Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg

[mandyb7]

I had been blaming a lot of the things I didn't like on Melissa Rosenberg, but I just read the sides. The sides are excerpts of the script that were sent out for casting purposes. I am so much more okay with Melissa Rosenberg now.... and quite a bit more disappointed in Catherine Harwicke. So many of the lines in the script much more closely resemble Twilight and even Midnight Sun! I got kind of sad reading them, because I could envision the movie that could have been.... a movie much closer to the one that played in my head when I was reading Twilight. Anyway.... I have a lot more faith in Rosenberg now. Especially considering she did the script in 6 weeks and then rushed out to the picket lines two hours after turning it in. I think she will do a great job with the next scripts. (And to think I had been so disappointed that they kept her!) You can download the sides here: http://fs03n1.sendspace.com/dl/513bd5d2 ... /Sides.zip

woah! thanks for the sides! I am currently reading a version of the script that (has an updated date on it of Feb. 11 2008) and it's very different from the sides, there's some things in the sides I like way better! But then some more from the script. Of course I prefer the book over either though.

[MelEponine]

One more thing about who is responsible for the uber differences between the film and the book...... Here is an excerpt from an interview with Kristen Stewart. You can find the interview at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/enterta ... oun-8.html

Interviewer: You begged for the audition, but in Entertainment Weekly, you said that you had to say some of the “corniest” dialogue you've ever had in a movie. Director Catherine Hardwicke also said if you didn’t feel comfortable saying something, you wouldn’t. She encouraged you to improvise. How much did you change?

KS: We changed everything. There wasn’t one scene we didn’t touch. There were many occasions, really quiet parts of the movie when it’s just Edward and Bella together, where I was like, "Alright, we’re not saying any of the lines. We’re just going to do the whole scene with no lines."

But, at the same time, some of those "corny lines," it was just me being self-conscious. Those wrenching fundamental emotions, I mean how else do you express them? How else do you say, "I love you"? How else do you say, "I want to die for you"? I mean, those are really dramatic lines, but when expressed in that context, there really is no other way to say it. Catherine really helped me with that. She put me in the right position and sort of forced me to go there. You have to be so exposed, so entirely cracked open and vulnerable to able to give like that. So on the page it was really corny, but we worked it out.

I knew that she had insisted on changing some of the lines.... And I can't honestly say that I wouldn't have felt awkward saying some of Bella's dialogue from the book, either. But she's an actor! She should be able to get into the character and make it sound right. Prime example: The lion and the lamb line. The filmmakers tried to change it, but SM fought for it. It could have come off corny, but it was well-delivered, and was one of the most beautiful moments in the movie. I think Kristen did a good job as Bella, so I can forgive a lot, but after hearing HOW MUCH she changed the lines.... ugh!! Grrrrrrr, Kristen. Just Grrrr. And Hardwicke just let her.....

Just another reason why I am now pro Melissa Rosenberg.

[shortstuff]

One more thing about who is responsible for the uber differences between the film and the book...... Here is an excerpt from an interview with Kristen Stewart. You can find the interview at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/enterta ... oun-8.html

Interviewer: You begged for the audition, but in Entertainment Weekly, you said that you had to say some of the “corniest” dialogue you've ever had in a movie. Director Catherine Hardwicke also said if you didn’t feel comfortable saying something, you wouldn’t. She encouraged you to improvise. How much did you change?

KS: We changed everything. There wasn’t one scene we didn’t touch. There were many occasions, really quiet parts of the movie when it’s just Edward and Bella together, where I was like, "Alright, we’re not saying any of the lines. We’re just going to do the whole scene with no lines."

But, at the same time, some of those "corny lines," it was just me being self-conscious. Those wrenching fundamental emotions, I mean how else do you express them? How else do you say, "I love you"? How else do you say, "I want to die for you"? I mean, those are really dramatic lines, but when expressed in that context, there really is no other way to say it. Catherine really helped me with that. She put me in the right position and sort of forced me to go there. You have to be so exposed, so entirely cracked open and vulnerable to able to give like that. So on the page it was really corny, but we worked it out.

I knew that she had insisted on changing some of the lines.... And I can't honestly say that I wouldn't have felt awkward saying some of Bella's dialogue from the book, either. But she's an actor! She should be able to get into the character and make it sound right. Prime example: The lion and the lamb line. The filmmakers tried to change it, but SM fought for it. It could have come off corny, but it was well-delivered, and was one of the most beautiful moments in the movie. I think Kristen did a good job as Bella, so I can forgive a lot, but after hearing HOW MUCH she changed the lines.... ugh!! Grrrrrrr, Kristen. Just Grrrr. And Hardwicke just let her.....

Just another reason why I am now pro Melissa Rosenberg.

wow thats really interesting to read... so basically, butchering twilight was a joint effort, lol.

