Screenwriting : Hollywood against all by Stevan Šerban

No.

No... not sure what the question is?

Good material transcends boundaries.

No. And if you compare the box office for USA and Europe, you'll find the same films at the top.

Yes. I know what he means. I do believe some films fare better if made in certain countries. Absolutely. Because of certain cultural nuances infused into a film it cab be that it works better under one flag than another. Also it can appeal differently to different audiences. I'm surprised others don't get that.

Most popular films last week in every country: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/intl/ US films go out of their way to be "culture neutral" so the appeal to everyone... anything that's only appealing to USA gets cut.

Not entirely sure I agree with that. Seabiscuit was sent our way.

Horse racing is the sport of kings... we don't have any of those in the USA. Nobody here cares about horse racing... but it is an international sport. Every story meeting has notes: "Will this play in Peru? Phnom Penh? Paraguay? Portugal?" And if the element is something that only works in the USA it gets axed. The whole focus is on making a movie that appeals to everyone in the world. There is kind of a "fake USA" used in movies that is not really culturally specific, but designed to work almost anywhere in the world.

That could be applied to anything. What's an example of a US centric movie that would not have been sent OS?

Can't say I agree with you there Willaim and I usually do.

Yes.

I can't tell you how many TV shows have been remade in America only to fail miserably despite being successful in their home countries. The style of humour and stories just don't translate into American. I hated American shows growing up as I couldn't relate to them. Americans were so alien to me. I've become used to it now because we show a lot o fAmerican TV shows here. And that's the trick. We've become used to you, but deep down we don't dont speak the same language.

Off the top of my head I thought: Tyler Perry movies. Totally about cultural elements that are native to the USA. But they are comedies, and I wondered if that meant they may have been popular elsewhere. DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN: Domestic: $50,633,099 100.0%, Foreign: $19,104 0.0%. That ends up about normal for those films: made independently (studios want something that will play the world) for around $5m and they made $50 to $65m here and nada overseas. Baseball movies also tend to not play well outside the USA, so the beloved FIELD OF DREAMS made Domestic: $64,431,625 76.3% Foreign: $20,000,000 23.7% (which is inverted, the average USA movie makes 3/4s of it's money outside the USA). A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN is the most popular baseball movie ever made: Domestic: $107,533,928 81.2% + Foreign: $24,906,141 18.8%. #2 most popular is 42, Domestic:$95,020,213 and NO FOREIGN! No other country picked it up for theatrical. Which is why one of the things they tell you in those meetings is "No baseball!" It may be the American passtime, but no one else in the world cares... so they avoid making movies about baseball. Too USA, not international enough. If you have a script where kids play baseball, the note you get is "Couldn't they play soccer?" I'm sure if I took more time I could come up with a bunch more, but those are examples off the top of my head.

Remakes of foreign films don't use the same screenplays, they have new scripts that bleed out anything about the original film's culture that limited its market in other cultures. Goes through the same "Will it play in Pnom Penh" process of notes. But also the films that are bought for remakes are always genre stuff, no one is remaking a Mike Leigh movie.

As a resident of NYC, L.A. and Dublin, I gotta say anything with awesome stunts and visuals AND is not rah rah USA plays worldwide - e.g. Fast and Furious. They love that shit just as much as U.S. audiences if not more. But U.S. sports films like William said - not just baseball but football and really jingoistic U.S. movies do not play in Europe or elsewhere.
For example - American Sniper did $350m in US, $190m everywhere else. Fast and Furious 7 did $300m US, $900 everywhere else. That's a clear example to me of the fact that a lot of Americans go the movies out of national pride if it's the right story, whereas the rest of the world could care less about the stars and stripes. And nobody in Europe has a f'n clue what Friday Night Lights is
Also darker edgier American stuff does well in Europe. Breaking Bad was bigger in Ireland than it was in the U.S. Pulp Fiction was a mainstream hit in France, but an "indie" hit in the U.S. SO i think the moral of the story is - U.S. is waaay better at making awesome visuals and stunts but Europe has better taste :)
The same is true in music. Van Halen - huge band in the States, in Europe they're known as the band that did that song "Jump". Muse meanwhile sell out arenas with 50,000 people in them in 2 hours and nobody in the states has heard of them. Oasis at their peak were bigger in England than Beyonce has ever been in the U.S.

