My Life as Roger Ebert
Project Greenlight has come to Australia, offering a million dollars to produce an original screenplay to aspiring directors. This is a program developed by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon back in the U.S., where at least two movies have been completed so far. Once a winner is selected, the filming begins, and Project Greenlight follows the progress for a documentary series presentation on HBO. The completed film premieres at Sundance.

It took some convincing, but M.'s gone ahead and submitted her feature to the contest, which now requires her to join the ranks of the peer review panel. Everyone who submits must review at least 3 scripts, but you don't have to enter to be a reviewer. To see what her competition is like, and what she's going through herself at this stage, I signed up as a reviewer myself. I've now completed 2 scripts, and have one more to read to complete my commitment. While M.'s reports of what's come her way have been pretty dire, my own experience has been less troubled, at least insofar as the overall content goes. The stories have been cliched, but the biggest problem has been the language. Does no one writing a screenplay understand basic English? The first script read like it had been badly translated from the Japanese, and the next as if it had been written by a year-8 dropout. I'm more convinced than ever that M. will go far.