Meh. Film making is a collaborative medium. Terry Rossio (Pirates of the Caribbean), in his Web articles, complains extensively about producers screwing up his and Ted Elliott's genius ideas, as well as directors going cowboy and rewriting with their own pet writers. You've also got powerful stars who can decide to rewrite their own dialog or push push for other changes—or just turn in strange performance choices. You could even have a DP make some dull photography choices or an editor fail to find the right rhythm and pacing. And practically no author or screenwriter is going to admit that his or her work was improved by the collaboration.

It's no different from project work in the consulting industry. Everybody has an opinion and a goal, collaborates to affect the outcomes, and blames any failures or shortcomings on whomever he or she views as the sticks in the mud, including the original architect.

The architect never sees his vision fully realized, but it's the client who paid for it who has to live with it—and who reaps any benefit from it. And the architect doesn't get paid $400,000 to produce a lousy 110-page document with enough white space to add a Visio diagram on every page, nor residuals for later use of his ideas or even his name permanently attached to the project results or Blu-ray he can show his friends.

So where do I sign up to get screwed over like that?

/bitter

As long as you can cite tropes like Brian can cite Star Trek, Michael can cite Star Wars, Trey can identify effects and design artists by their handiwork, Teague can do Teague stuff, and Eddie can cite Hollywood history, you'll be fine.

Wait, what IS Teague an expert at? Rotoscoping?

EDIT: Incisive question-asking!

PS GodDAMN tvtropes is a time-suck. It's like someone wrote down all the things in my head including stuff I haven't even thought of yet and then cited examples in all forms of media. I cannot begin to say how many hours I've spent there.

Ha ha ha! That's ridiculous!

*Texting recon team: "Abort! Abort! Subject has become suspicious! Pull all hardware!"*

In Blues Brothers 2000, the new brothers slip into the county fair by repainting their car and disguising themselves. Then in the next scene, they've somehow gotten into the flaming loop-the-loop car in their black suits. The film makers seem to have edited out a gag as to how they changed vehicles.

The weird thing is, if they had just edited out the disguise part, they could have gone all the way from "How are we gonna get past the cops?" to entering in the flaming loop-the-loop car.

Also, I hear that in 2010: Moby Dick, there's a dude trying and trying to catch up to Ahab's submarine, then all of a sudden, he's on the sub. No explanation.

Man, *snort* I hope somebody got fired for that one.

Diamonds are Forever, the famous stunt involving a car that goes into an alley sideways features a hilarious cut to the interior twisting around to try to hide the fact that the car comes out of the alley wrong-side up.

Damn, you're smooth.

I bet you have a rich flavor and contain very low tar.

Hooray! Finally an argument that I didn't start and have no opinion on!

/Tell them Zarban's dead.  He died on that planet.

Kel looks great, but he doesn't get a lot to do.

Nia looks really great.

Booze will be helpful.

It wasn't me! John wouldn't shut up about it! Plus, he kept saying how great DIF and Sax's Fandom Planet are!

Thanks for having the guts to have a live chatroom in the first place.

Huh? That was a good one.

Hey! Release it as a Geekza!

I've said before that The Spy Who Loved Me was the movie that blew my 10-year-old mind. But it was probably House of Games (Mamet, with Lindsey Crouse and Fat Tony) that was the first film where I (20-year-old me) could see the mechanics working. Mamet is a very mechanical writer*, and seeing the wheels turn as he explored deception and seduction was enlightening.

* See The Spanish Prisoner for probably the most arch example.

Aw crap! Trey's cameo was the only reason I even came to look at this page!

(They say Teague's posts were based on him, you know.)