Writing Wrinkle

Hmm... was just looking through the Official Rules for Project Greenlight — so as to ensure that everything I was planning for the director’s scene was in keeping with the contest parameters — when I noticed something perturbing.

In describing the contest originally, they specified that they were looking for “genre” projects like horror or thriller. In other words (at least to my interpretation), pictures that were imaginative but easily slotted into a category. Unfortunately, it appears that my assessment was insufficient: They’re looking exclusively for horror or thriller projects. Or at least almost exclusively.

Yeah, in the movie business, horror pictures are often referred to as “genre” films. Dimension Films, for example, is often referred to as the “genre” wing of Miramax. Still, Dimension doesn’t handle just horror films — witness Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

The rules — or at least the overview — do indicate that they’ll accept other types of pictures, but you have to assume there’s a pretty big hurdle to overcome to get accepted that way; you’d have to have one damn good screenplay. And while I do think mine’s good — and definitely worthy of production — I don’t know that it’s enough to get the producers to say, “You know what? We were going to make a thriller, but after reading this, I don’t want to anymore.” And, of course, there’s no way I can write a brand-new thriller in two weeks (and the notion of adapting Holding Pattern into a thriller is laughable).

I’ll probably submit it anyway. What the hell. And I can at least take comfort that my director’s scene fits the criteria.