote a screenwriting book entitled Save The Cat! which I just finished reading. While it has some good strategies on how to formulate a mainstream Hollywood movie, Snyder comes off as a pretenious wannabe all-star writer who seems to think Blank Check was the next best thing since Some Like It Hot.

I guess the reason why I'm going off on this guy is because after reading his book, I felt like he was overly proud of making millions of dollars on horribly generic family films that average a 3.0 on IMDb. I mean yes, I do respect him in the sense that he's worked the Hollywood system over well enough to become successful, but it just seems that he purposely writes mediocre movies because they follow a very rigid and boring formula that sells well. Sure I wanna go out there and write films and achieve mainstream success, but I also want to write a good movie in the process, one that has a meaningful story, and not just one that follows the Hollywood script formula perfectly.

So yes, Save The Cat! is a helpful resource on screenwriting formula, but Snyder doesn't seem to know himself how to actually write a good movie, one that not only entertains, but one that makes you think in-depth about it if you choose to do so.

Go out and read his book, because 1) its moderately helpful with some aspects, and 2) he sounds like a Disney-style douchebag who brags immensely about writing some pretty awful films that got made presumably because he filled the mold.

To Blake Snyder: You were kind enough to give out your e-mail address so we could write and explain to you why Signs wasn't a bad movie, so here's mine: Jrroisman@aol.com. Please explain to me why you're a good writer.