Redressing success

Hollywood loves to repackage successful films. They do it most clumsily as sequels. But cogent screenwriters do it more cleverly by taking a proven story structure or strategy or dramatic sequence and repackaging it. This is the key, I believe, to the success of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, which is a generic action-romance in a very new package. What is "new" here is the package, not the contents, the skeleton, stripped of its attractive new flesh.

Thus, for years now, I've been trying to find the right disguise in which to repackage Casablanca. The world has been so different -- until the rise of terrorism. This morning I woke up with an idea, just researched it a bit on the Internet, and I think I have a package that may be worth exploring. The key, as with SLUMDOG, is to make the new package so original and different that no one recognizes the source, no one "gets" that you're just retelling a tried and true old story. Nobody likes that. We like to be surprised. My wife got very upset when I said SLUMDOG was a generic Action Romance, as if this made it less worthy. In fact, though, there aren't all that many story strategies and types in the culture.

I have my next two scripts lined up but this will give me time to research this and see if my early optimism is right. If so, then it should go quickly since, after all, it's Casablanca in drag, or whatever else it takes to hide the skeleton.