The Master - Spoiler-Free Thread

[Gittes]

The following quote from PTA, taken from this interview, seems to substantiate some of the ideas being thrown around on the last page regarding him possibly getting upset over the leaked script:

"One of the films that I have the fondest memory of seeing is Gallipoli, because I knew absolutely nothing about it. My brother said, ''Let's go see this movie.'' And I said, ''What's it about?'' He said, ''I'm not going to tell you.'' And I hadn't seen the poster, I hadn't seen a trailer or anything, and it was such an amazing experience. [Talking about the Radiohead release] just made me think of it. To be able to just kind of get something as close to the bone as possible, without too much intrusion..."

[Pubrick]

still waiting..

can someone with a sense of reality please stand up, raise your hand, or somehow acknowledge that this discussion is total bullshit?

[Gittes]

Yeah, I still don't understand your instantaneous aggression over this, though. It's an interesting discussion.

Nor do I get — as I mentioned in my last post found on the prior page, which you seem to have skimmed over — why you have to shorten the parameters on this interesting discussion by declaring that PTA has only one reason to be irked about the script leak. There could, in fact, be more than one reason.

[Stefen]

It was an unfinished draft. A work in progress. Can't imagine anyone being happy about a work in progress getting out into the open. It's a vulnerable piece of work; something that you don't want anybody to see.

I could see him being indifferent if it was the last draft, but an early draft like this? I'd be pissed and might even give up on it and work on something else.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see PTA say fuck it and move onto something else. It's not like anything else except a rough draft was in place.

Metal Gear Solid FTW.

[New Feeling]

still waiting..

can someone with a sense of reality please stand up, raise your hand, or somehow acknowledge that this discussion is total bullshit?

yeah because clearly this ain't you.  ever since you've started posting again I almost wish you hadn't, and I think your attitude towards this reasonable discussion is a good example of why.

There are lots of reasons why a filmmaker would be glad people were reading their screenplay well in advance of production and even, gasp, final draft.  The main one would be that they're proud of it and well aware that reading it wouldn't be spoiling the story but rather reading the story, in screenplay form, which for many of us can be as touching and valuable, (or possibly even moreso) than seeing the completed film.   

[Sleepless]

Maybe we need a sub-thread? 

[Gittes]

It was an unfinished draft. A work in progress. Can't imagine anyone being happy about a work in progress getting out into the open. It's a vulnerable piece of work; something that you don't want anybody to see.

I could see him being indifferent if it was the last draft, but an early draft like this? I'd be pissed and might even give up on it and work on something else.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see PTA say fuck it and move onto something else. It's not like anything else except a rough draft was in place.

Metal Gear Solid FTW.

By the way, if this post was in response to mine, I'm not of the camp that thinks PTA is definitely indifferent about this. As I said back on the last page, I can see both sides to the argument. Nobody can say for sure how he feels about this. Yet.

[Stefen]

He feels shitty. How can that even be debated? It was an unfinished draft. It's a mess, pretty much. At least with the TWBB draft that got leaked early, it was coherent. This isn't. Everything is fragmented, to be added later, etc. It's in its most unawesome form.

There is no way he's "happy" with this version seeing the intrawebs.

[Gittes]

Who is saying that he's absolutely ecstatic about this, though? It's a possibility that he's somewhat indifferent, or that he sees both sides of the coin, or that he is downright upset. But it's naturally hard to determine what is in fact the truth. Nobody here has access to the facts, as far as PTA's reaction is concerned.

And the draft is a "mess"? That's the most negative review of the script I've seen yet. If that's true, I guess I can understand why you are so particularly certain that he "feels shitty" about the leak.

[Alexandro]

Personally, the ideal for me as an audience member is to plunge into a film knowing the least info about it. Thinking as a filmmaker, the ideal would be that the audience would see the film like that. Absolutely no expectations, no advertising, no trailer, no press, no nothing. You want the audience to see a movie, not a screenplay.

The more you know beforehand the less you get 100% surprised. I don't see what's to debate here. No one likes screenplays leaked because people will go to the movie with another movie already in their head. Because they will know how it turns out, or what music will be used in a certain scene. It just spoils it. It must be a pain in the ass for a writer director to see his new screenplay leak like that, it ruins the surprise. The worst part is that fans are the ones who do this to themselves. I absolutely LOVED the experience of  watching TWWB knowing no plot, no actors outside of DDL, no reviews, opinions, or anything.

