Read the whole article about how a good script got turned into what is considered the worst film of the last decade. And speaking of Scientology, CNN’s Anderson Cooper is doing a week-long series on the cult which is getting sued over violence in their Sea Org unit.
Let me start by apologizing to anyone who went to see “Battlefield Earth.” It wasn’t as I intended — promise. No one sets out to make a train wreck. Actually, comparing it to a train wreck isn’t really fair to train wrecks, because people actually want to watch those.
It started, as so many of my choices do, with my Willy Wonker.
It was 1994, and I had read an article in Premiere magazine saying that the Celebrity Center, the Scientology epicenter in Los Angeles, was a great place to meet women.
Willy convinced me to go check it out. Touring the building, I didn’t find any eligible women at first, but I did meet Karen Hollander, president of the center, who said she was a fan of [my film] “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.” […] Eventually, I had dinner with John Travolta, his wife Kelly Preston, Karen — about 10 Scientologists in all.
[…]
I researched Scientology before signing on to the movie, to make sure I wasn’t making anything that would indoctrinate people. I took a few courses, including the Purification Rundown, or Purif. You go to CC every day, take vitamins and go in and out of a sauna so toxins are released from your body. You’re supposed to reach an “End Point.” I never did, but I was bored so I told them I had a vision of L. Ron. They said, “What did he say?” “Pull my finger,” was my response. They said I was done.
[…]
My script was very, VERY different than what ended up on the screen. My screenplay was darker, grittier and had a very compelling story with rich characters. What my screenplay didn’t have was slow motion at every turn, Dutch tilts, campy dialogue, aliens in KISS boots, and everyone wearing Bob Marley wigs.
Those without the constitution, can’t see the truth.
Scientology feeds people with the “performer” personality type the attention and praise and acknowledgement and validation that performers crave more than life itself.
Hubbard was brilliant to structure Scientology around core celebrities (himself being the first). By capturing the core celebrities, he also ensnared their “hangers on” and other fans, in an expanding sphere of influence. The blinded celebrities lead the mesmerized fans into an emotional and intellectual black hole.
Absolute genius.
How is Scientology any worse than christianity, Islam, Morman, or any other faith? How is the idea that aliens and volcanos any sillier than one man executed on a cross and his body is stolen. Or the rantings of an insane, child molesting, desert bedouin, war lord.
I haven’t heard of any aspect of their faith that requires them to murder or enslave all non-believers. All they strive to do is improve themselves, but not at the cost of others.
#3: Agree with your first paragraph, but the high cost of Scientology is in money and loss of freedom.
I may be one of the few people that liked that movie; I like sci-fi in most forms obviously. I thought it was campy, silly and absurd which for me made it entertaining. I didn’t expect much from it so it being watchable worked for me. As for those stupendously horrible Star Wars prequels: Talk about bad film making… those are just sickening!
My answer is, after boiling away all the embelishments:
the Hebrew God is upset with man, and behaves in the way a father may discipline wayward children
the Christan God is hopeful that man has learned the lessons of adolescence, and will carry on as responsible informed young adult in the rules of life and love
the Muslim God wishes ease man through his mid-life crisis by putting him in charge, and responsible for, his many women and children, and to be suspecious of his neighbors’ influences
the Buddist God sees man as part of life’s continuum, and recognizes the passage of the individual is but necessary and natural
the Scientological God sees spirituality as a joke played on man by a man (Hubbard), and that feeding man’s vanitity is a delightful game of manipulation
I guess rating the worst movies ever made is a highly subjective thing. As for me, I didn’t mind Battlefield Earth. There are far far worse movies out there. Here is my short list of movies where I not only want the precious minutes of my life I spent watching them back, I think someone should die a horrible slow death for making these. Here goes:
Happiness
She’s so Lovely
Sphere
Event Horizon
And quite possibly the worst movie you have never seen…..
Hard Rock Nightmare
As for The Church of Scientology?
