Tack Désirée,
Det tog lite tid att bli medlem, därför dröjsmålet.
Jag vet nog inte riktigt vad jag menar.
Jo, jag har ett bra familjefilm-manus och ett presentabelt teaterstycke, men de flesta cinematic assets är i formaten "gamla filmer jag har rättighet att adaptera", "romaner som ännu inte filmats", och "korta historier som jag tweakat i riktning mot treatment".
Jag har jobbat med de skönlitterära texterna i 10 år, så jag har nu en ordentlig mängd texter som bara väntar på att bli omvandlade till filmmanus (jodå, jag har kompetensen).
Problemet är att när man väl en gång skrivit loglinen
Ex:
A wooden horse escapes the carousel, and we follow him on his journey towards Amerika, while experiencing to his reflections over the bipeds that enslaved him, the nature of the world, and his fellow animals on the merry-go-round.
så har man valt bort en rad möjligheter som för något produktionsbolag/samarbetspartner kunnat göra idén attraktiv, och när logline blivit till filmmanus är det för sent att ändra (du skulle ha gjort det till en kamel/radiobil, han skulle ha gett sig av mot Sverige, han skulle blivit bortjagad och inte rymt).
Jag söker filmintelligenta människor som kan läsa två sidor (se nedan) nu, innan logline blir till synopsis, och ge kommentarer av typen:
"Sätt bakgrunden i något Norskt vikingasamhälle, så har du mycket bättre chans att hitta en producent."
"Det där skall du skriva på svenska snarare än engelska."
"Jag vet faktiskt någon som du skulle kunna samarbeta med i det projektet."
"SFF kommer att starta ett projekt som kommer att söka efter filmmanus som det där, men då måste du..."
"Det där vill jag bli med på."
"Visar du det där för ett produktionsbolag kommer de inte att vilja ha med dig att göra."
"Jag vet någon du borde prata med om det där."
Jag känner mig som en diamantslipare, kompetent att slipa stenen till vilken form som helst, men inte medveten om vilken slipning marknaden vill ha.
Jag bifogar en beskrivning av mina cine projekt: alla reflektioner/förslag välkomna.
CINE PROJECTS
Andres Laszlo Sr./my father was as much a script-writer as a fiction writer and having as his best friend movie producer Ladislao Vajda, of course, helped steer his books and interest towards cine. Senior has three movies to his name: My Uncle Jacinto that became a blockbuster, and in today's Spanish film festivals often competes for "Best Spanish/Hispanic film ever." Paco Never Fails is ok but has never been shown outside Spain because of contractual disagreements, and Sin Uniforme that was produced by Warner Brothers I have never seen. Also, he has four unfilmed novels and 24 short stories that have now been translated to English while tweaked towards cine.
I/Junior/Andres Laszlo Jr., am a writer too, and I have spent the last ten years translating and improving my father’s - scout’s honor: I have improved them (esp. as the unfilmed texts never had been content edited) a lot - and my own texts for publication, while steering much of it towards cine. I now consider my ‘bookwork’ finished, and I am shifting my efforts towards cine: producing treatments and scripts. These are my (our) cinematic assets, I hope you find something that interest you:
CINEMATIC ASSETS 1: EXISTING MOVIES:
1. My Uncle Jacinto. I get royalties from Spain but rarely from rest-of-Europe/South American.
2. Paco Never Fails 1 is a source of contractual dispute as the new “outside-Spain-owner” claims that the film is not “exploited”, and that their contract with me is not valid.
3. Paco Never Fails 2. I own the Paco exploitation rights to the Scandinavian countries but I have never worked these.
4. Sin Uniforme could offer possibilities but I have not looked into it.
CINEMATIC ASSETS 2: NEW ADAPTATIONS OF OLD MOVIES:
5. Paco Never Fails 1. I have been called to Paris/Gallimard twice to sign contracts for new adaptations (€300,000/€500,000) but both times we failed to agree (mainly as I had no agent to represent me). “Quick money 1”.
6. Paco Never Fails 2. I am thinking about making an adaptation myself, turning (anthropologic book/comic movie) towards anthropologic murder mystery, and setting the action in Portuguese Goa (India) in the 1930s/40s, maybe getting interest from nearby Mumbai/Bollywood.
7. My Uncle Jacinto. I think of this as one of the most popular bestselling children’s books/family blockbuster movies never to have gotten animated. “Quick money 2”.
CINEMATIC ASSETS 3: ACTUAL SCRIPTS:
One of Senior’s novels was about to become a movie at his demise (Mother Unknown), Senior’s French publishers recommended him to approach the Spanish film industry with another novel/novella (Doña Juana), and Junior’s The Challenge has been to IFFR.
8. Mother Unknown. Though I have lost the script I still retain the synopsis. Whether or not the script is recovered, this is a text out of which great cine could be made and Senior’s best as: 1) I have provided the content editing it lacked, 2. I have translated it to English, and 3. Today a non-straight timeline of structuring scripts is popular – a method that was not accepted/common back in the 1980s – that will suit the story excellently well. “Quick money 3”.
9. Doña Juana was a theatre script in the 1930s but got turned into a novella (in order to get published), and has only recently been turned back into script format. So far it is a rather undeveloped script but once it has been turned back into the good theatre script that it doubtlessly once was (not my job), theatre-to-film script development will be next (my job).