I can't think of one good film that's "good" for other countries but not the US. But maybe it's because we're a melting pot and we have so much diversity in our everyday lives that we can easily adapt. With that being said, Americans like their films entertaining so if the entirety of the film involves reading, no thank you. lol. That's why they remake foreign films. Language barriers, not cultural differences.

Jean-Pierre there are plenty of films that don't travel to the U.S. Alan Partridge being one example.

Ah, comedies. Yes, those are tricky. I guess that would be the exception. .

Some great points raised. William's point about movie Americana vs real America is a big one. I'd go as far as to suggest America is the world's movie set. Dave's point about the whole USA!-USA!-USA! attitude not appealing in Europe is very true. A tv series like Generation Kill does very well over here while something like Zero Dark Thirty and American Sniper is treated more like unwanted propaganda. Regardless, our cinemas and tv stations are dominated by US productions now. We are good at pushing boundaries and being quirky but we can often be way too art-house, which is partly due to how our films tend to be funded.

Love Alan Partridge, love the humour - you're right, Dave, don't think that worked in the USA - Steve Coogan, great in The Trip, The Trip to Italy and Philomena.

CJ, it's not a total loss, while US TV and cinema dominates, how many of the actors in these films and series are either British or Australian, lol, the mind boggles.

Yeah, that's the really weird thing.

I think American Horror travels very well to Europe, almost everything big stateside does well here... not so the other way and in particular J Horror which the US insists on re-making!

Zero Dark Thirty what a joke! Now it turns out that whole op may have been b.s. never mind that it wasn't a woman....

When I was back in Ireland my mom (65) her lesbian friend in her 50s and her girlfriend and me and my girlfriend went to The Hangover. You couldn't hear the dialogue because people of all ages were laughing so hard. Not just 21 year old Irish fratboys. Pretty sure rural Irish middle-aged lesbians were NOT in the target demo for that one lol. So funny is funny, good is good. There's a lot of universality there, we are waaay more alike than different.

Dave: I didn't see Zero Dark Thirty until recently. I don't know about the historical validity of the film; but I was surprised a what a dull, flat movie it was. I hated it and by the end was thinking "that's two and half hours I'll never get back."

Apparently the American Hustle script was pretty much thrown out with only the beats being the actor's guidance through the scenes. Something about character over story. I didn't think much of the film.

CJ and Owen: I love American Hustle but I think it's great that the art of cinema elicits so many varying opinions and interpretations. It sounds cliché but that what art is all about. Everyone I know loves 'Wolf of Wall Street" and I stopped watching after the airplane scene. I love hardcore material but sometimes that level of crass wears thin.

I have yet to see American Hustle. I've read that it's "all over the place" which curtailed my interest. I managed to read the first few pages of The Wolf of Wall Street script, but stopped. A high level of crass does not interest me at all -- fully aware that the film "captures" behavior and is not "condoning" anything. Whatever... I just thought, "no thanks." I'll probably never see the film. But, to each their own. :) Works that seem too self-indulgent often lose my attention.

I thought Hustle was trying to be Scorsese and it just wasn't strong enough, some really good performances but the movie didn't hang together for me. WOWS... the swearing is just wallpaper after about 10 minutes, Leo is excellent, in fact the cast is excellent... I think what makes it interetsing is that he's an evil snake, but presented in a way that leaves the audience conflicted - typical Sorceses ;-)

Though he has made stunningly beautiful films like “The Age of Innocence” and “The Aviator”, Scorsese’s stock and trade has always been depicting the underbelly of society or crazy obsessive behavior with characters like Travis Bickle and Jake LaMotta. And in the case of “Goodfellas”, Scorsese was firing on all cylinders. Thought Henry Hill and his cronies were animals, disgusting behavior was not showcased for the sake of being sordid. I’m sure by telling Jordan Belfort’s story Scorsese wanted to display the excesses of Wall Street. Ultimately, the viewer has to determine if that’s something you really have to see. For me, the answer is no. This is not to say I don’t enjoy intense adult material. Though my wife never understood how I could watch it, I was a huge fan of David Milch’s “Deadwood” and have watched every episode several times. There were many distasteful things depicted in that show but it had equal measures of heroic behavior. It was a story about the breech birth of a frontier community with people coming together for utilitarian purpose. At the risk of sounding hypocritical, my belief is that crass or unpleasant elements can be mitigated by redemptive elements. But without them, Vulgar material falls short of being something I wish to watch.

