Episode Report Card Jessica: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Day Out Of Days
By Jessica | Season 6 | Episode 11 | Aired on 01.14.2003
Cut to The Anonymous Film Studio, where Todd and Dawson are getting notes from Executive Whitney From Bring It On and a studio executive, played by Paul Gleason of The Breakfast Club fame. Paul Gleason is reading from blue audience response cards as Todd and Dawson listen and make sad faces. "Blindingly dull. Achingly dull. Mind-numbingly dull," Paul reads, and then drops the audience response cards in front of Todd. Has someone been reading the recaps? Todd asks what those little cards prove, "other than the fact that [the studio has] been previewing the thing all along?" Erm. Okay. Get a snack, dear readers, because this is going to be a long rant. First off: "previewing this thing all along"? No studio previews a film "all along." Not for the public, anyway. That's simply absurd. Because it's not like these things are shot in a linear fashion, anyway. There would be nothing to show the public that would make any sort of sense until after the film had been edited. And how would they "preview [it] all along"? Do they show bits and pieces of the movie to the same group of schmoes every week? That would be a total exercise in futility, not to mention a very expensive waste of the studio's time. Second: it's STILL TUESDAY. Which means that principle photography ended YESTERDAY. Which means that in order to make this particular screening -- which, it is implied in the following discussion of the changes that need to be made in the movie, was of the completed film -- they completed the second unit photography and edited the film (and that's at the very least, by the way. I'm assuming that this screening took place before they finished the color and sound correction, or completed the music and titles and credits) and then screened it AGAIN in LESS THAN 24 HOURS? That's absurd. It's absurd, and it's insulting to the viewer. Like, I don't know who had the hard-on for the little Days Of The Week structural conceit they're using in this episode, but it's doing nothing but fucking with the timeline. It doesn't add anything to the episode and serves only to make the writers look as though they haven't thought this episode through at all. Which probably isn't entirely true -- it's definitely possible that this Days Of The Week thing worked at one point, but didn't really make it through editing and revisions -- but it certainly looks that way, and someone should have made the call and taken it out.
Phew. Anyway. Where was I? Paul Gleason says that these cards prove they need reshoots. Whitney smirks in the background. "More sex, more violence, maybe a little twist in the plot that's not predictable from the very first frame," Paul says. "I mean, obviously, the goal here is to try to make this damn thing watchable." Paul Gleason and I are soulmates, y'all! At this, naturally, Todd gets all worked up and whips out his cigarettes, yelping that if he's going to sit here and take criticism "from every Tom, Dick and Harry in Tarzana who didn't have anything else better to do on a Wednesday night," then he needs to have a cigarette. I'll leave out the part where they'd never let you smoke inside an office building in Los Angeles and point out that if they screened the movie -- in its completed format as implied -- on Wednesday, and it's still Tuesday, then apparently everyone in Los Angeles but me has the ability to GO BACKWARD IN TIME. Because no one screens unfinished movies for the general public! They'll show a teaser, sure. And I can see showing bits and pieces of a highly anticipated film to an industry crowd. But a test screening to the general public, before the director is even finished shooting? Is not going to happen. And the thing is, I know that the writers know that. This is their area of expertise. It's not like they're making mistakes in, like, nuclear physics. As a writer myself, I'm actually beginning to feel bad about my constant bad-mouthing of the Dawson's Creek writers. I simply can't believe that none of them pointed out that this storyline is completely impossible. I don't know what's going on over there, but I'm waiting for the Dawson's Creek E! True Hollywood Story, because someone is letting lazy mistakes in plotting and characterization slip through left and right, and I can't imagine that it's entirely the fault of the writing staff. And they could have fixed it by simply dropping the title cards and by putting the big "Todd's and Dawson's Movie Wraps" scene in a previous episode. I'd give them artistic license on the post-production timeline if, at the very least, they'd have pretended that some time had passed between wrap and the screening!