Screenplays are shit you read cause you have to, maybe you are an actor, an editor, something in the film industry, and you have to read scripts and soon you know too many plots and endings of movies around you. Although I understand the urge of fans to read "the master project", from where I'm standing, it serves no purpose to do that. I have no business reading that thing, I'm not related to it in any way. The only job I have in that production is to watch the final film.

[Gold Trumpet]

I remember when leaked screenplays had more political and financial implications. Here we're just considering the fate of Paul Thomas Anderson's feelings, but when Oliver Stone made Salvador, he specifically wrote a version that favored Nicaragua because he wanted the film to be made in the country with the government's financial support. However, this copy wasn't the real one and Stone risked international backing by putting this version out there. He gave that version to officials and they loved it, but Stone couldn't make the film in the country anyways since his main researcher for the film was murdered in the country shortly after. Instead he had to make it in Mexico and scrape to get money anyway he could to finance it.

There are lots of other filmmakers who had to deal with a lot of grief, especially in Eastern Europe in years past, over screenplay protection. I don't really care what Paul Thomas Anderson feels. I imagine he understands a leaked screenplay is part of the game in America.

[matt35mm]

Really, the greater threat is promotional material like trailers, because that's something that will spoil what the film's about for general audience members.  The only people who are going to read the script, other than the people working on the film, are geeks like me who want to know everything about how a movie gets made, including what a draft is like at this stage.  I think it's pointless to guess how PTA feels about it, but if it were me, I wouldn't get worried about a hundred people reading a leaked script when I'm making a movie for a million audience members.  I've been digging for more yet-to-be-produced scripts and I've found that there are a lot out there--there's a whole subculture of people reading this stuff, but it still really only amounts to a few hundred super nerds who are generally concerned with the craft of screenwriting.

In choosing to read the script, I am deliberately taking myself away from being a normal audience member of this film, which is fine with me.  I agree that for the best experience of the film, you should go in knowing little or nothing about it.  I didn't read this script because I couldn't wait to know the story.  I could wait.  I chose to read it because the opportunity came and I decided that I would like to see how I can study the making of the film from this perspective.  I don't know what I'll learn yet.  I've already learned a bit, because I've read PTA shooting scripts before, and now I'm learning how he builds them (I'm also in the middle of reading the recently posted early draft of There Will Be Blood).

There's a lot to learn by reading whatever scripts I can find, and personally I've found it difficult to read a script if I've already seen the movie because I have nothing to propel me through the tedious task of reading a script.  But reading something I haven't seen, perhaps a few drafts of it as it comes along, and then seeing the film... I can be eager for each one of those steps.  Reading the script doesn't kill the desire to see the film, and might better allow me to understand the choices they made in producing it.  I can read the script like literature, and since I haven't seen the film, I can freely imagine what it might be like and vaguely how I might direct it.  Then, when I see how it ultimately turns out, I can learn a lot by seeing how each of the thousands of choices was made differently or similarly to how I imagined it.  This is not the case if I'm reading something I've already seen as a film.  I find myself too hungry to learn whatever I can to not take an opportunity like this when it comes along.

[Gittes]

I don't see what's to debate here.

Consider the two posts below yours, then.

[Pozer]

headin towards a 20th page lowlights reel. good luck, pages 18 & 19!

[Alexandro]

I don't see what's to debate here.

Consider the two posts below yours, then.

Still, as many angles as we can find to frame this, leaked screenplays suck for the filmmaker. If filmmakers wanted people to read first drafts or whatever, they would post them themselves and ask for feedback from the nerds. It may be part of the game in 2010's western civilization, it may not be a life or death situation as it might have been in the past, and people who read them may be choosing to for educational reasons, the filmmaker may feel "honored" that fans are eager to read the new material, but it's still a pain in the ass because it's not the intended way for a movie to come out.

I understand all points of view expressed here, but if the question is whether filmmakers find it acceptable that screenplays for an unmade film spread around the internet, my guess is that most would say "no", and would be a little annoyed by it at the very least.