Phillip, great commentary about Scorsese's phenomenal work. Exploration about the underbelly of society is truly fascinating. But, something about The Wolf of Wall Street just makes me throw up a little... I don't know exactly what it is, perhaps the subject matter, perhaps the vulgarity, perhaps people like Jordan Belfort just make me feel sick. Sometimes I react to work that way, although I do respect it as storytelling. I feel the same way about vulgar material. It does need some sort of balance; it does need to be mitigated by some redemptive elements -- well, at least for my tolerance as a audience member. I'd rather spend precious time watching something else. :)

Owen: Great insight on WOWS. Always interesting to see Hollywood versus the truth.

Movie of the world?not that definition but let's say "comedies'of the worl: difficult to make a global humoristic movie each culture has its own. so there is a french humor an irish laugh etc....Next will come the historical,the sport,the TV series,the docudrama,social and experimental and all other niches even pornography which cannot be globally successful. We are left with few: perhaps horror.love.intimate.science fiction and perhaps fantasia categories which could have a whole world impact and be successful or fail as well in every country.of the world.

true

I know a story around a sport is iffy. My story isn't about The Masters (golf tournament) but rather The Masters is Just the location/container. My main character is however a golf pro. I believe my story itself has universal appeal. Any feedback is much appreciated.

I wonder....marketing is about creating demand...for example in SA all our movies are drama related and politically related. But since I can remember I always wished to see more fantasy or action movies. My friends would discuss this endlessly ...how pathetic the SA movie industry is. So I put it to you, do you think these different genre movies don't do well because they do not have a market here or because they are not marketed properly here? Having studied marketing, demand can be created.

It is interesting to note - that many of the big Hollywood productions were actually made in the UK. Avengers - Age of Ultron was mainly shot at Shepperton and the recent Brad Pitt World War 2 tank movie Fury - filmed primarily in Hertforshire. One could even surmise that the massive Pinewood Studio site, primarily exists to churn out American financed blockbusters - and without that dosh from across the pond - an awful lot of British technical expertise would be looking for a job. I personally enjoyed Zero Dark Thirty. I thought it was a tight well made docu/thriller that actually rose above the usual action thriller bullshit. I personally loathed Hurt Locker. As for accuracy - as Owen as said, very few filmmakers have ever allowed a fact to stand in the way of a good story - although I suspect that the film will turn out to be more accurate than a recent conspiracy publication.

I think the wolf of wallstreet was a great film, I didn't read the script, I watched the film directed by Martin Scorsese ( Great Director) and I didn't think he went over the top with the sexual content at all, maybe he did from a Hollywood perspective

I also really enjoyed American Hustle, the directing is just great, but the best are the performances, improvised or not improvised the film is unique in its own way in my opinion... But for me it's the kind of film that you only watch once.

Dave raises a good point about the Zero screenplay - in that the writer, Mark Boal has rewritten history and made the key CIA intelligence operative a woman, when it would seem that it was a man. I did not know that. I have done the same with a feature film called Soweto, which hopefully goes into production next year. One of my key characters is a senior SA intelligence officer, who is responsible for tracking down an MK covert team - which, of course, contains the key characters who we are rooting for. I could have made the I/O a grizzled, hard drinking policeman, which in 1970's SA, such stereotypes were two a'penny - but by making the hunter a woman, the story becomes so much more interesting. OK - so it would have been unlikely - who cares - my producer loved that fact that it was a woman, because one of the hard brutal facts of the film industry is it is much cheaper to hire a highly talented, middle aged, A listed female actor than the equivalent male.