The Final Rewrite

2 Best Intentions and Excellent Fails

DOI: 10.4324/9781003161578-3

Where do things go wrong in the writing and development stages? Is it a lack of engagement, a dreary pace, a false character, a forced plot? How do these factors affect the post production stage of the process? How does this inform a writer’s choices? How do editors confront this fact? How can the editing process fulfil expectations engendered by the script?

Not Quite Heaven

Early in my editing career I was the associate editor, with Tom Walls, on a film entitled Made in Heaven (1987). It had an excellent premise, so good that it garnered a large budget and the top Academy Award winning actors at the time. It was written by two excellent writers, Bruce A. Evans and Raynold ...