A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Hi, there, Constant Reader. I'm sorry that I have not dropped by recently, but I've been busy writing paid blog posts  at Cerebral Palsy Guidance (CPG), a site that provides information about one of the most common disabilities that afflicts children and adults - cerebral palsy (CP). This isn't my preferred type of writing gig; I'd rather be paid for writing reviews of movies, books, computer games, and music albums, to be honest. But I have CP - I acquired it as the result of an injury at birth - and the site owner wanted a blogger with some insights about living with the disability, so I was asked to contribute. I accepted the gig, not because I like the topic, but because I need the money. I didn't set out to become a spokesperson for the many people who live with CP in the U.S. and elsewhere. I am more comfortable writing about, say, the merits of Saving Private Ryan and arguing in favor of George Lucas's much-maligned Star Wars prequels than the ups and d...

Since the late 1970s, so many Star Wars movie tie-ins have been published that they’d fill a Star Destroyer’s cargo hold. From novelizations of the screenplays to comic books, radio dramatizations, and even parodies, the publishing industry has given Star Wars fans different means to explore George Lucas’s original six-film space fantasy saga and Star Wars: The Force Awakens over the past 39 years. With less than five months to go before the premiere of Disney/Lucasfilm’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, let’s explore the brightest shining stars of the Star Wars literary tie-in universe: Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker, George Lucas (ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster. Published by Del Rey in December 1976 with cover art by conceptual artist, Foster’s adaptation of Lucas’s fourth draft of the Star Wars screenplay gave the world its first peek of that galaxy far, far away. The novel sold moderately well before the film opened in May 1977. After Star Wars became...

Jaws 2 (1978) Directed by Jeannot Szwarc Written by Carl Gottlieb and Howard Sackler, based on characters created by Peter Benchley Starring: Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Mark Gilpin. Ann Dusenberry Martin Brody: But I'm telling you, and I'm telling everybody at this table that that's a shark! And I know what a shark looks like, because I've seen one up close. And you'd better do something about this one, because I don't intend to go through that hell again! With the phenomenal success of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws - with its $260 million domestic gross ($470 million worldwide), it’s not surprising that Universal Studios commissioned a sequel while the blockbuster was still in its record-setting theatrical run. Producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, who didn’t want their competition to make Jaws 2,  egan developing a follow-up story as early as the fall of 1975. Zanuck and Brown also wanted Spielberg to direct Jaws 2, but he r...

(C) 2012 Columbia Pictures Zero Dark Thirty,  director Kathryn Bigelow’s controversial 2012 thriller, is a riveting account of the 10-year hunt for Osama bin Laden and the May 1, 2011 raid that killed him. Because the outcome of SEAL Team Six’s mission is well-known,  Zero Dark Thirty  isn’t a typical spy tale where the ending is kept under wraps. Instead, it’s a tribute to the intelligence agents and military personnel who spent a decade tracking Al Qaeda’s elusive leader.     Zero Dark Thirty  is also a good example of what happens when a script begins to tell one story and, by twists of fate, ends up telling a different one. In the case of  Zero Dark Thirty,  screenwriter/producer Mark Boal was working on a script about bin Laden’s escape from U.S. and allied forces after the Battle of Tora Bora. Boal and Bigelow (who had collaborated on 2009’s  The Hurt Locker ) intended to make a movie about the CIA’s  failure  to...