An excerpt from my script review for Green Book which will be available 01/28/19:
1.) Marketability of the Idea
Based on a true friendship.
Tony “Lip” Vallelonga was a real person, who later became a type actor in popular Italian mafia movies/series, a fact I did not know going in.
So too was Dr. Donald Shirley a real musical genius.
The project has all that going for it, but what would worry me as a writer pitching the project would be things like this:
BIRD’S-EYE VIEW of The Westside Highway in 1960’s Manhattan
and the glistening Hudson River as the two Cadillacs cross
the upper-level of the George Washington Bridge surrounded by
hundreds of period cars.
That’s an expensive shot right there, and this script was very much focused on the “period” in period piece. Which means you need a studio with deep pockets (limiting your potential customers) not to mention that studio will want bankable stars to sign on, if only to hedge their bets.
Aside from that, it is “Oscar bait” subject matter, so it may not take too much convincing.
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