Sunday, November 16, 2008

The movie I "wrote"

For anyone that doesn't know, I have recently written some screenplays for a production company called Nu-Lite Entertainment that distributes through Universal and BlackChristianMovies.com.

Well, I finally got copies of the movie I wrote for Nu-Lite, Johnson Family Christmas Dinner. It is more low budget than any of you can probably imagine but some of the acting is fine and the script was really good to begin with so it almost qualifies as a real movie. However, as Ashlea and I were watching it we began to notice a couple things. One, the characters on the cover of the DVD aren't actually in the movie.


Those are characters from the first Johnson Family movie.

Another thing we noticed is that there were scenes and lines in it that I didn't write, which is totally fine and understandable to a certain extent, no movie is going to be exactly how the script is. However, we got to a scene where characters say things that I did not write that made me embarrassed to have my name on the movie as the writer. I don't want my name associated with what they're talking about. I will only go into slight detail so that when people watch the movie they'll know that I didn't have anything to do with it and am opposed to it.

Basically the family is sitting at the table and the patriarch tells a joke explicitly ridiculing people with special needs. This comes late in the movie when we are supposed to be attached to these characters. After he made the joke I couldn't care less about them. The joke is tasteless and the scene doesn't add anything to the plot or the story (in fact it detracts significantly). When/if you watch this movie know that I did not write that scene and when I saw it I immediately stopped the movie and tried to get in contact with the Producers.

This movie will be out on December 9th. I'm hoping that no one will see the movie without knowing that I did not write that scene. The other day I was offered the chance to write several more screenplays for the company and I also have a script that they just finished production on. This makes me nervous as to what could leak into the other movies supposedly written by me. Hopefully I will not be embarrassed to have my name on the next DVD they put out but right now my relationship with their company is in jeopardy.

In good news, I have a short that I wrote being produced this afternoon by the company my roommate is starting up. For this shoot I will be on set, actually have input, and the quality of the finished product will be much higher. I'll hopefully have a link where you can watch it in the following weeks.

-Peter

1 comment:

M.O.M said...

And Oh Yea, I Thought You Knew About The Cover To The DVD, I Would Have Told You......I FOLOL When I Seen It, Cause I Knew You Had To Change The Script Because No-One was Returning....WOW If I Was The new Cast I Might Be A Little Peeved.