Written By February/March 2011 : Page 28
Structurally, one of the biggest challenges was balancing the science, politics, and human stories. Fox’s strategy was to “frame each episode as its own little arc, which adds up to the bigger arc,” he says. “I tried to find succinct ways of putting the science part of it, but also to make something alive with a visual, or a metaphor, or a joke.” Perhaps the severest obstacle became time constraints. The film was completed in just nine months, while Fox also opened multiple plays in New York. “There was no time to plan,” he confides. “We had to do this fast if it was going to be relevant.” That meant getting out in front of the sched-uled drilling along the Delaware River. The result? In November, the New York State assembly approved a temporary fracking moratorium—an important victory in an ongoing struggle that Fox helped bring to light through his entertaining take on a complex and highly emotional topic. inside Job Written by Charles Ferguson; Co-writ-ten by Chad Beck and Adam Bolt Charles Ferguson is outraged. And so are most Americans. To-gether with co-writers-editors Chad Beck and Adam Bolt, Ferguson poses the question on everyone’s mind after the financial meltdown of 2008: What the hell happened? But Inside Job isn’t only an analy-sis of how the crisis oc-curred. It’s a passionate investigation into an industry that has corrupted this country from the highest offices of poli-tics to the halls of academia. With a background in economic policy and having writ-ten and directed the award-winning investigative documen-tary No End In Sight, Ferguson felt prepared for such an ambitious subject. After about nine months of research and filming, he handed a detailed outline over to Beck and Bolt. From there, the process became intensely collaborative. Ac-cording to Bolt, “Charles knew the story he wanted to tell, and the three of us worked together on how to tell it in a cinematic way.” That meant tirelessly structuring, sequenc-ing, refining, and sharpening until the narrative was not only easy to understand but entertaining as well. “I was determined not to make a dull film,” Ferguson says. “[But] making a feature length film about finance interest-ing and cinematic and accessible was certainly a challenge.” To accomplish such a daunting task, the collaborators dug 28 • WGA W Written By FEBRUARY/MARCH 2011 deep in their arsenal of storytelling tools, employing a bal-ance of title cards, graphics, voiceover, and music. Pacing was also crucial to keep the audience engaged. Bolt explains: “After a section that was heavy on infor-mation and voiceover, it was good to put something that was a little more fun and music-driven, to give the audience a break.” The simple goal, Beck says, was “to make poten-tially dry subject matter lively and emotional.” Enter Charles Ferguson, interviewer. As facts add up in an easy-to-follow manner, discomfort with the greed, shortsighted agendas, and conflicts of interest that created the meltdown transforms into outrage. Ferguson is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. He becomes the voice of the average American—only, unlike us, he actually knows what he’s talking about. We feel a little less help-less when he challenges his smug interviewees, interrupt-ing them with evidence: “Forgive me, but that’s clearly not true,” and “Excuse me, but you can’t be serious.” Ferguson explains that the intent was “to show that these people aren’t superhuman, that it’s perfectly possible to challenge them and that, in fact, when actually challenged, their façade often crumbles quickly.” Adds Beck, “It’s great cinema, and it gives the audience a voice. I’ve always con-sidered it essential to the film.” Thanks to a skillfully crafted narrative that manages to simultaneously entertain and infuriate, you don’t have to have an MBA to understand that the financial meltdown of 2008 should have been avoided. the two escobars Written by Michael Zimbalist and Jeff Zimbalist Jeff and Michael Zim-balist’s film about the shocking connection between the murders of Columbian soccer legend Andrés Escobar and notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar was never supposed to be on the big screen. In fact, the original assignment was a one-hour piece investigating who killed Andrés Escobar after he scored on his own team in the 1994 World Cup. But when the brothers uncovered the complex world of “narco soccer” and drew a connection between the Columbian national soccer team and the fate of an entire nation, ESPN gave its blessing for a feature-length theatrical release designed for an audience much wider than sports fans. continued on page 54
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