Who cares! I am sure a comet of something else will pass by earth in the near future and they will all kill themselves anyway. Kind of a self fixing problem.
Maybe I’m just not seeing it, but none of the 5 links above actually go to the article shown.
[Fixed]
If I had written a turd that horrific, I too would be looking to deflect the blame elsewhere. He would have had a lot more credibility if he had just apologized and left it at that.
#9
Same problem. This is probably the best linked article I’ve seen on here in a week and I can’t read the whole thing.
Did some searching and drilling and finally found it.
After reading the whole article I have to say this guy is quite funny. From reading the article I have to conclude that based on how he writes I have to believe what he says about his script being rewritten.
On a side not the headline about it skewering Scientology is all hype. I didn’t get that from the article at all. He did crack some jokes in regards to some of the members and one Scientology ceremony but he didn’t say anything bad about Scientology in any part of the article.
No way this film is the worst of the decade! I’ve seen plenty of crap in the last ten years. Just in the field of scifi I thought the star trek movie was much worse, childishly predictable plot, overamped acting and a total ignorance of a finely detailed history and timeline.
This Razzie seems to be directed more at scientology than film prodution quality.
Scientology is a religious mafia powerful enough to mistrust. I personally know of a case where a tiny european software company went scientologist and started international distribution around the same time. Their success was suspiciously meteoric, and they’re still going strong. Lot’s of immorality going on under the guise of religious organizations. Maybe it’s about time the sheeple ignore the shepards.
Sadly, I will watch just about anything. I get trapped thinking either “How could I have made this better?” or “Surely it will get better as the story develops?” But just like women, you can usually tell in 5 minutes what the outcome is going to be===but hope springs eternal.
My brain doesn’t remember “bad things” very well which means I often wind up watching a bad movie until some scene reminds me it is trash, then I stop. Sphere and Event Horizon were bad–forget why. Battlefield Earth seems to me had a few watchable elements—isn’t it fun seeing Travolta “ham it up” or is half his other better ham movies setting too high a bar?
Well, after 30 min I just turned off “Always and Forever” on Hallmark Channel. I wanted to see Rena Sofer because she is hot but not hot enough to make me sit thru the crapfest.
“Adults acting like Teenagers”–never a good movie.
#14 so whats the company, so I can make sure to never buy their stuff.
I read the book when it first came out. The plot was fun but the characters were so one-dimensional as to be completely laughable. The movie had no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
I read the book about 10 years ago, on the recommendation of a guy who said it was the greatest book he had ever read (who also claimed to be well read). It was a long read, for sure, but at the end… I’m still scratching my head, wondering 1) why it was so long, and 2) why oh why would *anyone* think this was a great book? Given this, how could they make a good movie out of it? You could make a fun movie out of it possibly. And it’s not a bad book, but it wouldn’t take much to produce a better list.
>> yankinwaoz said, on March 28th, 2010 at 7:02 am
>> Or the rantings of an insane, child molesting, desert bedouin, war lord.
If, in the future, legal age is moved to 21, would that make people today child molesters?
#21–Greg==you say “If, in the future, legal age is moved to 21, would that make people today child molesters? /// Of course not. You have made too many good posts not to know that morality and law are independent variables? Some overlap, true==but still independent of one another. “The law allows and prevents certain activities that a moral man ill choose to abstain from or engage in as the moral precepts apply.”
I won’t have sex with an adult retard or intoxicated person regardless of whatever the law allows. I’m sure you are the same.
Father: Suggesting Scientology should be tolerated simply because we already tolerate Christianity or Islam, etc., is simply absurd. We should tolerate none of them.
Evidence for the idiocy of Scientology? They chose the writer of Robin Hood: Men in Tights to script Hubbard’s high drama sci-fi opera.
Not an insult to the writer. I rather enjoyed the uneven Mel Brooks film. But, would you ask Marilyn Manson to do chamber music?
