BOOK SOUP
Dear Readers;
In 1994, I wrote a screenplay called Anaconda. I wrote it on spec (that’s movie talk for writing a script before you’ve sold the story). I knew it was a good idea, high concept, as they say in the biz. It took my agent all of about three days to sell. My contract included one rewrite, which I completed during 1994, and after that, the story was in the hands of Columbia Pictures.
If you know a little about the film business, you know that a director often doesn't have complete creative control over the theatrical version of a film. The advent of home videos and DVDs gave directors a chance to present their own vision of a film. The “director’s cut” has become a well-known medium, and many fans look forward to DVD releases nowadays, for the chance to see the new cut, to see the film that the director imagined.
You may also know that a screenwriter typically has no control over what happens to the story once he or she has turned in the script. In the case of Anaconda, I was lucky. The casting was an incredible stroke of luck, from the writer’s POV (that’s movie talk for point of view), even more so in hindsight, when one takes into account actors who later became some of the most famous and beloved entertainers in the world, including Eric Stoltz, Ice Cube, Owen Wilson, and of course, J-Lo. I was fortunate too, in the changes that were made to the story after I did my work. The camp that helped make Anaconda a cult classic was added later. When a writer doesn’t have any control over who changes his work, or how so, all he can do is hope for the best. As I said, I was “lucky.”
As much as I owe to my fellow filmmakers, I still imagined over the years the idea of telling the story the way I had always imagined it would be told. But I had never written a novel, and frankly, I wasn’t sure I could do it. Film writing is very different from novel writing. A screenplay is merely a scaffold on which a film is built; the director, cinematographer, costume designer, actors, and many others all work to together to tell the story, like an orchestra comprised of many instruments that work together to play a symphony. I had been working collaboratively in filmmaking for my entire career. But could I craft a work of fiction all on my own, using just my own words, and pull it off? I don’t mind telling you, I had my doubts.
Meanwhile, I had begun a collaboration to co-author a children’s novel based on an unproduced screenplay I had written a few years after Anaconda. The script Fishtale was also sold to Columbia, but the studio had never developed the project. I always loved the story, and of my many sold-but-unproduced screenplays, Fishtale was, for me, truly the one that got away. I teamed up with my tremendously talented and good friend Catherine Masciola to create the middle-grade adventure novel Fishtale. We completed the manuscript. We landed an agent. Our agent sold the book. The book was published. The reviews were good. We were thrilled and more than a little amazed that we had managed to get so far with what was a first novel for us both. And during this process, I became more confident with writing prose.
One day, I told Catherine, I’m going to do it. I’m going to write the novel Anaconda. And she said: Do it. It will be “the writer’s cut.”
Publishers, however, didn’t quite get the concept of the writer’s cut. The word Anaconda made them think of a prose version of the screenplay, commonly called a movie tie-in, usually published in paperback shortly after a film is released. But a tie-in wasn’t what I had in mind.
The advent of the self-published eBook gave me a new opportunity to connect with readers. My friends encouraged me through the many long months of hard work necessary to produce a novel.
So now I present to you Anaconda, The Writer’s Cut, my vision of the story, which I originally conceived back in 1994. I hope you’ll agree it was worth the effort.
Hans Bauer
Kerrville, Texas
January 2014
In 1994, I wrote a screenplay called Anaconda. I wrote it on spec (that’s movie talk for writing a script before you’ve sold the story). I knew it was a good idea, high concept, as they say in the biz. It took my agent all of about three days to sell. My contract included one rewrite, which I completed during 1994, and after that, the story was in the hands of Columbia Pictures.
If you know a little about the film business, you know that a director often doesn't have complete creative control over the theatrical version of a film. The advent of home videos and DVDs gave directors a chance to present their own vision of a film. The “director’s cut” has become a well-known medium, and many fans look forward to DVD releases nowadays, for the chance to see the new cut, to see the film that the director imagined.
You may also know that a screenwriter typically has no control over what happens to the story once he or she has turned in the script. In the case of Anaconda, I was lucky. The casting was an incredible stroke of luck, from the writer’s POV (that’s movie talk for point of view), even more so in hindsight, when one takes into account actors who later became some of the most famous and beloved entertainers in the world, including Eric Stoltz, Ice Cube, Owen Wilson, and of course, J-Lo. I was fortunate too, in the changes that were made to the story after I did my work. The camp that helped make Anaconda a cult classic was added later. When a writer doesn’t have any control over who changes his work, or how so, all he can do is hope for the best. As I said, I was “lucky.”
As much as I owe to my fellow filmmakers, I still imagined over the years the idea of telling the story the way I had always imagined it would be told. But I had never written a novel, and frankly, I wasn’t sure I could do it. Film writing is very different from novel writing. A screenplay is merely a scaffold on which a film is built; the director, cinematographer, costume designer, actors, and many others all work to together to tell the story, like an orchestra comprised of many instruments that work together to play a symphony. I had been working collaboratively in filmmaking for my entire career. But could I craft a work of fiction all on my own, using just my own words, and pull it off? I don’t mind telling you, I had my doubts.
Meanwhile, I had begun a collaboration to co-author a children’s novel based on an unproduced screenplay I had written a few years after Anaconda. The script Fishtale was also sold to Columbia, but the studio had never developed the project. I always loved the story, and of my many sold-but-unproduced screenplays, Fishtale was, for me, truly the one that got away. I teamed up with my tremendously talented and good friend Catherine Masciola to create the middle-grade adventure novel Fishtale. We completed the manuscript. We landed an agent. Our agent sold the book. The book was published. The reviews were good. We were thrilled and more than a little amazed that we had managed to get so far with what was a first novel for us both. And during this process, I became more confident with writing prose.
One day, I told Catherine, I’m going to do it. I’m going to write the novel Anaconda. And she said: Do it. It will be “the writer’s cut.”
Publishers, however, didn’t quite get the concept of the writer’s cut. The word Anaconda made them think of a prose version of the screenplay, commonly called a movie tie-in, usually published in paperback shortly after a film is released. But a tie-in wasn’t what I had in mind.
The advent of the self-published eBook gave me a new opportunity to connect with readers. My friends encouraged me through the many long months of hard work necessary to produce a novel.
So now I present to you Anaconda, The Writer’s Cut, my vision of the story, which I originally conceived back in 1994. I hope you’ll agree it was worth the effort.
Hans Bauer
Kerrville, Texas
January 2014
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