In these powerful screenplays, Andrew Kevin Walker provides two compelling stories of dark deeds and dark motives, in which the forces of good are pitted against the many forms of evil. Seven, which starred Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow, followed the trail of a serial killer, whose victims were murdered in accordance with the seven deadly sins. 8mm focuses on Tom Welles -- portrayed by Nicolas Cage -- an honest and hardworking private detective, who discovers an appalling 8mm "snuff" film in which a teenage girl was raped and killed. Hired to track down the masked murderers shown in the film, Welles reconstructs the dead girl's unhappy life; in the course of his investigation, he learns that all fantasies can be filmed to order, at a terrible price, and he becomes obsessed with avenging the girl's death.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"This Is Not Going To Have A Happy Ending"; Indeed,
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This review is from: Seven & 8Mm (Classic screenplay) (Paperback)
Here is Andrew Kevin Walker's justly acclaimed screenplay for "Seven", plus his first draft script for the Joel Schumacher fiasco "8mm." The first script is pretty much intact in David Fincher's brilliant film. The result was the best scary movie of its genre of the 1990's; in my opinion, even better than "The Silence of the Lambs" because of "Seven"'s deeper, darker moral (even theological) vision. Fincher omitted a prologue and epilogue featuring Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and discarded some lines of dialogue, but essentially everything was used. "8mm" is a very different case. As Walker explains in an interview that prefaces the book, director Joel Schumacher dumbed down his script, injecting spurious, lumbering melodrama and blunting the thematic amiguities so the result was a stupid revenge fantasy. (The Nicolas Cage character is given explicit permission to do the things he does in the final act in Schumacher's movie.) To be fair, Walker's original version is so incredibly dark that no Hollywood studio would ever want to film it. It should have been an independent film. In the introductory interview Walker also discusses how he wrote the scripts and how he got an agent to place "Seven" with the studios. He seems like a smart guy who is self-aware enough to keep a check on pretentiousness in his work. I would now like to read his original screenplay for "Sleepy Hollow" and his adaptation of Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage", two other works he mentions in this book.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant Screenwriting,
This review is from: Seven & 8Mm (Classic screenplay) (Paperback)
Andrew Kevin Walker is a favorite of mine. Most people wouldn't recognize his name on the screen credits, but for guys like me, we know what to expect. His brilliant talent for weaving a textured plot together is, I believe, unparalleled. This book preserves the two scripts that made him a sought-after A-list writer. I can remember when his first film was released, Brainscan. Not as dense or textured as his new stuff but still not bad. Later on he helped pen the adaptation of the Dean Koontz novel, Hideaway and did an uncredited rewrite for Event Horizon and The Game. If you are serious into screenwriting or just appreciate the mechanics of a good film, buy this book right now. It's a good bet.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
It concerns only Seven,
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This review is from: Seven & 8Mm (Classic screenplay) (Paperback)
It is surprising to read the screenplay after having seen the film several times and exploited it in class with senior high school students. There are fundamental differences and the screenplay does not center the story the same way as the film. The screenplay is definitely centered from beginning to end on Somerset and not on Mills, or even on the couple Mills-Somerset. The question that comes up then is not whether Mills is going to flunk or not, but whether Somerset is going to leave the police and the City or not. The first and last scenes of thes creenplay have been cut off. Apart from that the differences are essentially details, but as I said before, the perspective is different. The numerous and long stage directions are also interesting because they give more meaning to the visual details, and they also explain better why some details are there, but not always. It does not tell us why the apartment of the 3rd victims is number 303 and Doe's apartment is 6A. But there we can easily find the connection, and the symbolism. But Mills is shown as an angry and ambitious man who does not have the patience it takes to cope with the perverted world in which we live, or die. Mills is definitely angrier and he reacts more violently in the screenplay. We also find out that the stage directions explain his character better than the way Brad Pitt plays it. Brad Pitt appears to lack some depth and not to be able to show the psychological complexity that we find in the screenplay, whereas Morgan Freeman is a lot better. That's probably why the film was decentered from Somerset and centered on the couple Mills-Somerset, not to put Brad Pitt in a secondary position. One element though in the screenplay is to be criticized : the metronome used by Somerset to recapture his balance at the end of a day, to erase the noise of the city, to come back to some regular rhythm and to go to sleep is definitely overused. Once is enough to understand. Three times is too much. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX.
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