Monday, April 4, 2011

2010 Black List Movies

The Black List, movie-modern era, is screenplays that are ready to film, but for reasons undiscovered, have not been produced, completed or handed to distributors. LA Times claims a midlevel executive named Franklin Leonard polls his colleagues for the list. There are murky rules, multiple "like"(s), but many of the voters probably were the very folks who turned down the deal. Another site claims a guy in Leonardo DiCaprio's production company Appian Way came up the idea. Fine. We do not know who the 300 people surveyed for the 2010 list are. That colleagues, Hollywood, executives are keywords tells me these are men. I counted 75 movies on this list at slashfilms. Writers credited for the screenplays: 82 men (including one movie written by three) and ready?... 5 women. F-I-V-E. Katie Lovejoy, Jenni Ross, Carrie Evans, Megan Martin, Katie Wech. The guys wrote movies like "Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch," and "F*cking Jane Austen." Although Carrie Evans cowrote "Boy Scouts vs. Zombies," and Katie Welch wrote "Prom" so I'm making no judgment on the literary quality of these scenarios. But 75 movies and five women is a pitiful ratio. The most votes went to current event, fact-based, CIA-tinged yawns. Are we all in for reality film just like reality TV? Nobody has to make stuff up, revise a second act, or break a brain sweat at all. Coming to a theater near you. We can do better than this. I wish I knew how.

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