Ridley Scott has been one of our most prolific and productive movie directors of the last 30 years and over the past 30 years he has created some of the best movies and some that are far from the best. This has always been a question in my mind—why is it that Ridley one year makes an awesome movie (American Gangster) and then the next year makes a crap movie (Robin Hood)? Well, I have the answer—Ridley is incapable of overcoming bad writing. Let’s start with Ridley’s 2nd major motion picture and probably his best movie—‘Blade Runner’. ‘Blade Runner’ was written by one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time—Philip K. Dick, and with such apt source material Ridley made one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time. Jumping ahead 30 years Ridley decided to reboot the ‘Alien’ series and recruited one the worst working writers in movies and t.v. (and my personal nemesis)--Damon Lindelof and the result was the awful ‘Prometheus’, a movie that was not only horrific but killed the ‘Alien’ series forever. Another example is ‘American Gangster’ a great slow-burn of a movie written by Steve Zaillian, an awesome writer of such greats as ‘Gangs of New York’, ‘Clear & Present Danger’, and ‘Schindler’s List’ to name just a few. That movie was followed by the above stated crap movie ‘Robin Hood’ which was written by the equally crap writer Brian Helgeland who has raped our eyes with such movies as ‘The Taking of Pelham 123’ & ‘The Postman’. Now why have I said all this? Because Ridley has a new movie coming out next week called ‘The Counselor’ which was written by the greatest living American writer—Cormac McCarthy. I’m not overstating it when I say greatest living American writer. His last novel ‘The Road’ not only won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction but was also adapted into one of the most haunting movies of the last decade (seriously, if you’ve never seen ‘The Road’ do so immediately). Before that there was the remarkable novel ‘No Country for Old Men’ which was also adapted into a movie that later went on to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. But, in my opinion, Cormac’s greatest work and the novel that motivated me to become a writer—‘Blood Meridian’, an awe-inspiring collection of words that Time magazine placed in its top 100 greatest novels. A combination of Ridley Scott backed by the great Cormac McCarthy equals a movie of the year if not the decade. So I plead with you my friends to go and spend your money on seeing this movie and I guarantee you will be thoroughly entertained. If this movie makes some decent money than there’s a good chance Cormac McCarthy will write more screenplays and in an industry that thinks teaming up Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake is a good idea we could use more Cormac McCarthy movies. PLEASE GO SEE ‘THE COUNSELOR’—THANK YOU!
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 22:33:53 +0000
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