Your Movie Is A Piece of Crap

I recently worked on a movie where the executive producer came in to finalize the project. He blurted out that the movie is complete and absolute garbage. To which this news trickled down to my co-worker who told me what he said. That's how fast information travels. Keep in mind, my co-worker's English is HORRIBLE. It's really weird when people know when something doesn't work. In the big studio movies, I'm not sure what they're judging this on. This movie has been released already, and just broke even, but just knowing how bad a movie you have on your hands is sickening. Especially as the money person.

I think it also takes a lot of chutzpah to say exactly what can't be really said. Too many people say too many things. Coddling and blowing smoke up the actor's rear ends, telling them this/that/the other. The cast and crew party happens, and then...the post production is in the dark. Now...

...a few things come to mind. Did the script suck? Did they mis-cast? Did production shoot what was needed? Go over budget? Judging by the dailies, not a single issue arose from the shoot. No divas, no drama, nothing...it wasn't until they started to piece it together that they truly knew they were in trouble.

And honestly...I have no idea what works. Obviously there are some things that are at the core of what was funny. The trailer was funny. The girls in the movie are funny. They're really decent actors. But this movie was destroyed in the press. I've never seen the finish piece, but it's hard to conclude anything that I saw as coming in under 20% on Rotten Tomatoes. So, I don't know. But the producer knew. And word of mouth knew.

Why is it that we collectively feel we understand when a movie is going to be good? I worked on "Trainwreck" as well. And it was a solid hit. I saw it in theaters and a little confused as to what everyone else saw, in terms of glowing about Amy Schumer. She was fine. But it wasn't anything past her stand-up act. Then I was at the screening of "Saw" back in 2004, and I thought it was totally stupid and cheap looking. What did the producers on that see?

I can't imagine spending some much time, energy or money to have a producer tell me that my movie sucks. It's just a massive pile, and that we'd be lucky to break even. That's when the real fingerpointing happens. And the people who are really responsible, walk away relatively unscathed. It's a weird business.