Underexposed! , livre ebook

Editor: Connor Leonard
Designers: Eli Mock, Deb Wood, and Jack Woodhams
Production Manager: Larry Pekarek
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020931056
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4469-3
eISBN: 978-1-68335-918-0
2021 PosterSpy Limited
Posters: this page Tom Coupland (BoyThirty), this page Kreg Franco, this page Joe Sanchez, this page Dave O Flanagan, this page Freya Betts, this page Neil Davies, this page Bella Grace, this page Ben Turner, this page Alexandra Espa a, this page Jaren Hemphill, this page Guillem Bosch, this page Kevin Tiernan, this page Albert Collado, this page Simon Caruso, this page Julien Rico Jr., this page Anthony Galatis, this page Brandon Michael Elrod, this page Danny Schlitz, this page Rafa Rola, this page Genzo (Zoltan Kovacs), this page Scott Saslow, this page Chris Garofalo, this page Laura Streit, this page SG Posters, this page Mat Roff, this page Noah Bailey, this page Nico Bascu n, this page Ksenia Lanina, this page Alexander Cherepanov, this page , this page , this page Brit Sigh, this page Edgar Ascens o, this page Aleksey Rico, this page Liza Shumskaya, this page Miki Edge, this page Yvan Quinet, this page Patrick Connan, this page Si Heard, this page Of Stick and Bone, this page Sister Hyde Design (Drusilla Adeline), this page Josh Campbell, this page Dakota Randall, this page QzKills (Quinnzel Kills), this page Sam Coyle, this page Derek Eads, this page Laura Racero, this page Nicky Barkla, this page Rachael Sinclair, this page Nick Taylor, this page Mark Levy, this page Matt Talbot
Foreword Fred Dekker 2021
Cover 2021 Abrams
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CONTENTS
FOREWORD BY FRED DEKKER
INTRODUCTION
Neill Blomkamp s Alien 5
Joel Schumacher s Batman Unchained
Peter Jackson s A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Lover
John Hughes s Oil and Vinegar
Sofia Coppola s The Little Mermaid
David Fincher s Ness
Steven Soderbergh s Cleopatra 3-D
John Carpenter s Shadow Company
Jean Marc-Vall e s Get It While You Can
Nicolas Winding Refn s The Bringing
Peter Brigg s Hellboy: Silverlance
Tim Burton s Monsterpocalypse 3-D
Steven Spielberg s Oldboy
The Tony Clifton Story
George Miller s Justice League: Mortal
Rob Zombie s The Blob
Shane Carruth s A Topiary
Nick Cave s Gladiator 2
William Friedkin s The Diary of Jack the Ripper
The Wachowskis Plastic Man
The Day the Clown Cried
Alfred Hitchcock s Kaleidoscope
A Clockwork Orange Starring the Rolling Stones
Catherine Hardwicke s Hamlet
Spike Jonze s Harold and the Purple Crayon
The Coen Brothers To the White Sea
Ridley Scott s I Am Legend
Alejandro Jodorowsky s King Shot
Neil Marshall s BURST 3-D
Joe Carnahan s Daredevil Trilogy ( Daredevil 1973, Daredevil 1979, Daredevil 1985)
David Lynch s One Saliva Bubble
Vincenzo Natali s Neuromancer
Stanley Kubrick s The Lord of the Rings Starring the Beatles
Quentin Tarantino s The Psychic
Robert Rodriguez s Barbarella
Tim Burton s Catwoman
Jason vs. Cheech and Chong
Henri-Georges Clouzot s Inferno
Harmony Korine s Fight Harm
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation
Martin Scorsese s Gershwin
John Carpenter s Escape from Earth
Larry Clark s Mona Lisa
Kevin Smith s Fletch Won
Guillermo del Toro s At the Mountains of Madness
Joe Dante s The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes
Vampirella
David Cronenberg s Total Recall
Batman vs. Godzilla
Patrick Lussier s Halloween 3-D
ARTIST BIOS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FOREWORD
My first movie has an easter egg in it. In the comic-con age of Marvel and Star Wars and a million nerd podcasts, producers and filmmakers love to plant hidden references ( Easter eggs ) to related movies, franchises, or characters. It s a way to let the fans feel like they re in on something , like backdoor software or a secret club handshake.
But with all humility, I did it before it was fashionable.
