You're Soaking in It!

I've been working furiously on my Rewrite homework. If this strike hadn't happened, I would now be a 60-hour-a-week writers' assistant, and that would NOT leave a lot of time for producing a revised draft of a 120 page screenplay.

The very best thing about this terrible situation is that whenever I'm feeling down about the strike, I can scare myself with the thought it will end tomorrow and I'll have to kill myself to finish my school work by the end of the semester. (It's my last assignment for my last class -- when it's done, I'll earn my MFA. So, no pressure.) And whenever I get scared about the rewrite, I think: Well, if the strike ends, at least I have my job back.

ANYWAY. Sometimes all that work wrings my little brain out like a sponge and I have to put it in a bowl of warm water for a while. Except, instead of warm water, I use finished, high quality television and movies. Last night, I caught up on "Ugly Betty" (great); "House" (fantastic); and "30 Rock" (what I hope the afterlife is like when you die.) By the time I finished watching "30 Rock," not only was I feeling much better, but I thought: Anyone who saw that is going to be really pissed at NBC for not settling with the writers when they had a chance.

You know what's NOT helpful for the aspiring writer? "Silver Streak." I heard a "Fresh Air" interview with Gene Wilder a few weeks ago and...

Wait, time out: Did you know it was Wilder's idea to insert "Puttin' on the Ritz" into "Young Frankenstein"? He wrote the screenplay and that scene, in particular, was all his. Brooks fought him on it for days before finally deciding that if Wilder wanted it that bad, it must be a good scene. The NYT's review of the musical specifically mentions THAT ONE SCENE as the only musical number really worth watching. And does Wilder get mentioned EVEN ONCE in the review? No, he does not. Because he didn't write the book. And considering the result, I have to say: MAYBE HE SHOULD HAVE.

Okay, back to the "Fresh Air" interview. Gene Wilder's talking about working with Richard Pryor on "Silver Streak" and how Pryor was concerned about Wilder's scene in black face. The two of them think it over, come up with a solution, and successfully rewrite the scene. I thought: Wow, I've got to see that movie again.

Yeah, don't. It's a piece of crap. No, worse, it's a piece of crap with large swaths stolen from "North by Northwest," such that if you'd never seen NBNW before, and you saw it afterwards, you'd be like "Wow, this is disturbingly similar to the dreadful 'Silver Streak.'" SS is so bad, it makes other, better movies not as good by extension. I still respect Pryor and Wilder for making the black face scene smarter and sharper than originally written, but I have my doubts about the wisdom of taking the job in the first place.

On the plus side (and believe me, I had to think awhile before a plus side occurred to me), it did contain the following valuable screenwriting lesson: No one wants to watch the adventures of a man so incompetent that he gets thrown off the same train twice.

Once, okay, I'll go with that.

Twice? I'm out of there. I'm gonna go watch something where the protagonist actually learns from his mistakes.