The book was fun to read as a kid, though a bit long and quite a bit of unneeded prose. I think a good editor could have cut it down towards 2/3 its size.
The movie just turned into a campy mess, I’m glad for the writer that he was kicked out. If he had actually written everything that went on the screen, I’d never watch or read anything else he wrote.
What’s sad is that people that are excited for their books/beliefs/heroes tend to not be the best to make derivative works. Most movies from underlying books, to me, tend to be much better if the script writer and director are less attached to the story and able to pick up on interesting side notes.
My rule of thumb concerning movies is this. Anytime a movie is created, edited, or rewritten, to serve some propaganda purpose, it always suffers for it. Whether this is done by the film’s director, producer, its financial backer, or even good old Uncle Sam (who has a finger into a lot of movie scripts you don’t know about). The more interference from parties other than the original writers, the worse things get. Basically, your “too many cooks” syndrome. “B.F.” probably went thru one of more committees of the LRH organization. Each adding their touches and flourishes. And all proving how out of touch and clueless they are at creating movie art.
Most members probably haven’t seen many movies of the past few decades. Since they choose to isolate their world view from such contaminating outside sources, as the entertainment media. It’s little wonder they probably based their ideas on most of LRon’s tired old story plots. Assuming those weren’t ghost written, by hacks. Pulp magazine fiction of the 1950s, is hardly a sound basis for making a modern movie. And when you’re constantly trying to interject some chunks of your politics or religion, in order to propagate it. Then the story really starts to suffer.
An exaggerated example. I just saw the latest Simpson episode, where they go to Jerusalem. And Flanders stops to see the Israeli version of the “Transformers” movie. And in that, the two giant robots stop fighting when they realize its the Sabbath, and sit down to read the Koran for the rest of the movie. Just a joke. But the point being the same. When some fanatically pontificating and invasive authority, deems it necessary to add its “two cents” views to a movie script. It turns out awful.
“When some fanatically pontificating and invasive authority, deems it necessary to add its “two cents” views to a movie script. It turns out awful.” /// So what you’re saying is “Art imitates life?”
I liked Battlefield Earth, I understand why others didn’t.
My imagination fills the gaps of the parts that were poorly done.
My understanding of the difficulty of condensing a book to a movie forgives some of the more farfetched plot elements which I can imagine transpiring over a far longer period of time.
I also liked the book Dianetics by L Ron Hubbard.
I think Scientology is a bit silly, but not that much more so than Islam and only a bit more than Christianity … but what’s that have to do with a movie?
I can separate the movie from the religion of the author and don’t mix message and messenger.
I am an atheist maybe better described as a transreligionist as I really don’t find the need to “hate religion and all that” and find fascinating ideas here and there in the ideas of many religions and tangent works.
In this case, I found the message of “leverage” as an interest concept in Battlefield Earth when I watched in at the theater.
I liked the book Battlefield Earth. It was pretty good, but it is the same length of Atlas Shrugged and both books have little tiny writing to get 1064 pages in a paperback.
The movie Battlefield Earth was the worse movie I had ever seen. Not only did it end at a cliffhanger that occurred in the middle of the book, but it changed key parts to just make the movie suck in general.
I loved the book, hated the movie, and Scientology is just weird. Really. Do Tom Cruise and John Travolta look anything but crazy? You can see crazy in their eyes.
It only takes a minute into this piece of crap before you get the cornball reaction by the main protagonist to a family member dying. and it goes downhill from there.
My favorite parts are the blatant Blade Runner rip-offs of the alien cityscape (complete with flames shooting into the sky) and the scene with the hero crashing through several panes of glass after getting shot in the back. Har!
BE is a camp classic; a “Plan 9” for our generation. I watch it at least once a year. It’s so bad it’s good.
Great books rarely become great movies. A lot of great movies came from mediocre books. Complicated books never become good movies. Authors doing screen plays screw up terribly (see any Stephen King movie)
In my opinion, the best movie from a book? The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway and starring Spencer Tracy.