10. The Challenge is my adaptation of Senior’s blockbusting My Uncle Jacinto. In my script Senior’s bullfighting becomes boxing, and Madrid/La Quinta becomes Cape Town/Mandela Park. I turned my adaptation into a script, did all the nitty-gritty, and presented the project to International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) where I applied for production grants to produce the film in Cape Town with Tim Spring (Raw Target, Reason to Die, etc.) as director. IFFR said it was “a near miss.” The script is only available in English, though the first draft of a Spanish translation is underway. “Quick money 4”.
CINEMATIC ASSETS 4: NOVELS SUITABLE TO BECOME SCRIPTS:
As I have translated Senior’s texts Spanish-to-English, I have always done so with cine in mind, and in my opinion, the novels listed below are the most cine-suitable. Also, there is my own Odin’s-son-project.
11. The Seal Castle. In this autobiographic-sounding love-story Senior, before leaving his homeland (Austro-Hungary), to save on the rent, took up residence in the famous Turkish Baths of Budapest (the castle). We follow the protagonist, a good-looking actor, as an upper-class girl falls in love with him/his image, against backstories of a boxer who sells his skeleton, and various other survival-scams.
12. The Caspian Connection. This is a huge project, and its first semi-presentable book-drafts are only now seeing the light of day (in English and Swedish): Odin’s son, Vikings, Muhammad, an addendum to the Quran, a 1400 year plus Arab organization set on blackmailing the world into surrendering to an Islamic Caliphate… The most important question is; “Shall I proceed in English or Swedish?” These scripts I would not be capable to develop to the standard I would like without help. “Quick money 5”.
CINEMATIC ASSETS 5: SHORT STORIES SUITABLE TO BECOME TREATMENTS & SCRIPTS:
Short stories - that often have been written/adapted to read closer to treatments - are picked from the 49 short stories that make up The Tale of Two Knaves. There are at least a dozen stories that could be turned into scripts. Here is a couple:
13. The Little Wooden Horse (story 2) is about a horse that escapes the carousel in the dark of night and sets his course for the continent where he believes that horses all roam free: America. As he gallops through the night, we follow him on his adventures while we are getting to know him through his reflections over the nature of the world, us bipeds that have enslaved him, and his fellow animals on the merry-go-round. Yes, of course, he ends up going in a circle. I love the story, that could become a “deep” animated family/children’s movie, and I would be happy to provide it with a pre-treatment rewrite.
14. My Friend in the Photo (story 4) is a vampire story that could be developed into a movie. It is set in traditional "vampire-country," and in a modern-yet-within-living-memory (the late 1930s) “vampire-setting”. Senior allegedly had some dubious branches on his ancestral tree (ok, so I have them as well but I have been symptom-free for decades).
15. A Beautiful Girl (story 8) is a love story with an amazing twist that could be turned into cine or maybe theatre. It is set in post-war Germany Cologne, where it delves deep into the nature of the feminine psyche: something that I am not very good at, though I am good enough to see that this will put a smile on many a male’s face.
16. The Man in the Blue Tuxedo (story 14) - call it a casino-heist if you will - could become good cine. Also, the casino-part could contribute to any action movie where the hero – having failed in his initial plan – needs to stumble upon a cool way to make a huge income in a casino: it would provide such a superb humanity-part to a hard action movie that an entire movie could be written “around” this action.
17. The Spy (story 17). Here we follow a day in the life of an Italian spy in the late 1940s. His girlfriend is a spy too (though he doesn't know that), and in this short story - that gives insight into the real lives of spies at the time - we (well, the smartest of us) see how our hero gets set up to be framed for murder, though he doesn't realize this. This could be developed into a full-length mystery-thriller: with some direction, I could rewrite it to something close in spirit to North by Northwest.
18. The Dominant Male (story 30). I have a fascination with man-eating felines and this is one of several tiger-stories (story 25, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36), where we see ‘life in the jungle’ from a “nice man-eating tiger's” point of view, set in the Sundarbans (a Bangladeshi/Indian beach jungle). The stories are all entertaining, and reasonably well researched but I don't know what to do with them unless one wants to make a movie starring a man-eating tiger and seen from his point-of-view. Actually, not a bad idea...
19. Sahara 2 (story 40). Imagine a giant of a man (me), hitchhiking through the Sahara because it is on his bucket list and that a small feminine man full of hatred at midnight raises a stone to crush this sleeping giant's skull. The giant awakes in time to raise his hands, and the small man throws the stone beside him; "Scorpion!" he says, and sits down atop the stone so that the big man shall not lift it to check. There they sit – hater and hated, encroaching on each-others personal spaces – the hitchhiker desperately trying not to fall asleep (and so be killed); the small, refusing to budge as believing that remaining on the stone until dawn is his only way to survive. Maybe this story could become theatre; it contains amazing possibilities if one could just get the discussion right (or if just I could remember more of it).
PS. Om en vecka eller så borde jag ha en kritiserbar logline för varje projekt, och kanske till och med ett par råsynopsises.
Tack för hjälpen,
Andres
Z. CINE.pdf
