DB on TV: Project Greenlight Gets a Big Green Thumbs Up

If you like movies, or writing, or Wes Craven, or Matt Damon, or Ben Affleck, you need to break quick-like to your TiVo or DVR or other archaic taping contraption to program-ize Project Greenlight (on Bravo – check listings), which chronicles an attempt to pick relative unknowns to write and direct a commercial Hollywood film release.

It’s that good.

And yes, you can not like Ben Affleck and still enjoy the show.

This is the third installment of Project Greelight, the brainchild of the Damon-Affleck WonderTwins Duo. This time around the Twins, along with Craven and American Pie producer Chris Moore, are looking for the next great director and screenwriting team to get a shot at greatness, put together an entertaining and intelligent film, and make a little profit along the way.

Except the reality is far messier and uglier than that. And a hell of a lot more fun to watch.

The reality for this reality project is that because they’re playing with millions of dollars of studio money, they need to actually crank out a profit this time around. The first two Project Greenlight films made in the neighborhood of $100,000, which is, in Hollywood parlance, bubkus. This time out, they’re going for a more commercial enterprise (read = need to make money or no more Project Greenlight) which, at a very early stage, is adding an intriguing level of tension and complexity to the proceedings.

Setup to key scene from the first episode: The team is down to picking a finalist from the best three screenplays submitted to the competition. As everyone knows, the script is the blueprint: it’s everything. If the script is tripe, or hollow, or unfilmable, or not right for the budget or time schedule, it will stink like three-week old cod.

The three screenplays boil down to: an intelligent thriller, an intelligent comedy/sci fi flick about time travel, and a story about monsters attacking a house.

Article Author: Eric Berlin

Eric Berlin is the publisher of Online Media Cultist. He's also prone to referring to himself in the third person in author bios in an attempt to make it look like someone Less Important wrote it for him.
Contact: dumpsterbust@gmail.com

Visit Eric Berlin's author page — Eric Berlin's Blog