11 December 2000

JUST WONDERING: Was anyone else shocked by the efforts of Nancy Myers to sell herself as the "real" writer of What Women Want? As the story goes, in detail in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, the script started with an original by Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa and another by Diane Drake, which also used the telepathy gimmick. Myers was brought into the project by Disney in 1998, for whom she did a rewrite. Disney put it into turnaround and Myers set it up with Mel Gibson, his company Icon, and its home studio, Paramount. Writers Guild arbitration ensued, though not automatically, as the N.Y. Times incorrectly states, and Myers lost out on story credit to Goldsmith and Yuspa and Drake and in screenplay credit to Goldsmith and Yuspa alone.

I am sympathetic to Ms. Myers on one level, having suffered the fate of arbitration at the WGA and knowing that dialogue is given almost no weight in terms of credit arbitration. I believe that she brought a lot of the dialogue to the movie. She is an excellent writer. But while the WGA does not, appropriately, discuss arbitration in any depth, the likelihood is that Goldsmith, Yuspa, and Drake would have happily accepted the credits as they stand and that it was Myers who forced the arbitration. Additionally, when an interview with Myers leads to the New York Times’ Margy Rochlin writing, "But not being listed as having contributed to the script doesn’t necessarily mean that Ms. Myers has broken her 18-year streak of writing and producing her own projects," I am offended for the writers who won the arbitration. And as I stated before, the L.A. Times featured this issue prominently in its story as well.

Everybody wants to be part of a winner. What Women Want is a winner. It will be a big hit. But for Myers to be out there selling herself as the writer, even though she didn’t win arbitration, is grotesque. Just look at the case of Meet the Parents. It was based on another movie. The writers of the movie are a little upset because they sold their rights for a pittance, but their deal was their deal. The screenplay for the smash-hit movie is quite different, from stem to stern. The writers of the original, Greg Glienna and Mary Ruth Clarke, got "story by" credit and Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg got "screenplay by" credit. Yet, Herzfeld and Hamburg and director Jay Roach have been very respectful of Glienna and Clarke when talking to media outlets. They could have kicked and screamed and tried to devalue the original writers. They didn’t.

Worse, in the case of What Women Want, Paramount is pushing for Oscar. (Just ask Peter "The Quote" Travers, who offered up, "We’re Talking Oscar Watch... You Bet." Oy!) And while Mel Gibson is a longshot candidate, the only other candidate that is even remotely realistic is Best Supporting Screenplay... the very category that director Nancy Myers has now attacked publicly in the coastal Times-es and god knows where else.

BAD AD WATCH: What Women Want is way too good a movie to be reduced by the names of Mark S. Allen, Maria Salas, Bonnie Churchill, Kyle Osborne, and Steve Oldfield. This group gives pause, not enthusiasm.

READER OF THE DAY: This came from JH -- "Chocolat is awful. I caught a sneak of it tonight and really, really hated what I saw.

Juliette Binoche stars in the film (which gives her next to nothing to do), which is sort of Where the Heart Is meets The Full Monty. It’s a completely offensive liberal fantasy.

"The basic plot is that a woman comes to a small town in 1950s France, and through the power of her chocolate making, changes their outlook on lives. The problem with this is that you need to share its viewpoint, which is that all of the townspeople are stupid and blindly follow their way of life and religion since they don’t know any better.

"The film treats Catholicism as folly. I’m not Catholic, but I was still offended. It takes place during Lent. Binoche’s character tempts all of the characters to break their Lenten vows with her chocolate, and this is seen as a good thing. She doesn’t attend church and seems to callously brush aside their views on religion. Basically her character’s goal comes at the cost of the town’s way of life, and we’re expected to applaud that.

"I could go on, but I doubt many people here have seen it yet. I just want to warn you that the film, while seemingly sweet, is incredibly subversive... in the worst way. It manipulates the audience into accepting the offensive views it has.

"If you watch the film with any sort of rational mind at all, you can’t help but be offended. I’m up for magic realism as much as the next person, but this film doesn’t work at all.

"What I had a huge problem with were its attitudes toward society. It’s one of those movies that celebrates vagrants at the expense of people who are settled down in life, but then expects us to be happy when the main vagrants in the story all decide to settle down at the end. What hogwash. I don’t mind that the film condemns the church and the town’s people so much as that it expects us to be happy when it betrays itself and decides these are good things.

"Also problematic is Judi Dench’s character... she is presented as a fellow outcast from the town, but she is obviously influenced by what her daughter (the mayor’s loyal assistant) thinks of her. The film definitely wants to be subversive and conformist at the same time, and you simply can’t.

"The condescending way it treats the townspeople and the pedestal it places Binoche and Depp on both are ridiculous. The film is a total failure (though I’m sure people who don’t much think about what they’re watching are apt to enjoy it.)"

E ME: What’s making you smile these days?