Please tell me you repeated the Alzheimer log line as a bit of dark humor.

Further proof Eszterhas could do whatever he wanted in the mid-90s -- they were buying his name, not his scripts. I mean Sacred Cows?! I'd love to see the exact amount he's earnt on spec scripts that have never been produced if anyone knows?

I'd be curious to know if there is a writer who manages to ONLY sell spec scripts to make a living. And if there's a world record holder for selling the MOST specs to Hollywood.

So many of the class of '97 were actually produced, especially comedy: halfbaked, dirty work, remote control (= click?), stealing stanford (= stealing harvard?). a very good year. teething is by far my favorite logline.

Interesting year for screenwriting. Some big hitters making their bones, including John August, Charlie Kaufman, M Night Shyamalan and, er, Troy Duffy. Anyone who hasn’t seen Overnight, thus missing out on enduring the staggering hubris and rancid conduct of the man that brought us The Boondock Saints and… The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, needs to watch it, if for no other reason than to reaffirm faith in their own decency as a human being. He gotta hold of that dream scenario a lot of us are chasing and punched it in the face. Justice prevailed. Considering how well it all turned out it’s funny how the logline for The Sixth Sense sounds like a grievous Hallmark crapfest. The logline for Being John Malkovich, on the other hand, screams ‘read me, I dare you’. One of the worst loglines has to be the one for Telling Lies: ‘FBI polygraph expert is accused of falsifying a polygraph test at the behest of the mob. He is convicted and sentenced to five years. After he’s released, he finds out that his lover set him up.’ That’s not a logline. That’s a plot. The devil’s on the make in the same year that saw The Devil’s Advocate hit the screen and Joe Eszterhas crawl further up his own ass; Hell Bent sounds great, shame it never made it; and Black Ice was also pretty intriguing, if batshit insane and probably destined to sound better than it would play. The Millers is a pretty cool concept, I could still see that working in these Twilight times we live in. Sweet and Sour gets honorable mention, for being darker than a weekend at Mel Gibson’s house, and The C-Word sounds like it could work but has me thinking something similar came out and stank up the joint. The writer later brought us The Hottie and the Nottie, a movie that topped out at 1.9 on IMDB, cracking their Worst 100 List and eliciting user comments like: ‘My only regret is that I cannot vote less than 1...’ Scott, at the end of this thing you should solicit recommendations for the best specs that never made it. Some of these deserve a shoutout.

Teething does sound great, one of the best in there.

I have a copy of Sacred Cows. You're right about Eszterhas in the mid-90s. It was almost like he could scratch out a plot on a napkin over lunch and sell it for $2M. He literally sold IIRC a 2-page treatment for $4M ["One Night Stand" I believe].

Vic, that is a great idea. We could even make a list of each year and vote on the best unproduced spec of the year, even if it's just based on the logline.

STUDIOS Warner Bros. (15) 11% FOX (14) 10% Universal (11) 8% TriStar (9) 6% Paramount (8) 6% Walt Disney Pics (8) 6% Dreamworks SKG (7) 5% MGM (7) 5% N/A (5) 4% Columbia (4) 3% Miramax (4) 3% New Line Cinema (4) 3% UA (4) 3% Castle Rock Entertainment (2) 1% Imagine (2) 1% Jim Henson Pictures (2) 1% Mandalay (2) 1% Spelling Entertainment (2) 1% Others 1 and less than 1% GENRES Drama (30) 0,212765957 Comedy (29) 0,205673759 Romantic Comedy (13) 0,092198582 Thriller (13) 0,092198582 Romance (9) 0,063829787 Comedy Drama (8) 0,056737589 Action (7) 0,04964539 Action Comedy (6) 0,042553191 Action Thriller (4) 0,028368794 Black Comedy (2) 0,014184397 Horror (2) 0,014184397 Sci-fi Fantasy (2) 0,014184397 Others 1 and less than 1% But I have to ask...84. Faith, what is Hip Horror?? Best, Jolli

It's like horror but with added rap. So if it were A Nightmare on Elm Street we were talking about: Freddie 'Now this is a story all about how Elm Street got flipped, turned upside down And I'd like to take a minute, please don't be scared I'll tell you how I maimed and murdered the kids I found there'

Great. Now I'm gonna have that song stuck in my head all day. Boom boom chuck. Boom b-boom chuck.

The log line on my script (#129) is pretty lame and inaccurate. Not your fault. You probably got this from the studio. Sony likely bought this script in order to kill it, since they had already put serious bank into Stewart Little at the time and they didn't wanted to stop Universal from buying it. I didn't know this until later. No complaints. The checks cleared. And it got me more work. That's Hollywood, baby. P.S. It's still an awesome script. Funny and smart. I'm still proud of it.

Caught key typo. Oops. It's been a long day. The correct version of my comment is: The log line on my script (#129) is pretty lame and inaccurate. Not your fault. You probably got this from the studio. Sony likely bought this script in order to kill it, since they had already put serious bank into Stewart Little at the time and they wanted to stop Universal from buying it. I didn’t know this until later. No complaints. The checks cleared. And it got me more work. That’s Hollywood, baby. P.S. It’s still an awesome script. Funny and smart. I’m still proud of it.