Another Voice
Charter Member of The Element
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2000
The current issue of Creative Screenwriter magazine (a glossy trade magazine for writers) has an interview with Mark Perez, the credited screenwriter for Disneys The Country Bears'. There are several answers he gave that very telling about the current state of Disney and about the upcoming highly-anticipated movie.
I was selected for a one-year deal at Disney, and I had one month left on my contract. Disney had this idea about making a movie out of the Country Jamboree ride. There were two other writers under contract at the time, and neither of them could think of anything, so Disney came to me. I couldnt say no, because I was the last guy. So real quick I came up with a take on the movie a mix of The Jerk and The Blues Brothers and Disney went for it. I literally wrote the first draft in a week, and before I knew it, it was greenlighted.
That was my goal: why cant PG movies be really funny? Even G movies, which is what Country Bears is. You dont have to have swearing and drugs to make movies interesting.
Theres a whole scene where they go to this bar and find one of the guys and hes drunk on honey. And in the final cut of the movie you wont see any of that, because the parents didnt like it. Even though its honey, and even though its a bear, anything about being addicted to something .
All I used from the ride were two facts: (a) that the Bears play instruments, and (b) four names. It was weird, because we got to go behind the scenes of the ride, and people were so serious about who the characters are, and what theyre about. I felt weird: Oh man, I hope its not sacrilege what I did.
Remember in The Jerk how Steve Martin was a white guy raised in a black family and he doesnt know it? I thought, Wouldnt it be interesting to do that with bears and humans? Beary would be asking if he was adopted, which I thought would be ridiculous.
The key is to have an idea that youve heard before, then twist it a little to make a different version. Its familiar enough to a studio executive where they know, That movie works, and then you say, This is how were doing it differently. My goal is to make things original inside the confines of what you can make in Hollywood.
A lot of times with any movie, when a script comes in and people think its good, thats when the energy gets behind it. Lets be honest, the bar is low for a script about an attraction at Disney World. I think now, since Bears, theres more time and preparation being taken in scripts like The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean before anyone starts writing.
Yes, the glamorous world of Hollywood.
I was selected for a one-year deal at Disney, and I had one month left on my contract. Disney had this idea about making a movie out of the Country Jamboree ride. There were two other writers under contract at the time, and neither of them could think of anything, so Disney came to me. I couldnt say no, because I was the last guy. So real quick I came up with a take on the movie a mix of The Jerk and The Blues Brothers and Disney went for it. I literally wrote the first draft in a week, and before I knew it, it was greenlighted.
That was my goal: why cant PG movies be really funny? Even G movies, which is what Country Bears is. You dont have to have swearing and drugs to make movies interesting.
Theres a whole scene where they go to this bar and find one of the guys and hes drunk on honey. And in the final cut of the movie you wont see any of that, because the parents didnt like it. Even though its honey, and even though its a bear, anything about being addicted to something .
All I used from the ride were two facts: (a) that the Bears play instruments, and (b) four names. It was weird, because we got to go behind the scenes of the ride, and people were so serious about who the characters are, and what theyre about. I felt weird: Oh man, I hope its not sacrilege what I did.
Remember in The Jerk how Steve Martin was a white guy raised in a black family and he doesnt know it? I thought, Wouldnt it be interesting to do that with bears and humans? Beary would be asking if he was adopted, which I thought would be ridiculous.
The key is to have an idea that youve heard before, then twist it a little to make a different version. Its familiar enough to a studio executive where they know, That movie works, and then you say, This is how were doing it differently. My goal is to make things original inside the confines of what you can make in Hollywood.
A lot of times with any movie, when a script comes in and people think its good, thats when the energy gets behind it. Lets be honest, the bar is low for a script about an attraction at Disney World. I think now, since Bears, theres more time and preparation being taken in scripts like The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean before anyone starts writing.
Yes, the glamorous world of Hollywood.