Dreams on Spec
| Dreams on Spec | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Daniel J. Snyder |
| Starring | David Stieve Joe Aaron Deborah Goodwin James L. Brooks Nora Ephron Carrie Fisher Gary Ross Steven E. de Souza Larry Karaszewski Scott Alexander |
| Cinematography | Harry Frith |
| Music by | Deane Ogden |
| Distributed by | Mercury Productions |
Release dates | July 15, 2007 |
Running time | 86 min. |
Dreams on Spec is an American documentary film that was released in 2007 – the first ever to profile the struggles and triumphs of emerging Hollywood screenwriters. It was written and directed by Daniel J. Snyder, who learned first-hand about the screenwriter's travails in the late 1980s when he was a teenager working alongside aspiring writer/directors Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary in the famed Video Archives video store in Manhattan Beach, California.[1]
Synopsis
Dreams On Spec follows three aspiring screenwriters as they struggle to turn their scripts into movies.[2] David is a hip talent agent's assistant with three scripts circulating around town. He's plugged into "young Hollywood" - and when he's not working or writing, he's usually hanging out at the beach. Joe is a middle-aged family man who has split time over the last three years between caring for his autistic daughter and writing what he believes could be the great American screenplay. And Deborah is trying to become one of the few African-American women to ever write and direct a feature film, though she's struggling just to pay her bills while she searches for money to produce her script.[3] Between these stories, the film intercuts critical insight from such Hollywood heavyweights as James L. Brooks, Nora Ephron, Carrie Fisher, Gary Ross, Steven E. de Souza, Ed Solomon, Paul Guay, Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander.[4]
Memorable Quotes
Steven E. de Souza (Die Hard): "Well, Jack Warner may have been celebrated for calling writers 'Schmucks with Underwoods,' but 20 years earlier Irving Thalberg … said, 'The most important person in the motion picture process is the writer, and we must do everything in our power to prevent them from ever realizing it.'”
Carrie Fisher (Script Doctor Extraordinare): "It was Spielberg that asked me to rewrite Hook – just to rewrite Tinkerbelle. But that makes no sense because you can’t just write one character. There is another character that they speak to. Although, you know, it was Robin’s character mostly, so I would improvise with Robin Williams. Well, he and I do that anyway. So now you have two people that desperately need medication, but it’s fine if they’re off and you’re taking notes. And we had a very good time.
Nora Ephron (You've Got Mail): "It’s a very male business, and it has in vast portions of it, the whole action movie part of it might as well be the United States Army in 1943, in that the ethics of it are – are, you know, boot camp and action movies and guns and explosions and all the rest of it, and that – so that means that – that about 50% of the business is not only pretty much closed off to women, but women don’t even wanna be in it."
James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment): "I never knew anybody who ever got a Writers Guild card who didn’t have a hard time when somebody said, 'What do you do for a living?' saying, 'I’m a writer.' Your – your voice always catches on 'a writer.' I think it takes about 14 years to not have the catch in your voice if you’re very aggressive. It takes longer if you’re not. Because it – you know, so many of us have dreamt about it forever as a dream that could not be realized, and ... I just think there are a lot of us."
Gary Ross (Big): "Success is sort of an elusive word. Were you satisfied? Do other people see the movie and are they satisfied? Does it evoke something strong and powerful? Not everybody – and this is not about concensus. This is about were you able to communicate something specifically to somebody and move them?"
References
- ^ "The Working Screenwriter, July 28, 2007, "A must-see documentary ..."".
- ^ "Los Angeles Times, July 18, 2007, "Like the lottery: Someone wins," p. 4".
- ^ "Entertainment Insiders, July 18, 2007, "Dreams on Spec (2007)"".
- ^ Creative Screenwriting magazine, January-February 2006, "Daniel Snyder Documents the Dream," p. 16.