ANNUAL MOVIE BLACK LIST

This is something really interesting I came across that I never knew existed (Shocking, I know).  There are really brilliant screenplays that float through the circle jerk of Hollywood without, for various reasons, ever becoming celluloid and each year a list is compiled and released of these screenplays.

Started two years ago by a young executive at Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company Appian Way, who polled 90+ peers to send him their 10 favorite new unproduced screenplays to read over the holidays. The underground list was e-mailed around and quickly became a Hollywood phenomenon.

I can’t lie: the various synopses sound really interesting, except for the political ones (link above).  This is going to sound completely ludicrous and outrageous, but I’m sorry, the best political movie was already made and that’s that.  All the President’s Men.  

Back in college I attended a talk by Doug Liman who directed one of my all time favorite movies, “Swingers.”  Although he was there to talk primarily about the user created video content website he started (which I believe folded in the dot com bubble burst 1.0), we primarily only wanted to hear about Swingers.  As he explained, this seminal film was actually one of those screenplays that circulated heavily, because of its brilliance, but for whatever reason people passed on actually producing it.  Good thing it did, because without it we wouldn’t have catchphrases like “you’re so money,” “beautiful babies,” and leaving extended and very awkward voicemails to girls.