The year was 1986. I was in production on my directorial debut, a horror-comedy called Night of the Creeps . The scene was a campus restroom where a character finds himself trapped by the titular creeps -experimental space slugs from another world. As our intrepid, handicapped sidekick leaps off the toilet to escape an extraterrestrial demise, we briefly glimpse graffiti on the restroom wall: GO, MONSTER SQUAD!
Clearly, this would have meant nothing to Creeps first audiences, but it was a sly wink that I d already set up what would become my next film. And like the early James Bond movies, which announced the next installment s title in the end credits, it was with no small amount of hubris that I was touting my second feature before my first was even finished. I didn t appreciate it at the time, but the miraculous part was this: The Monster Squad was actually made and released the following year.
Now comes the sad part. While my first two films found a cult audience in subsequent decades, neither of them made any money at the time and my directing career was on life support as quickly as it had started. But before that happened-before The Monster Squad was even finished-the company financing it was fairly enthusiastic about it and asked me what I wanted to do next.
As it turns out, this same company controlled the rights to my favorite childhood cartoon adventure show! So, we made a deal for me to adapt the animated series into a live-action feature for the big screen, which is why, if you look very carefully in The Monster Squad , you ll see a poster for Jonny Quest . (Spoiler: It s on the wall in Eugene s bedroom.)
But alas, the box office failure of Squad was the death knell for my Jonny Quest movie, in addition to the beginning of my understanding that for every movie that gets made, there are hundreds, thousands, millions that don t .
That s what this book is about.
As I was licking my wounds over the box office failure of Squad , my friend Shane Black (who d co-written it with me) asked me to help him rewrite a script of his own-his first, in fact-which he d sold to Universal. It was an action-horror thriller called Shadow Company , with Walter Hill producing and John Carpenter directing. Things were looking up. We were given an office/trailer on the Universal backlot and, like Dr. Frankenstein, set about trying to apply the electrodes to bring Shadow Company to life.
Too violent, said the studio after we turned in the rewrite. The story involved a platoon of U.S. Special Forces found dead in Cambodia, killed during the Vietnam war. No sooner are their bodies shipped back to the U.S. for military burial than they rise from their graves as the walking (and heavily armed) dead, only to lay waste to small town America. A grisly metaphor for the karmic damage of war.
Too violent? Maybe. But also too political. Moviegoers don t want their noses shoved in the tragedy of Vietnam, we were told. They go to the movies to forget things like that! And so, we learned that while people may like chocolate in their peanut butter, combining action, horror, and metaphoric social commentary was a tough sell. Time for a new project , I sighed.
I wanted to write a Dirty Harry movie. There had only been two really good ones (the first two, IMHO), so I wrote a screenplay in which a criminal from Callahan s past is released from prison-or escapes, I can t remember- sand sets out to make Harry s life a living hell. I called it Ricochet , and when it was done, I gave it to my friend Joel Silver, for whom I d written the first episode of HBO s Tales from the Crypt .
It s the high school play of Cape Fear ! he enthused, damning with faint praise. Let s give it to Clint! I had gone out of my way to change the lead characters name, just in case Clint didn t consider it worthy of his most iconic role. This, as it turned out, was the case. Too grim, was Eastwood s response.
Joel was undaunted and, to my surprise, asked if I wanted to direct it. In short order, Warner Bros. had bought the script and I was meeting with Kurt Russell about playing San Francisco Police Detective Nick Styles.
I m not certain what happened exactly, although I suspect I didn t win Kurt over (I think this should probably be my on my tombstone: HUSBAND-FATHER-DIDN T WIN KURT OVER ). In any case, as happens with most movies, a new writer was hired, then a new director, and Ricochet starring Denzel Washington as Nick Styles eventually came to a theater near you in 1991.
When I saw it, I noted seven things that still remained from my original script.
The same thing happened around the same time with a script I d written called Teen Agent . Seeing the comic genius of Anthony Michael Hall in John Hughes s early films inspired me to concoct a high-concept action comedy about a nerdy high schooler mistaken for an international spy who s tasked with saving the world while also not flunking his biology midterm.
I met with Mr. Hall. We made small talk and watched MTV, and eventually came to an agreement that Bruce Springsteen s I m On Fire video was pretty rad. But Michael (as he was known) was apparently done playing nerds so Teen Agent was a no go for him, even though he would ve gotten the girl and driven a red Lotus Esprit. Without Hall, I lost interest in the project. Cue new writer; in this case, my UCLA schoolmate and Sex and the City creator Darren Star. Amazingly