Movies > Aldous Huxley
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flowers.in.her.hair
Aldous Huxley
I haven't read anything on this site about it yet, but I'm sorry if it's been covered already and you guys are sick and tired of this topic, but my question is just this: Why is it that Aldous Huxley's name goes unmentioned in the list of "story" writers in the Disney movie? Also, is there any logic in having so many screeplay writers? They aren't the cartoonists also, right?
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Kirkinson
- Humpty Dumpty
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It's very common for writers to work on a film and go uncredited. The Writers' Guild of America (the screenwriters' union which has required approval of the writing credits on all films produced in the USA since 1941) requires that a writer contribute a certain amount of material in order to receive credit. Nowadays the rules are that a writer (or a team of writers working in collaboration) must show he contributed at least 1/3 of the screenplay to receive credit (a director or producer who worked on the screenplay must prove he wrote at least half). Writers working in collaboration will be separated by "&" and writers who worked separately on a screenplay will be separated by "and." This is why you see credits like "Screenplay by Adam Adamson & Jake Jacobson and Will Williamson & Rich Richardson."
The rules today are that no more than three writers can be included on any one team, and no more than three separate writers (or teams of writers) can receive the same credit. The rules might have been a bit different in 1951. But in any era, this whole process has always resulted in writers receiving no credit for their work. The sole credited writer on Speed said that Joss Whedon wrote 98.9% of the dialogue, but Whedon didn't receive any credit (plot points and characters are generally given priority over dialogue). The 1994 film of The Flintstones supposedly had over 60 writers working on it.
In the "Golden Age" of Hollywood writers often lived in dorms at the studios and there would be several writers working on the same screenplay. They would often have specific areas of screenplays that they would be assigned to, i.e., they would give the script to a certain writer who would make it funnier, another writer who was good at romantic scenes, another writer who was good at thinking of plot twists, etc. This process continues largely to today, except that nowadays writers are freelancers, don't live on studio lots, and the whole process of assigning credit is much more complicated (before 1941 the studio would just decide who got credit, which often lead to executives assigning themselves writing credits to make themselves look good).
Most mainstream Hollywood movies have probably had loads of writers working on them, regardless of how many are credited, and writers have been going uncredited for as long as cinema has existed. The only reason we end up hearing about people like Aldous Huxley and Joss Whedon not receiving credit is that their names are well-known and it makes a juicy news story.
Huxley's original screenplay (which he worked on with Disney years and years before Alice was made) was a fictional/fantasical account of the life of Charles Dodgson, which was to be a combination of live-action and animation (like Mary Poppins or Bednobs and Broomsticks), the animated portions being dips into Dodgson's fantasies, most (if not all) of them based on the Alice books.
The rules today are that no more than three writers can be included on any one team, and no more than three separate writers (or teams of writers) can receive the same credit. The rules might have been a bit different in 1951. But in any era, this whole process has always resulted in writers receiving no credit for their work. The sole credited writer on Speed said that Joss Whedon wrote 98.9% of the dialogue, but Whedon didn't receive any credit (plot points and characters are generally given priority over dialogue). The 1994 film of The Flintstones supposedly had over 60 writers working on it.
In the "Golden Age" of Hollywood writers often lived in dorms at the studios and there would be several writers working on the same screenplay. They would often have specific areas of screenplays that they would be assigned to, i.e., they would give the script to a certain writer who would make it funnier, another writer who was good at romantic scenes, another writer who was good at thinking of plot twists, etc. This process continues largely to today, except that nowadays writers are freelancers, don't live on studio lots, and the whole process of assigning credit is much more complicated (before 1941 the studio would just decide who got credit, which often lead to executives assigning themselves writing credits to make themselves look good).
Most mainstream Hollywood movies have probably had loads of writers working on them, regardless of how many are credited, and writers have been going uncredited for as long as cinema has existed. The only reason we end up hearing about people like Aldous Huxley and Joss Whedon not receiving credit is that their names are well-known and it makes a juicy news story.
Huxley's original screenplay (which he worked on with Disney years and years before Alice was made) was a fictional/fantasical account of the life of Charles Dodgson, which was to be a combination of live-action and animation (like Mary Poppins or Bednobs and Broomsticks), the animated portions being dips into Dodgson's fantasies, most (if not all) of them based on the Alice books.
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flower.in.her.hair
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Kirkinson
- Humpty Dumpty
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I plan on being a writer/director, so I've read a lot about it. Most of what I told you came from various articles, essays and interviews I've seen over the past few years. I also have a relative in L.A. who is a producer and screenwriter (though he's never sold a screenplay) and I've taken a couple classes taught by another screenwriter, so I've heard some of their horror stories about working in the industry.
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Emmot'er slim
- Queen Alice
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FYI
It does exist.
* Huxley's 'Deep Jam' and the Adaptation of Alice in Wonderland
* David Leon Higdon and Phill Lehrman
* The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 43, No. 169 (Feb., 1992), pp. 57-74 (article consists of 18 pages)
* Published by: Oxford University Press
http://www.jstor.org/pss/517490
If you can get access to that document, Huxley's treatment of alice in wonderland is in the appendix.
