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Pete Jones - On the Show
I unfortunately can't jump on to the Project Greenlight website often because I get so sucked in by the commentary I forget I need to write the next script so I can pay for all of the babies my wife wants to have. At Liveplanet, Chris Moore, Sean Bailey, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wanted to create a company where productions could take advantage of the web, TV, and film. I am not an expert when it comes to integrated media, but Project Greenlight has to be doing it as well as any production ever has. The website is incredible, the TV show is great, and I think the movie is pretty good (if I'm allowed to say so). Because all of these things worked so well, I think there is going to be a Project Greenlight 2.
The unfortunate thing about Project Greenlight is that the slant the HBO show decided to take is a dramatic, mostly one-sided one. Trust me, I'm the first to thank Miramax TV for making good TV. I believe, though some journalists disagree, that the show's popularity will help at the box office. Frankly, I'm incredibly impressed how they turned boring 18 hour shooting days into riveting TV. Unfortunately, because of the negativity, there are many high school and college students I have met with who say that after seeing the show, they do not want to pursue a career in film. The show forgot to show the great rewards of making movies. When I defend the stupid comments I make or my co-workers make, many have said to me, "Dude, it's not as if they CGI'd those comments in." Good point! We did say these things, but if I was asked on March 15th where I would get the confidence to direct a movie for the first time, and that quote is edited in after an argument I have with Chris about stealing a shot (Sandbagging!) on May 17th, though I did say it, is it not being taken out of context? In a sense, is that quote not being CGI'd? The fact that I am quoted as taking a hands on approach to working with the kids instead of the acting coach and then they show me sitting at a monitor when in truth I was on the bed working with the kids hands on, is that not a form of CGI editing? If you go out 100 yards in Lake Michigan, it's only at most three feet of water and so if the kids had trouble after 6 strokes, all they had to do is standup. And what about the fact that the kids loved the water and I couldn't get them out to do their scenes on land? Would those truths sabotage the quality of the drama?
Everyone involved, no one more so than me, is grateful for Project Greenlight in all its shapes and forms. And I imagine people are getting sick of hearing the complaints from the people who made the movie. The truth is, the HBO show illustrates beautifully the difficulty of making a movie. It's an inexact science that creates moments of sheer joy and frustration as if they live in the same room, or in my case, the same head. But the show purposely creates an untrue ratio of failures to successes, and by omitting these successes, Project Greenlight cannot graduate from a great reality TV show to an entertaining, well-balanced documentary.
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