![]() ![]() A $1 million deal for the screenplay was brokered with Columbia Tri-Star, but on finally reading it, the studio responded: “This is the worst thing ever written. RELATED: Did you know Marty McFly was almost played by Eric Stoltz?Įven though writer/director Quentin Tarantino was a hot commodity by 1993, he was struggling to get his next project on-track, a pastiche of darkly comic episodes featuring hit men, petty thieves, and underworld characters. No one else in Hollywood wanted to take a chance, so the project was shelved until Zemeckis hit it big with 1984’s “Romancing the Stone.” Suddenly, Universal was up for some time travel, and at long last, “Back To The Future” got the go-ahead. Unfortunately, the execs there had the opposite problem: the film simply wasn’t wholesome enough to carry the Disney banner. Surely the folks guarding the Mickey Mouse legacy wouldn’t have the same concerns. Gale says, “ thought it was a really nice, cute, warm film, but not sexual enough.” Zemeckis balked at this suggestion. Columbia Pictures took an interest, but felt the story of young Marty McFly traveling back in time to his parents’ courting days should have a higher raunch factor. Robert Zemeckis and writing partner Bob Gale began pitching this beloved comedy way back in 1981. Watch the heart-warming kids sci-fi classic that makes Columbia Pictures cry. and Me,” but Columbia dismissed it as “a wimpy Walt Disney movie” with “limited commercial potential.” Eventually picked up by Universal, “E.T.” went on to gross over $700 million - more than fulfilling its “limited” potential. ![]() ![]() Spielberg and collaborator Melissa Matheson crafted a script titled “E.T. Columbia Pictures was intrigued at first, but when the project evolved into a more family-friendly feature about a young boy’s connection with a candy loving creature from outer space, they were less enthusiastic. The plot had a family fending off hostile alien invaders at a remote farmhouse. ![]() After the success of “ Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), director Steven Spielberg started work on a follow-up called “Night Skies”. This classic didn’t start out as a cuddly story about a boy helping an alien return to his planetary home. Here, for example, are five big surprises: hugely successful films that were originally passed on by short-sighted studios who’ve been kicking themselves ever since. Man, that’s gotta hurt! And it has happened, my friends - more than we all realize. What about those scripts the suits said would never fly that end up soaring, making scads of money for a competing studio. It’s bad enough to back a movie that tanks at the box office. What he meant is that nobody - but nobody - truly knows whether a movie is going to be a hit or a bust. To be clear, he was not actually suggesting that the people who green-light pictures are fools or morons, though I suspect he’d admit to having seen a few of those types hanging around. Summing up all the studio heads, marketing people, and producers frantically reading the tea leaves in search of the next big hit, Goldman observed: “Nobody knows anything.” Out of that compulsively readable tome came one simple quote that became quite famous. Its author is veteran screenwriter William Goldman, who scripted numerous high profile movies in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. Delores: Mama, I seen you, ever since I was a little kid, getting up in the middle of the night to take the subway to ride for two hours to go to their house, to do their cooking and to do their ironing and do their cleaning and wash the shit out of their toilet.One of my favorite “insider” books about the film business is 1983’s “ Adventures In The Screen Trade,” an often lacerating, highly insightful expose about the inner workings of Hollywood.We don't have to run around shining his shoes and driving his cars and cleaning his floors and being his ma. Thanking him for his chicken-shit pay and chicken-shit jobs. Delores: We don't have to live off what the white man throws our way.Mama, we don't have to slaves to the white establishment anymore. Delores: Like, there's education like there never was before.Effie: are going right with you and that suitcase.Effie: Well, whatever troubles you got here.Delores: I'm leaving and I'm going away. ![]()
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