With the sheer amount of entertainment content we consume it has become increasingly easier to forget the amount of people and effort it takes for such content to be made - which is why Project Greenlight makes for such engaging watch. Each series documents a contest winner as they direct their first film, and this season it will be a broad comedy titled Not Another Pretty Woman and written by The Farrelly Brothers (best known for Dumb and Dumber, and There's Something About Mary).
Being fairly young I wasn't aware of the earlier iteration of the series that premiered back in 2001 on HBO and ran for two seasons before switching to Bravo for a third season in 2005. In those seasons of the series the contest winners were both writers and directors, producing their own original screenplay throughout the series, while this season the competition was solely for directors. While it's disappointing that the writing aspect has been removed, it's not hard to see why. It was most likely a cost-cutting measure. Having the winner direct a film that has already been written (and likely would have been produced regardless of the series) not only adds an extra finical partner to the series, but diminishes potential loses. As I've said, the series is a great idea, but the previous three films it has released Stolen Summer, The Battle of Shaker Heights, and Feast, were not financial successes and have undoubtedly put them at a loss.
Despite this, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, along with their production company LiveAction, and HBO, have decided to make another season and I, for one, am very interested to see what the series is. Majority of the first episode, unfortunately, was almost typical reality fare as Matt, Ben, The Farrelly Brothers and a whole array of other of producers etc. whittled down 13 contestants, who were first chosen on their own short-film submissions, and then what they did with 3 minutes of the Farrelly's script) down to one winner.
Matt and Ben, as always, were overly charming and doing the buddy thing as sort-of co-hosts - which is fine - but the wrong sort of aspect to add to this sort of series. And the contestants were a wonderful array of passionate film-makers - who were also a wonderful array of weirdos. Too bad there's not a series where we could spend more time delving into that weirdness, but refreshingly that isn't Project Greenlight.
The episode only got interesting when it make down to the judges to pick a winner. A heated discussion about diversity and the treatment of women in film, and then the thought processes behind giving a potentially pretentious and difficult director the job elevated the series to something more than Project Runway with directors. Or does it? The group end up picking the aforementioned pretentious director, Jason, because he's obviously the best director. But he'll also provide more drama than any of the other contestants would for the series, as he immediately demonstrates to Matt and Ben. As soon as he's been announced the winner he tells them he has to shoot in film and would prefer it if another writer was hired to re-do the script. As one of the the producers puts it, you can't write that drama. Maybe not. But if reality television has taught us anything it's that drama can be constructed.
So now it remains to be seen what content Project Greenlight will produce as the winner Jason start filming his directorial debut, but either way, I think I'm along for the ride.
Rating: 3.5/5
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