I’ve tallied all the votes from comments and email the ‘winner’ is Dune.
I say ‘winner’ because the goal for the September 5th ScriptChat session was to come up with a bad screenplay to analyze. We learn a lot from reading good screenplays. What can we learn from one not-so-good one? And Dune resonated on that score with the most voters.
Again out of deference to the writers involved — who knows what type of pressure they were under to steer the script in this or that direction — we will focus comments strictly on the script itself.
Next question: Who has the last best version of the Dune script as a PDF? What’s the URL where it’s hosted for download?
I’ll have more information on the September 5th event later. In the meantime, you may visit the ScriptChat website to learn more about what they do. And thanks again to Nate Winslow for organizing the event on our end.
Finally for those who voted for Crash, The Bounty Hunter, The A-Team, 2012, and They Serve Beer in Hell, I am open to the possibility of a GITS analysis of each on a month-to-month basis. Let me see a virtual show of hands in comments to determine how many people would be interested in that to see if it’s worth our while.
Awesome!
Thanks to everyone who voted/emailed/discussed in the comments–and I'm all for the monthly discussion. I think there's a lot to learn from all those scripts. Plus, I know there are all sorts of writers here, and the scripts cover a pretty diverse range of genres. A little something for everyone in there.
Scott, I have some drafts of Dune on my computer somewhere. I've only ever seen one source for it, though. If any one has any script finding wizards in your back pocket, I'd love to see if anyone has a final draft of this sitting around. I'll update this with the draft dates that I have, see if anyone has different ones.
More details from #scriptchat when I get them!
The more bad scripts the merrier. I vote for one per month. I was fortunate/unfortunate enough to catch the first act of Beer in Hell the other day. Wow! We've got to analyze that thing.
We at #scriptchat are very excited to have all the Go Into The Story writers/readers at our chat! Bring on the tequila!
The chat room is http://tweetchat.com/room/scriptchat
Sunday, Sept 5th 8pm GT (EURO) and 8pm ET (USA)
Update on what Dune PDF scripts I have:
2nd draft – 5/29/82
5th draft – 8/27/82
6th draft – 12/9/82
7th draft – 12/9/83
Not totally sure what draft # ended up being the final one–did they go higher than 7? Anyone else have any copies of Dune?
I think the 7th draft is the latest one available. Here's a link for a PDF version:
http://www.duneinfo.com/caladan/dune_script_7th_draft.pdf
I think you might be right, but I'm still seeing if anyone has anything after that. I'll upload my copy to the Script Library and we'll post the link here and on #scriptchat soon.
Count me in for analyzing a bad script a month.