Monday, July 17, 2006

The worst pirate you ever heard of?

Galley Friend M.R. sends us to this sad appraisal of Dead Man's Chest, which features a clip from the following really, really sad interview with Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott, who wrote both of the Pirates scripts:
Terry Rossio: The world wants there to be movie stars and, in a sense, the story becomes Johnny Depp—because people want that. In terms of understanding why he's [created] an iconic character, the story becomes 'Johnny Depp is brilliant' which of course is true because Johnny Depp is brilliant. People are not necessarily as interesting in pedestrian reality. You still have a storyboard artist who comes up with a visual of Johnny first stepping onto the dock as the ship sinks. We wrote that [scene in which Jack Sparrow is introduced]. We wrote lines like: 'you're the worst pirate I've ever heard of—' and [the response] 'but you have heard of me.' People quote those lines. If the character had walked on screen and just stood there and said, 'hello,' it wouldn't be the same. So, clearly the screenwriting goes into the creation of the character. And I have to credit Gore Verbinski's direction.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I assure you they write better than they speak. Elliot and Rossio have a really good, if infrequently updated, screenwriting website here:

http://www.wordplayer.com/

--See Dubya