It's basically a description of what is to happen in the film in paragraph form. Not really a screenplay, but it's what huxley submitted to disney.
* David Leon Higdon and Phill Lehrman
* The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 43, No. 169 (Feb., 1992), pp. 57-74 (article consists of 18 pages)
* Published by: Oxford University Press
http://www.jstor.org/pss/517490
If you can get access to that document, Huxley's treatment of alice in wonderland is in the appendix.
It's basically a description of what is to happen in the film in paragraph form. Not really a screenplay, but it's what huxley submitted to disney.
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captaina09
Summary Please?
Um...
Could you maybe give us a summary (as detailed as possible) of Huxley's treatment, please?
Because you can only view the entire article on JSTOR if you have an account on that site and if you're affiliated with some sort of organization or educational institution, and that means many people who are Alice in Wonderland fans or even just casual Internet viewers can't view it.
I think many of us would appreciate it if you could do this for us.
(Because to be frank, I think that Huxley's interpretation of both the "Alice" stories, and of Lewis Carroll himself, sounds very interesting and maybe it SHOULD be made into a movie one of these days.)
"Good-bye, until we meet again!"-Alice, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Chapter 6, "Humpty Dumpyty"
Could you maybe give us a summary (as detailed as possible) of Huxley's treatment, please?
Because you can only view the entire article on JSTOR if you have an account on that site and if you're affiliated with some sort of organization or educational institution, and that means many people who are Alice in Wonderland fans or even just casual Internet viewers can't view it.
I think many of us would appreciate it if you could do this for us.
(Because to be frank, I think that Huxley's interpretation of both the "Alice" stories, and of Lewis Carroll himself, sounds very interesting and maybe it SHOULD be made into a movie one of these days.)
"Good-bye, until we meet again!"-Alice, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Chapter 6, "Humpty Dumpyty"
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Kirkinson
- Humpty Dumpty
- Posts: 89
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 6:04 pm
- Location: Chicago, IL, USA
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An interesting article in the most recent issue of The Believer contains a bit more information on Huxley's unproduced script than I've read before. You can read the whole thing at Salon.com, and I encourage you to do so, but here is the relevant portion:
In 1945, Walt Disney signed Aldous Huxley to write a screenplay for "Alice and the Mysterious Mr. Carroll": a combination live-action and animated incorporation of "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland" with the biography of Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson). Dodgson, a beleaguered Oxford lecturer known as the Dodo, has already written "Alice in Wonderland" under the name Lewis Carroll. He and Alice take refuge in Wonderland from Alice’s cruel governess and Dodgson’s Tory vice-chancellor. These villains, who disapprove of "nonsense books," must never learn that Dodgson and Carroll are the same person, lest Dodgson be barred from a coveted university librarianship. A series of fantastic adventures culminates with the resolution of the Carroll-Dodgson identity through a deus-ex-machina appearance by Queen Victoria. "It was so literary I could understand only every third word," Disney said of Huxley’s script, which he didn’t end up using for his adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland" (1951).
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Grimley Fieendish
- Mad Hatter
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The proposed 1940's Disney version of AIW, animation wise, was based largely on the abandoned 1932 version, which if it had been made, would have featured Mary Pickford in the title role... (The 1932 Disney version had to be cancelled, after Paramount Pictures announced that it was releasing a live action version of the above, featuring a all star cast in 1933)An interesting article in the most recent issue of The Believer contains a bit more information on Huxley's unproduced script than I've read before. You can read the whole thing at Salon.com, and I encourage you to do so, but here is the relevant portion:In 1945, Walt Disney signed Aldous Huxley to write a screenplay for "Alice and the Mysterious Mr. Carroll": a combination live-action and animated incorporation of "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland" with the biography of Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson). Dodgson, a beleaguered Oxford lecturer known as the Dodo, has already written "Alice in Wonderland" under the name Lewis Carroll. He and Alice take refuge in Wonderland from Alice’s cruel governess and Dodgson’s Tory vice-chancellor. These villains, who disapprove of "nonsense books," must never learn that Dodgson and Carroll are the same person, lest Dodgson be barred from a coveted university librarianship. A series of fantastic adventures culminates with the resolution of the Carroll-Dodgson identity through a deus-ex-machina appearance by Queen Victoria. "It was so literary I could understand only every third word," Disney said of Huxley’s script, which he didn’t end up using for his adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland" (1951).
Unfortunately for this version, a French adaptation of AIW, using the same style of animation & live action, as the proposed Disney adaptation was cinematically released in 1948...
Disney reportedly attempted to have this version "strangled at birth", as he launched a lawsuit to halt it's distrubution in the U.S, claiming plagarism by the French makers... However, Disney lost the court case, & the film was released...
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Guest
http://rapidshare.com/files/384709111/517490.pdf.html
There it is! The first ten can get it and then rapidshare kills it.
Have Fun
There it is! The first ten can get it and then rapidshare kills it.
Have Fun
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