[Babygirl67]

i think she did a pretty good job

[Wendy65]

For the most part I think she did a good job.
We can't expect her to take all of the lines from Twilight and throw them in, or else she wouldn't be the writer just the re-organizer. She probably doesn't know how much dazzle and all of the other lines mean to us. So I can't blame her. Am I disappointed? Slightly, yes. But I can't get angry at her.
The only line that really, really got me mad was the "sex, money, sex, money, cat" line. Edward's a gentleman. He wouldn't have so bluntly said "sex" and let Bella know that what was on their dirty minds. Even in Eclipse and BD he never said sex, it was more old-fashioned stuff like "make love" and stuff. So that line bugged me a whole lot.

Edward did said the word sex once in BD. I think it was "Isle Esme" "sex was the key all along. I could have save myself alot of aurgments."

But you are right, up until this point Edward would never have been so crass. And even in the context in BD the use of the word sex wasn't as vulgar as it was in the movie. It was more like something the "infuriating" Mike Newton would say.

[Jadey]

I thought the movie was corny and kiddy.
The books are beautiful pieces of work, and they ruined it by wanting to attract and snatch the money off 12 year olds.

[di0772]

I saw the movie first and actually liked it. Then I read the books (all of them) and came to the conclusion that Melissa Rosenberg should be shot, put down and sacked. I think her adaptation was one of the worst that I've seen. It's right up there with Queen of the Damned. She is soo way off in her script that the movie is like the twilight zone - lost in translation. I hate to think what she does with New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. After seeing the movie, reading the books and then seeing the movie again you can see that she just didn't get it. All the great lines in the book were said by the wrong actors in the movie, she added that stupid spider monkey scene and then the helicopter shot up the tree. Why?? The book laid out the general storyline and I really think I could have written a better adaptation. Stephenie is soo visual in the books that you can actually see what she has written. Melissa made it about Hollywood and the big bucks - and not the characters. The hard part was she had the time line out of sequence and all the important conversations that Bella and Edward had were in the wrong places. The script was missing some of the most important scenes from the book that tie in the rest of the series. The most disappointing scene was the meadow by far. It is so intimate in the book but it was just a 30 second lay in the grass in the movie. My rating of Melissa is a -10.

[di0772]

Hey I just read the sides. I take back part of what I said about Melissa. Catherine changed the script so much it sounds like she wrote it instead of Melissa. Melissa definitely missed some crucial scenes and the time line was way changed but Catherine is the one that totally messed it up. I still believe they should trash the movie and redo it though. Sorry Melissa.

Well I've had enough of the junk and am a 3rd of the way through writing my own script. Any takers?

[DudeRocksTheTwilight]

Beginning of rant:

Oh my god! She made the movie SOO corny like she completely butchered the "and so the lion fell in love with the lamb what a stupid lamb" line for ME! I mean I know that some of the actors *cough, Kristen Stewart cough* didn't want to say the "corny" lines but I mean "put in your earplugs" GET ON WITH YOUR JOB PEOPLE! IT'S YOUR JOB TO ACT IF I WAS CH I WOULD'VE FIRED THEM IF THEY DIDN'T WANT TO DO THE LINES so it wasn't entirely their faults but STILL!

End of rant

[Amanda Beth]

I think it's impossibly hard to turn a book, especially a very very popular cult classic book, into a movie. No one here could say we could do any better because we don't really know the guidelines she had to follow, any restrictions she had AND as people have said, a lot of was changed after her job was done. There were more scenes of them walking in the meadow/woods. She wrote it, they shot it but it was edited out.

Twilight is a very difficult book (well the entire saga) to translate on screen because it's so much in Bella's(and eventually Jacob's) head. Things come off in our imaginations (that have no budget so we can make them FANTASTIC) versus how something comes across with a bunch of actors are extremely different. I love the books, I do, but the first two books I find Bella very whiney and...I hate to say, pathetic... in my mind-- I don't see her that way in the movie and that's a good thing to me. I also find B&E to be OVERLY gooey with each other in the books which would come off even cornier on screen. I know everyone can picture it like it IS a movie, but it's not that easy. I find it humorous also that people think some of the lines in the movie were corny-- I laughed the first time I came across the "dazzle" conversation in the book. People don't really talk like that!

So, unless someone finds the script Melissa wrote, the fingers need to point at the director. If it sucks and Hardwicke let it be put into the movie, well then she sucks at her job doesn't she? I'm pretty sure while flipping through her directors notebook at B&N I saw a bunch of places where she mentioned putting lines in. She also had her own copy of Twilight that she wrote in and pointed out what lines need to be included. She had a HUGE say.

I'm letting the Melissa off the hook for now. If New Moon is better then we'll know the director was the problem. If it still sucks-- well don't go see the movies anymore. It's a well known fact that the movies can never hold a candle to the books.